How many times have you found yourself thinking you'd like to develop a new skill or sharpen an old one? Maybe you've wanted to learn another language or play a musical instrument; further your education; or get up out of your easy chair and do some catch-up on that correspondence you've been putting off for weeks!

But in each, or at least most, of these instances, before you can even get started, you find yourself turned back -- repelled from your upcoming chosen task by an onslaught of invisible forces! Suddenly, you're surrounded by deep weariness, self-doubt, mental fog, or sometimes just plain fear.

Do you recognize any of these self-stalling inner-attackers? Would you like to be liberated from their limiting influences? Freed to pursue higher levels of your own inner development? That's what this exercise is all about; teaching you how to take that next step each time you're sure you can't. Let's begin by covering a few basics in higher, or esoteric, psychology.

Most of us wouldn't be too surprised to hear that our mind has a will of its own. We all know what it's like to be more or less helplessly doing something we wish we weren't! We often feel the presence of this force within, but don't understand it -- or its implications.

Figuratively speaking, every cell of your whole body has a "will" of a sort. This is a well-known scientific truth. Both the mind and the body are always hard at work, at a cellular level, to keep their lives -- as they know them -- in what is called "homeostasis." Don't let this strange sounding term throw you. All it means is, "the tendency of any organism, simple or complex, to want to maintain within itself relatively stable conditions." The translation as it concerns this exercise: There are more parts of you that want to stay the same than there are ones interested in growing, or achieving new heights through effort.

The good news is that who you really are is greater than any one of these invisible aspects of yourself which are mechanically compelled to maintain its status quo. Your true nature is greater than the sum of all these physical, mental, and emotional parts. If you have any doubts about this, it's in your power to make this truth self-evident.

The next time you want to go ahead with any project -- whether it's designing a rocket ship or finally getting around to repairing your favorite rocking chair -- and you start to feel those old familiar doubts, dreads, or doldrums rising up to block your way, just walk right through them. You can do it if you use your new wisdom to clear the way for you.

One excellent way to break through these seemingly impassable inner states is to see them as being the fakes they are. This isn't to say you won't feel their punishing presence when you first dare to defy their threats. But each time you'll psychologically walk up to and past these inner disturbances, you'll become increasingly aware that these task-resistant thoughts and feelings are just big fakes!

You must prove this to yourself to know the powers that come with such a discovery. Following is a glimpse of what you'll learn each time you take that step you're sure you can't.

Those negative states that try to stop you from taking the next step of any chosen journey are just psychological special effects. These obstacles of psychic flash-and-smoke are generated by the mind to keep you from disturbing its established levels of comfort. But special effects, regardless of the kind of "screen" upon which they're projected, have no reality outside of your temporary belief in their appearance.

The truth is these inner-barriers are without real substance, and so must vanish the moment you pass through them. Which brings us to a great spiritual truth; on the other side of the resistance is the flow. This means that each time you call on this exercise to walk through some pocket of inner resistance, you'll find, on its other side, all the fresh energy and intelligence you'll need to go through and complete your task.

All these years you've been taught to believe that before you can hope to succeed at something, you have to first feel as though you can. No! To succeed you need only understand how failure is created, and then consciously refuse to cooperate with what has been defeating you from within.