I’ve always been fascinated with the study of human potential. You simply cannot tell what someone might be able to achieve simply by looking at them. Some achieve extraordinary feats through almost unimaginable adversity. Some suffer terrible tragedies, but emerge as competent, confident human beings. And some seem to be denied any possible advantage in life and yet emerge as significant symbols of triumph. Think of Helen Keller: Blind and deaf before she was two years old, she went on to become an articulate champion of disabled people’s rights. Joan of Arc became a leader of men in an era when women who challenged authority were burned at the stake. Bill Gates was a college dropout, but he changed the world and helped usher in the computer era. John F. Kennedy galvanized a nation and thrust them into the Space Age with nothing but a vision of landing a man on the moon. Martin Luther King inspired a social revolution of non-violent change in a segment of the population that had been oppressed for generations.
What would you say if I told you that you have exactly the same potential to change your world as any of these great people? You’d find that hard to believe, I’m sure. But if I was to take you through the streets of almost any city in the world and point out a homeless person, would you think you had more potential to achieve than they do? You probably would. If I pointed out one of your coworkers, would you consider your potential at least equal to if not better than theirs? What if we were in New York and saw Donald Trump speed past in his limo? Would you think that you have the same potential as him? Probably not.
Why?
It’s simple conditioning. We tend to judge what a person can or cannot accomplish by their current results. If their current results are poor, then we assume that they will always be poor. If your current results are what you consider average, then it’s easy to project that you’ll always be average. If you see someone incredibly wealthy, then of course we’ll expect that they have the most potential of all, because their results are so great.
We play this comparison game in our heads, and decide where we fit. But as I’ve already discussed, your present results have absolutely nothing to do with your future. They are completely irrelevant. The perception that you are less than anyone else who walks this planet is ridiculous. You are equal to any other person on this earth, and they are equal to you. There is no shortage of success or wealth. There is an abundant supply to go around. This means that every single person has the same potential. The only differences are the ones we perceive in our mind.
This is especially noticeable in children. When young children start school, they believe what they are told. If they are told they are slow or stupid, they believe it—even though it’s completely untrue. If they’re told they’re brilliant and gifted, then they believe that—and their performance rises to meet that expectation.
What you believe about yourself and your potential stems from a hodgepodge of experiences and statements that you took in as a child. You had no choice but to believe them. Your conscious mind was untrained and unable to filter them and your sub-conscious accepted them as fact. Unless you specifically try to change those beliefs, you will continue believing them no matter what. In order to achieve great things, you have to believe you have the same potential that everyone else has—and you must commit to developing that potential.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “There will come a time in every person’s education when they’ll realize that envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide.” I really think of this directly in terms of anyone who wants to live a wealthy life.
Why? Well, one of the biggest things you have to accept is that you have the same potential as anyone else. And if that’s the case, what reason could you have to envy anyone else? If your potential is the same, then your results could also be the same.
When I started studying how wealth was achieved, this is one of the first lessons I learned. If you want the same results as wealthy people, then you must take action to create those results yourself!
Emerson also says that “imitation is suicide.” And it’s true. Every single person who achieves great wealth does so in a slightly different manner. They are their own person with their own passions—just like you are. You can’t just duplicate someone else’s actions and expect to achieve their success, because the path to wealth is passion, and passion, as we know, is as unique and individual as each person on this planet. This is why you need to find your own personal passion to create wealth.
I hope this comes as something of a relief. Just think: you don’t have to be a real estate magnate like Donald Trump to achieve wealth—or an international public speaker, like me. I know this first hand. I know of many people who have tried to do exactly what I’m doing. And you know what? I’m never threatened by it. In fact, I’m happy to give them every little detail of how I do what I do.
Often, after a few months of trying, they come back (sometimes a little annoyed) and want to know what I’ve left out. They can’t understand why their results have been so poor when they have been imitating exactly what I do. But as we’ve just pointed out, what’s missing is not something I’ve left out—it’s something in them. No matter how closely they imitate me, they can’t create the passion I have for what I do. This is why you have to find your own passion—that one thing that inspires you to leap out of bed each day eager for the challenge.
Knowing that you have the potential to create any life that you choose, how can you justify trading time for money now to live the life you really want in the future? How can you say that your time is worth $20 per hour or even $40 per hour? Your time is worth a limitless amount! By putting an artificial dollar amount on it you become the architect of your own failure. Thousands of people around the world can understand and agree that they have potential, but how many actually take charge of their lives and do something about it? I’m sad to say, very few.
Most of us can grasp the possibility of change in our mind, but that’s very different than committing to it—committing to overcome your programming and beliefs that have been drilled into you your entire life. But unless you do, it will remain only that: A possibility, and unrealized potential. This puts you back where you started: The excitement soon turns to apathy and apathy sends you to the same old job every day.
Your life reassumes its drudgerous routine. It convinces you that you need some downtime, that you should spend that time plopped in front of the television watching pain, suffering and negative ideas for hours on end. It drives you to apathy. And apathy is like a sadistic drug which deadens your mind from wanting more. It convinces you that you’re okay as you are. It is the friend of the average, and as such, the mortal enemy of true wealth.
Over the past few years the Law of Attraction has gotten a lot of attention. And why not? The idea that you can attract what you want into your life is, well, pretty attractive, isn’t it?
However, you need to understand that the Law of Attraction is—and always has been—at work in your life. You just didn’t know it. The basic explanation of this law is that everything in our lives is drawn to us by our thoughts. The Law of Attraction is always at work: Everything that happens to us—good, bad or indifferent—we have brought on ourselves, even though we may never understand why.
I say this because often, I’m asked why bad events or catastrophes occur. To be honest, I don’t know. But I can tell you that you have the ability to attract good and positive events into your life if you choose to. We have already touched on the power that your thoughts and beliefs have and how they affect your mind. The Law of Attraction deals with how these thoughts affect the world around you.
It may sound simple. But it demands a heavy dose of personal responsibility. To attract the positive results and wealth that you desire, you must first understand and accept that all that has happened to you so far, you have also attracted—that they are your responsibility, no-one else’s.
Few people are willing to do this. More commonly, they prefer to blame others, or fate, while pushing aside the idea that their own thoughts and beliefs are responsible for their current results.
The Law of Attraction is actually a sub-law of the Law of Vibration which says that everything is energy, and that energy is constantly moving, or vibrating. This is true for physical objects, which are vibrating on an atomic level, as well as for the energy created by your thoughts. Every time you think something, you’re putting energy in motion. Energy attracts more energy of the same kind. Thus, positive thoughts are magnets for more positive energy, while negative thoughts, well, I don’t have to spell that out now, do I?
It’s important to keep this in mind, because the Law of Attraction doesn’t have the ability to discriminate—it can create good or bad results in equal measure. It doesn’t have an opinion; it simply gives you what you focus on. And this is important: it doesn’t give you what you say you want—but what you focus on.
Remember earlier, where I told you that you should focus on what you want to happen rather than focusing and worrying about something negative like all the bills you have to pay? This is important because of the Law of Attraction. The more you worry about these sorts of things, the more you focus on your fear that you will not make enough money. And that’s likely to take you exactly where you don’t want to go…towards insolvency, or worse.
By focusing on creating more wealth, you will attract the solutions and answers that will provide more income. Then, what you’ve practiced—not worrying about how to pay those bills—will simply become a reality.
So clearly, we want to use the Law of Attraction in our favor, not our detriment. But first, we need to take a good hard look at our present results. I’m not saying you should feel bad about them especially since we know that feeling bad about something will just attract more of the same. No, you should do the best you can to take an objective look. Ask yourself what kind of friends you currently have. What kind of coworkers? How do you feel about your level of income? How is your business going?
As the answers to these questions flash through your mind, write them down. And make sure you write the first answer that pops into your head—not the sugar-coated one that rationalized and justifies the results that you don’t really want.
Then, as you look at your list, realize that these ideas are responsible for programming your results in life thus far. Your every result in life is magnetized to a specific thought and belief that you have. Your initial thoughts are a reflection of your subconscious beliefs, and that’s what attracted this current reality into your life.
It’s quite common for people who try this exercise to find that they dislike the thoughts and beliefs they uncover. But take a step back. Recognize that they are merely a reflection of what has been in your life, and that you have the ability to change them if you want to. This is why I spend so much time talking about how to change your mindset and move positive thoughts into your subconscious—they are what the Law of Attraction works from.
Unfortunately, many people who read this information about the Law of Attraction still get the very same results in their life. No matter how many times I speak to audiences or share my thoughts with them through my books, audio products or coaching programs, many people still exhibit the same results year after year—even decade after decade! It’s a sad and terrible thing to witness. I know they understand what I’ve told them. They know intellectually that this makes good logical sense. They’ve probably heard it repeatedly not only from me, but from many others who understand its power. But their results indicate that they really never understood it to the point of incorporating it into their lives.
Why? Well, often, people stop at that first step—looking at their results. Taking responsibility for a life you don’t like, and acknowledging that you created it, can be heartbreaking. . Few people have the strength it takes to work though that old programming. It hurts to look at a disappointing result and accept blame for it. So they set it aside and avoid the issue. But what they don’t consider is that they’re are still invoking the Law of Attraction—you can’t turn it off; one way or another, it’s always working. And by pushing their disappointment aside, they’re fuelling the Law of Attraction in a negative and destructive way.
You have to commit to being one of those willing to accept your situation as self-created, and you have to commit to use the Law of Attraction to help you in your pursuit of wealth. After you take stock of where you are and take responsibility for what has produced your results, you’re ready to move forward.
Maybe you’ve already tried to choose the ideas and thoughts that would bring about a positive vibration but you haven’t made any progress yet. Be very aware of outside influences: Every person you spend time with, everything you see and hear on television, and even random, overheard conversations—they all have their own vibration. If you associate with people who have a negative vibration, it’s hard for you to constantly choose positive ideas.
If you have a friend or family member who is constantly spouting a litany of negative thoughts—complaining about his or her job, relationships, lack of money—then it’s going to hamper your ability to project the positive. How many times have you noticed that, after being with this person, you feel physically drained? The fact is, you are—they’ve sucked your positive energy right out of you!
You can correct this, but it means staying away from negative people like this. Of course, we can’t always choose our business associates—and never our families!—so simply avoiding them it isn’t always practical. So the best way to protect yourself is to refuse to become emotionally involved in their negative energy. Refuse to commiserate. Don’t get dragged down with them. That can lessen the impact of their negative thoughts, and allows your positive ones to shine through!
Outside influences will always threaten to mix their opposing or discordant energies with your own. If you allow yourself to get emotionally involved in these influences, then the wealthy life that you want will evaporate into thin air. You must be steadfast to change your results and incredibly determined to guard your mind from negative thoughts.
Go back to the first questions I asked about your life and income. Analyze your responses. Where did those ideas originate? From something you heard or experienced in childhood? Are they the words of a teacher, parent or other influential person? Are they the result of an encounter with a boss, spouse or former spouse? Do you want to continue to allow their thoughts and ideas to control your results?
At some point, even small children will rebel against the instructions they are given by adults. I saw this happen at a restaurant with a little girl who was being told to eat some type of vegetable she obviously didn’t like. Each time her mother would try to get her to take a bite, the little girl’s response was the same. She crossed her arms and gritted her teeth and said, “You’re not the boss of me!”
When you think of the outside influences that have rattled around in your mind for most of your life, this is a great response: “You’re not the boss of me!” You can choose to change and reject those old ideas, but it takes a stubborn, single-minded will and determination to make it happen. Just like that little girl who was determined not to allow one bite past her gritted teeth, you must have that kind of tenacity to change your thoughts.
Until you recognize where the thoughts that created your results came from and resolve to change those thoughts, you won’t make much progress toward a wealthy mindset. Once you understand them, it then takes a strong commitment to see this change through. This takes much more than the occasional wish or New Year’s resolution. It takes firm commitment. But this commitment is just the starting point.
You’re now at the starting gate and ready to run. But you need to know where the finish line is. You must have a very clear picture in your mind of where you are going. If you don’t, your vibration will have no clue what to focus on. I’ve seen this happen many times: When the end result is not clear, the results are lack lustre at best.
This can lead you to make the mistake of thinking that none of these ideas are working. At worst, this can justify your retreat to a life less than extraordinary: You think you’re doing everything right, but the wealth you expected isn’t streaming in. In fact, there’s not even a trickle! So you accept failure and contemplate quitting altogether.
But wait! You do have commitment, you have the intelligence and you’ve learned to focus on the positive. So what gives? You haven’t created a really concrete idea of what you want. It’s like running with no finish line—you just keep going and going—eventually you wear out! Does this describe your current situation? Then go back to the first technique I talked about in Chapter 1. Visualize what you want in as much detail as you possibly can.
Write down—in the present tense—what your business will be like when you reach your goal. You might say, “I am so happy and grateful now that I earn thousands every day providing value and quality to my clients.” Keep the wording positive and focus on what you want—not what you don’t. You might say, “I easily earn more than enough to pay my expenses and provide for my family,” not “I don’t run out of money before the end of the month.”
As you imagine your new wealthy life, imagine the home you live in. Picture this as if you are actually walking through the house giving someone a tour. Notice the quality woods and beautifully stained floors, the plush rugs and granite counters. Notice every detail, from the exotic fresh flower arrangement on the table to the crystal in the cabinet.
Now do the same with your business. If you imagine working from home, then picture a home office that has everything you need within easy reach. Imagine being able to walk out to your garden for a coffee break or pick up your children from school. This type of intricate detail allows you to become emotionally involved with the new image that you’re now creating.
Revisit this image in your mind on a daily basis. This is extremely important: Each day imagine some new scenario that is part of this end result—perhaps an international business meeting where you discuss taking your concept worldwide or the purchase of a new vacation home on a Caribbean island. Imagine your toes in the sand as you see, hear and smell the waves bubble onto the beautiful shore.
You can even include others in your image—your parents, maybe. Imagine buying them a dream home or taking them on a once in a lifetime cruise. Think of how it will feel to use your new wealth to help others. Write those feelings down and hold tight to that emotion. Writing descriptions of the images causes you to think and as you think you create new and more intricate images. These stir emotion and emotions are expressed in action. Action sets up a reaction and thus alters your circumstance, environment and the conditions in your life. This isn’t some miraculous spell. It’s the Law of Attraction.
The more you focus on building this new image, the faster your actual results will begin to parallel that image. The more attention and focus you give that new, vibrant picture, the faster the expansion of energetic vibration. This energy is highly charged and vibrates at an increasing rate. The increase amplifies your thoughts bringing results that are better, faster and more complete. Every time you entertain this image you’re setting energy into motion. You’re impressing a picture on the subjective mind and creating new recognition and emotion. That vibration moves into action—it can’t help itself. But now the action is creating the results you want, not the ones you don’t.
It is important to understand that this doesn’t happen overnight. I tell people to fully expect to do this for at least 30 days before anything happens, and even then it may be something small. Of course, I frequently hear of people who try this for just a few days and immediately experience results. That could be the case for you, but understand that usually it takes time. This has nothing to do with luck but it does have to do with awareness. Every person has different programming and a different amount or potency of old beliefs to overcome before they can gain an awareness of wealth and a wealthy mindset. For this reason, everyone’s path and experience is different—and so too is how long the shift takes to manifest.
The good news is that once you start building this new image, you don’t want to go back—you don’t want to settle for less than your mind is now imagining and believing. Your awareness has already expanded to this new place and you have created an emotional attachment to it. This encourages you to continue to press forward. So keep that image firmly in your mind and don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Remember how hard the mind holds on to ideas. As with a severed limb, it often takes time to convince the mind that things have changed!
Old beliefs are very strong. This is because they are a combination of memories, pain and emotion, as well as pictures of people, places and events. It’s not just a negative habit of thought—these beliefs are multilayered and complex. They are not just single thoughts, but part of an entire group of habits that support those thoughts. This is why “think positive” programs don’t work. You can’t apply a one-dimensional solution to a multidimensional problem. You must use all the techniques I’ve outlined—just one or two won’t work. They must be used together.
Even though the entire process might take longer than you want or think it should, it will happen. I guarantee you will begin to notice changes in your life and your ability to attract opportunities for wealth. As you begin to see small differences and changes here and there, you’ll get even more emotionally involved in making this reality happen. And that’s when you need to keep your enthusiasm rolling and renew your commitment to creating a wealthy mindset.
As with any goal in life that you truly want to achieve, at first you’ll need to invest a great deal of personal resources, including time. But you already know this. I bet you can think of one or two accomplishments in your life that required a great deal of time and focused, energetic commitment. When you first started, it wasn’t comfortable at all—in fact, it might have even been painful. You probably had to give up other things to keep your commitment. But you wanted this thing more. You yearned for it. So you kept going.
This is known as disciplined repetition. Eventually, you’re so focused on your goal that you stop thinking about what you are giving up to pursue it. It has become the priority in your life and you’re determined to achieve it.
Think about your daily routine right now. There are segments of time you’ve set aside to things that you once held to be important. Are they as important as developing a new, wealthy mindset? If your answer is yes, how likely are you to devote the necessary time to your new life? If you’re really committed to changing for the better, you’ll shift your priorities and devote the time you need.
With every specific new image or new positive belief that you incorporate, you’ll notice other areas of your life improve as well. They benefit from the positive energy spilling over. You’ll also start to inspire others who witness your transformation—especially those who are close to you. The way you live your new life will affect positive change for you, but your family and future generations will benefit too as they learn from your example. This is another great reason not to put it off one day longer!
I often hear people talk about “someday” as the place where their dreams will finally come true. But I know that “someday” is a killer of possibilities and a destroyer of dreams. To delay is to miss out on all life has to offer you. The decisions you make right now will determine your future results. If you delay the change you need to effect, and that becomes your way of being, then I can assure you “someday” will never come.
The idea that your life is predetermined and can’t be changed is a common theological debate. Of course, if this was true, we wouldn’t have the power to choose, but we do. People often use the ideas of fate or destiny to absolve themselves of responsibility for their results. It’s easier to blame an outside entity or force than to shoulder the blame yourself. Most people understand “fate” as something static—as if there were a message written in the stars that said, “This is the way it’s going to be and it’s not up to me.” No wonder a passive life develops from this attitude, where people wait for their fate to find them and just “happen.” It is much like waiting on that ship to take you off the island.
Many people live their lives thinking that fate will come along and anoint them with wealth if it’s meant to be. Too often, years go by before they realize that in all this time they haven’t experienced anything—they’ve virtually slept through their days in a monotonous routine of work, lunch, dinner, occasional entertainment, television and rest. Each day is the same boring routine, until the days become months and the months stretch into years.
These same individuals often struggle to make ends meet. As they sit and wait for something—anything—to happen, it’s easy for them to adopt the mindset that wealth is something that’s “just not meant to be” for them. They give up on bettering their circumstances and their standard of living spirals downward. They are pushed around by events they have attracted with their negative attitude and their lives become progressively worse.
These people are truly locked within their Prison of Perception. One movie that I particularly like is called The Shawshank Redemption. An idea that this movie works with is the notion that prisoners, over time, become “institutionalized.” This means that they come to accept their jail cell and prison life as their home; that prison is the only place they belong. Their dreams of freedom die. If they’re released, they’ll commit a crime just to be sent back. The prisoners become so use to their limited life within the walls of their cell that the outside world seems foreign and frightening.
People who have chosen to live within the limits of their old beliefs experience something very similar. This is most evident when someone presents a new and exciting possibility or opportunity to them. They will immediately reject the idea and get as far away as possible. If they accept that they might have a better life, or that their current situation is their responsibility, then they will not be able to go on as they always have.
Many people live in a mental prison as strong and confining as those who are behind bars. They have all the freedom in the world but they exercise none of it because they are afraid to believe, like a prisoner, that a better life can be theirs. They prefer to believe that it is not possible for them and that some outside force, like fate, is responsible.
Why? Because it takes courage to change your life. It takes effort and commitment to break the old patterns, change old habits and rebuild your thought process. It is easier to stay where you are, blame fate and tell yourself, “No, this is too hard. Who am I to think that I can make it happen? What if I fail? Right now, I have something. Maybe it isn’t the life that I want or even one that I like—but it’s mine and I don’t want to lose what I have.”
The idea of destiny isn’t much different. How can anyone be destined for wealth or riches? It almost sounds like a birthright that is bestowed on the chosen few with a wave of a magic wand. However, wealthy people, those that preserve and grow their wealth, do so through working at it not by having it bestowed upon them by destiny.
You can see the truth of this with people who inherit wealth. Often, if wealth is handed to them and they’ve never known how to work at it, they merely squander their money on useless frivolity. They haven’t gained a mindset of wealth—that’s definitely not inherited!
Wealth will only come through learning how to think wealthy and applying the principles of attraction and positive energy. Gary Player, one of the best golfers of his time, once said: “The harder I work, the luckier I am.” He knew that there was no magic or fate involved no matter how it may look to outside observers.
Someone who seems to accumulate wealth easily isn’t lucky. They don’t have fate on their side and they are not destined to be wealthy. They have merely developed the mindset and skill to make it look easy. Commit yourself right now to doing what it takes to develop a wealthy mindset for yourself and your efforts will bring the reward you seek.
We are each born with an equal measure of potential and wealth is the birthright of every single person. This does not diminish over time so no matter how old you are you can still tap into the infinite abundance that has always been yours. In fact, the more experiences you have had, the more value you can provide for others. I’ve known numerous people who have had several careers in their lives and this is a great resource to draw from when you are looking for ways to create value.
Nothing happens by chance or accident. The life you have led up to this point may not have produced the results you would like, but it can provide the seeds for your future as you search for your passion. You don’t stumble through life hoping for the best. You can actively plan your future and visualize it.
Many people are surprised at the sense of empowerment they get once they accept responsibility and stop blaming fate and destiny for their results. They have spent so much time floating through their lives with no notion of where they want to go, visualizing that finish line is a powerful new sensation. Your life is completely within your control and the events that you choose to experience are what make you a unique individual. Your new sense of empowerment will allow you to enjoy those events more fully as you realize that you created them and now have the ability to create and bring about whatever you desire.
Chapter 3 REVIEW
• Stop comparing your results to the results of others.
• Your present results are completely irrelevant.
• Be unique—you can’t imitate someone else’s passion.
• Your time is invaluable.
• Apathy is the friend of the average and the enemy of true wealth.
• You must accept responsibility for your current results.
• The Law of Attraction does not judge—it gives you what you focus on.
• It takes great courage to change your life.