The practice register

Introduced in M-001 The Life You Are Standing In, Module One

Written for this lesson. Take one year of your life, any year, and write three things that happened in it. For each, mark which parts could not have gone otherwise given what you believed at the time, and which parts might have. Do not force the second column. Some rows will have nothing in it, and a row with nothing in it is an honest result rather than a failure of the exercise. One limit before you start. Illness, accident, another person's choice and the conditions you were born into are not your production, and this exercise is not for them. If it turns into an account of how you caused something that was done to you, stop rather than trying harder.

Introduced in M-002 The Lag, Module One

Written for this lesson. Find one loop in your life short enough to observe inside a week. Before an ordinary recurring event, write one sentence of what you expect from it. Afterwards, write what happened. Do this five times. You are not testing whether expectation controls outcomes, which it does not. You are finding out how much of the outcome was your own contribution arriving back at you.

Introduced in M-003 What You Send Out Is an Expectation, Module One

Written for this lesson. At the start of a week, write down what you expect from five specific things: a meeting, a conversation, a task, a person, and the week as a whole. Write what you expect, not what you hope and not what you would tell someone. The test of whether you have written the real one is whether it is slightly embarrassing. At the end of the week, read them back against what happened, and mark which of your expectations did work you had not noticed them doing.

Introduced in M-004 The Three Words, Module One

Written for this lesson. Take one area of your life that is not moving: money, work, health, a relationship. Write three lines. What do I believe about this, which is what I hold to be true underneath. What do I expect from it in the next year, which is that belief pointed forward. What technique have I been applying to it, if any, which is the assumption. Then read the three together and find the gap. In almost every case the third does not reach the first, and the second is sitting exactly where the first left it.

Introduced in M-005 The Backward Audit, Module One

Written for this lesson, and the anchor practice of the module. Choose one outcome you are living with now, medium-sized. Write the date it arrived. Go back three years and write, in the words you would have used then, what you expected about that area of your life. Compare them. Record which of the three results you got: close match, denied-but-visible match, or no match. Then stop. Do not extend it into a second outcome in the same sitting. Choose an outcome that was substantially within your own conduct: a career direction, a habit, a pattern in how you relate to people. Do not run this on a bereavement, a diagnosis, an accident, or something another person did. A determined mind can trace anything to anything, and the false positive does real harm.

Introduced in M-006 The Six Rungs, Module Two

Written for this lesson. Take one thing you have wanted for more than a year and has not happened. Walk the six rungs and mark the highest one you have actually reached. Be strict about rung three: a rung three action is something that left your head and touched the world, not a plan, a purchase, or research. Then write the smallest possible next rung. If you are at two, the next thing is not a business plan; it is four loaves.

Introduced in M-007 What the Brain Is Actually Doing, Module Two

Written for this lesson, and it is a demonstration rather than an exercise. Choose something specific and reasonably common that you do not usually notice: a color of front door, a make of watch, a particular bird. Write it down with today's date. Do nothing else about it. Count what you encounter over the next seven days. The point is not that you will see more of them, which you will. The point is that they were all there last week.

Introduced in M-008 The Quantum Canvas, and What It Can Carry, Module Two

Written for this lesson. Take one claim you have encountered in this field, from anywhere, including from these books. Write it in two columns. On the left, the claim as stated. On the right, the same claim restated using only mechanisms you could describe to a skeptical friend without either of you laughing. Then ask the only question that matters: does anything in the left column, which did not survive into the right, change what you would actually do tomorrow? Usually the answer is no, and that is worth knowing.

Introduced in M-009 Perception Gathers Its Own Proof, Module Two

Written for this lesson. Take one belief you hold about yourself that is limiting and that you consider simply factual. Write the evidence for it, honestly and in full, because it is real evidence and the exercise fails if you pretend otherwise. Then write a second column: everything from the same period that did not make it into the first. Not counter-arguments. Discarded observations. The second column is usually shorter and harder to write, and how much harder is itself the finding.

Introduced in M-010 The Baker, Module Two

Written for this lesson. Take the thing you named at M-006 and write it out as Maya's story, six short paragraphs, one per rung, in the past tense as though it had already happened. This is not visualization and it is not affirmation. It is a feasibility check: a rung you cannot write a plausible paragraph for is a rung you have no plan for, and it will be rung three or rung four, and finding that out now costs you an hour instead of a year.

Introduced in M-011 Which Mind Is Yours, Module Three

Written for this lesson. Over three days, note five moments when you had to decide something that mattered. For each, write which movement ran first: did you look for the next step, see the finished thing, or start explaining why the situation was as it was? Five entries is enough. You are not looking for a majority verdict. You are looking for what happens under pressure, which is often not what happens when you are relaxed.

Introduced in M-012 The Linear Mind, Module Three

Written for this lesson, and calibrated for this mind. Take the destination you named in Module Two and stop trying to plan it. Write only this: what would someone who was going there do this week? One thing, doable in seven days, requiring no permission and no new resources. Do it. Then next week, write the question again from wherever you now stand. You are not building a plan. You are building a tread at a time, which is the only way this mind builds anything.

Introduced in M-013 The Broad Mind, Module Three

Written for this lesson. Name one destination in writing, with a date, and commit to not revising it for thirty days. Tell one person and ask them to ask you about that destination and no other, weekly. During the thirty days, do not spend time elaborating the vision; it is already vivid enough and further detail is the reward being drawn down again. Every week, one action. The constraint is the practice. The action is only the evidence that the constraint held.

Introduced in M-014 The Analytical Mind, Module Three

Written for this mind specifically. Write four things. The hypothesis, stated so it could be wrong: if I change what I expect about X and act accordingly, then Y will be observably different. The period, fixed in advance, and ninety days is the usual minimum given the lag. The measure, stated now rather than chosen later. And the falsification condition: what would have to be true at the end for you to conclude this does not work. Then run it, and honor the review date whichever way it goes. One participant and no control is a decision procedure rather than a study. Its value is that it commits you in advance to a period and a verdict, which is what stops an indefinite evaluation from running forever. Do not report the result as though it established anything general.

Introduced in M-015 Teaching Yourself in Your Own Language, Module Three

Written for this lesson, and it is the practice that makes the rest of the course usable. Take any one practice from Module One or Two that you did not complete. Work out which movement was running when you abandoned it. Then rewrite the practice in that movement's language: reduce it to a next step, or attach a constraint and a witness, or convert it to a hypothesis with a review date. Then do the rewritten version. Keep the rewrite; you will be doing this for every practice in Modules Four and Five.

Introduced in M-016 Clarify the Signal, Module Four

From step one. Write the sentence who would I be if I already had this, and then answer it in twelve lines, every one of which must contain a verb and none of which may contain a feeling word. What does that person do in the morning. What do they decline. What do they no longer discuss. What do they spend money on and what have they stopped spending it on. Where are they at four in the afternoon. Twelve lines. Then circle the three that you could do this week without permission, money, or anyone else changing.

Introduced in M-017 Emotional Alignment, Module Four

Once a day for fourteen days, at a fixed time. Sit and occupy the state of the person from M-016, not the scene and not the outcome. Ten minutes on a timer. Two rules. You may not check anything afterward, and you may not adjust the target during the session. At the end write one line: what was the state, and could you reach it. If the answer is no on more than half the days, the target is too large. Halve it and start the fourteen days again.

Introduced in M-018 Inspired Action, Module Four

For ten days, before any action you are about to take toward the thing, pause for one breath and note one word: tight or open. Do not change the decision on the strength of the word. Just record it, and record the action. At the end of ten days read the list. You are looking for a pattern rather than a verdict, and the pattern most people find is that the tight entries cluster around a single recurring fear, which is then the actual subject of the next module.

Introduced in M-019 Let Go of the How, Module Four

One sitting, thirty minutes. Write the outcome at the top of a page. Then list every route by which it could arrive, and keep going past the point where it is comfortable: aim for twenty and do not stop before fifteen. Include the ones that are unlikely, the ones that depend on other people, and the ones that would be inconvenient. Then mark the one you have secretly been requiring. That one is the grip, and seeing it sitting on a list of nineteen others is the entire exercise.

Introduced in M-020 Collapse Old Timelines, Module Four

Name one recurring situation where you know in advance exactly how you will respond. It should be small: a particular kind of message, a particular person's request, a particular hour of the day. Decide now what the other response is, in one sentence, before the situation arises. Then keep a two column tally for eight weeks: old, new. Do not aim for all new. Aim for the ratio to move, and expect the first fortnight to be almost entirely old, because that is what the first fortnight is.

Introduced in M-021 When Nothing Has Changed, Module Five

One sitting, twenty minutes, in order and in writing. One, how many weeks since you began, and what is the stated interval for the practice you are judging? Two, read your M-016 page and count the lines with no verb in them. Three, name one action you took toward the thing and then undid, softened, or hedged; if you can name one, Module Five is for you. Four, write the obstacle you would still face if your inner state were perfect. Do not decide anything until all four are written down.

Introduced in M-022 The Counter-Belief, Module Five

Take the tight entries from M-018 and set them beside this. For each of the last ten actions you took toward the thing, write two columns: what you did, and what you did next. Look only at the second column. Then finish these two sentences as fast as you can and do not edit them: If I actually got this, then ___. People like me do not ___. Fast is the instruction; the first answer is the honest one and the second answer is the presentable one.

Introduced in M-023 Why Arguing With It Does Not Work, Module Five

Ten minutes, once. Take the rule you named in M-022 and write its opposite as a plain positive statement. Say it aloud, slowly, and then write down, immediately and without filtering, the first three things your mind produced in response. Those three things are not obstacles to the practice. They are the practice's output, and they are the actual content of the rule, more precisely stated than your one sentence managed. Keep the list. M-024 operates on it directly.

Introduced in M-024 Evidence Over Argument, Module Five

Twelve weeks, one notebook. Name the rule. Then, each week, do one act the rule cannot account for, chosen small enough that you will do it and specific enough that the outcome is unambiguous. Record two lines only: what you did, and what actually happened. No feelings, no interpretation. At week six, read back what you have. At week twelve, read it again. You are not looking for a change of belief. You are looking at a second ledger that did not exist before, and the reading is the intervention.

Introduced in M-025 What Is Not Your Belief, Module Five

One sitting. Write your current situation across the top of a page and draw a line down the middle. On the left, everything that would still be true if your inner state were flawless. On the right, everything that would not. Fill both honestly; a page with nothing on the left is not honest and neither is a page with nothing on the right. Then take the single heaviest item on the left and write next to it what it actually requires, which will usually be a person, an institution, or an amount of time. Do that thing. The right hand column is what Module Five is for, and it will still be there next week.

Introduced in M-026 Coincidence, and What To Do With One, Module Six

For one month, keep a short list with two columns: the coincidence, and what you did about it. The rule is that the second column may never contain the word decided. It may contain looked into, asked, checked, went. At the end of the month, read the second column and count how many led anywhere. The number is usually low and the ones that landed are usually worth the whole exercise, and both of those facts are the lesson.

Introduced in M-027 Need and Overflow, Module Six

Two parts, one sitting each. First, name the behavior where your need is visible to other people. It is usually one of four: asking too often, explaining too long, accepting terms you know are poor, or being unable to end a conversation. Write a single rule that constrains it, and keep the rule for thirty days. Second, name one domain in your life where you are genuinely sufficient, however small and however unrelated. Spend twenty minutes a week in it deliberately. The second part is not a consolation; it is where the conduct in the first part becomes possible.

Introduced in M-028 What You Take To Be Arranging It, Module Six

One page, written once, kept. State which of the three you actually hold, in your own words, not in the words you think you should use. Then write the sentence that follows from it: what you do when something does not arrive. The first reader writes something about timing or protection; the second writes something about the route or the odds; the third writes something about the experiment continuing. Whichever you write, that sentence is what you will reach for in a difficult month, so it is worth having written it in a calm one.

Introduced in M-029 Joy Is a Compass, Not a Reward, Module Six

Once a week, one line, one number. Rate the direction you are currently working in from one to five, where the question is not how was the week but how does the direction feel, and write one short phrase about why. Do not read back for three months. At three months, read all twelve entries in one sitting. You are looking for the trend and for whether the phrases repeat. Repeating phrases are the actual signal, and they are usually more specific than the number.

Introduced in M-030 The Living Prayer, Module Six

One page, handwritten, and it replaces everything else in the course. Four things. What you are aiming at, in one sentence. Who that person is, in verbs, taken from your M-016 page and cut to five lines. The rule you found in M-022, in its original unedited words. And the sentence you say when something does not arrive, from M-028. Read it once a month. Rewrite it when it stops being true, which will be about twice a year. When you can write the whole page from memory, the course is done with you. And it is worth saying once, at the end, what the shape of the whole was: a method built from the books themselves, taught so that three kinds of mind can use it, with its mechanism claims separated from its instructions and its limits stated inside the course rather than in a disclaimer. It is less than the genre promises and it is the part that is true.