Posts Tagged ‘Law of attraction’

In 2002 I was laid off from the last of my “good” jobs.  It was, for me, my second lay off in three years. The jobs were considered “good” because they paid well, used my education and carried a title.

While working my “good” jobs I woke up every morning much earlier than I wanted, hurried my children off to school so I could drive 40 minutes to my office.  In the evening, I’d repeat the trip this time filled with rage, frustration and a sense of futility, which I would share with emotion over the dinner table.  Perhaps my boss was exceptionally volatile and inconsistent. Perhaps my expectations for creating positive change in a well established organization were unrealistic. Perhaps there was something intrinsically wrong with me that I couldn’t find happiness in the American dream of a well paid job and a loving family.  What I know is:  I turned into a bitter, complaining woman.

The Law of Attraction – It Works

I lost those jobs. Just as promised, the law of attraction responded to my misery by delivering to me exactly what I wanted. 

At first I did not respond at all well to getting my way.

I am okay with it now.

It took these two painful and unexpected experiences (thank you universe) for me to begin to accept my chronic unemployed status as an irrepressible calling from my spirit.  My finally stepping into a place of authenticity came from a universally human commitment to my own self preservation. Shaken and uncertain after the second corporate rejection, I found myself unwilling to go through that same pain again. That is when I declared, out loud, and without my usual careful research and planning; “I will never again work a job.”

Transformation

I had no idea how I was going to keep my promise but, as with all transformation stories, through my commitment I created a new reality.

Once I truly committed to never working again not having a job became my new comfort zone. Once we commit, truly commit, to a change, it is easier for us to find our way to our new reality than to stay in the old rut.

It Takes Time

My transformation was not immediately evident. In those long, lonely and lost days of my unemployment I realized some things about myself. The truth was, ever since I pitched my first freelance story idea to the local paper, I had always wanted to be independent, creative and resourceful, in short, an entrepreneur.

This change in my understanding of myself came slowly. In the beginning, steeped in my own judgment of my failure, being independent, resourceful and creative did not seem like a good thing.  I saw myself not as I do now, as a uniquely gifted spirit called to benefit others with my knowledge, products and services, but as an unemployable, a seriously flawed individual, a misfit, a failure.

I was ripe for a Working Miracle.

The Value of a Good Title

At some point in my social isolation, I discovered in my junk mail an invitation to a workshop called Wealth Without a Job . 

Talk about the value of good titles! Wealth without a Job is exactly what I wanted.

So, worried the whole time about the expense and guilty to be spending money on my undeserving, unemployable self, I flew to Arizona to attend.

It was at that workshop; presented by the late Phil Laut and his business partner Andy Fuehl, that I first discovered the concept of passive cash flow.  Up until that point I thought my choices were either work for myself or work for someone else.  With the concept of passive cash flow I understood that what I need was not work but a source of income. My life was changed. I had glimpsed the path I was to follow.

Skills and Abilities

 Back home I started to work on both my money psychology and my business skills.

Psychology comes first because, it was clear from my recent career decisions that I was operating from a place of fear.

 Every corporate job I’d ever taken I had taken despite an inner knowing that said, “You do not want this”. Every job was taken out of fear: fear of a lack (money) and a pathetic desire to avoid criticism (attack) by finding approval in the eyes of others. 

Once I recognized the thoughts that caused my behavior, I was free to challenge my own thinking and free to take a chance on listening to my inner voice. In short I was free to be happy.

And so, after a long and difficult journey with many wrong turns, I finally found my path.

Taking my inherent gifts into account, instead of discounting them, I started a journey of learning and discovery.    Years of study are not the right path for everyone but, given who I am; my natural skills, strengths and abilities, it was the right path for me. (I can help you with this too) I set out to learn not just about working for myself but about making money by building a business that showcased my skills and abilities and, just as promised, the teachers appeared.

Me as Millionaire

You can find the teachers I choose to learn from and the programs that inform all that I teach my clients here. If you want to explore any of these programs further, I will be happy to talk to you about my experience, what I want you to know right now, is my conscious decision to learn what I needed to know to make money a source of energy in my life, and my commitment to taking action, including overcoming obstacles, on all that I learned, turned me from an insecure frightened bag-woman-in-waiting into a millionaire.

I feel no shame in telling you that my million dollar status did not survive the economic down turn because really that detail doesn’t matter.  What I gained and still value is my self-image as an excellent money manager, my income as a successful entrepreneur and my confidence that I am now a person who creates the money she needs and always will.

Now that I have discovered this gift, it is mine to share. All my experience and learning has led me to become a business coach.  For a woman with my skills, my experiences and my personality my obvious area of growth is to share what I have learned with others.

I teach tactical, practical skills for turning your abundant gifts into a quality life, without sacrificing what you are uniquely designed to do. The key to my small business coaching is a process I call the Working Miracles Map to Success.  My process includes, gaining control of your money psychology, following your inner knowing, embracing the abundant gifts you already have and giving yourself permission to create wealth as you adopt the skills and attitude of a business leader.

Revisiting the content of The Secret and re examining the Law of Attraction premise from inside the economic meltdown has me thinking.

One of the claims of the book is that “current reality is not who you are but only who you were”.

Here is an exercise to help you clarify who you were and who you are now.    Answering these questions for yourself can set you on the positive thinking path of choosing who you might become.

Self Image

• What is my current self image?
• How has my vision changed for the kind of person I want to be?

Tangibles

• What is the real state of my tangible possessions?
• How has my vision changed for tangible passions?

Home

• Where do I live now?
• How has my vision changed for my living environment?

Health

• What is the state of my health and fitness?
• How has my health vision changed?

Relationships

• What is my current state in terms of my relationships? (marriage, romance, friendship)
• How has my vision for my relationships changed?

Work

• What is my professional or vocational situation?
• How has my job/career vision changed?

Pursuits

• What is my current reality regarding my individual learning, travel, reading and other activities?
• How has my vision changed?

Community

• What kind of community do I live in and belong to?
• How has my vision for community changed?

Other

• What are any other important aspects of current reality?
• How has my vision changed?

Life purpose

• What is current reality now in terms of my life purpose and deepest aspirations?
• How have these aspects of my vision changed?

Adapted from The Fifth Discipline Field book: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization by Senge, Peter M. et al.

I’ve been struggling lately to articulate to myself why the following passage in a famously mysterious book is so inspiring to me.

The Passage

“By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you; but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.

Under the impelling power of the Supreme Spirit, men’s affairs will be so ordered that someone will be led to mine the gold for you; other men’s business transactions will be so directed that the gold will be brought toward you, and you must so arrange your own business affairs that you may be able to receive it when it comes to you.  Your thoughts make all things, animate and inanimate, work to bring you what you want; but your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.  You are not to take it as charity, nor to steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.” (Italics mine)

To my way of thinking, this passage  from Wallace D. Wattles’ 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich is the secret to the, now famous, Law of Abundance. 

My Thoughts

When the movie first came out, I was in a bad place. I was unemployed for the second time in three years and pretty much convinced that I was unemployable.  Each day I was consciously fighting the self loathing I felt I deserved.  As I stood staring into the abyss of depression, along came The Secret to tell me I had caused my own results.

On some level I knew this was true because I was literally counting the days (days actually still numbered in years – many years) until I could retire.  The work, writing documentation, was, to me tedious, mind numbingly mundane, and Sisyphean.  The corporate culture required long, intensely focused hours scrolling through thousands of pages of documents to make tiny little changes to various numbers and acronyms.  The hours grew longer as the release date grew nearer and the motivational light at the end of the tunnel didn’t exist.  Each release was already outdated and work would begin immediately on another release.

I had only taken the job for the money.

When The Secret came out I decided since I was only working for the money, I could visualize my way to the wealth I wanted and skip the J.O.B. since that part was unpleasant and wasn’t working out anyway.

That Was Then

That was 2006.  In those days it still seemed do-able to just choose to get rich.  And so I began to study the books of wealth building and follow the voices of the wealth building industry.

Working backwards from The Secret I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and, eventually, found my way to this The Science of Getting Rich: The Proven Mental Program to a Life of Wealth, published 100 years ago by Wallace Wattles.

The book, reportedly the same 100 year old book, that Rhonda Byrne, discovered and subsequently shared with the world as “The Secret” sets out a system for acquiring whatever wealth you desire.

Here are the steps, as described in the movie.

Ask

Know what you want and ask the universe for it.

This is where you need to get clear on what it is you want to create and visualize what you want as being as ‘real’ as possible.

Believe

Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way.

Focus your thoughts and your language on what it is you want to attract. You want to feel the feeling of really ‘knowing’ that what you desire is on its way to you, even if you have to trick yourself into believing it – do it.

Receive

Be open to receiving it.

Pay attention to your intuitive messages, synchronicities, signs from the Universe to help you along the way as assurance you are on the ‘right’ path. As you align yourself with the Universe and open yourself up to receiving, the very thing you want to manifest will show up.

It Doesn’t Work That Way

This last step is where I and others take issue with the magical, mystical promise of the movie version of the law of attraction.

It doesn’t work that way and the passage quoted from the Wattles Book explains why.

“You must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.”

To receive one must be ready. 

It may be as easy to manifest a million dollars as it is to manifest on dollar but it is a lot harder to be ready to receive the million because,

Your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.  You are not to take it as charity, nor to steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.”

Interdependent Web

We are all part of the cornucopia of abundance.  The riches we manifest from the universe are not magical but reciprocal. The Law of Abundance is reciprocal.  It is the law of energy exchange.  Without each individual adding value there is no abundance.

So I ask you, what value do you offer in exchange for the riches of the world?  How is the universal law of attraction manifest in you?  If the law is true, then you are a manifest gift to each person you meet. You are a manifest gift each moment of your day, every encounter is an opportunity to give more value than you get.  Are you ready to receive?   Are you creating for others the abundance and wealth of the universe in every moment of your life?