Focus, Instead of Going Unconscious

What You Will Learn Everyone faces stress from their environment in some form. The key to success is not letting this stress affect you. Adopt a coping method to deal with your stress – divert yourself, avoid the stress itself or try and dissipate the energy caused by the stress.

Several years ago I used to live in a house that had a room overlooking my neighbors’ backyard. I had a little exercise area with an elliptical machine and a StairMaster set up in one corner of the room, and whenever I would exercise I could look directly out to my neighbors’ backyard and see whatever was going on there. It was generally a pretty bucolic scene with a nice garden and some trees.

About once every two or three months I would be exercising on the weekends and I would see the man of the house come into the backyard, and then walk over to an area to the side of his garage (which was not visible to the people inside of his house) with a couple of beers. He would drink the beers in less than five minutes. Then, maybe 30 minutes later or so, he would come out again and do the same thing.

In the afternoons, the man could never see me exercising, because the sun would have blocked his view, but I always saw him. The funny thing about this was that in the few years I had lived in the house, I learned to recognize a pattern. I realized that, if the guy was drinking behind his garage, it meant his daughter and her husband were visiting. I knew this because I could always look outside at their cars in the driveway. Something about having his daughter and her husband over every few weeks obviously stressed the man out, and in order to deal with this stress he decided to shotgun beers. I should point out the man was also a grandfather at the time, probably in his late 60s; however, he had developed this beer ritual as a coping mechanism, in order to deal with the stress that seeing his son-in-law and daughter apparently caused him.

I am sure you have all sorts of coping mechanisms that you too use to deal with the various stresses in your environment. Everyone has various coping mechanisms that they use to distract themselves, and to cope.

• I have seen people who hear about something awful that just happened to someone, or someone they know, and they immediately say, “I need to take a run.” In the midst of hearing about some terrible tragedy or other sort of stressful news, they immediately sit up and go out for a long run.
• I have seen other people who have had an incredibly tough day at the office, stop by the grocery store on the way home from work and buy $20 worth of ice cream, and then spend the evening gorging themselves.
• I have known people who had several bad experiences at parties, and decided never to attend any parties ever again.
• As a student, I knew people who refused to eat lunch with other students, and instead went to the library at lunchtime each day.

These are all methods that people adopt in order to dissipate energy that is coming at them that is too stressful to deal with. I am sure you have had a lot of these experiences before, wherein the input from the environment is overwhelming. Everyone has experiences like this, and everyone deals with stress in different ways.

One of the greatest challenges that people face in their jobs, in life and all around them is stress. In fact, the threat of stress, and the strong natural inclination to avoid it can prevent an incredible number of people from ever reaching their full potential in their relationships, careers, and lives. It is this fear of exposing ourselves to more stress that can ultimately keep many of us from moving forward at the rate we should.

The people who end up achieving the most in the world are the ones who are willing to do that which others are unwilling or afraid to do.

One of the great risks of the pursuit of success involves generally exposing and subjecting yourself to more and more stress. However, the key to excelling, even under extremely stressful situations, is to not allow the stress to affect you the same way it did before. Many people can adapt quite easily to all sorts of stresses in their environment, and due to this they are typically better off than those who cannot adapt so readily.

There are three common ways that we tend to deal with stress in the environment. Each of these is essentially a method of going unconscious, instead of dealing with the stress head-on:

1. We do something to divert our attention away from the stress. For example, if something is upsetting to us we can do all sorts of things. Eating lots of ice cream, using drugs or alcohol, watching television and so forth can all draw our attention away from the problem and stress we are facing. So too can engaging in reckless sex, spending all of our time reading, or doing other things that place our attention on something other than the problem at hand.

Diverting our attention away from the stress we are facing is something that is very common for most people. Many people even do this when they have certain tasks to complete at work that are difficult for them. They might talk on the phone, work on other meaningless projects, and do all sorts of things that are not relevant to the task at hand, because working on the task may cause them stress.

2. We simply avoid the stress. In this method of coping, people may isolate themselves and avoid stressful situations by calling in sick to work, or they find other reasons not to participate in the stressful situation. In my career I have seen numerous people do everything they can to avoid certain kinds of stressful situations. It could be as simple as not going to the dance or not coming out to play. Isolation can be an effective form of avoidance.

Depression in many cases is also related to the isolation coping mechanism. When people are depressed it changes their physiological state. They breathe much slower and move more slowly. People who are depressed do not typically get excited, and they are typically withdrawn from the world around them. Depression is another way of avoiding stress.

When I was in law school I remember studying for exams with a friend of mine who had graduated from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, before going to law school with me at the University of Virginia. We were taking a break in the student commons one day, where we had been studying for exams.

“This is pretty stressful,” I told him at one point.

“It sure is. A bunch of the kids I knew when I was at Harvard Law School went and got Prozac prescribed to them during exams because it helped them study,” he said.

He proceeded to tell me that Prozac helped the kids study and be more focused, rather than being completely overwhelmed with stress. I am certainly not advocating this; however, I thought what he was saying was very interesting because it showed that people of high achievement were relying on something external to help them move forward, instead of allowing the stress to make them withdraw-or suffering a complete breakdown. People are certainly extremely complex in terms of how they operate in the world; nowhere is this more apparent than in how each individual handles different types of stress.

3. We dissipate the energy that the stress is causing us. When the energy becomes too much, people will often do everything they can to alleviate the energy in some manner. For example, people may exercise, talk and complain to others, get angry, cry, or anything that helps them release the stress they are feeling.

The problem with each of these three coping mechanisms is that, most often, they do not allow people to deal directly with the issues that are affecting them and, instead, they can create a whole separate set of problems. The things we do to comfort ourselves when we feel stress do not necessarily help us in the long run. Isolation, dissipation, distraction and so forth all prevent us from dealing with the “root cause” of our problems.

In the case of my neighbor, he may have had some issues with his son-in-law. Instead of dealing with these issues, he decided to get drunk, and this may have created an entirely new set of problems for him. In the case of the person who calls in sick to work instead of dealing with their stress, not coming into work may create an entirely new difficult situation. People who deal with considerable stress by getting angry may cause other problems when their anger. It is important to understand that, unless we deal with stress in an effective and efficient manner, we are likely to experience numerous problems.

When you look at most people who are not achieving what they are capable of, a large part of the reason for their lack of success often comes down to how they deal with stress. Similarly, when you look at most people who are achieving a lot, a large part of their success comes down to how they deal with stress. Accordingly, how you deal with stress in your environment, and whether or not you can deal with it effectively, has a lot to do with how well you will ultimately do in everything.

Many of the things we do when we find ourselves feeling stressed-out are symptoms that we are going unconscious as a method of avoidance. In the book Focusing, by Dr. Eugene Gendlin, the author discusses the process of what he called “focusing”. Dr. Gendlin is a professor at the University of Chicago who studied what types of therapy he believed were most effective for helping people deal with issues and move forward in a positive manner. After an extensive study, Gendlin concluded that there was not one form of therapy that seemed to work better than others. For example, regardless of what the particular therapeutic approach was, there were some patients who benefited and healed from therapy, and there were other patients who did not.

Because Dr. Gendlin could not find any form of therapy he believed was more effective than others, he began studying what similarities were shared by those patients who did get better. What Dr. Gendlin discovered was that the patients who improved were doing something called “focusing”, which involved being quiet and understanding the body’s felt sense of what is occurring. “Felt sense” refers to the person’s acceptance and being a part of whatever stress is going on. It means not analyzing what is going on, but just being with the emotion, stress, or fear, and allowing the body to accept the feeling that is occurring. Felt sense is not conscious, nor is it necessarily verbalized. It is experienced in the body, a physical feeling that one gets. It is something that is difficult to express, and is even a bit vague. After being immersed in felt sense for some time, a person can experience what Dr. Gendlin calls a “felt shift”.

According to Dr. Gendlin, the process of focusing can take 10 minutes, or longer. However, after allowing your body to be within the emotion, you will develop a new way of seeing things. It will feel good and you will diminish the pressure of what you are feeling. Instead of resisting whatever is causing you to feel angry, depressed, fearful, withdrawn and so forth, you will, instead, accept whatever it is. When you focus, you begin to realize that it is the resistance to the emotion, or stress, that causes pain, and not really whatever it is that is causing the stress. Once you are able to get in touch with the feeling that a stressful situation gives you, you no longer seek to go unconscious in the face of this stress.

What I am suggesting you do with every stress you encounter that causes you to go unconscious is, instead, to remain conscious. The focusing technique is an extremely effective method for remaining conscious and dealing with the sorts of emotions and stresses you may encounter.

You need to recognize when you are going unconscious, and take steps to deal with this. The more you go unconscious in your life, the more problems you will have and the less effective you will be. Instead, you need to understand how to remain conscious and do everything within your power to move forward consciously. Think about how often you go unconscious, and behavior patterns that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Not dealing with these issues is something that can harm you tremendously and make life very difficult for you. You need to focus and remain conscious, in order to move forward in your life.

Plan for Success–Not Failure

What You Will Learn Consistently plan to be happy and not sad. Never agree with negative voices that come from others – focus and think about positive and inspiring things. Plan for health, success and happiness and the person whom you have dreamed of becoming.

When I was younger, there was a restaurant on Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan that used to offer people a percentage off the price of their meals equal to a person’s age, on the person’s birthday each year. So, on your twenty-fifth birthday, for instance, you would get a 25% discount on your meal. On your fiftieth birthday, you would get a 50% discount on your meal.

Not surprisingly, this particular restaurant was extremely popular with older people on their birthdays. In fact, elderly people came from all over town on their birthdays each year. I don’t mean to be crass, but it sort of felt like like eating in a nursing home. There would be wheel chairs, walkers and so forth scattered all over the dining room, and in line. The hostesses in the restauarant always had to speak loudly to people when they came in. Sometimes the old people would doze off at their tables. The place was always packed. My father used to take me to the restaurant occasionally, and every evening I was ever there, the restaurant was quite crowded with old people who were celebrating their birthdays.

One time we visited my grandmother the day after her birthday, and she declared that she had been to this restaurant with several friends the evening before to celebrate her birthday, and that she had gotten a massive discount on her dinner, since she was so old. Because the restaurant kept giving discounts that increased the older people got, it made getting older a little more fun.

“I wonder if they would actually give you money back when you are 101, or if the meal is just free on your 100th birthday?” I asked her.

“I will let you know when I turn 101,” she said. She was quite serious and, after making this statement, went about her business.

While my grandmother did not live to be 101, she lived well into her 90s and I remember being very impressed with her when she said she “would let me know”. She had shown great spirit and made it clear that she was making plans to live, rather than making plans to die, as many elderly people do. She was in her late 80s when she said this to me, and I knew that she had every intention of moving forward into her 90s with ease and vigor. My grandmother was out and about every day, working outside of the house and being quite active with friends, going places and doing things. She enjoyed life and she planned on continuing to do so.

I would like to contrast my grandmother with some other people I have known throughout the years. I have known people who retired and then died within a year or two. The husband of a woman I know had worked at General Motors, in an auto plant. He retired at the age of 65. Up until the time he retired, he had been very responsible, someone that most people would look up to. After he retired, though, he became very depressed and felt like he had no purpose, as if his life were over. He sat on the roof of their small house in Warren, Michigan drinking at least a case of beer a day for around 9 months, and soon he was dead. He died, I think, because he had planned to die.

I have known numerous people throughout their lives that say things like:

• I’m washed up.
• No one likes me.
• I could never do that.
• That is not something I could do.
• I am not good at that sort of thing.
• I am going to fail.
• I am going to die by the time I am 35.
• My mother got that disease and I am probably going to get it too.

When people make statements like this, they are essentially “planning to fail” or planning for some other negative outcome. When you plan to fail, you are putting yourself in a place wherein success is unlikely, if not impossible. It is as simple as that. When you plan to succeed, your odds of succeeding are far greater.

When you are getting ready to move into a new house, you will typically make all sorts of preparations for the house before you even move in.

• You may know that that you are going to need a bed for an extra bedroom you now have. You may know that you are going to need sheets for the bed.
• You may know that you are going to need a chair in a certain area where there is empty space.
• You may know that rooms need to be repainted.
• You may know that the house needs a new dishwasher.
• You may know that you are going to need drapes in certain rooms.

Whenever I have seen a couple getting ready to buy a new house, most of the time they go out and start looking for all of these things weeks before they even move into the new house. Why? Because they are planning. They are not living in the house yet; however, they believe they soon will be, so they start making plans for their new life.

Have you ever gone and test-driven a car you were interested in? The only times I ever test-drove cars was before I could afford the cars I was test-driving. I went out and test drove the most ridiculous cars I could find. Then I started planning and doing what I needed to in order to purchase one of them. Seriously planning to achieve or obtain something makes all the difference. When I was growing up, the people I primarily saw driving my dream car back then, a Porsche 911, were old men. When I was in my early 20s I went and test-drove one. The cars were around $70,000 at the time. I decided that I would own one in a few years, and within a few short years, I ended up buying the exact same model I had test-driven. I did this before I even had a full time job. I simply planned on having the car, and then I made it happen.

A car is just a piece of metal, though, and it has little to do with who you are. A house is just a structure. Houses and cars are material things. The most important concept is your self-concept, who you are and who you are going to become. Are you planning to succeed in your life and to reach your full potential, or are you planning to fail?

You need to plan your life and your career around succeeding. Instead of making plans to fail, to be average and so forth, make plans to succeed and to be the absolute best at everything you can possibly be.

• If you are not living up to your potential, start making plans to fully realize that potential.
• If you are having financial problems, start making plans to become rich.
• If you are having relationship problems, start making plans to have a great relationship.
• If you are sick, start making plans to be well.
• If you are depressed, start making plans to be happy.

The most important thing you can do for yourself is to consistently plan to be happy and not sad. Successful and not unsuccessful. Satisfied and fulfilled, not unfulfilled. Alive and not dead.

It is just as easy to make plans to succeed as it is to make plans to fail, but it is a lot more fun and rewarding. You need to do everything you can to insure that you are planning for the best things in your life, instead of planning for the worst things.

Several years ago I purchased a lot of very expensive exercise equipment. I was not in good shape at the time. I could not really afford the exercise equipment at the time either, and it was a bit of a financial stretch for me. Why did I buy all of this equipment? I purchased it because I was planning on becoming healthy and fit. Moreover, I knew that there was no way that I would let all of this expensive equipment sit around without being used. Because the equipment was there, I used it, and this has made a major difference in the quality of my life.

I am not saying you need to run out and purchase exercise equipment in order to be healthy or happy. This was just something that worked for me. What you should definitely do, though, is make your own plans to be healthy. Planning to be healthy and to be well is something that can make a giant difference in your life and career.

Have you had negative things happen to you? Have you heard people say negative things about you? You should never allow these things to take hold of you and determine who you are, and what you think you are capable of achieving. Instead, you need to think forward and think of positive, inspiring things. Plan for being the person you want to be, not the person others may have called you, for reasons having more to do with them than you. You should never agree with those negative voices. Only agree with positive voices. Plan for health, success and happiness.

What would have happened to the people below if they had simply given up, and had not planned for great things in their lives?

The Vice President of Columbia Pictures told this actor that he was never going to make it in the business. The actor? – Harrison Ford

His first book was rejected by 12 publishing houses and sixteen agents. – John Grisham

A band was turned down by a recording company that said, “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” – The recording company was talking about The Beatles.

This person was told by his father that he would amount to nothing, and that he would be a disgrace to himself and his family – Charles Darwin

This man was told by a music teacher, “As a composer he is hopeless.” – Beethoven

This vocalist was told that “He couldn’t sing at all.” – Enrico Caruso

This visionary was fired from a newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no original ideas” – Walt Disney

This author was told by Publishers that “anthologies don’t sell” and that the book was “too positive”. The book was rejected a total of 140 times. The book? Chicken Soup for the Soul. It now has 65 different titles and has sold over 80 million copies all over the world.

This young man was told by a teacher he was “too stupid to learn anything”. – Thomas Edison

This man failed the sixth grade. – Winston Churchill

He wasn’t able to speak until he was almost 4 years old, and his teachers said he would “never amount to much”. – Albert Einstein

Did poorly in school and failed at running the family farm – Isaac Newton

Was not allowed to wait on customers in the store where he worked, because “He didn’t have enough sense.” – F. W. Woolworth

Was cut from the high school basketball team, went home, locked himself in his room and cried – Michael Jordan

Producer told her she was “unattractive” and could not act - Marilyn Monroe

This book was rejected 18 times before it was published. It then sold over one million copies the first year. The book was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Auditioned for All My Children and got rejected – Julia Roberts

Received 30 rejections and the author threw this book in the trash. Luckily his wife fished it out of the refuse and encouraged her husband to resubmit the manuscript. The book was Carrie – the author Stephen King
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1163465/inspirational_stories_of_famous_failures_pg2_pg2.html?cat=9

I have heard different versions of stories like this many, many times. These sorts of stories are inspirational because they show that success often has more to do with planning to achieve something great, than simply trying once, then giving up after listening to others’ negative opinions. Nothing is more important than having incredible faith in what we can achieve, and then preparing to do great things.

Maybe you have failed at certain things before. Plan to succeed the next time. Maybe your family members have a history of getting some horrible disease when they reach a certain age. Plan to be the one who does not get the disease.

Whatever it is, the best possible thing you can do is plan for the very best outcome.

Bad Dancing, Submitting, and Surrendering

What You Will Learn There is a difference between submitting and surrendering – in submitting you act forcefully due to external pressures and in surrendering, you act on your own choice. You need to understand this difference which could change your life and career. You need to do a job or anything that you like very much and that which you have surrendered to.

When I was in college I used to hate going to parties where there was a lot of dancing. In fact, I did everything I could to avoid it. If I took a girl to a party and she insisted on dancing, I would generally have one of my friends dance with her because I disliked it so much. I am not sure what it is about dancing, but it is just not something that gets me all that excited, and it never has.

If I really have to, though, I will dance. I am so bad at dancing that people often imitate my moves on the floor. One of my worst dance moves I have heard several people refer to as “the chicken” and it involves flapping my arms like a chicken, bobbing my head and butterflying my legs. My dancing is so bad that people often form little circles around me and start cheering because they think it is so funny. I have had too many embarrassing and humiliating moments to count. Imagine walking by girls in the school hallway and having them flap their arms and imitate your chicken moves. Or imagine standing around in a group of people, having a serious discussion about this or that, and being asked to demonstrate “the chicken dance”. I also remember another one of my patented moves, “the lasso dance”, wherein I moved my hand over my head for the entire duration of the dance; that one has certainly earned a few remarks over the years.

Several years ago I went to a highly regarded professional coach with all sorts of degrees, to bounce business ideas off of. Although we never talked about my dislike of dancing, or about the humiliating experiences I had had dancing in the past, one piece of advice that he kept giving me blew my mind:

“You should go get dance lessons. Preferably from a sassy black woman with a lot of rhythm. She’ll bring out your groove.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked him.

We were sitting in a very serious sort of office and the bookshelves were lined with all sorts of books by various important figures in business and personal development. There were various statues around the room and a nice oriental rug on the floor. It looked like the sort of room we could be smoking a couple of cigars in and sipping scotch. The coach was well dressed in khakis and a nice pressed shirt. He was also a very serious sort of guy and, in case you are wondering, he was white. Very white.

“Dance lessons from a black woman who knows how to get down will help you loosen up and get more in touch with your body, mind and spirit. You are resisting everything right now, but when you dance you will learn to surrender.”

I never went for dance lessons. I have no idea why he suggested the dance instructor needed to be “black and sassy” but he really meant it.

What he was saying, I think, was that I was an uptight white guy, and that I needed to loosen up and learn to get into the groove, whatever that meant. For the longest time I thought that was some of the crappiest business advice anyone could possibly give someone. I could not believe that this was the sort of professional advice I spent a lot of money on, and took up a lot of my time to get. I was looking for some advice about how to be a better businessman–not how to shake my booty. I had the following sorts of reactions to what he was saying:

• Withdrawn
• Skeptical
• Pessimistic
• Critical
• Judgmental
• Stubborn

These are the sorts of reactions we all have when we are resisting something. I flat-out resisted what the man said because it was not what I wanted to hear. It represented a part of myself I was not interested in. If he had instead said, “I recommend that you spend two weeks at a seminar at UCLA Business School about cross-border transactions in Russia. It is important that you understand the relevance and importance of cross-border trading with Russia to our modern economy,” I would have run right out and signed up for the course–despite the fact that I have never had anything to do with Russia in my business or career. However, when being advised to learn how to shake my booty, I was very resistant.

This Saturday I went to see a rock concert with my wife and, like at all rock concerts, there were people there who had been dragged along half-willingly by others. There were a lot of confused, uptight people like me there because it was a small and private benefit concert being put on by the rock star father of one of the kids in my daughter’s preschool in Malibu.

While the rock star is very well known, the concert was small and numerous parents of the preschool kids all showed up in the little auditorium at Pepperdine University in Malibu, with no idea who the performing rock group was. I am sure they had all heard the band’s songs on the radio throughout the years, but many of the professional white-collar sorts who were at the concert did not know who the group was. It was fun watching various parents stand there all stiffly while they watched the band perform. Most of the other parents got into it, though, and had fun. I was terrified of dancing because I did not want other parents making fun of my dancing. The last thing I wanted was people flapping their wings at me if I were to run into them at the grocery store, or at my daughter’s soccer practice. After all, I am grown-up now.

I was one of the ones who stood there stiffly at the concert, at least for the first 45 minutes or so. When you are one of the people who is not dancing at these sorts of events, you are typically looking around at the other people not dancing, making faces to each other that say things like:

• What the heck are all these people thinking dancing!
• We are all far too cool and professional to be dancing.
• Has the world lost its mind? Look at all these silly people dancing!
• I cannot believe that person is moving around like that!
• This band is out of control. What a bunch of freaks!

If you are part of the group of people who are not dancing, you are in good company. I have been at giant concerts inside of stadiums that hold 100,000 people, and if I am not dancing I have always spotted someone a couple of rows away, not dancing; we invariably instantly connect and exchange glances about the absurdity of the situation, clearly sharing an impression that everyone in the audience should be uptight like we are. If you are one of the people not dancing, you will always know who the others are who share your ability to be uptight.

After 45 minutes or so, my wife started poking me, trying to get me to dance. As I do in most of these events, I started to dance but without doing the chicken, or any other number of moves that were sure to bring me certain humiliation. I was half-dancing to the best of my ability, as an act of submission.

There is a difference between surrendering and submitting. The act of submission is more akin to the act of a slave than anything else. When you submit to something, you do so as an act of weakness, in response to pressures around you. You are acting because you are being dominated by outside forces, not really based on your own free will. You are a victim when you submit and are not really in control at all of your life. You are trying to look like something you are not, to someone else. As a victim, or as someone who is submitting, you are not really changing or enjoying what you are doing at all. Instead, you are simply acting a certain way or doing a certain thing because you feel that you should–that it is expected of you.

When you do not act in the way you want to, or a way that is natural to you, there is going to be covert resistance, an inability to put forth your full effort. Fear of action, hostility and all sorts of other negative emotions will overtake you. You become hostile because you are not really acting in a way that you want to. The way you really want to act lies festering beneath the surface, suppressed.

When I am at a wedding and someone tries to get me to get into a conga line, I tend to get a little bit hostile and resistant. As you might guess, I do not enjoy this very much. I might reluctantly motor around the room with the other wedding guests, but I never put my full effort into it. I don’t exactly go for the gusto.

There have been a few times in my life when I have been truly excited and have put my full effort into dancing. I enjoyed those occasions; however, in those instances I was surrounded by people I knew well, so I was not as self-conscious. I have been at seminars, for example, where the seminar leader got everyone to jump up and down and scream about how excited they were, and I have gotten into this and really let go. I love going to seminars and getting pumped up at them, as opposed to engaging in public dancing. I am not sure why this is, but I think a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I am more inspired by concepts and ideas than music and rhythm.

When I am at seminars where I am jumping up and down and excited, I am doing something far different from when I am dancing at a concert or in a bar. When I am jumping up and down at a seminar, I have surrendered and when I am dancing at a concert I have most often submitted. Understanding this difference could change your life and career. The odds are very good that there are areas of your life where you have surrendered and are doing well, and other areas wherein you have submitted, and are constantly sabotaging your own success.

The act of surrender is something that we choose to do. When you surrender, you are letting go and allowing whatever is to just be. Surrendering is a conscious decision and choice. When you allow what is to be, you open yourself up to whatever may come along. This defines the act of surrender.

• Surrendering could be as simple as, for example, allowing yourself to be close to another person.
• Surrendering could be deciding that you are ready to make the most of yourself and to start applying yourself.
• Surrendering could be allowing yourself to experience what is, instead of resisting what is.

The stiff people who are standing in the audience at rock concerts like myself are all resisting. When they start dancing they are generally just submitting. You can always distinguish the movements of people who are dancing in a submissive way; they are awkward. They do not move their body a lot. They are just going through the motions, not really accomplishing much with their dancing. Most of all, the people who submit are not really enjoying themselves all that much when they are dancing, which you can determine by their facial expressions. They are only dancing because they feel they should be doing it, others are doing it, someone is forcing them to do it, or they want to avoid being different….

In contrast, the people who are dancing freely and willfully have allowed themselves to “surrender” to the music. They are not self-conscious; they are simply feeling the music and living the music. They may dance with their eyes closed and move their bodies, totally oblivious to those around them. They are completely “into the music”, having a great time and feeling very good about what they are doing.

• Someone cannot be a good dancer unless he or she surrenders.
• Someone cannot really fully enjoy himself or herself at a concert, unless he or she surrenders.

In fact, unless you can learn to surrender, you will never be good at anything and you will never become anything of significance. If you cannot surrender, you will never have the career you want, or the life you want. Many, many people go through life not surrendering, and instead they continually resist.

For example, some people enter each relationship they are in resisting commitment. Other people enter various jobs and resist committing to the job because they feel they should be doing something else, or something better. Some people resist applying themselves because they feel that if they apply themselves they will have submitted to a certain type of lifestyle, or career.

What are you resisting in your life and your career? The odds are very good that there is something that you are resisting, and whatever it is that you are resisting, it is holding you back. You will never reach your full potential and be all you are capable of unless you pick someone, or something to which you can comfortably surrender.

One of the most exciting things in the world is spending time around people who have achieved great things, or, more simply, people who are incredibly happy. I do not care if the person is a rock star, or an attorney; I absolutely love spending time with very successful and/or happy people. The reason is that in almost every case there is a certain vein that runs through the histories of the most successful and happy people: They have found a profession, a person, a way of life, or a calling to which they have surrendered. They have surrendered their life to something, and have allowed whatever it is to, in a major sense, define how they run their lives.

You can always tell when someone has surrendered to something in their career. They base their life around the profession and are enthusiastic about it. They do not lament how they wish they had another job, wish they were doing something else, wish they lived somewhere else, or wish they were with someone else. Instead, the person who has surrendered has achieved a greater level of focus, commitment and spirit for their way of life than most people ever do.

I love looking at how rock star musicians dress. The rock star I saw on Saturday night looks tough and has long hair, but he also wore a Scottish kilt at one point during the concert. He did not care how he looked. He had surrendered to be the person and the persona that he wanted to be.

The people in the audience who were getting down and having the best time had also surrendered to their experience.

The people who had not surrendered, or who had submitted, were resisting the music and just waiting for the end of the show.

Resisting and thereby not allowing one’s self to surrender is often the reason behind mediocrity or failure, in almost every profession, and in life. When you are resisting, you are never able to apply yourself because your heart is not completely in the game. You are a slave to a job, another person, or the life you are in. You let the life you really want to fester beneath the surface, although you would much prefer to be somewhere other than where you are.

What is the secret to surrendering? I think the secret to surrendering is finding something that you respect and can surrender to. When you respect a profession and hold it in esteem, you can easily surrender to it. You do not need to resist the job because it is something that you want to be part of.

When you are doing something you are interested in and feel comfortable doing, you are doing a job that you have surrendered to. When you are doing a job that you do not feel comfortable doing, which is not in accordance with your values, you are doing a job that you have submitted to. No one can ever do very well in a job they are submitting to, and if you take a job like this you will likely never amount to much in your career.

Are you in a profession to which you have surrendered? If you are not, you need to be.

It is Better to Be Known for Something than Nothing at All

What You Will Learn In your career, you should stand for, and become known for something that others value. The more you become known for something and work on it, the better you will do. It is better to be known for something than for nothing at all.

When I was 20 years old, running an asphalt business in Detroit, I purchased a fax machine, a couple of business phone numbers, and I bought some lists of companies and businesses I thought would have big asphalt parking lots I could work on from a mailing list company. I then rented a loft apartment for the summer and hired a salesman named Jim, who was a career salesman in his 50s, to come into the loft and cold call businesses about potentially hiring me to do some asphalt work.

“Hello. I am calling to ask you a question: Isn’t it about time you invested in getting your parking lot patched up and sealed? Your parking lot is the first part of your business that your customers see and set foot on. I’d like to swing by and give you an estimate today.”

The salesman typically started his workday very early. The loft was a big open space without many closing doorways, walls and so forth between where I was sleeping and where Jim was making his phone calls. Typically, he would not wake me up when he would come in, and he would sit there for an hour or so before starting his day, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and reading the paper. And then the phone calls would start, and I would awaken surrounded by a haze of cigarette smoke and the smell of freshly made coffee.

“Hey Harrison!” he would scream as I would meander to the restroom rubbing my eyes each morning. Sometimes I was not alone and my guests were terrified when they got up to go the bathroom and saw a portly older man sitting at a desk talking to people about parking lots. Jim endured some shocking work conditions. My friends endured some strange sleepovers. Since my friends all lived with their parents, I had them sleep over a lot.

After Jim’s first month or so, I realized that every place he seemed to be successfully selling happened to be a church. Churches have big parking lots, so this was a good thing; however, there just seemed to be a real preponderance of these churches. The summer before hiring Jim, I had done the work that Jim did myself and had used the same lists and made the cold calls. For one reason or another, I was most successful selling to car dealerships. I sold a ton of them. I had never sold a church before.

I was a little pushy with the owners of the car dealerships, or the sales managers, who typically were the ones who set up the jobs with me:

“Ok. I will knock down the price by $400, but you are going to need to have the job done on Sunday and Sunday only!” I might tell the dealer.

These guys loved this sort of dealing style, getting a good deal, time pressure negotiation tactics and so forth. I loved working on the dealerships, and they seemed to enjoy all the back and forth I did with them when selling them.

I never took a lot of time speaking with Jim about the church parking lots and the process of setting up the job. Typically, he would just go out and give the estimate by measuring the parking lot, speaking with the people who owned it, and setting a time for the work to be done. I would then show up with a crew and complete the job.

After several weeks of doing churches every few days, I asked Jim why he thought he was doing so many churches and not auto dealerships, funeral homes, bowling alleys, strip malls and similar businesses that typically have big parking lots:

“I do not know. I think I just get along with the people there better,” he told me.

I asked to see some of the letters he sent out when he was giving estimates and I noticed the funniest thing: Instead of signing all of them “Sincerely,” or “Very truly yours,” he ended them all with “In Almighty Christ,” or “In Christ,” or something along those lines.

“What the heck is this?” I asked him when I looked at how all his winning bids had been signed.

“I am signing my estimates in ‘the Name of Christ,’” he told me matter-of-factly. He was pretty serious about this. It was as if he was channeling Jesus and the power of religion right through his estimates.

Jim believed in this stuff and he was not using the signature line as a joke, or to manipulate the churches. He really meant it. What was so interesting to me about this, though, was that his enthusiasm for churches and the people he was assisting actually came through in the way he signed his letters. This one little thing made a difference in Jim’s ultimate success as a salesperson.

How much was the way Jim signed his letters worth? I do not know. He was able to sell Catholic, Protestant and every other sort of church out there. Jim made tens of thousands of dollars that summer and he seemed to only ever be able to successfully close churches. He might close the occasional bowling alley, restaurant, or Dairy Queen; however, for the most part, all of his sales were with churches.

“Do you talk to the churches about religion when you give the estimates?” I asked him one day.

“Oh no. I would never do that,” he said. “It is never polite to bring up and discuss religion in a professional setting.”

Over the years I have thought about this incident a great deal because I always tried to get to the bottom of Jim’s enormous success in the asphalt sales business, specifically related to churches. The more and more I think of this I believe it has to do mostly with how he signed his estimates and letters to the church. I know this sounds absolutely crazy and hard to believe; however, as someone who has run sales organizations that have generated tens of millions of dollars throughout the years, I always do everything I can to analyze what makes one person more successful than another in sales, and I think that Jim’s signature block had everything to do with his success.

There is a deeper reason why Jim’s signature block worked so well for him, and I will get to this in a moment. Before I do, though, I would like to tell you a couple of quick stories about signature blocks.

Every few weeks or so I receive an email from someone about something or another, which has a footer that says something like the following: “Mission: Excellence in All Respects” or “Delivering Value Through Outstanding Follow-Through.” These are not corporate slogans but are, instead, little statements that people have programmed their email providers to inscribe automatically on the bottom of all their outgoing messages.

These small things that people write on their email footers, which discuss what they are all about are what I would call ‘mantras’ or ’slogans’. I think they are pretty interesting, and I also think they are quite effective. I have found that the people who write these little things on their communications tend to get my attention. When I see their messages, I always think to myself: “Yeah, that person really is trying to give value“; or, “That person really takes their stuff seriously. I’m glad I am working with them.”

I always like to speak with people about their little slogans, and the people who have these little slogans are always quite enthusiastic about them: “That’s right, I believe in efficiency and productivity!” they might say. People do not typically use footers like this in their emails unless they take them seriously.

We respect people who believe in something.

These sorts of positive statements in email headers and footers are a little bit more popular outside of the United States than they are here, but people use them here as well. Over the years I have also had well over 1,000 people working for my various companies, and I have had several people reporting to me or other managers that put these things on their emails. What I have noticed is that these people are typically the most enthusiastic, the most effective and tend to do the best in their jobs. In fact, people who do this with their emails and in their communications are almost universally in the top 5% of effectiveness in everything they do:

• The best real estate agents out there tend to do stuff like this in their email footers.
• The best sales people out there tend to do this in their email footers.
• The most popular doctors tend to do something like this in their footers.
• The best companies tend to have a slogan or something like this, which typically appears after their logos.

In fact, the more I have looked around, the more I have noticed that the people who are the absolute best at everything are the same ones who consistently stand for something and have a mantra of sorts that they write in their email footers, put on their business cards, or otherwise become very well known for. Why do you think this is?

The reason what Jim did worked so well was due to the fact that the “In Christ” he was signing his name with said it all to his potential clients. Think about what this communicated:

• I take this seriously.
• I am one of you.
• Like you, I am willing to be judged based on my faith, and to put it out there in the open.
• I am committed to being moral.
• I am a devout Christian.
• I should be trusted.
• I am a good person.

There are probably a lot of other things that signing your name “In Christ” connoted to the churches with whom Jim dealt. Nevertheless, the most important point is that, in signing his name like this, Jim was showing that he stood for something. The truth of the matter is that Jim believed very much in what he was writing, and it came across to the receivers of his messages. I am sure that signing his name “In Christ” probably did not work as well with auto dealerships. I can imagine what the average auto dealership thought when getting a estimate signed “In Christ” from Jim:

“Oh, shit! I hope this guy does not realize we are dishonest! I do not want to go to hell, and had better avoid this guy!”

Despite not selling any auto dealerships and primarily only churches that summer, I would be willing to bet that Jim sold more total volume than he would have sold had he not stood for anything. Having that signature block made all the difference. When it comes down to it, when you stand for something and get behind an idea that represents who you are and what you represent (as long as it has positive connotations)–when you broadcast this to the world, you will do far better than if you do not get behind anything at all. I have seen it work this way always: The more you stand for something, the better you will ultimately do.

The people who put these little mission statements on the bottom of their emails may seem “cheesy” to some people, but they are also the same people you think of whenever you need “efficient service” or whatever the footer may say. I also think that the act of writing these missions down for many people motivates and reminds them to stand for something and get better at whatever skill it is that they want to be known for. It is better to stand for and be known for one thing, rather than to not stand for anything–and to be known for nothing.

In your career, you should stand for and become known for something. Choose being friendly, being a hard worker, being a perfectionist, or something along those lines. The more you become known for something and the more you work on it, the better you will do.

In my first job out of law school I worked for a federal judge. In this role, it was extremely important that typos were never, ever made in any of the legal work that I was doing. The reason was that the opinions our office wrote were sometimes published and, in all cases, they were looked at by numerous attorneys locally, and by attorneys working other cases around the country. Despite the fact that proofreading is not my greatest skill, I put all of my effort into this and decided that I needed to be exceptional at it if I were going to do well as an attorney. I literally went all-out in my proofreading.

When I started practicing law, I started getting compliments from partners and others I worked with about my proofreading skills, and pretty soon people started asking me to proof their work. Thinking back on this, I cannot believe that this ever happened. Even other young attorneys I worked with started asking me to review their work because they had heard I was good at this. I made this a skill of mine, doing my best to become known for this, because I thought it was the most important thing. It was an asset for me when I was practicing, and helped me to do well as an attorney. I simply picked something I thought was important and then focused on it.

I no longer make being known for great proofreading a focus of my job, but I did at one time when I thought this was the most important skill I could have, and something others would value. You need to be known for something and have a skill that others value. You want to do your best to focus on something in your career and do the best you can at something that others will appreciate. It is better to be known for something than for nothing at all.

Time Economy Jobs and Productivity Economy Jobs

What You Will Learn There are advantages to being in either a productivity economy or a time economy job. You need to decide which sort of job you want to do – most people are suited to one or the other. Once you have decided on this, do this sort of work.

In a law firm, when an attorney stops billing hours and no longer has any work, the person will be very close to losing his or her job. Survival in law firms involves staying busy and making work all the time. This is one reason it is so hard for young attorneys to stay employed in law firms. They find that they must ingratiate themselves with the right people, in order to consistently get work. Moreover, they have to do excellent quality work. And finally, because law firms typically charge clients by the hour, the attorneys are expected to bill lots of hours because, unless they do, the law firm will not make money. If an attorney stops churning out the hours, he or she will soon be out of a job.

When I was practicing law, I remember a first-year attorney I was working with was quietly asked to leave the firm. However, despite how quiet the firm was about the entire thing, the attorney made a big stink about it, telling everyone who would listen that there was a conspiracy of sorts, regarding why he had been asked to leave the firm.

He had gotten into a giant conflict with two of the more successful partners in the law firm, who had asked him to go and do a bunch of research about a complex legal matter. It was the sort of research that was meant to take days–if not weeks of his time. The research was something that the law firm would be charging the client thousands of dollars for, of course, and the attorney decided that, before going and doing all of this research, he wanted to make sure that the work was necessary at all. The attorney had not received any prior information about the case, so he went and got the case file and started looking through it, studying it.

In the course of reviewing the file, he discovered a technicality: the statute of limitations had run out on the lawsuit, which would definitely be good news for the client. Without more than six weeks of law firm experience at this point, the young attorney was very proud of what he had discovered. I remember that he went to the partners who had assigned him all of the research and said:

“I may be reading this wrong, but it looks like the statute of limitations would bar this lawsuit against our client. This is fantastic. All we need to do is tell the court about this and the case should go away.”

The partners did not share his enthusiasm. In fact, they told him they were aware of this issue, but that he was to go do the research they had assigned him. The statute of limitations was not something he was supposed to be researching, they told him, and they wanted answers on other issues.

The young attorney then went and spoke with some other partners in a “hypothetical” about the situation, and they all agreed with him that the case would be barred by the statute of limitations. He then emailed the attorneys who had assigned him the research and cc’d the partners who had agreed with the statute of limitations issue when he had brought it up as a hypothetical.

The young attorney was taken off the case and ended up getting into a giant argument with the attorneys who had assigned him the work. He accused them of being “unethical” and trying to “run up unnecessary legal bills” for their client, among other things. I do not know exactly what was going on and why he was doing research on a case that sounded like it could easily have been put away by filing a simple motion; however, the young attorney’s inability to cooperate and do the requested work ultimately cost him his job.

After this episode, people simply refused to give the attorney any work. He did not play by the rules. The rules of the job required him to do what he was told, and even to run up legal bills when it was necessary. Within a few months, with nothing to do and no one willing to give him work, the attorney was asked to leave the firm. He was told he was “not productive.”

I am not sure if the attorneys in the law firm were doing anything unethical or not–I tend to believe they were not. What I do know, though, is that they were upset that the attorney was not willing to do the work they assigned him.

One of the most important things for attorneys is always having work on their table and, in fact, “creating work” since their time is valued based on how many hours they put in. Since attorneys charge by the hour, most of them are looking to do as much work as they possibly can. One of the reasons that attorneys are so highly paid, I think, relates to the fact that they are always working, and billing out for as many hours as possible.

Especially in the case of an attorney, if someone is willing to pay, it is important that one consistently looks and is busy at all times. When I was practicing law, I remember that many times I myself was working on research and all sorts of projects that were only tangentially relevant to the case I was involved in. Nevertheless, I was given the work in order to increase billings for the case. As an attorney in this position, the job could be viewed as simply showing up and doing meaningless work.

Much like an attorney, if you are a barber who gets paid directly by customers, you can only make a lot of money if you cut a lot of hair. Similarly, a doctor only earns a lot if he or she sees a high volume of patients. There are typically two types of jobs:

• Time Economy Jobs. The first job is one you report to, and you generally get paid for, regardless of your productivity. Many office jobs inside corporations and the government are like this, for example. People report to work each day and, for the most part, have a deal that if they are there a certain number of hours and produce at a certain standard they will be paid. These sorts of jobs are called “the time economy”.
• Productivity Economy Jobs. The second type of job is one in which you exchange a task for a certain amount of money. A doctor, for example, may be paid based on the number of procedures that they have done. Someone who cuts hair may get paid based on the number of haircuts they have given. People who do these jobs typically only make a good amount of money and increasing amounts of money when they are able to be very productive with their various tasks. These sorts of jobs are termed “the productivity economy”.

Your ability to succeed in a job will generally be based on your ability to deliver in the sort of environment you are working in.

Success in time economy jobs is generally based on your ability to

• (1) look busy and deliver the amount of productivity expected of you,
• (2) show up at work on time, and
• (3) be effective at impressing superiors.

The more productivity you deliver and the more effective you are at impressing superiors, the more likely it is that you will be successful in your job. These are skills that not all people have, and if you have these sorts of skills, then you will do best in a time economy job.

In the case of the attorney who lost his job for not doing seemingly needless work, he was failing to deliver the amount of productivity expected of him, and he also failed to impress his superiors. A certain amount of productivity is expected in every job. You need to find out what is expected in your job, and to make sure that you deliver. The better you deliver, the better off you will be in your career.

In contrast, success in productivity economy jobs is generally based on

• (1) doing as much work as possible,
• (2) doing as much work as possible in the minimum amount of time, and
• (3) doing high quality work.

The more you can get done and the more productive you are, the better you will typically do in productivity economy jobs. If you have a productivity economy job, you can have horrible interpersonal skills and still do very well, as long as you are productive and your work is of high quality.

I read recently that the average office worker who goes to work each day ultimately ends up accomplishing no more than 60 to 90 minutes worth of work. Instead of working, the person is doing numerous things like the following:

• talking on the phone,
• day-dreaming,
• getting involved in conversations at work that are not relevant to the task at hand,
• gossiping,
• thinking about working,
• screwing around on the Internet,
• walking around the office,
• planning lunch,
• thinking about working some more,
• going to lunch,
• talking about lunch and more.

In fact, at the end of an average day it is unlikely that most people have ended up completing more than 90 minutes worth of work. The lack of work being done is far more common in time economy jobs than it is in productivity economy jobs. I believe that there are numerous dangers in time economy jobs because for many people doing these sorts of jobs the objective becomes to do as little as possible and still get paid. People in time economy jobs are at the greatest danger of being laid off because it generally and eventually becomes understood by higher ups that there are numerous people inside of the company that are simply not adding value.

If you are in a time economy job where this is the case, you should be doing something else. The key to succeeding in a time economy job is to play by the rules and be involved in something that is meaningful to you, and that you enjoy. If you are doing something you enjoy, your productivity tends to be higher. In contrast, in a productivity economy job you will be paid based on the amount of work that you do and, in most cases, for the results of that work.

In everyone’s career, they need to decide which sort of job they want to do. There are advantages to being in either a productivity economy or a time economy job. I have found that most people are suited to one or the other. You need to decide which one makes you most comfortable, and once you have decided on this, do this sort of work.

Bullies and Your Career

What You Will Learn There are two types of people in the world – bullies and not bullies. Bullies are people who will use any method at their disposal to exert control over you. You need to realize that when someone is trying to bully you, you can choose not to play their game. Your ability to succeed will in most cases relate to your ability to defend yourself against bullies.

One of the guards was always incredibly bored and was therefore always looking to get into long conversations. My job kept me pretty busy, but one day I decided to sit down and start chatting with him. I was glad I did because it turned out to be one of the most interesting conversations I had ever had.

The guard told me he had spent the last 10 years of his career sitting in police cars outside the homes of a few kids in the neighborhood where I grew up. These homes were within a few streets of my house. The retired officer told me that he and various policemen had been doing 24-hour surveillance of a few of these homes for “at least a decade, just watching who came and went”.

“A couple of your neighbors were among the most powerful crime bosses in the country,” he told me. “They were being watched all the time.”

The neighborhood in which I grew up consisted of quiet urban streets. Since the courthouse I was working in was around 100 miles from there, it was a real coincidence to find myself talking to someone who had spent 10 years sitting in a police car right down the street from my house. I certainly never saw these police cars or the policeman doing stakeouts down the street when I was growing up, and I never heard anything about it from anyone.

The people that the guard mentioned, with whom I had gone to school, all had Italian last names, and their parents had been rumored to be in the mafia. When I asked the retired policeman what the parents did to warrant such massive police attention, he said something I will never forget:

“Lots of stuff. But like most people who succeed over a long period of time, they were experts in bullying and intimidating people, and getting them to do what they wanted them to do. They are just grown up bullies who are really mean-spirited.”

This former policeman essentially saw the world in terms of bullies and the bullied. In fact, everything about the way the guy saw the world was in terms of people intimidating others, and people being intimidated by others. He was very short, and in listening to him speak I started to feel that he himself had had probably been bullied when he was younger, perhaps because of his stature.

The guard’s statement really stuck with me because at the time I was working in a courthouse, seeing all sorts of conflicts every day. I was seeing cases of companies being sued and suing people. I was seeing all sorts of cases of bank robberies and other crimes. However, when I looked at most of the cases I was dealing with, I realized that most of the conflict always had a bully on one side of the conflict. In fact, when it comes right down to it, most conflicts involve bullies in some way.

Over the next several months I started looking at every case I worked on in a different light.

• I saw a case of a man who found a bum on the street and talked him into robbing a bank for him by intimidating him.
• I saw a case of a woman hurt in a giant convenience chain, in which the chain was “lawyering up” and intimidating her by dragging up her past, threatening her with malicious prosecution and questioning her motives.
• I saw a case of a company copying a very small competitor’s product and then making it incredibly difficult for the small company to sue, by making the legal process extraordinarily cumbersome and expensive for them.
• I saw a case of the government bullying someone that it did not like by taking away their property and making things difficult for them.
• I saw the case of a large company taking away the business of a small company by unethical means, and then making it incredibly difficult for the smaller company to fight back.

The judge I worked for did an excellent job of mediating all of these disputes; however, what I realized when I saw all of this was that there is a lot of truth to the notion that the world consists of bullies and the bullied.

The more I thought about the kids that I had grown up with whose parents had been in the mafia, the more I realized that these kids had almost mastered the art of being bullies. These kids were absolutely, hands down, the most popular kids in the school where I had attended seventh grade. The more I thought about this, the more I began to believe that a lot of their power came from their ability to bully the other kids around them. They were bullies in some very subtle–and also some other not-so-subtle ways.

Here are some of the tactics I saw them use, which most bullies commonly use:

The bullies would make certain people they may have been competitive with, or simply did not like, uncomfortable or awkward. These bullies always would walk up to other guys with whom they may have been competitive, and they would point out some imperfection. For example, they might approach a big kid who thought he was cool and criticize his backpack, his shoes, or one of his mannerisms. I saw the bullies do this many times, and this is something that can really throw people off balance.

It was as if these kids were always on the offensive. If you were standing around with them and a group of other kids, one of the bullies might tease another kid, whom he did not like, about his hair or some inconsequential sort of thing.

The effect of making people feel uncomfortable over time is a strategy that bullies often use to throw others out of balance. It establishes a power dynamic between two parties, wherein one party is the criticizer, and the other person takes all the criticism. This is a way that a bully might try to establish dominance and superiority over another person.

People are bullied in business all of the time. You are bullied by stores and you are certainly bullied by employers.

A few days ago I was on the Costco website and, to my astonishment, I noticed that they were selling funeral caskets with next-day air delivery service. The sale of caskets is a great business for the funeral homes. When people come to a funeral home to purchase a casket for someone they love, they typically feel far too upset and nervous to negotiate the sale price of a casket. They are told what the price is, and they are expected to accept the price and leave it at that. Most people would be far too uncomfortable to negotiate the price of a casket, and people rarely do this. Most people would also be uncomfortable ordering a casket via next day air from Costco and, instead, they are intimidated into paying much more than they need to, at the average funeral home.

In the Jeff Bridges movie The Big Lebowski, there is a scene in which Bridges (whose character is called “The Dude”) and another character get into an argument in a funeral home about being forced to spend $299 on a “vessel” in which to carry their friend’s ashes from the funeral home. The vase is the lowest costing option available. The funeral director is extremely serious, well dressed and surrounded by marble and wood, in a very intimidating sort of environment. The scene works, and it is so interesting because the viewer realizes that nobody would probably do something like this in a funeral home.

There are all sorts of power dynamics at play in most companies. For example, many people feel extremely uncomfortable asking for raises, and are made to feel this way by their employers. Their boss may be in a separate office. Their boss may make them extremely uncomfortable if and when they bring up the idea of a raise. The ability to make you uncomfortable to ask for this or that is a perfect example of how bullying can be used in a subtle way.

The bullies would threaten certain people in order to intimidate them. Threats are probably among the most common techniques used by bullies. People can simply be threatened with physical harm, social ostracism, or something along those lines.

In my school I never saw the kids whose parents were being watched ever beat anyone up. However, on at least a few occasions I witnessed them threatening to do so. The threat of violence is something that scares a lot of people. Usually, when people are threatened with violence, they immediately back down–and the bully gets his or her way. The threat of violence simply repels people; it frightens and makes people run away.

One of the most common scenes from movies is a man kissing or having an affair with another man’s girlfriend, after which the boyfriend finds out and chases him around, threatening to beat him up. In this case, a threat of violence is used to frighten away other potential suitors. I just saw this on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. If you spend a day watching television you will generally see this scenario occur at least once.

Threats are not always about violence. At work, for example, the ultimate threat is the threat of firing someone. If someone feels threatened with being fired, he is more likely to comply. If someone is threatened with not getting a raise, he is more likely to comply. Many employers use all sorts of spoken and unspoken threats in order to get various people to do whatever the employer wants them to do. In fact, if you look at any job you will generally see that some sort of bullying and use of threats (spoken or unspoken) is occurring.

The bullies would say or write nasty things about people in order to put them down–and keep them down. There are many circumstances in which it is simply not prudent to intimidate people with physical violence, to damage their property, or to intentionally make them feel uncomfortable or awkward. In these sorts of situations, one of the greatest tools that bullies have at their disposal is saying or writing nasty things about people.

Bullies can start rumors about people by saying negative things about them to others–whether or not the statements are true. These rumors can keep the subject of the rumors on edge, making him or her feel like an outcast, and more. People can be attacked verbally through rumors, innuendo, and by other means.

When I was growing up, I remember hearing numerous negative rumors floating around. These rumors included statements about kids’ mothers (one of whom was rumored to be a porn star) and more. These kinds of rumors can obviously do a lot of damage to one’s mental state, as well as to one’s social standing.

Newspapers and the media can also be bullies. Many media, for example, are very left wing or right wing. Media that have one political leaning or another are typically quite brutal, attacking their opponents in one way or another. It is not necessarily what the offending party says; it is often how they say it, and what they imply. In addition, people can simply be victims of others’ writings or broadcasts that are meant to attack, humiliate, or oppress.

The bullies would leave people out of activities. Bullies can very effectively taunt and badger certain people by intentionally leaving them out of activities. Leaving people out of activities signals to them that you do not value them or their participation. People who are left out may feel insecure, and as if they have no value. To a bully, leaving people out of activities is a way to make them feel bad about themselves, which gives the bully a sense of power over them.

When I was growing up, bullies would often be in charge of picking their teammates for various sports and games, on the playground. If the bully did not pick someone, that person would feel bad about himself or herself. Not inviting someone to join a group of people for an activity, not allowing someone to participate in a group, and so forth–are all tactics that serve to isolate people and make them feel insecure and alone.

This happens in the business world as well. There are events that take place in a company, to which certain people might be invited–and to which other people are not invited. There are meetings to which only certain people are invited–and others are left out. Some clubs will accept certain people and not others. Bullies can use these social structures to their advantage, in order to make a targeted person or group feel bad about themselves.

The bullies would often damage other peoples’ things. Another very common tactic used to intimidate people and get them to conform and/or push them down, is to damage their property. When you deface, or hurt someone’s things, this can do a lot to intimidate them.

One day I was walking down the hall in my middle school on a late afternoon, after school had ended and the hallways had been deserted. I noticed a couple of kids in front of a locker that was not theirs, with the locker open. They were ripping up the pages of the books, and defacing someone’s personal belongings that were inside the locker. I did not know whose locker it was, but I am sure that the victim of this behavior must have been left feeling quite intimidated and upset.

Damaging other people’s things intentionally is something that is meant to, and often does, intimidate other people. In Detroit, for example, during the time when neighborhoods first started to become socially integrated, one of the tactics that bullies used was to spray paint, trash, or vandalize the homes of African Americans. This kind of behavior is extremely common, and it is a method of intimidation that bullies (in this case racists) use to hurt people and scare them away.

If you park a really nice car in a really bad neighborhood, the odds are pretty good that the car will eventually be vandalized. This is just how it goes. Things that stick out and that are better than their surroundings are typically damaged and attacked. This is a lesson that you should understand in the workplace and in your life as well.

In order to stifle action, and to frighten and intimidate, bullies may damage the property of others. At work it could be someone going in and messing up your papers, doing something to your computer, or otherwise. This kind of behavior can serve to keep you down and on-edge, and it also puts the bully in control.

The bullies would intimidate others by calling them names. One of the greatest techniques bullies use is name- calling. Calling names can put people off guard, and it is a tactic bullies employ to get compliance from others. The use of name-calling is so effective, in fact, that sayings such as, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” were probably developed in order to help people who were bullied by others cope with the bullying.

Name-calling is an excellent weapon that can hurt and intimidate others very effectively. Name-calling puts the receiving party constantly on the defensive, and often forces them to prove to others that they are not this, or not that.

When I was in seventh grade, a kid I knew was running for student counsel. He was one of the smarter kids in the class, but he was not popular, and was somewhat socially awkward. He put up a bunch of posters around the school with his name on them, in order to get people to vote for him. Within a few days, someone had written all sorts of funny characterizations of the kid on the posters, and all sorts of statements that mocked him.

I remember walking by these posters and finding them very humorous, even laughing at them. I realized that it would be very difficult for anyone to take the guy seriously after seeing these revamped posters, and sure enough, he lost the little student counsel election.

Names like “lazy”, “stupid”, “underachiever” and so forth are all statements that can do a lot of damage to people in the workplace, because they characterize people in a negative light. Bullies are experts in name-calling, and will throw bad names and other negative statements around with a lot of abandon. This can really harm people and, ultimately, help bullies achieve their objectives.

The bullies would often intimidate others by simply not talking to them. One of the most effective tools of bullies is simply ignoring certain people. Sometimes the bully will ignore people and other times they will not. Or, they will ignore them all the time. This is something that gives the bully power and control over people who typically expect to be acknowledged and spoken to in a normal manner.

When I was younger I saw bullies constantly ignore some people, just blowing them off completely, as if they did not exist. In the business world, ignoring people is something that can be extremely effective in allowing certain people to gain control over others. Ignoring some people and not others can send a signal of inferiority to certain people and serve to intimidate them.

***

When you meet and spend time with the people who are the greatest successes at anything, whether they are attorneys, business people, or otherwise, they have almost always mastered the art of either (1) bullying others or (2) not allowing themselves to be bullied. Your ability to succeed in the world will be directly proportional to your ability to do one of these things well enough.

My personal belief is that you can never succeed over the long run by being a bully, because you will upset so many people along the way that eventually enough sentiment will build that society, or others, will want to knock you down at all costs. Therefore, the best option is to avoid bullies and learn how to be successful without being a bully.

If you get good enough at anything, you will very quickly encounter many people who will try and knock you off your horse. There are numerous reasons for this, and it is not important what these reasons are. What is important, though, is to realize that all the career advice in the world will never do you any good if you do not know how to stand up for yourself and defend yourself against bullies.

Essentially, you can divide the world into those people who are bullies of some sort, and those who are not bullies. Despite the fact that when we typically think of bullies, we think of children who harass other kids on the school playground, in reality the bully is much more serious and pervasive than this. The bullies are people who, for whatever reason, are around you, trying through whatever means to intimidate you and keep you from doing the things you enjoy, and living the life you dream. They are people who will use pretty much any method at their disposal to exert control over you. What is important with bullies is to realize when someone is trying to bully you; then you can simply choose not to play their game. Your ability to succeed over time in any job and in whatever career you choose will in almost all cases relate to your ability to defend yourself against bullies.

Your Invisible Power

Your Invisible Power was the first book and by far the most powerful and popular works of Genevieve Behrend. Here, she presents, perpetuates, and shares the knowledge of the Troward philosophy at its best, teaching us how to use the power of visualization and other processes to transform your life. The concepts of Mental Science are written with the purpose that their suggestions may furnish you a key to open up the way to the attainment of your desires.

Your Invisible Power provided me with deep insight into numerous life changing theories regarding how to attract to yourself the things you desire, the reward of increased faith, how to make nature respond to you, and many more. I am sure these ideas can positively influence your life and your career.

–Harrison

YOUR INVISIBLE POWER

By Genevieve Behrend

FOREWORD

These pages have been written with purpose and hope that their suggestions may furnish you a key to open up the way to the attainment of your desires, and to explain that Fear should be entirely banished from your effort to obtain possession of the things you desire. This presupposes, of course, that your desire for possession is based upon your aspiration for greater liberty. For example, you feel that the possession of more money, lands or friends will make you happier, and your desire for possession of these things arises from a conviction that their possession will bring you liberty and happiness.

In your effort to possess you will discover that the thing you most and ultimately need is to “Be,” always (not spasmodically) your best self -that self which understands that the mistakes of those you love are simply misunderstandings. Your feeling that greater possessions, no matter of what kind they may be, will, of themselves bring you contentment or happiness, is a misunderstanding. No person, place or thing can give you happiness. They may give you cause for happiness and a feeling of contentment, but the joy of Living comes from within. Therefore, it is here recommended, rather than otherwise, that you should make the effort to obtain the things which you feel will bring you joy, provided, as previously stated, that your desires are in accord with the joy of Living.

It is also desired, in this volume, to suggest the possibilities in store for all who make persistent effort to understand the Law of Visualization and make practical application of this knowledge on whatever plane he or she may be. The word “effort,” as here employed, is not intended to convey the idea of strain. All study and meditation should be without strain or tension.

It has been my endeavor to show that by starting at the beginning of the creative action or the mental picture, certain corresponding results are sure to follow. “While the laws of the Universe cannot be altered, they can be made to work under specific conditions, thereby producing results for individual advancement which cannot be obtained under the spontaneous working of the law provided by Nature.”

However far the suggestions I have given you of the possibilities in store for you through visualizing may carry you beyond your past experience, they nowhere break the continuity of the law of cause and effect.

If through the suggestions here given anyone is brought to realize that their mind is a center through and in which “all power there is” is in operation, simply waiting to be given direction in the one and only way through which it can take specific action (and this means reaction in concrete or physical form), then the mission to which this book is dedicated has been fulfilled.

Try to remember that the picture you think, feel and see is reflected into the Universal Mind, and by the natural law of reciprocal action must return to you in either spiritual or physical form. Knowledge of this law of reciprocal action between the individual and the Universal Mind opens to you free access to all you may wish to possess or to be.

It must be steadfastly borne in mind that all this can only be true for the individual who recognizes that they derive their power to make an abiding mental picture from the All-Originating Universal Spirit of Life (God), and can be used constructively only so long as it is employed and retained in harmony with the Nature of the Spirit which originated it. To insure this there must be no inversion of the thought of the individual regarding their relationship to this Universal Originating Spirit which is that of a son or daughter, through which the parent mind acts and reacts.

Thus conditioned, whatever you think and feel yourself to be; the Creative Spirit of Life is bound to faithfully reproduce in a corresponding reaction. This is the great reason for picturing yourself and your affairs as you wish them to be as existing facts (though invisible to the physical eye), and live in your picture. An honest endeavor to do this, always recognizing that your own mind is a projection of the Originating Spirit, will prove to you that the best there is, is yours in all your ways.

Genevieve Behrend, September 1921

ORDER OF VISUALIZATION

Chapter 1

The exercise of the visualizing faculty keeps your mind in order, and attracts to you the things you need to make life more enjoyable in an orderly way. If you train yourself in practice of deliberately picturing your desire and carefully examining it, you will soon find your thought and desires come and proceed in more orderly procession than ever before. Having reached a state of ordered mentality you are no longer in a constant state of mental hurry. Hurry is Fear and consequently destructive.

In other words, when your understanding grasps the power to visualize your heart’s desire and hold it with your will, it attracts to you all things requisite to the fulfillment of that picture by the harmonious vibrations of the law of attraction. You realize that since Order is Heaven’s first law, and visualization places things in their natural element, then it must be a heavenly thing to visualize.

Everyone visualizes, whether they know it or not. Visualizing is the great secret of Success. The conscious use of this great power attracts to you greatly multiplied resources, intensifies your wisdom, and enables you to make use of advantages which you formerly failed to recognize.

We now fly through the air, not because anyone has been able to change the laws of Nature, but because the inventor of the flying machine learned how to apply Nature’s laws and, by making orderly use of them, produced the desired result. So far as natural forces are concerned, nothing has changed since the beginning. There were no airplanes in “the Year One,” because those of that generation could not conceive the idea as a practical working possibility. “It has not yet been done” was the argument, “and it cannot be done.” Yet the laws and materials for practical flying machines existed then as now.

Troward tells us that the great lesson he learned from the airplane and wireless telegraphy is the triumph of principle over precedent, and the working of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of accumulated testimony of all past experience.

With such an example before you, can you not realize that still greater secrets may be disclosed? Also “That you hold the key within yourself, with which to unlock the secret chamber that contains your heart’s desire? All that is necessary in order that you may use this key and make your life exactly what you wish it to be, is a careful inquiry into the unseen causes which stand back of every external and visible condition. Then bring these unseen causes into harmony with your conception, and you will find that you can make practical working realities of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams.”

We all know that the balloon was the forefather of the airplane. In 1766 Henry Cavendish, an English nobleman, proved that hydrogen gas was seven times lighter than atmospheric air. From that discovery the balloon came into existence, and from the ordinary balloon the dirigible, a cigar-shaped airship, was evolved. Study of aeronautics and the laws of aerial locomotion of birds and projectiles led to the belief that mechanism could be evolved by which heavier-than-air machines could be made to travel from place to place and remain in the air by the maintenance of great speed which would overcome by propulsive force the ordinary law of gravitation.

Professor Langley of Washington who developed much of the theory which others afterward improved was subjected to much derision when he sent a model airplane up only to have it bury its nose in the muddy water of the Potomac. But the Wright Brothers, who experimented in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, realized the possibility of traveling through the air in a machine that had no gas bag. They saw themselves enjoying this mode of transportation with great facility. It is said that one of the brothers would tell the other (when their varied experiments did not turn out as they expected): “It’s all right, brother, I can see myself riding in that machine, and it travels easily and steadily.” Those Wright Brothers knew what they wanted, and kept their pictures constantly before them.

In visualizing, or making a mental picture, you are not endeavoring to change the laws of Nature. You are fulfilling them. Your object in visualizing is to bring things into regular order both mentally and physically. When you realize that this method of employing the creative power brings your desires, one after another, into practical material accomplishment, your confidence in the mysterious but unfailing law of attraction, which has its central power station in the very heart of your word/picture, becomes supreme. Nothing can shake it. You never feel that it is necessary to take anything from anybody else. You have learned that asking and seeking have receiving and finding as their correlatives. You know that all you have to do is to start the plastic substance of the Universe flowing into the thought-molds your picture-desire provides.

HOW TO ATTRACT TO YOURSELF THE THINGS YOU DESIRE

Chapter 2

The power within you which enables you to form a thought picture is the starting point of all there is. In its original state it is the undifferentiated formless substance of life. Your thought picture forms the mould (so to speak) into which this formless substance takes shape. Visualizing, or mentally seeing things and conditions as you wish them to be, is the condensing, the specializing power in you that might be illustrated by the lens of a magic lantern. The magic lantern is one of the best symbols of this imaging faculty. It illustrates the working of the Creative Spirit on the plane of the initiative and selection (or in its concentrated specializing form) in a remarkably clear manner.

This picture slide illustrates your own mental picture -invisible in the lantern of your mind until you turn on the light of your will. That is to say, you light up your desire with absolute faith that the Creative Spirit of Life, in you, is doing the work. By the steady flow of light of the will on the Spirit, your desired picture is projected upon the screen of the physical world, an exact reproduction of the pictured slide in your mind.

Visualizing without a will sufficiently steady to inhibit every thought and feeling contrary to your picture would be as useless as a magic lantern without the light. On the other hand, if your will is sufficiently developed to hold your picture in thought and feeling, without any “ifs,” simply realizing that your thought is the great attracting power, then your mental picture is as certain to be projected upon the screen of your physical world as any pictured slide put into the best magic lantern ever made.

Try projecting the picture in a magic lantern with a light that is constantly shifting from one side to the other, and you will have the effect of an uncertain will. It is as necessary that you should always stand back of your picture with a strong, steady will, as it is to have a strong steady light back of a picture slide.

The joyous assurance with which you make your picture is the very powerful magnet of Faith, and nothing can obliterate it. You are happier than you ever were, because you have learned to know where your source of supply is, and you rely upon its never-failing response to your given direction.

When all said and done, happiness is the one thing which every human being wants, and the study of visualization enables you to get more out of life than you ever enjoyed before. Increasing possibilities keep opening out, more and more, before you.

A business man once told me that since practicing visualization and forming the habit of devoting a few minutes each day to thinking about his work as he desired it to be in a large, broad way, his business had more than doubled in six months. His method was to go into a room every morning before breakfast and take a mental inventory of his business as he had left it the evening before, and then enlarge upon it. He said he expanded and expanded in this way until his affairs were in remarkably successful condition. He would see himself in his office doing everything that he wanted done. His occupation required him to meet many strangers every day. In his mental picture he saw himself meeting these people, understanding their needs and supplying them in just the way they wished. This habit, he said, had strengthened and steadied his will in an almost inconceivable manner. Furthermore, by thus mentally seeing things as he wished them to be, he had acquired the confident feeling that a certain creative power was exercising itself, for him and through him, for the purpose of improving his little world.

When you first begin to visualize seriously, you may feel, as many others do, that someone else may be forming the same picture you are, and that naturally would not suit your purpose. Do not give yourself any unnecessary concern about this. Simply try to realize that your picture is an orderly exercise of the Universal Creative Power specifically applied. Then you may be sure that no one can work in opposition to you. The universal law of harmony prevents this. Endeavor to bear in mind that your mental picture is Universal Mind exercising its inherent powers of initiative and selection specifically.

God, or Universal Mind, made man for the special purpose of differentiating Himself through him. Everything that is, came into existence in this same way, by this self-same law of self-differentiation, and for the same purpose. First the idea, the mental picture or the prototype of the thing, which is the thing itself in its incipiency or plastic form.

The Great Architect of the Universe contemplated Himself as manifesting through His polar opposite, matter, and the idea expanded and projected itself until we have a world -many worlds.

Many people ask, “But why should we have a physical world at all?” The answer is: Because it is the nature of originating substance to solidify, under directivity rather than activity, just as it is the nature of wax to harden when it becomes cold, or plaster of paris to become firm and solid when exposed to the air. Your picture in this same Divine substance in its fluent state taking shape through the individualized center of Divine operation, your mind; and there is no power to prevent this combination of spiritual substance from becoming physical form. It is the nature of Spirit to complete its work and an idea is not complete until it has made for itself a vehicle.

Nothing can prevent your picture from coming into concrete form except the same power that gave it birth yourself. Suppose you wish to have a more orderly room. You look about your room and the idea of order suggests boxes, closets, shelves, hooks and so forth. The box, the closet, the hooks, all are concrete ideas of order. Vehicles through which order and harmony suggest themselves.

RELATION BETWEEN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL FORM

Chapter 3

Some persons feel that it is not quite proper to visualize for things. “It’s too material” they say. But material form is necessary for the self-recognition of spirit from the individual standpoint. And this is the means through which the creative process is carried forward. Therefore, far from matter being an illusion and something that ought not to be (as some metaphysical teachers have taught), matter is the necessary channel for the self-differentiation of spirit. However, it is not my desire to lead you into lengthy and tiresome scientific reasoning in order to remove the mystery of visualization and to put it upon a logical foundation. Naturally, each individual will do this in his own way. My only wish is to point out to you the smoothest way I know, which is the road on which Troward guides me. I feel sure you will conclude as I have, that the only mystery in connection with visualizing is the mystery of life taking form, governed by unchangeable and easily understood laws.

We all possess more power and greater possibilities than we realize, and visualizing is one of the greatest of these powers. It brings other possibilities to our observation. When we pause to think for a moment, we realize that for a cosmos to exist at all, it must be the outcome of a cosmic mind, which binds “all individual minds to a certain generic unities of action, thereby producing all things as realities and nothing as illusions.” If you will take this thought of Troward’s and meditate upon it without prejudice, you will surely realize that concrete material form is an absolute necessity of the creative process, also “that matter is not an illusion but a necessary channel through which life differentiates itself.”

If you consider matter in its right order as the polar opposite to Spirit, you will not find any antagonism between them. On the contrary, together they constitute one harmonious whole. And when you realize this you feel, in your practice of visualizing, that you are working from cause to effect, from beginning to finish. In reality your mental picture is the specialized working of the originating spirit.

One could talk for hours on purely scientific lines, showing, as Troward says, “that raw material for the formation of the solar systems is universally distributed throughout all space. Yet investigation shows that while the Heavens are studded with millions of suns, there are spaces that show no signs of cosmic activity. This being true, there must be something which started cosmic activity in certain places, while passing over others in which the raw material was equally available. At first thought one might attribute the development of cosmic energy to the etheric particles themselves. Upon investigation, however, we find this to be mathematically impossible in a medium which is equally distributed throughout space, for all its particles are in equilibrium, therefore no one particle possesses in itself a greater power of originating motion than the other.

Thus we find that the initial movement, though working in and through the particles of primary substance, is not the particles themselves. It is this something we mean when we speak of Spirit. The same power that brought universal substance into existence will bring your individual thought or mental picture into physical form. There is no difference of kind in the power. The only difference is a difference of scale. The power and the substance themselves are the same. Only in working out your mental picture it has transferred its creative energy from the universal to the scale of the particular, and is working in the same unfailing manner from its specific center, your mind.

OPERATION OF YOUR MENTAL PICTURE

Chapter 4

THE operation of a large telephone system may be used as a simile. The main or head central subdivides itself into many branch centrals, every branch being in direct connection with its source and each individual branch recognizing the source of its existence, reports all things to its central head. Therefore, when assistance of any nature is required, new supplies, difficult repairs to be done or what not, the branch in need goes at once to its central head. It would not think of referring its difficulties (or its successes) to the main central of a telegraph system (though they belong to the same organization). These different branch centrals know that the only remedy for any difficulty must come from the central out of which they were projected.

If we, as individual branches of the Universal Mind, would refer our difficulties in the same confident manner to the source from which we were projected, and use the remedies that it has provided, we would realize what Jesus meant when he said, “Ask and ye shall receive.” Our every equipment would be met. Surely the Father must supply the child. The trunk of the tree cannot fail to provide for its branches.

Everything animate or inanimate is called into existence or outstandingness by a power which itself does not stand out. The power that creates the mental picture, the originating spirit substance of your pictured desire does not stand out. It projects the substance of itself that is a solidified counterpart of itself, while it remains invisible to the physical eye. Only those will ever appreciate the value of visualizing who are able to realize Paul’s meaning when he said “The worlds were formed by the word of God. Things which are seen are not made of things which do appear.”

There is nothing unusual or mysterious in the idea of your pictured desire coming into material evidence. It is the working of a universal natural Law. The world was projected by the self-contemplation of the Universal Mind, and this same action is taking place in its individualized branch which is the Mind of Man. Everything in the whole world has its beginning in mind and comes into existence in exactly the same manner from the hat on your head to the boots on your feet. All are projected thoughts, solidified.

Your personal advance in evolution depends upon your right use of the power of visualizing, and your use of it depends on whether you recognize that you, yourself, are a particular center through and in which the originating spirit is finding ever new expression for potentialities already existing within itself. This is evolution; this continual unfolding of existing though outwardly invisible things.

Your mental picture is the force of attraction that evolves and combines the originating substance into specific shape. Your picture is the combining and evolving powerhouse, so to speak, through which the originating Creative Spirit expressed itself. Its creative action is limitless, without beginning and without end, and always progressive and orderly. “It proceeds stage by stage, each stage being a necessary preparation for the one to follow.”

Now let us see if we can get an idea of the different stages by which the things in the world have come to be. Troward says, “If we can get at the working principle which is producing these results, we can very quickly and easily give it personal application. First, we find that the thought of originating life or Spirit about itself is its simple awareness of its own being and this produced a primary ether, a universal substance out of which everything in the world must grow.

Troward also tells us that “though this awareness of being is a necessary foundation for any further possibilities, it is not much to talk about.” It is the same with individualized spirit, which is yourself. Before you would entertain the idea of making a mental picture of your desire as being at all practical, you must have some idea of your being, of your “I am,” and just as soon as you are conscious of your “I-am-ness” you begin to wish to enjoy the freedom which this consciousness suggests. You want to do more and be more, and as you fulfill this desire within yourself, localized spirit begins conscious activities in you.

The thing you are most concerned with is the specific action of the creative spirit of life, universal mind specialized. The localized God-germ in you is your personality, your individuality, and since the joy of absolute freedom is the inherent nature of this God-germ, it is natural that it should endeavor to enjoy itself through its specific center. And as you grow in the comprehension that your being, your individuality, is God particularizing Himself, you naturally develop Divine tendencies.

You want to enjoy life and liberty. You want freedom in your affairs as well as in your consciousness, and it is natural that you should. Always with this progressive wish there is a faint thought-picture. As your wish and your recognition grow into an intense desire, this desire becomes a clear mental picture. For example, a young lady studying music wishes she had a piano in order to practice at home. She wants the piano so much that she can mentally see it in one of the rooms. She holds the picture of the piano and indulges in the mental reflection of the pleasure and advantage it will be to have the piano in the corner of the living room. One day she finds it there just as she had pictured it.

As you grow in understanding as to who you are, where you came from, and what the purpose of your being is, how you are to fulfill the purpose for which you are intended, you will more and more afford a center through which the creative spirit of life can enjoy itself. And you will realize that there can be but one creative process filling all space, which is the same in its potentiality whether universal or individual. Furthermore, all that there is, whether on the plane of the visible or invisible, had its origin in the localized action of thought or a mental picture, and this includes yourself, because you are universal spirit localized, and the same creative action is taking place through you.

Now you are no doubt asking yourself why there is so much sickness and misery in the world. If the same power and intelligence which brought the world into existence is in operation in the mind of man, why does it not manifest itself as strength, joy, health and plenty? If one can have one’s desires fulfilled by simply making a mental picture of that desire, holding on to it with the will, and doing without anxiety, on the outward plane, whatever seems necessary to bring the desire into fulfillment, then there seems no reason for the existence of sickness and poverty. Surely no one desires either.

The first reason is that few persons will take the trouble to inquire into the working principle of the laws of life. If they did they would soon convince themselves that there is no necessity for the sickness and poverty that we see about us. They would realize that visualizing is a principle and not a fallacy.

There are a few who have found it worthwhile to study this simple, though absolutely unfailing law that will deliver them from bondage. However, the race as a whole is not willing to give the time required for this study. It is either too simple, or too difficult. They may make a picture of their desire with some little understanding of visualizing for a day or two, but more frequently it is for an hour or so.

But if you will insist upon mentally seeing yourself surrounded by things and conditions as you wish them to be, you will understand that the creative energy sends its plastic substance in the direction indicated by the tendency of your thoughts. Herein lies the advantage of holding your thought in the form of a mental picture.

The more enthusiasm and faith you are able to put into your picture, the more quickly it will come into visible form, and your enthusiasm is increased by keeping your desire secret. The moment you speak it to any living soul, that moment your power is weakened. Your power, your magnet of attraction is not so strong, and consequently cannot reach so far. The more perfectly a secret between your mind and outer self is guarded, the more vitality you give your power of attraction. One tells one’s troubles to weaken them, to get them off one’s mind, and when a thought is given out, its power is dissipated. Talk it over with yourself, and even write it down and at once destroy the paper.

However, this does not mean that you should strenuously endeavor to compel the power to work out your picture on the special lines that you think it should. That method would soon exhaust you and hinder the fulfillment of your purpose. A wealthy relative need not necessarily die or someone lose a fortune on the street to materialize the $10,000 that you are mentally picturing.

One of the doormen in the building in which I live heard much of the mental picturing of desires from visitors passing out of my rooms. The average desire was for $500. He considered that five dollars was more in his line and began to visualize it, without the slightest idea of where or how he was to get it. My parrot flew out of the window, and I telephoned to the men in the courtyard to get it for me. One caught it and it bit him on the finger. The doorman, who had gloves on, and did not fear a similar hurt, took hold of it and brought it up to me. I gave him five one-dollar bills for the service. This sudden reward surprised him. He enthusiastically told me that he had been visualizing for just $5, merely from hearing that others visualized. He was delighted at the unexpected realization of his mental picture.

All you have to do is to make such a mental picture of your heart’s desire, hold it cheerfully in place with your will, always conscious that the same Infinite Power which brought the universe into existence brought you into form for the purpose of enjoying itself in and through you. And since it is all life, love, light, power, peace, beauty and joy, and is the only creative power there is, the form it takes in and through you depends upon the direction given it by your thought indicator. In you it is undifferentiated, waiting to take any direction given it as it passes through the instrument that it has made for the purpose of self-distribution.

It is this power which enables you to transfer your thoughts from one form to another. The power to change your mind is the individualized universal power taking the initiative, giving direction to the fluent substance contained in every thought. It is the simplest thing in the world to give this highly sensitive plastic substance any form you will through visualizing. Anyone can do it with a small expenditure of effort.

Once you really believe that your mind is a center through which the plastic substance of all there is in your world, takes involuntary form, the only reason why your picture does not always materialize is because you have introduced something antagonistic to the fundamental principle. Very often this destructive element is caused by the frequency with which you change your pictures. After many such changes you decide that your original desire is what you want after all. Upon this conclusion you begin to wonder why, “being your first picture,” it hasn’t materialized. The plastic substance with which you are mentally dealing is more sensitive than the most sensitive photographer’s film. If, in taking a picture, you suddenly remembered you had already taken a picture on that same plate, you would not expect a perfect result of either picture.

On the other hand, you may have taken two pictures on the same plate unconsciously. When the plate has been developed, and the picture comes into physical view, you do not condemn the principle of photography, nor are you puzzled to understand why your picture has turned out so unsatisfactorily. You do not feel that it is impossible for you to obtain a good, clear picture of the subject in question. You know that you can do so, by simply starting at the beginning, putting in a new plate, and determining to be more careful while taking your picture next time. These lines followed out, you are sure of a satisfactory result. If you will proceed in the same manner with your mental picture, doing your part in a correspondingly confident frame of mind, the result will be just as perfect.

The laws of visualizing are as infallible as the laws governing photography. In fact, photography is the outcome of visualizing. Again, your results in visualizing and your desires may be imperfect or delayed through the misuse of this power, owing to the thought that the fulfillment of your desire is contingent upon certain persons or conditions. The originating principle is not in any way dependent upon any person, place or thing. It has no past and knows no future.

The law is that the originating creative principle of life is “the universal here and everlasting now.” It creates its own vehicles through which to operate. Therefore, past experience has no bearing upon your present picture. So do not try to obtain your desire through a channel that may not be natural for it, even though it may seem reasonable to you. Your feeling should be that the thing, or the consciousness which you so much desire, is normal and natural, a part of yourself, a form for your evolution. If you can do this, there is no power to prevent your enjoying the fulfillment of the picture you have in hand, or any other.

EXPRESSIONS FROM BEGINNERS

Chapter 5

HUNDREDS of persons have realized that “visualizing is an Aladdin’s lamp to him with a mighty will.” General Foch says that his feelings were so outraged during the Franco Prussian war in 1870 that he visualized himself leading a French army against the Germans to victory. He said he made his picture, smoked his pipe and waited. This is one result of visualizing we are all familiar with.

A famous actress wrote a long article in one of the leading Sunday papers last winter, describing how she rid herself of excessive body fat and weight by seeing her figure constantly as she wished to be.

A very interesting letter came to me from a doctor’s wife while I was lecturing in New York. She began with the hope that I would never discontinue my lectures on visualization making humanity realize the wonderful fact that they possess the method of liberation within themselves. Relating her own experience, she said that she had been born on the East Side of New York in the poorest quarter. From earliest girlhood she had cherished a dream of marrying a physician some day. This dream gradually formed a stationary mental picture. The first position she obtained was in the capacity of a nursemaid in a physician’s family.

Leaving this place she entered the family of another doctor. The wife of her employer died, and in time the doctor married her, the result of her long-pictured yearning. After that both she and her husband conceived the idea of owning a fruit farm in the South. They formed a mental picture of the idea and put their faith in its eventual fulfillment. The letter she sent me came from their fruit farm in the South. It was while at the farm that the doctor’s wife wrote me. Her second mental picture had seen the light of materialization.

Many letters of a similar nature come to me every day. The following is a case that was printed in the New York Herald last May:

“Atlantic City, May 5. -She was an old woman, and when she was arraigned before Judge Clarence Goldenberg in the police court today she was so weak and tired she could hardly stand. The judge asked the court attendant what she was charged with. “Stealing a bottle of milk, Your Honor,” repeated the officer. “She took it from the doorstep of a downtown cottage before daybreak this morning.” “Why did you do that?” Judge Goldenberg asked her. “I was hungry,” the old woman said. “I didn’t have a cent in the world and no way to get anything to eat except to steal it. I didn’t think anybody would mind if I took a bottle of milk.” “What’s your name?” asked the judge. “Weinberg,” said the old woman, “Elizabeth Weinberg.” Judge Goldenberg asked her a few questions about herself. Then he said:

“Well, you’re not very wealthy now, but you’re no longer poor. I’ve been searching for you for months. I’ve got $500 belonging to you from the estate of a relative. I am the executor of the estate.”

Judge Goldenberg paid the woman’s fine out of his own pocket, and then escorted her into his office, where he turned her legacy over to her and sent a policeman out to find her a lodging place.

I learned later that this little woman had been desiring and mentally picturing $500, while all the time ignorant of how it could possibly come to her. But she kept her vision and strengthened it with her faith.

In a recent issue of Good Housekeeping there was an article by Addington Bruce entitled “Stiffening Your Mental Backbone.” It is very instructive, and would benefit anyone to read it. He says, in part: “Form the habit of devoting a few moments every day to thinking about your work in a large, broad imaginative way, as a vital necessity to yourself and a useful service to society.”

Huntington, the great railway magnate, before he started building his road from coast to coast, said that he took hundreds of trips all along the line before there was a rail laid. It is said that he would sit for hours with a map of the United States before him and mentally travel from coast to coast just as we do now over his fulfilled mental picture. It would be possible to call your attention to hundreds of similar cases.

The best method of picturing to yourself that which you may desire is both simple and enjoyable, if you once understand the principle back of it well enough to believe it. First and above everything else, be sure of what it is you really want. Then specialize your desire along these lines.

SUGGESTIONS FOR MAKING YOUR MENTAL PICTURE

Chapter 6

Perhaps you want to feel that you’ve lived to some purpose. You want to be content and happy, and you feel that with good health and with successful business you could enjoy this state of mind. After you have decided once and for all that this is what you want, you proceed to picture yourself healthy, and your business just as great a success as you can naturally conceive it growing into.

The best time for making your definite picture is just before breakfast and before retiring at night. As it is necessary to give yourself plenty of time, it may be necessary to rise earlier than is your usual habit. Go into a room where you will not be disturbed, meditate for a few moments upon the practical working of the law of visualizing, and ask yourself, “How did the things about me first come into existence? How may I find it helpful to get more quickly in touch with the invisible supply?”

Someone felt that comfort would be better expressed and experienced by sitting on a chair than on the floor. The very beginning of the meditation, the chair, was the desire to be at ease. With this came the picture of some sort of a chair. The same principle applies to the hat and the clothes that you wear. Go carefully into this thought of the principle back of the thing. Establish it as a personal experience; make it a fact to your consciousness.

If you are thorough in this, you will find yourself in the deep consciousness beneath the surface of your own thought-power. Then open a window, take about ten deep breaths, and during the time draw a large imaginary circle of light around you. As you inhale (keeping yourself in the center of this circle of light) see great rays of light coming from the circle and entering your body at all points, centralizing itself at your solar plexus.

Hold the breath a few moments at this central light of your body (the solar plexus) then slowly exhale. As you do this mentally, see imaginary rays, or sprays, of light going up through the body and down and out through the feet. Mentally spray your entire body with this imaginary light. When you have finished the breathing exercise, sit in a comfortable upright chair and mentally know there is but one life, one substance, and this life substance of the universe is finding pleasure in self-recognition in you. Repeat some affirmation of this kind, until you feel the truth and reality of the words that you are affirming. Then begin your picture.

Whether your desire is for a state of consciousness or a possession, large or small, begin at the beginning. If you want a house, begin by seeing yourself in the kind of house you desire. Go all through it, taking careful note of the rooms, where the windows are situated, and such other details as help you to feel the reality of your concept.

You might change some of the furniture and look into some of the mirrors just to see how healthy, wealthy and happy you look. Go over your picture again and again until you feel the reality of it, then write it all down just as you have seen it, with the feeling that, “The best there is, is mine. There is no limit to me, because my mind is a center of divine operation” and your picture is as certain to come true, in your physical world, as the sun is to shine.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Chapter 7

In Using Your Thought Power for the Production of New Conditions,

1. Be sure to know what conditions you wish to produce. Then weigh carefully to what further results the accomplishment of your desire will lead. 2. By letting your thought dwell upon a mental picture, you are concentrating the creative spirit to this center, where all its forces are equally balanced. 3. Visualizing brings your objective mind into a state of equilibrium which enables you to consciously direct the flow of spirit to a definitely recognized purpose and to carefully guide your thought from including a flow in the opposite direction. 4. You must always bear in mind that you are dealing with a wonderful potential energy -which is not yet differentiated into any particular mould, and that by the action of your mind you can differentiate it into any specific mould that you will. Your picture assists you to keep your mind fixed on the fact that the inflow of this creative energy is taking place. Also by your mental picture you are determining the direction you wish the sensitive creative power to take, and by doing this the externalization of your picture is a certainty. 5. Remember when you are visualizing properly that there is no strenuous effort on your thoughts to hold your thought-forms in place. Strenuous effort defeats your purpose, and suggests the consciousness of an adverse force to be fought against, and this creates conditions adverse to your picture. 6. By holding your picture in a cheerful frame of mind, you shut out all thoughts that would disperse the spiritual nucleus of your picture. Because the law is creative in its action, your pictured desire is certain of accomplishment. 7. The seventh and great thing to remember in visualizing is that you are making a mental picture for the purpose of determining the quality you are giving to the previously undifferentiated substance and energy rather than to arrange the specific circumstances for its manifestation. That is the work of creative power itself. It will build its own forms of expression quite naturally, if you will allow it, and save you a great deal of needless anxiety. What you really want is expansion in a certain direction, whether of health, wealth, or what not, and so long as you get it (as you surely will, if you confidently hold to your picture) what does it matter whether it reaches you by some channel which you thought you could count upon, or through some other of whose existence you had no idea. You are concentrating energy of a particular kind for a particular purpose. Bear this in mind and let specific details take care of themselves, and never mention your intention to anyone. Remember always, that Nature from her clearly visible surface to her most arcane depths is one vast storehouse of light and good entirely devoted to your individual use. Your conscious Oneness with the great Whole is the secret of success and when once you have fathomed this you can enjoy your possession of the whole or a part of it at will, because by your recognition you have made it, and can increasingly make it yours.

Never forget that every physical thing, whether for you or against you, was a sustained thought before it was a thing.

Thought as thought is neither good nor bad, it is creative action and always takes physical form.

Therefore, the thoughts you dwell upon become the things you possess or do not possess.

WHY I TOOK UP THE STUDY OF MENTAL SCIENCE

Chapter 8

I have frequently been questioned about my reasons for taking up the study of Mental Science, and as to the results of my search, not only in knowledge of principles, but also in the application of that knowledge to the development of my own life and experience.

Such inquiries are justifiable, because one who essays the role of a messenger and teacher of psychological truths can only be effective and convincing as he or she has tested them in the laboratory of mental experience. This is particularly true in my case, as the only personal pupil of Thomas Troward, the greatest Master of Mental Science of the present day, whose teaching is based upon the relation borne by the Individual Mind toward the Universal Creative Mind which is the Giver of Life, and the manner in which that relation may be invoked to secure expansion and fuller expression in the individual life.

The initial impulse toward the study of Mental Science was an overwhelming sense of loneliness. In every life there must come some such experiences of spiritual isolations as, at that period, pervaded my life. Notwithstanding the fact that each day found me in the midst of friends, surrounded by mirth and gayety, there was a persistent feeling that I was alone in the world. I had been a widow for about three years, wandering from country to country, seeking for peace of mind.

The circumstances and surroundings of my life were such that my friends looked upon me as an unusually fortunate young woman. Although they recognized that I had sustained a great loss when my husband died, they knew that he had left me well provided for, free to go anywhere at pleasure, and having many friends. Yet, if my friends could have penetrated my inmost emotions, they would have found a deep sense of emptiness and isolation. This feeling inspired a spirit of unrest that drove me on and on in fruitless search upon the outside for that which I later learned could only be obtained from within.

I studied Christian Science, but it gave me no solace, though fully realizing the great work the Scientists were doing, and even having the pleasure and privilege of meeting Mrs. Eddy personally. But it was impossible for me to accept the fundamental teachings of Christian Science and make practical application of it.

When about to abandon the search for contentment and resign myself to resume a life of apparent amusement, a friend invited me to visit the great Seer and Teacher, Abdul Baha. After my interview with this most wonderful of men, my search for contentment began to take a change. He had told me that I would travel the world over seeking the truth, and when I had found it would speak it out. The fulfillment of the statement of this Great Seer then seemed to be impossible. But it carried a measure of encouragement, and at least indicated that my former seeking had been in the wrong direction. I began in a feeble and groping way to find contentment within myself, for had he not intimated that I should find the truth. That was the big thing, and about the only thing I remember of our interview.

A few days later, upon visiting the office of a New Thought practitioner, my attention was attracted to a book on his table entitled “The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science,” by Thomas Troward. It interested me to see that Troward was a retired Divisional judge from the Punjab, India. I purchased the book, thinking I would read it through that evening. Many have endeavored to do the same thing, only to find, as I did, that the book must be studied in order to be understood, and hundreds have decided, just as I did, to give it their undivided attention.

After finding this treasure book I went to the country for a few days, and while there studied the volume as thoroughly as I could. It seemed extremely difficult, and I decided to purchase another book of Troward’s, in the hope that its study might not require so much of an effort. Upon inquiry I was told that a subsequent volume, “The Dore Lectures,” was much the simpler and better of the two books. When I procured it, I found that it must also be studied. It took me weeks and months to get even a vague conception of the meaning of the first chapter of Dore, which is entitled “Entering Into the Spirit of It.” I mean by this that it took me months to enter into the spirit of what I was reading.

But in the meantime a paragraph from page 26 arrested my attention, as seeming the greatest thing I had ever read. I memorized it and endeavored with all my soul to enter into the spirit of Troward’s words. The paragraph reads: “My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in the past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner with me; consequently, in my own special world, of which I am the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.”

It took an effort on my part to memorize this paragraph, but in the endeavor toward this end the words seemed to carry with them a certain stimulus. Each repetition of the paragraph made it easier for me to enter into the spirit of it. The words expressed exactly what I had been seeking for. My one desire was for peace of mind. I found it comforting to believe that the Divine operation in me could expand to fuller expression and produce more and more contentment -in fact, a peace of mind and a degree of contentment greater than I had ever known. The paragraph further inspired me with deep interest to feel that the life-spark in me could bring into my life something entirely new. I did not wish to obliterate my past experience, but that was exactly what Troward said it would not do. The Divine operation would not exclude my past experience, but proceeding out of them would bring some new thing that would transcend anything that I had ever experienced before.

Meditation on these statements brought with it a certain joyous feeling. What a wonderful thing it would be if I could accept and sincerely believe, beyond all doubt, that this one statement of Troward’s was true. Surely the Divine could not change its inherent nature, and since Divine life is operating in me, I must be Divinely inhabited, and the Divine in me must operate just as it operates upon the Universal plane. This meant that my whole world of circumstances, friends and conditions would ultimately become a world of contentment and enjoyment of which “I am the center.” This would all happen just as soon as I was able to control my mind and thereby provide concrete center around which the Divine energies could play.

Surely it was worth trying for. If Troward had found this truth, why not I? The idea held me to my task. Later I determined to study with the man who had realized and given to the world so great a statement. It had lifted me from my state of despondency. The immediate difficulty was the need for increased finances.

HOW I ATTRACTED TO MYSELF TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS

Chapter 9

In the laboratory of experience in which my newly revealed relation to Divine operation was to be tested, the first problem was a financial one. My income was a stipulated one, quite enough for my everyday needs. But it did not seem sufficient to enable me to go comfortably to England where Troward lived, and remain for an indefinite period to study with so great a teacher as he must be. So before inquiring whether Troward took pupils or whether I would be eligible in case he did, I began to use the paragraph I had memorized. Daily, in fact, almost hourly, the words were in my mind: “My mind is a center of Divine operation, and Divine operation means expansion into something better than has gone before.”

From the Edinburgh Lectures I had read something about the Law of Attraction, and from the Chapter of “Causes and Conditions” I had gleaned a vague idea of visualizing. So every night, before going to sleep, I made a mental picture of the desired $20,000. Twenty $1,000 bills were counted over each night in my bedroom, and then, with the idea of more emphatically impressing my mind with the fact that this twenty thousand dollars was for the purpose of going to England and studying with Troward, I wrote out my picture, saw myself buying my steamer ticket, walking up and down the ship’s deck from New York to London, and, finally, saw myself accepted as Troward’s pupil.

This process was repeated every morning and every evening, always impressing more and more fully upon my mind Troward’s memorized statement: “My mind is a center of Divine operations.” I endeavored to keep this statement in the back part of my consciousness all the time with no thought in mind as how the money might be obtained. Probably the reason why there was no thought of the avenues through which the money might reach me was because I could not possibly imagine where the $20,000 would come from. So I simply held my thought steady and let the power of attraction find its own ways and means.

One day while walking on the street, taking deep breathing exercises, the thought came: “My mind is surely a center of Divine operation. If God fills all space, then God must be in my mind also; if I want this money to study with Troward that I may know the truth of Life, then both the money and the truth must be mine, though I am unable to feel or see the physical manifestations of either; still,” I declared, “it must be mine.”

While these reflections were going on in my mind, there seemed to come up from within me the thought: “I am all the substance there is.” Then, from another channel in my brain the answer seemed to come, “Of course, that’s it; everything must have its beginning in mind. The “I” the Idea, must be the only one and primary substance there is, and this means money as well as everything else.” My mind accepted this idea, and immediately all the tension of mind and body was relaxed.

There was a feeling of absolute certainty of being in touch with all the power Life has to give. All thought of money, teacher, or even my own personality, vanished in the great wave of joy which swept over my entire being. I walked on and on with this feeling of joy steadily increasing and expanding until everything about me seemed aglow with resplendent light. Every person I passed was illuminated as I was. All consciousness of personality had disappeared, and in its place there came that great and almost overwhelming sense of joy and contentment.

That night when I made my picture of the twenty thousand dollars it was with an entirely changed aspect. On previous occasions, when making my mental picture, I had felt that I was waking up something within myself. This time there was no sensation of effort. I simply counted over the twenty thousand dollars. Then, in a most unexpected manner, from a source of which I had no consciousness at the time, there seemed to open a possible avenue through which the money might reach me.

At first it took great effort not to be excited. It all seemed so wonderful, so glorious to be in touch with supply. But had not Troward cautioned his readers to keep all excitement out of their minds in the first flush of realization of union with Infinite supply, and to treat this fact as a perfectly natural result that had been reached through our demand? This was even more difficult for me than it was to hold the thought that “all the substance there is, I am; I (idea) am the beginning of all form, visible or invisible.”

Just as soon as there appeared a circumstance which indicated the direction through which the twenty thousand dollars might come, I not only made a supreme effort to regard the indicated direction calmly as the first sprout of the seed I had sown in the absolute, but left no stone unturned to follow up that direction by fulfilling my part. By so doing one circumstance seemed naturally to lead to another, until, step-by-step, my desired twenty thousand dollars was secured. To keep my mind poised and free from excitement was my greatest effort.

This first concrete fruition of my study of Mental Science as expounded by Troward’s book had come by a careful following of the methods he had outlined. In this connection, therefore, I can offer to the reader no better gift than to quote Troward’s book, “The Edinburgh Lectures,” from which may be derived a complete idea of the line of action I was endeavoring to follow. In the chapter on Causes and Conditions he says: “To get good results we must properly understand our relation to the great impersonal power we are using. It is intelligent, and we are intelligent, and the two intelligences must co-operate.

We must not fly in the face of the Law expecting it to do for us what it can only do through us; and we must therefore use our intelligence with the knowledge that it is acting as the instrument of a greater intelligence; and because we have this knowledge we may and should cease from all anxiety as to the final result.

In actual practice we must first form the ideal conception of our object with the definite intention of impressing it upon the universal mind -it is this thought that takes such thought out of the region of mere casual fancies -and then affirm that our knowledge of the Law is sufficient reason for a calm expectation of a corresponding result, and that therefore all necessary conditions will come to us in due order. We can then turn to the affairs of our daily life with the calm assurance that the initial conditions are either there already or will soon come into view. If we do not at once see them, let us rest content with the knowledge that the spiritual prototype is already in existence and wait till some circumstance pointing in the desired direction begins to show itself.

It may be a very small circumstance, but it is the direction and not the magnitude that is to be taken into consideration. As soon as we see it we should regard it as the first sprouting of the seed sown in the Absolute, and do calmly, and without excitement, whatever the circumstances seem to require, and then later on we shall see that this doing will in turn lead to a further circumstance in the same direction, until we find ourselves conducted, step by step, to the accomplishment of our object.

In this way the understanding of the great principle of the Law of Supply will, by repeated experiences, deliver us more and more completely out of the region of anxious thought and toilsome labor and bring us into a new world where the useful employment of all our powers, whether mental or physical, will only be an unfolding of our individuality upon the lines of its own nature, and therefore a perpetual source of health and happiness; a sufficient inducement, surely, to the careful study of the laws governing the relation between the individual and the Universal Mind.”

To my mind, then as now, this quotation outlines the core and center of the method and manner of approach necessary for coming in touch with Infinite supply. At least it, together with the previously quoted statement, “My mind is a center of Divine operation,” etc., constituted the only apparent means of attracting to myself the twenty thousand dollars. My constant endeavor to get into the spirit of these statements, and to attract to myself this needed sum, was about six weeks, at the end of which time I had in my bank the required twenty thousand dollars. This could be made into a long story, giving all the details, but the facts, as already narrated, will give you a definite idea of the magnetic condition of my mind while the twenty thousand dollars was finding its way to me.

HOW I BECAME THE ONLY PERSONAL PUPIL OF THE GREATEST MENTAL SCIENTIST OF THE PRESENT DAY

Chapter 10

As soon as the idea of studying with Troward came to me, I asked a friend to write to him for me, feeling that perhaps my friend could put my desire in better or more persuasive terms than I could employ. To all the letters written by this friend I received not one reply. This was so discouraging that I would have completely abandoned the idea of becoming Troward’s pupil except for the experience I had that day on the street when my whole world was illuminated, and I remembered the promise “All things whatsoever thou wilt, believe thou hast
received, and thou shalt receive.”

With this experience in my mind, my passage to England was arranged, notwithstanding the fact that apparently my letters were ignored. We wrote again, however, and finally received a reply, very courteous though very positive. Troward did not take pupils; he had no time to devote to a pupil. Notwithstanding this definite decision, I declined to be discouraged because of the memory of my experience upon the day when the light and the thought came to me, “I am all the Substance there is.” I seemed to be able to live that experience over at will, and with it there always came a flood of courage and renewed energy. We journeyed on to London, and from there telegraphed Troward, asking for an interview. The telegram was promptly answered by Troward setting a date when he could see us.

At this time Troward was living in Ruan Manor, a little-out-of-the-way place in the southern part of England, about twenty miles from a railway station. We could not find it on the map, and with great difficulty Cook’s Touring Agency in London, located the place for us. There was very little speculation in my mind as to what Troward would say to me in this interview. There always remained the feeling that the truth was mine; also that it would grow and expand in my consciousness until peace and contentment were outward as well as inward manifestations of my individual life.

We arrived at Troward’s house in a terrific rainstorm, and were cordially received by Troward himself, whom I found, much to my surprise, to be more the type of a Frenchman than an Englishman (I afterward learned that he was a descendant of the Huguenot race), a man of medium stature, with rather a large head, big nose, and eyes that fairly danced with merriment. After we had been introduced to the other members of the family and given a hot cup of tea, we were invited into the living room where Troward talked very freely of everything except my proposed studies. It seemed quite impossible to bring him to that subject.

Just before we were leaving, however, I asked quite boldly: “Will you not reconsider your decision to take a personal pupil? I wish so much to study with you,” to which he replied with a very indifferent manner that he did not feel he could give the time it would require for personal instruction, but that he would be glad to give me the names of two or three books which he felt would not only be interesting but instructive to me. He said he felt much flattered and pleased that I had come all the way from America to study with him, and as we walked out through the lane from his house to our automobile his manner became less indifferent, a feeling of sympathy seemed to touch his heart, and he turned to me with the remark: “You might write to me, if so inclined, after you get to Paris, and perhaps, if I have time in the autumn, we could arrange something, though it does not seem possible now.”

I lost no time in following up his very kind invitation to write. My letters were all promptly and courteously answered, but there was never a word of encouragement as to my proposed studies. Finally, about two months later, there came a letter with the question in it: “What do you suppose is the meaning of this verse in the 21st Chapter of Revelation?”

“16. And the city lieth foursquare and the length is as large as the breadth; and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.”

Instinctively I knew that my chance to study with Troward hung upon my giving the correct answer to that question. The definition of the verse seemed utterly beyond my reach. Naturally, answers came to my mind, but I knew intuitively that none was correct. I began bombarding my scholarly friends and acquaintances with the same question. Lawyers, doctors, priests, nuns and clergymen, all over the world, received letters from me with this question in them. Later answers began to return to me, but intuition told me that none was correct. All the while I was endeavoring to find the answer for myself, but none seemed to come. I memorized the verse in order that I might meditate upon it.

I began a search of Paris for the books Troward had recommended to me, and after two or three days’ search we crossed the River Seine to the Ile de Cite to go into some of the old bookstores there. They were out of print, and these were the best places to find them in. Finally we came upon a little shop that had the books there. These were the last copies the man had, consequently the price was high. While remonstrating with the clerk, my eye rested upon the work of an astrologer, which I laughingly picked up and asked: “Do you think Prof. would read my horoscope?” The clerk looked aghast at the suggestion, and responded, “Why, no, Madame, this is one of France’s greatest astrologers. He does not read horoscopes.”

In spite of this answer, there was a persistent impulse within me to go to the man. The friend who had accompanied me in my search for the books remonstrated with me, and tried in every way to dissuade me from going to the famous astrologer, but I insisted, and she went with me. When we came to his office I found it somewhat embarrassing to ask him to read my horoscope. Nevertheless, there was nothing to do but put the question. Reluctantly, the Professor invited us into his paper-strewn study, and reluctantly, and also impatiently, asked us to be seated. Very courteously and coldly he told me that he did not read horoscopes. His whole manner said, more clearly than words could, that he wished we would take our departure.

My friend stood up. I was at a great loss what to do next, because I felt that I was not quite ready to go. Intuition seemed to tell me there was something for me to gain there. Just what it was I was unable to define, so I paused a moment, much to my friend’s displeasure, when one of the Professor’s enormous Persian cats jumped into my lap. “Get down, Jack!” the Professor shouted. “What does it mean?” he seemed to ask himself. Then with a greater interest than he had hitherto shown in me, the Professor said with a smile: “Have never known that cat to go to a stranger before, Madame; my cat pleads for you.” I, also, now feel an interest in your horoscope, and if you will give me the data it will give me pleasure to write it out for you.” There was a great feeling of happiness in me when he made this statement. He concluded by saying: “I do not feel that you really care for your horoscope.” The truth of this statement shocked me, because I did not care about a horoscope, and could not give any reason why I was letting him do it. “However,” he said, “May I call for your data next Sunday afternoon?”

On Sunday afternoon at the appointed time, the Professor arrived, and I was handing him the slip of paper with all the data of my birth, etc., when the idea came to me to ask the Professor for the answer to the question about the 16th verse of the 21st Chapter of Revelation. The thought was instantly carried into effect, and I found myself asking this man what he thought this verse meant. Without pausing to think it over he immediately replied “it means: The city signifies the truth, and the truth is non-invertible; every side from which you approach it is exactly the same.” Intuitively and undoubtingly I recognized this answer as the true one, and my joy knew no bounds, because I felt sure that with this correct answer in my possession, Troward would accept me as his pupil in the fall.

As the great astrologer was leaving, I explained to him all about my desire to study with Troward, how I had come from New York City for that express purpose, seemingly to no avail, until the answer to this test question had been given to me by him. He was greatly interested and asked many questions about Troward, and when asked if he would please send me his bill, he smilingly replied, “Let me know if the great Troward accepts you as his pupil,” and bade me good afternoon. I hastened to my room to send a telegram to Troward giving my answer to the question about the 16th verse of the 21st Chapter of Revelation.

There was an immediate response from Troward that said: “Your answer is correct. Am beginning a course of lectures on The Great Pyramid In London. If you wish to attend them, will be pleased to have you, and afterward, if you still wish to study with me, I think it can be arranged.” On receipt of this reply preparations were at once made to leave Paris for London.

I attended all the lectures, receiving much instruction from them, after which arrangements were made for my studying with Troward. Two days before leaving for Cornwall I received the following letter from Troward clearly indicating the line of study he gave me:

31 Stanwick Road,

W. Kensington, England, November 8, 1912.

Dear Mrs. Behrend,

I think I had better write you a few lines with regard to your proposed studies with me, as I should be sorry for you to be under any misapprehension and so to suffer any disappointment.

I have studied the subject now for several years, and have a general acquaintance with the leading features of most of the systems which, unfortunately, occupy attention in many circles at the present time, such as Theosophy, The Tarot, The Kabala, and the like, and I have no hesitation in saying that, to the best of my judgment, all sorts and descriptions of so-called occult study are in direct opposition to the real life-giving Truth, and, therefore, you must not expect any teaching on such lines as these.

We hear a great deal these days about Initiation; but, believe me, the more you try to become a so-called “Initiate” the further you will put yourself from living life. I speak after many years of careful study and consideration when I say that the Bible and its Revelation of Christ is the one thing really worth studying, and that is a subject large enough in all conscience, embracing, as it does, our outward life and of everyday concerns, and also the inner springs of our life and all that we can in general terms conceive of the life in the unseen after putting off the body at death.

You have expressed a very great degree of confidence in my teaching, and if your confidence is such that you wish, as you say, to put yourself entirely under my guidance, I can only accept it as a very serious responsibility, and should have to ask you to exhibit that confidence by refusing to look into such so-called “Mysteries” as I would forbid you to look into.

I am speaking from experience; but the result will be that much of my teaching will appear to be very simple, perhaps to some extent dogmatic, and you will say you have heard much of it before.

Faith in God, Prayer and Worship, approach to the Father through Christ -all this is in a certain sense familiar to you; and all I can hope to do is perhaps to throw a little more light on these subjects, that they may become to you, not merely traditional words, but present living facts.

I have been thus explicit as I do not want you to have any disappointment, and also I should say that our so-called course of study will be only friendly conversations at such times as we can fit them in, either you coming to our house, or I to yours, as may be most convenient at the time.

Also, I will lend you some books that will be helpful, but they are very few, and in no sense occult.

Now, if all this falls in with your ideas, we shall, I am sure, be very glad to see you at Ruan Manor, and you will find that the residents there, though few, are very friendly and the neighborhood very pretty.

But, on the other hand, if you feel that you want some other source of learning, do not mind saying so, only you will never find any substitute for Christ.

I trust you will not mind my writing you like this, but I do not want you to come all the way down to Cornwall, and then be disappointed.

With kindest regards,

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) T. TROWARD.

This copy of Troward’s letter, to my mind, is the greatest thing I can give you.

HOW TO BRING THE POWER IN YOUR WORD INTO ACTION

Chapter 11

In your every word there is the power germ that expands and projects itself in the direction your word indicates, and ultimately develops into physical expression. For example, you wish to establish joy in your consciousness. Just repeat the word “joy” secretly, persistently and emphatically. The joy germ begins to expand and project itself until your whole being is filled with joy. This is not a mere fancy, but a truth. Once you experience this power, you will “daily prove that these facts have not been fabricated to fit a theory, but the theory has been built up by careful observation of facts.” Everyone knows that joy comes from within. Another may give you cause for joy, but no one can be joyous for you. Joy is a state of consciousness, and consciousness is purely Troward says, “Mental.”

Mental faculties always work under something which stimulates them, and this stimulus may come either from without, through the external senses, or from within by the consciousness of something not perceptible on the physical plane. The recognition of this interior source of stimulus enables you to bring into your consciousness any state you “desire.” Once a thing seems normal to you, it is as surely yours, through the law of growth and attraction, as it is yours to know addition after you have the conscious use of figures.

This method of repeating the word makes the word in all of its limitless meaning yours, because words are the embodiment of thoughts, and thought is creative, neither good nor bad, simply creative. This is the reason why Faith builds up and Fear destroys. “Only believe, and all things are possible unto you.” It is Faith that gives you dominion over every adverse circumstance or condition. It is your word of faith that sets you free, not faith in any specific thing or act, but simple Faith in your best self in all ways. It is because of this ever-present creative power within the heart of the word that makes your health, your peace of mind and your financial condition a reproduction of your most habitual thought. Try to believe and understand this, and you will find yourself Master of every adverse circumstance or condition, a Prince of Power.

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR FAITH

Chapter 12

But, you ask -How can I speak the word of Faith when I have little or no faith? Every living thing has faith in something or somebody. It is the quality of the creative energy in the positive Faith thought which gives it vitality, not the form it takes. Even intense fear is alive with faith. You fear smallpox because you believe it possible for you to contract it. You fear poverty and loneliness because you believe them possible for you.

It is your habitual tendency of thought that reappears in your mind, your body and your affairs, not the occasional thought upon some specific line or desire. It is the Faith which understands that every creation had its birth in the womb of thought -words that gives you dominion over all things, your lesser self included, and this feeling of faith is increased and intensified through observing what it does.

This observation is the observation of your state of consciousness when you did, not when you hoped you might, but feared it was too good to be true. How did you feel that time when you simply had to bring yourself into a better frame of mind and did, or you had to have a certain thing and got it? Live these experiences over again and again (mentally) until you really feel in touch with the self that knows and does, and the best there is, is yours.

THE REWARD OF INCREASED FAITH

Chapter 13

Because you have expanded your faith into the faith and laws of the universe that know no failure, your faith in the best of yourself (the principle of life in you) has brought you into conscious realization that you are not a victim of the universe, but a part of it. Consequently, there is that within yourself which is able to make conscious contact with the universal principal of law and power, and enables you to press all the particular laws of nature, whether visible or invisible, into serving your particular demand or desire, and thereby you find yourself Master, not a slave of any situation.

Troward tells us that this Mastering is to be “accomplished by knowledge, and the only knowledge which will afford this purpose in all its measureless immensity is the knowledge of the personal element in universal spirit” and its reciprocity to our own personality. In other words, the words you think, the personality you feel yourself to be, are all reproductions in miniature or specialized God “or universal spirit.” All your word-thoughts were God word-forms before they were yours.

The words you use are the instruments, channels, through which the creative energy takes shape. Naturally, this sensitive creative power can only reproduce in accordance with the instrument through which it passes. All disappointments and failures are the result of endeavoring to think one thing and produce another. This is just as impossible as it would be for an electric fan to be used for lighting purposes, or for water to flow through a crooked pipe in a straight line.

The water must take the shape of the pipe through which it flows. Even more truly this sensitive, invisible, fluent substance must reproduce outwardly the shape of the thought-word through which it passes. This is the law of its nature; therefore, it logically follows, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Hence, when your thought or word-form is in correspondence with the Eternal constructive and forward movement of the Universal Law, then your mind is the mirror in which the infinite power and intelligence of the universe sees itself reproduced, and your individual life becomes one of harmony.

HOW TO MAKE NATURE RESPOND TO YOU

Chapter 14

It should be steadily borne in mind that there is an intelligence and power in all nature and all space that is always creative and infinitely sensitive and responsive. The responsiveness of its nature is two-fold: it is creative and amenable to suggestion. Once the human understanding grasps this all-important fact, it realizes the simplicity of the law of life.

All that is necessary is to realize that your mind is a center of Divine operation, and consequently contains that within itself which accepts suggestions, and expect all life to respond to your call, and you will find suggestions which tend to the fulfillment of your desire coming to you, not only from your fellowmen, but also from the lowers, the grass, the trees and the rocks which will enable you to fulfill your heart’s desire, if you act upon them in confidence on this physical plane. “Faith without works is dead,” but Faith with Works sets you absolutely free.

FAITH WITH WORKS – WHAT IT HAS ACCOMPLISHED

Chapter 15

It is said of Tyson, the great Australian millionaire, that the suggestion to “make the desert land of Australia blossom as the rose” came to him from a modest little Australian violet while he was working as a bushman for something like three shillings a day. He used to find these friendly little violets growing in certain places in the woods, and something in the flower touched something akin to itself in the mind of Tyson, and he would sit on the side of his bunk at night and wonder how flowers and vegetable life could be given an opportunity to express itself in the desert land of Australia.

No doubt he realized that it would take a long time to save enough money to put irrigating ditches in the desert lands, but his thought and feeling were sure it could be accomplished, and if it could be done, he could do it. If there was a power within himself that was able to capture the idea, then there must be a responsive power within the idea itself that could bring itself into a practical physical manifestation. He resolutely put aside all questions as to the specific ways and means which would be employed in bringing his desire into physical manifestation, and simply kept his thought centered upon the idea of making fences and seeing flowers and grass where none existed.

Since the responsiveness of reproductive creative power is not limited to any local condition of mind, his habitual meditation and mental picture set his ideas free to roam in an infinitude, and attract to themselves other ideas of a kindred nature. Therefore, it was not necessary for Tyson to wait and see his ideas and desires fulfilled, until he had saved from his three shillings a day enough money to irrigate the land, for his ideas found other ideas in the financial world which were attuned in sympathy with themselves, and doors of finance were quickly opened.

All charitable institutions are maintained upon the principle of the responsiveness of life. If this were not true, no one would care to give, simply because another needed. The law of demand and supply, cause and effect, can never be broken. Ideas attract to themselves kindred ideas. Sometimes they come from a flower, a book or out of the invisible. You are sitting or walking, intent upon an idea not quite complete as to the ways and means of fulfillment, and behold along comes another idea, from no one can tell where, and finds friendly lodging with your idea, one idea attracting another, and so on until your desires are physical facts.

You may feel the necessity for an improvement in your finances, and wonder how this increase is to be brought about, when there seems suddenly to come from within the idea that everything had its birth in thought, even money, and your thoughts turn their course. You simply hold to the statement or affirmation that the best, and all there is, is yours. Since you are able to capture ideas from the Infinite through the instrument of your intuition, you let your mind rest upon that thought knowing full well that this very thought will respond to itself. Your inhibition of the thought of doubt and feeling of anxiety enables the reassuring ideas to establish themselves and attract to themselves “I can” and “I will” ideas, which gradually grow into physical form of the desire in mind.

In the conscious use of the universal power to reproduce your desires in physical form, three facts should be borne in mind:

First -All space is filled with a creative power. Second -This creative power is amenable to suggestion. Third -It can only work by deductive methods.

As Troward tells us, this last is an exceedingly important point, for it implies that the action of the ever-present creative power is in no way limited by precedent. It works according to the essence of the spirit of the principle. In other words, this universal power takes its creative direction from the word you give it. Once man realizes this great truth, it becomes the most important of all his consideration with what character this sensitive reproductive power is invested. It is the unvarying law of this creative life principle that “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” If you realize the truth that the only creative power can be to you only what you feel and think it to be, it is willing and able to meet your demands.

Troward says, “If you think your thought is Powerful, then your Thought is Powerful.” “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” is the law of life, and the creative power can no more change this law than an ordinary mirror can reflect back to you a different image than the object you hold before it. “As you think so are you” does not mean “as you tell people you think” or “as you would wish the world to believe you think.” It means your innermost thoughts, that place where no one but you knows. “None can know the Father save the son” and “No one can know the son but the Father.”

Only the reproductive creative spirit of life knows what you think until your thoughts become physical facts and manifest themselves in your body, your brain or your affairs. Then everyone with whom you come into contact may know, because the Father, the intelligent creative energy which heareth in secret, hears your most secret thoughts, rewards you openly, reproduces your thoughts in physical form. “As you think you know that is what you become” should be kept in the background of your mind constantly. This is watching and praying without ceasing, and when you are not feeling quite up to par to physically pray.

SUGGESTIONS AS TO HOW TO PRAY OR ASK, BELIEVING YOU HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED

Chapter 16

Scientific Thinking -Positive Thought

Suggestions for Practical Application:

Try, through careful, positive, enthusiastic (though not strenuous) thought, to realize that the indescribable, invisible substance of life fills all space; that its nature is intelligent, plastic, subjective substance.

Five o’clock in the morning is the best time to go into this sort of meditation. If you will retire early every night for one month, before falling asleep impress firmly upon your subjective mind the affirmation “My Father is the ruler of all the world, and is expressing His directing power through me,” you will find that the substance of life takes form in the moulds of your thoughts.

Do not accept the above suggestion simply because it is given to you. Think it over carefully until the impression is made upon your own subconscious mind understandingly. Rise every morning, as was suggested before, at five o’clock, sit in a quiet room in a straight-backed chair, and think out the affirmation of the previous evening, and you will realize and be able to put into practice your princely power with the realization to some extent, at least, that your mind really is a center through which all the creative energy and power there is taking form.

Scientific Prayer:

The Principle Underlying Scientific Prayer

In prayer for a change in condition, physical, mental or financial for yourself or another, bear in mind that the fundamental necessity for the answer to prayer is the understanding of the scientific statement:

“Ask, BELIEVING YOU HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED and you shall receive”

This is not as difficult as it appears on the surface, once you realize that everything has its origin in the mind, and that which you seek outwardly, you already possess. No one can think a thought in the future. Your thought of a thing constitutes its origin.

THEREFORE

The Thought Form of the Thing is already Yours as soon as you think it. Your steady recognition of this Thought Possession causes the thought to concentrate, to condense, to project itself and to assume physical form.

To Get Rich Through Creation

The recognition or conception of new forces of wealth is the loftiest aspiration you can take into your heart, for it assumes and implies the furtherance of all noble aims.

Items to be remembered about Prayer for Yourself or Another: Remember that that which you call treatment or prayer is not, in any sense, hypnotism. It should never be your endeavor to take possession of the mind of another. Remember that it should never be your intention to make yourself believe that which you know to be untrue. You are simply thinking into God or First Cause with the understanding that

“If a thing is true at all, there is a way in which it is true throughout the Universe.” Remember that the Power of Thought works by absolutely scientific principles. These principles are expressed in the language of the statement:

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

This statement contains a world of wisdom, but man’s steady recognition and careful application of the statement itself is required to bring it into practical use.

Remember that the principles involved in being as we think in our heart are elucidated and revealed by the law “As you sow, you shall reap.”

Remember that your Freedom to choose just what you will think, just what thought possession you will affirm and claim constitutes God’s gift to you.

It shows…

How:

First Cause has endowed every man with the Power and Ability to bring into his personal environment whatever he chooses. Cause and Effect in reference to Getting:

If you plant an ACORN, you get an OAK. If you sow a GRAIN OF CORN, you reap a stalk and MANY Kernels of Corn. You always get the manifestation of that which you consciously or unconsciously AFFIRM and CLAIM, habitually declare and expect, or in other words “AS YOU SOW”

Therefore, sow the seeds of I AM …. I OUGHT…. I CAN…. I WILL REALIZE that because you ARE you OUGHT, that because you OUGHT, you CAN, that because you CAN, you DO.

The manifestation of this Truth, even in a small degree, gives you the indisputable understanding that DOMINION IS YOUR CHARTER RIGHT You are an Heir of First Cause, endowed with all the power He has. God has given you everything. ALL is yours, and you know that all you have to do is to reach out your mental hand and take it.

This Formula may serve as a pattern to shape your own Prayer or Affirmation into God for the benefit of another or yourself.

If for another, you speak the Christian name of the person you wish to help, then dismiss their personality entirely from your consciousness.

Intensify your thought by meditating upon the fact that there is that in you which finds the way, which is the Truth and is the Life.

You are affirming this fact, believing that since you are thinking this, it is already yours. Having lifted up your feeling to the central idea of this meditation, you examine your own consciousness to see if there is ought which is unlike God. If there is any feeling of fear, worry, malice, envy, hatred, or jealousy, turn back in your meditation to Cleanse your Thought through the affirmation that God’s Love and Purity fill all space including your heart and soul. Reconcile your thought with the Love of God, always remembering that

You are made in the Image and Likeness of Love.

Keep this Cleansing thought in mind until you feel that you have freed your consciousness entirely of all thoughts and feelings other than

Love and Unity with all Humanity

Then if denials do not disturb you, deny all that is unlike your desired manifestation. This

accomplished, you almost overlay your denial with the affirmative thought that: You are made in the Image and Likeness of God and that you already have your desire fulfilled in its first, its original spiritual or thought-form.

Closing of Prayer:

Prayer as a method of thought is a deliberate use of the Law which gives you the Power of Dominion over everything which tends in any way to hamper your perfect liberty. YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN LIFE THAT YOU MAY ENJOY IT MORE AND MORE FULLY The steady recognition of this Truth makes you declare yourself a PRINCE OF POWER.

You recognize, accept and use this power as A CHILD OF A KING AND HENCE DOMINION IS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT Then when you feel the light of this great Truth flooding your consciousness -open the floodgates of your soul in Heartfelt Praise that you have the understanding that….THE CREATOR AND HIS CREATION ARE ONE.

Also that the Creator is continually creating through his creation.

Close your treatment in the happy assurance that the Prayer which is fulfilled is not a form of supplication but a steady habitual affirming that The Creator of all Creation is operating Specifically through you, therefore

THE WORK MUST BE PERFECTLY DONE -YOUR MIND IS A CENTER OF DIVINE OPERATION.

Hints for Application and Practice:

For every five minutes given to reading and study of the theories of Mental Science, spend fifteen minutes in the use and application of the knowledge acquired.

1. Spend one minute in every twenty-four hours in conscientiously thinking over the specification that must be observed in order to have your prayers answered.

2. Practice the steady recognition of desirable thought possession for two periods of fifteen minutes each every day. Not only time yourself each period to see how long you can keep a given conception before your mental vision, but also keep a written record of the vividness with which you experience your mental image. Remember that your mental senses are just as varied and trainable as your physical ones.

3. Spend five minutes every day between 12 noon and 1 o’clock with a mental search for new sources of wealth.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

Chapter 17

Remember that the greatest Mental Scientist the world has ever known (Jesus Christ, the Man) said all things are possible unto you.

Also the “things I do you can do.” Did he tell the truth?

Jesus did not claim to be more divine than you are. He declared the whole human race children of God. By birth he was no ‘exception to this rule. The power he possessed was developed through His personal effort. He said you could do the same if you would only believe in yourself. A great idea is valueless unless accompanied by physical action. God gives the idea; man works it out upon the physical plane.

All that is really worthwhile is contentment. Self-command alone can produce it. The soul and body are one. Contentment of mind is contentment of soul, and contentment of soul means contentment of body.

If you wish health, watch your thoughts, not only of your physical being, but your thoughts about everything and everybody. With your will keep them in line with your desire, and outwardly act in accordance with your thoughts, and you will soon realize that all power both over thoughts and conditions has been given to you. You believe in God. Believe in yourself as the physical instrument through which God operates. Absolute dominion is yours when you have sufficient self-mastery to conquer the negative tendency of thoughts and actions.

Ask yourself daily: “What is the purpose of the power which put me here?” “How can I work with the purpose for life and liberty in me?”

Upon having decided these questions, endeavor hourly to fulfill them. You are a law unto yourself.

If you have a tendency to overdo anything, eat, drink or blame circumstances for your misfortunes, conquer that tendency with the inward conviction that all power is yours outwardly. Eat less, drink less, blame circumstances less, and the best there is will gradually grow in the place where the worst seemed to be.

Always remember that all is yours to use, as you will. You can if you will: if you will you do.

God the Father blesses you with all He has to give.

Make good Godly use of it.

The reason for greater success when you first began your studies and demonstrations in Mental Science is that your joy and enthusiasm at the simple discovery of the power within was greater than you have been able to put into your understanding later.

With increased understanding put increasing joy and enthusiasm, and the results will correspond.

Carpenters, Fancy French Restaurants, Backstage, and Your Career

What You Will Learn You need to be invested in the backstage of everything you are doing. Nothing is more important than what you do behind-the-scenes. The substance is what makes everything work. Only with a good backstage can you achieve your full potential in anything.

One of my favorite stories is about a man who has a creak in his house. For years he has tried one way or another to fix the creak, but every single time he walks through the old house it still makes that annoying squeaky sound. No one has ever been able to fix the problem, and the man does not know exactly what he should do. He has been living with the creak for years and it just seems to get louder and louder. He has been told the only way to get rid of the creak is to rip out the old wood floor and replace it. Since that will cost tens of thousands of dollars, the man is not sure if that would be wise.

One day, the man decides he simply cannot take the creaking in the floor anymore. He calls a carpenter into his house to give him an estimate for replacing the floor. Before the carpenter starts to write up the estimate, the man explains to the carpenter that the only reason he wants to replace the old wood floor is because of the annoying creaking sound it makes every time anyone walks on it.

The carpenter, probably well into his 70s, nods when the man tells him this. Then he walks around the house for a minute or two, pulls out his hammer, and bangs it in the middle of one of the wood planks in the floor.

“There. The creak is fixed,” he tells the man. “Now you do not need a new floor.” The carpenter then pulls out of piece of paper, looks down and starts writing.

The homeowner walks around a bit and, to his astonishment, there really is no more creaking. In fact, he is surprised by how the house feels so much different without the persistent creaking every time he moves through his house.

“Thank you!” the man tells the carpenter.

The carpenter hands him a bill. To the man’s astonishment, the bill is for $225.00.

“That’s way too much money,” the man says. “It did not take you more than a minute to fix the floor.”

“You’re correct,” the carpenter says. “I charged you $25 for the time I spent coming out here and doing the work. I charged you $200 for the 50 years of experience I have in knowing precisely where to hit the floor.”

When the man heard this, he promptly paid the carpenter and the carpenter was on his way.

This is one of my favorite stories, because it is so instructive about developing depth and skill in everything we do. Many people read a story like this and their immediate thought is something like: “I can charge $225 to do the same work the carpenter does.” This could not be further from the truth. There is a difference between being able to provide an incredible experience to people and not being able to do this. The incredible experience is built upon a series of incredible things that occur behind-the-scenes. The more of these things that are occurring behind-the-scenes, the better the ultimate product will be. In the case of the carpenter, what happened was that his 50+ years of experience, training, learning, intuition and more–all enabled him to hit the hammer in the right place.

Several years ago my wife and I were in Switzerland, touring around the country. In the guidebook we were reading, we learned about a small French restaurant with only around 15 small tables or so, in the Alps, which was supposed to be one of the best French restaurants in Europe. It had apparently won all sorts of accolades, including several Michelin stars.

We went to the restaurant and had dinner and, sure enough, it was absolutely spectacular–among the best meals I had ever had. There were not very large portions, and there did not seem to be a ton of activity going on in the place. For example, I believe I had a very small cut of beef, which had a little bit of sauce on it. It was not very substantial, but it was very, very good. I had a salad and it was just greens dressing lightly–and it was also surprisingly tasty. None of the food was that complex, but everything was quite fantastic. The bread tasted light, buttery and warm. Even the table water was good, served at just the right chilled temperature. There was someone playing the piano, and the music was not too soft or too loud.

I went into the restroom at one point during the meal, and noticed that the restroom was immaculate. There was a fresh fluffy towel for me to dry my hands. The second I left the restroom, I noticed that someone in a very low-key manner immediately went and replaced the hand towel with a new one. I could see they did this every time someone went to the water closet. If my water glass were ever becoming empty, someone would promptly refill it, without me even noticing. We were never left sitting for very long without another course coming out. The service was exceptional, but one barely noticed the people working there at all.

The point about this restaurant is that everything there was done perfectly, but nothing seemed exceptionally complex. You could make the food at home, I suppose, if you wanted to, but it would not turn out the same. An average waiter could wait on you without drawing attention to himself, but not quite as well as these people.

Since we were eating at one of the top 10 or so ranked restaurants in the world, my wife wanted to take a lot of time to eat and enjoy the atmosphere. We were among the last two or three people in the restaurant, and after our meal my wife wanted to take a walk around the grounds of the restaurant. Since we were in the Swiss Alps the surroundings were quite beautiful, and the walk was lovely.

After we returned to board the chauffeured car that had been provided by the restaurant, we drove around the back of the restaurant. We could see inside the restaurant and it must have been midnight or later. While we had been dining in the restaurant, we probably had not seen more than 25 people; however, in the back of the restaurant we could see that there were probably at least 50 or 60 people.

• We saw a group of chefs all dressed in full chef regalia, who seemed to be having a conference.
• We saw numerous other people moving around, performing all sorts of tasks.
• The people we saw all appeared to be very busy.
• We saw white boards that had all sorts of notes scribbled on them, and it looked like a huge backstage sort of production, in which those in charge were writing on the white boards, while others watched and listened.
• We saw various chefs working at a cutting board, and another chef walking around, supervising their work.

We were spying, in effect, since no one in the restaurant could see us. What I was witnessing looked like the most professional and hardcore cooking operation I had ever seen. I had worked in restaurants before, and this was like nothing I had ever seen. The most interesting part of the evening for me was not the meal, but seeing all of the activities that went on behind-the-scenes at the restaurant. What I realized right then was that the real strength of the restaurant came from all those things that my wife and I had not seen while we were eating our meal. It was the incredible number of people and their level of organization that made the restaurant the success it was. I could tell that the restaurant probably had more procedures in place than most other companies. There was quality control and group decision- making, and all sorts of high level management techniques that were being done incredibly well.

Most successful people and businesses always have a very strong operation behind-the-scenes. It is not what people see when they look at a storefront that matters, it is the “substance” of what is going behind-the-scenes. It is like this with you and your profession as well. The ultimate product that you produce will be more a product of what you do “behind-the-scenes” than of the actual service that you provide.

One of the most interesting ongoing debates is the one about pay caps for certain executives and so forth. It is very common for politicians to do things like declare that bankers should not make more than $500,000 a year, for example, because they might have taken federal funds. There may be good arguments for this sort of thing, but when it comes right down to it, the banker does not get paid $1,000,000 a year for no reason: He typically earns this amount of money because of the results he is able to achieve, which in most cases is the product of his experience and all of the things he is able to make happen behind-the-scenes. It is behind-the-scenes that most of the work occurs. Most people are paid for what they do behind-the-scenes, not simply for showing up for work.

If you look at professional tennis players who earn millions of dollars per year, for example, while they certainly will have a lot of skills, there is a lot that has gone into making them great at what they do. In most cases, they have probably been training at the game since they were 10 years old, and they have practiced an incredible amount and dedicated their life to tennis. When I was growing up, there was a guy at my racquet club who became a professional tennis player. He was near my age. He played 5+ hours a day every day from the time he was seven years old or so. When he got older, he practiced almost exclusively with professionals, who he needed to pay to practice with him. It takes a lot of work and sacrifice to become truly excellent.

• It is like this with golfers.
• It is like this with lawyers.
• It is like this with doctors.
• It is like this with carpenters.

In fact, anyone who is decent at anything has practiced an incredible amount to develop their skills to an extraordinary degree, since before you ever meet them. The more behind-the-scenes work that occurs, the better the final product will be. The more behind-the-scenes work you do, the better you will be at anything. All of the experience, education and knowledge that make you great at your profession–constitute the sort of work I am referring to.

When people hire you, or go to a restaurant, they are only in it for what they see. They are only there because of the front stage, which represents the experience they believe they are going to have. However, you can never have a good front stage without a good backstage to back it up.

The legal recruiting business is fascinating to me because most recruiters I have known in the past do not understand the importance of “backstage” to their careers. Essentially, all legal recruiting involves is soliciting a candidate for a job, and then sending the candidate to the job opportunity. You can make over a million dollars a year doing this every year or, you can do okay for a time–and then fail at it. Most people fail at it, and it is mostly because of their lack of understanding of the importance of a solid backstage.

Most careers work like this. The best legal recruiters spend the majority of their free time reading about topics that are relevant to them becoming better legal recruiters, whether this means reading articles about helping people, sales, or improving the quality of their written work. When the recruiters then speak with candidates, they spend a lot of time on the phone with them, and get to understand them. The more that recruiters works on all of this substance, the better they ultimately do. They develop in-depth relationships with candidates and law firms. They take incredible amounts of time to understand everyone they are dealing with. They do in-depth profiles of their candidates, who are then tailored appropriately to different firms.

In contrast, most recruiters are doing their job simply because they fell into it somehow. They do not care about developing themselves into being excellent recruiters, nor do they have a strong interest in improving their strategies. They do not take a lot of time to understand their candidates. They believe that the job simply involves finding a candidate and sending them to a law firm. These typical recruiters almost always fail. They may do okay in a good economy, but in a poor economy they will often fail.

The recruiters who do all the backstage work, and who stay on top of this work, rarely–if ever, fail. In fact, they thrive no matter what happens with the economy.

It takes more than going through the motions of recruiting–or of any profession, for that matter–in order to do well. The substance that goes into an opportunity placement is what changes everything. The substance is what makes everything work. It is as simple as this.

I really hope that you understand the significance of this, because it can mean the difference between great success and failure. You need to be invested in the backstage of everything you are doing and, if you are, then you will experience the success you deserve. Nothing is more important than what you do behind-the-scenes, and the substance that goes into your job.

Only with a good backstage can you achieve you full potential in anything.

Bears, Foster Homes, Resourcefulness, Love, and Endless Opportunity

What You Will Learn There are people in every part of the world who simply do not have the same number of opportunities that are available to you. Strive to make the most of every opportunity that exists out there. There are plenty of opportunities everywhere – be grateful for this.

When I was around 12 years old, my mother decided to take my 5-year-old sister and I on a trip from Detroit to Northern Michigan. There was not a lot of preplanning involved, and all we knew was that we were going to be gone for two weeks. There was no decision made about where we would be staying, or what we were going to do once we got there. We simply got in the car one early morning in late summer and started driving north.

After several hours of driving, my mother would typically stop at some sort of hotel. We did not have air conditioning, or a pool in our house, so my mother typically liked to stop at motels that were centered around pools. We loved being able to jump in the pool and cool down in the air-conditioned room. Then, typically, we would go out to eat in the evening, at a small local restaurant in whatever town we were in. The next morning would wake up late and drive some more.

We were headed to a place in Northern Michigan called Mackinac Island, which was a popular tourist site. We took several days to get to the island, because we did not drive more than an hour or two each day, and we kept getting sidetracked. We might stop in a small town that supposedly had a nice lake, and spend some time in a lakeside cabin.

When we finally got to the area of Northern Michigan where Mackinac Island was situated, we missed the ferry going to the island that day, so we decided to continue further into Northern Michigan. This was a lot of fun. My mother was getting bored of driving and there were many long open roads in this area, so she started teaching me to drive. Incredibly, I found myself driving on long open roads and I learned to drive quite easily. We meandered around Northern Michigan for a few days and then headed back to the area where we would finally take the ferry to Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Island is a nice place, and there are no cars allowed there. In order to get to the island, you need to park your car in a parking lot and then take a ferry. The ferry ride takes at least 30 minutes, from what I remember. I had a very good time at Mackinac Island and, years later, I ended up planning a wedding there at a place called the Grand Hotel, which never happened–but would have been very nice.

We stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find on the island because it was very expensive there. Even back in 1982, staying at the biggest hotel on the Island, the Grand Hotel, cost over $200 a night. It was more money than we could afford. Being on the island was like stepping back in time because there were horses and buggies there. Overall, the island had a very touristy but fun and laid back manner about it.

It was very hot that summer and we decided after the second night that we were going to return to the mainland. When we got up in the morning, my mother was not feeling well at all. We got our things together and headed to the ferry, and my mom was walking quite slowly. She thought she had gotten food poisoning. On the ferry ride back from the island, she started to get sick. The large waves and the rocking of the boat started to make her throw up. The boat was very crowded and my mother’s vomit started running up and down the aisles, getting on everyone’s feet as the boat buckled back and forth.

“Gross!” people started screaming.

My mother was very sick, but I was unsure what was wrong, or what we should do. When we got to the shore my mother said she wanted to check into a hotel right by the dock because she felt so ill. I checked us into a hotel, and I could tell my mom felt bad, like she was ruining our vacation:

“I think I will feel better if you go get me a shake. Can you go get me a shake?” she asked.

I went and got her a shake. She never drank it. Within a few hours we realized that Mom was incredibly sick. She started to ramble, and become incoherent. I decided I needed to take her to the hospital. I helped her into the car and drove my mom to the hospital, which was around 20 minutes away. The people in the hospital were very surprised when I drove up to the emergency room because I was so young.

My sister and I waited in the emergency room for the next few hours. It was a small hospital with bad lighting. It appeared that we were the only people in the emergency room. My little sister seemed very frightened. I told her it would be ok.

After we had been waiting there for a few hours, a granola-looking man with a beard appeared:

“Your mother is very sick,” he said, and started to ask me several questions. The questions were about things like where we were staying and so forth. As he was asking us questions, they rolled my mother by us in a wheelchair. She was so sick she did not even look over at us. She appeared to be writhing in all sorts of pain. In not so many words, the man informed us that he was going to be taking us to a foster home and sending other social workers to pick up our clothes and so forth from the motel.

While this sounds like it was going to be a real disaster, in reality it was something I was not all that terrified of. In fact, to me it sounded like a downright adventure. My parents were divorced and I knew that my father would be more than willing to take care of my sister and I, if necessary. My sister was not by my father, she was by my mother’s second marriage, but I knew that whatever happened, we would stick together.

Unfortunately, my mother had been coherent long enough to tell the social worker and doctors that she had sole custody of my sister and I. The social worker informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not to contact my father and that he would not be contacting my father. This is something I do not understand to this day; however, this is how it went. Within a few minutes, the social worker was driving my sister and me deep into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to stay with a foster family. It would become one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

The social worker was a nice guy, but he was a state social worker and was doing his job. He started asking me all sorts of questions in a roundabout way, about whether my mother used drugs, drank a lot, if I had ever been molested, and all sorts of other things. I was smart enough at the time to understand that he was probably programmed to do this, but his questioning became a bit annoying to me, despite his best intentions.

About 90 minutes into the drive, we were in the middle of nowhere, when he pulled into a gas station on the side of the road.

“We’re here!” he said. My sister and I got out of the car and the social worker took us up to a small house that was next to the gas station. We went into the living room and I was introduced to a middle-aged woman who appeared to know the social worker quite well. The two of them started talking about the money that the family would be getting paid for taking care us, and the fact that my mother was sick. The social worker also started asking various questions about a bunch of other kids that were apparently also staying there. Within a few minutes, the social worker was gone and my sister and I were sitting in the living room, not sure what to do.

I noticed that a little doorbell went off in the house every time that a car pulled into the gas station next door. We were located on a desolate country road, and the gas station was not all that busy; however, while my sister and I were sitting there, right after the social worker left, the little doorbell went off, and the woman told us she needed to go “pump gas”. She ordered us not to move.

I looked outside and saw her, standing with a gas nozzle that was hooked up to someone’s gas tank. She started cleaning the windows of the car she was waiting on with a squeegee. It was quite a site. After she had finished, she came inside and began to lecture my sister and I about various procedures we needed to follow.

The first thing that she told us, which was very serious in her mind, was that after 10:00 p.m. each evening, the male foster children (the rest of whom I would soon be meeting) all needed to stay in the basement, and the women needed to stay in another certain part of the house. There were numerous kids staying in the house, and the woman did not want the opposite sexes frolicking together after a certain hour.

• In no uncertain terms she told us that if I came upstairs after 10:00 pm I would be sent away.
• She also told us that we were not allowed to use the phone and that if we used the phone, we would be sent away.
• She told me I was not allowed to touch the cash register in the gas station and that if I touched the cash register, I would be sent away.

I do not remember all of the regulations; however, there were several of them. After the lecture, I was shown where I would be sleeping in the basement, along with several of the other foster kids. However, for the time being, I was put in the room of her son.

There was no television in the house, apparently because we were in too remote of an area to get reception. This was in the early 1980s, before satellite television and so forth. For me, the enjoyment I got started to come from watching birds in the woods, talking to the other kids every chance I got, and taking long walks outside. There was nothing else to do.

Since we were all living in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, I quickly found out what the people there did for fun. Most of the “fun” involved some sort of relationship with animals and fish, and related mostly to killing them. The first night I was there, and every few nights thereafter, the mother and father drove the rest of the foster kids and me to the dump, which was around 25 minutes up the just-about-abandoned road that the gas station was on. It is hard to explain, but going to the dump was something I looked forward to. The parents and all of the kids looked forward to this as well.

On the surface, the reason for going to the dump was that, after the trucks had dumped stuff there during the day, and the area had quieted down, all sorts of bears started to appear, to scavenge in the dump. Our car, along with other cars, would sit around 50 yards from the dumpsite, and we would all watch the bears eat the trash. Thursday was always the finale of the week, because this was the day that the operators of the dumpsite burned all the trash. There were huge plumes of smoke, and the bears were more entertaining, acting much differently than on the other days of the week.

All of the foster kids, including myself, looked forward to going to the dump in the evenings, mostly because it was a time during which everyone got to be together and feel like a family. I realized that there was something about being together in a car doing nothing, watching a bunch of bears, which can really bring people closer together.

The experience of many of the kids in our foster family was also quite sad. When the family took care of a kid that they liked, they would adopt them. The kids who had been adopted were incredibly grateful. They seemed to worship the woman and her husband. The kids who had not been adopted were all either trying to get adopted, and were doing their best to be liked, or they realized that they never would be adopted because the family did not like them; therefore those kids had withdrawn and become angry, it seemed. These kids had given up, in some respects, and even to this day it hurts me to think about them. I often wonder what has happened to them.

The foster family could not afford to take us to movies, or do other sorts of things, so they took us to watch the bears. I will never forget those nights. What struck me the most about this foster family is that they did everything within their power to eke out a living–in the middle of nowhere.

The parents were paid by the State of Michigan for taking in foster kids. I know they did not make much from it, but whatever they did make, they made it go as far as they could. They were, I think, genuinely good people that had some skill with raising children, and they were making use of this skill. They knew they could do well with this.

The gas station on the side of the road sold smoked fish. The fish came from the various rivers that dotted the area. The father had built a few hut type contraptions, and each evening he would come home with fresh fish, and he would build a fire to smoke some of the day’s catch. He sold the fish to cars that drove past, and I think he also sold it to other people who lived in the vicinity. One day I spoke to him about how he caught the fish and he told me that he did not catch them, but Native American Indians living in the area did. He said they used illegal gill netting in order to catch the fish, and that only they could do so, because it was illegal for non-Indians to fish this way.

While the man did not make a lot of money selling the smoked fish, I was still impressed that he had started a little business in the middle of nowhere, peddling his commodity to the few cars that drove past every day. All up and down the highway in both directions he had set up crudely painted signs that said things like “fresh smoked fish – 2 miles”, which tourists and other passersby could easily see.

The couple’s natural son, with whom I shared a room, worked in the gas station with his mother. He helped pump gas and sell fish. He had graduated from high school and was not going to college. There was not really enough work to keep him busy in the gas station, though, because there were only a couple of customers an hour at best, and his mother could actually handle most of the business, in addition to also raising all the foster kids. When I was staying there, with great pride, his parents purchased him a kit and training course to start a new career.

The kit consisted of a very cheap plastic briefcase that had a little iron in it and was filled with all sorts of tubes and so forth, which could be color matched, to repair rips in restaurant booths and chairs. According to the boy, once he learned how to do this he was going to be able to make up to $250 a day, repairing restaurant booths and chairs. While he sat in the gas station waiting on the occasional car, he played around and experimented with his kit. He had so much ambition, and his plan was to drive 90 minutes each day to the nearest cities and start repairing restaurant booths and so forth, when he was done with his training.

He was one of the lucky ones, and the other kids looked upon him with a lot of respect because he was skilled. They believed that he was really going places. The other kids near his age were around 15 to 17, and I have no idea what happened to them. But I knew at the time that they were probably frightened about the world out there. They did not have the same luxury of sitting around a gas station, learning new skills. When they turned 18 years old, they would have to leave the foster home, or whatever foster home they were in, and they would be 100% on their own. They had no one to care for them and no one who loved them. They had no skills and the world out there seemed to be a very frightening place.

While my sister and I were understandably not thrilled about being in the foster home, we also had a sick air of superiority, since we knew that we had people who loved us, and that we would probably be okay. My sister had plenty of other family members in addition to my mother and, even if something bad were to happen, she knew that she did not have anything to seriously worry about.

We had no idea how our mother was doing, and no one told us. After I had been at the foster home for a few weeks, I was called to the telephone one afternoon. It was my mother. She had apparently been extremely sick and was completely out of it, still barely able to speak coherently. She had been airlifted from the Northern Michigan hospital to the University of Michigan hospital. Incredibly, the doctors were never able to identify what was specifically wrong with her. She had started to heal and then ended up having a stroke, somehow.

My mother was understandably not happy that we had been in a foster home for so long. As soon as my father found out and we were allowed to contact him, he drove nonstop the 8+ hours outside of Detroit, where we had been situated, and picked us up. The new school year had already started back in Detroit, and my sister and I had missed some of the first few days.

This particular experience left a very strong impact on me. I was so impressed with the family that I stayed with because I learned that no matter where you are in your life, it is possible to find success, love and happiness. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the family had used their skills and resources in an incredibly effective and efficient way.

• They had love to give, so they brought kids in as foster children and helped raise them. In addition to helping children in need, this also helped them earn a living.
• They lived near Indian reservations and they figured out how to purchase fish cheaply from Indians, and then smoke and sell it to tourists passing by.
• They lived by a road, so they were able to sell a little bit of gas and make a little bit of money from this.
• They were not the sorts of people who went to college, so they made sure their son learned a basic skill to repair rips in restaurant booths and chairs. They took great pride in this.
• They did not live near any form of theaters–did not even get television because they were in such a remote location, so they figured out a way to enjoy themselves by going to watch the bears.

The late summer and early autumn that I spent with the foster family was among the most educational and inspirational times of my life.

• When I got back to school, designer jeans were all the rage, I remember, and all of the kids were pestering their parents to buy them $100 jeans.
• Kids all wanted a game console called “ColecoVision”, and they were hounding their parents for this as well.
• Kids’ parents were driving them to soccer practice, making them lunches to take to school and more.
• Moreover, in the city where I lived, there were tons of businesses selling everything from Italian sherbet, to expensive bikes.
• There were movie theaters every few blocks. My father purchased a new Cadillac, and he was so proud of the leather seats.
• On the weekends one of the dilemmas I used to have was which roller skating rink I would be going to.
• I saw that the kids around me received genuine love from their parents, and the environment gave them an incredible number of opportunities–so numerous that it boggles the mind.

There are such incredible differences in the opportunities and the resources that are available to different people. After my experience in the foster home, I was left with the understanding that there is such an amazing number of opportunities out there, and we absolutely need to make the most of our resources, whatever they may be. I also became a bit angry, I think, at kids who were spoiled and people who are spoiled with all these opportunities, and do not realize it.

Take the job market in a major city, for example. There are so many potential jobs and things you can do, it is really overwhelming. Many people spend their time talking about the opportunities that are not there. An attorney making $200,000 a year may be extremely angry that the only job he can get pays $175,000 a year. An attorney who does not get a good response from the first few employers to whom he applies may get discouraged and simply give up his or her search for a job.

The truth is that there are so many opportunities out there for us; it is mostly all a matter of how you look at the world, and the opportunities you allow yourself to see. No matter how bad things get, there are always opportunities.

I went to see a Michael Moore movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, recently. This movie essentially laments the state of the world, and the complete absence of opportunity out there. However, in this movie there was a scene that really caught my attention. All along, the movie is talking about the high number of foreclosures and so forth that are occurring throughout Detroit, and how bad the real estate market is. The filmmaker then shows a house being boarded up, in order to prevent the occupants from going inside.

I watched this scene and was struck by an interesting idea: The man boarding up the house for the bank had a job. In fact, the movie mentions repeatedly how busy this man is. When most people look at a city like Detroit, they focus on the idea that there are no opportunities–yet here is a man who is busier than ever, boarding up houses. Everything is about the opportunity that you see and take advantage of around you. It is all about how you look at the world.

If you had a house on a road 90 minutes from civilization, could you make a living? This is what the foster family did, and still amazes me, after all these years. It shows that there are countless opportunities everywhere.

There are people in other parts of the world, in our own country and everywhere that simply do not have the same number of opportunities that are available to us. The foster family that I met consisted of some very happy people, but what impressed me the most about them was that they knew how to take advantage of the few opportunities that were around then–no matter how small these opportunities were. They used all of their skills and all of their resources to make the absolute most of where they lived and of whatever opportunities were around them.

There are also the matters of connection and love, and feeling close to other people. Many of the foster children I met did not have any love in their lives, or anyone who cared about them. They longed for some sort of human connection but did not get it. They had no one. The less love these kids had, and the fewer people around them who cared, the worse off they were. The love others have towards us, and our connection to others is also a huge resource. You should feel grateful whenever you have this. There is so much that you have, which others do not. You should acknowledge and appreciate all the opportunities and resources available to you.

Strive to make the most of every opportunity that exists out there for you. There are plenty of opportunities everywhere. Be grateful for this. Be grateful for where you live. Be grateful for the people who care about you. Be grateful for your life.

Trust Your Intuition in Your Career and Life

What You Will Learn Each day people get intuitions about various things – most of the time they are correct. Intuitions are incredibly powerful, but most people simply ignore them. Your subconscious mind is making all sorts of calculations, observations, and conclusions and picks up things from the surroundings. Intuition is something you need to connect with at all times in your life – listen to it and follow it.

When I was around 11 years old, a couple of friends of mine, Charlie and Dave, had found a use for an amazing garden of sculptured bushes that was behind Charlie’s house. I had never understood or appreciated how exciting a garden could really be.

Charlie’s dad was a very successful salesman of something or another, and he and his family lived in a giant corner house on a street called Sunningdale, in Grosse Pointe Woods, a nice suburb of Detroit. Charlie was about the richest kid in our elementary school class, and he was also a really nice guy. Charlie’s backyard had a giant garden of all sorts of topiaries and so forth. It must have been an acre in size; it alone was larger than the lots on which most of the houses around us were situated.

In contrast, Dave was one of the poorer kids in our class, and he was always getting in trouble. He had always been an incredible athlete and a very fast runner. However, when I saw him several years later, he was no longer playing sports. When I asked him about it, a classmate standing next to him spoke up and said “Are you kidding, he’s on the weed team!”

David had had all kinds of problems growing up, and his mother had been married several times. He had been in a juvenile detention center at one point and was not a good kid. He had moved to Detroit from Chicago.

I sat between David and Charlie in my fifth grade class. One day they started an inside joke in class.

“Grade A!” David would say.

“Yep. Nothing but Grade A,” Charlie would say back.

This went on all morning in class, and I had absolutely no idea what these guys were talking about, but I was quite curious. It was very strange to me that they kept going back and forth like this. At recess and lunch I pushed them to tell me what Grade A meant, but they refused. For the next couple of days they kept stating Grade A, and told me that they could not tell me what it meant because if they did they would get in trouble.

Finally, one day Charlie decided to let me in on the secret. “Come over to my house at 7:30 tonight and meet me in back, in the bush garden, and I will tell you what ‘Grade A’ means. You are going to need to bring $3.00 though.”

Charlie’s enormous house was a decent bike ride from my neighborhood. Something inside of me told me that I should not go over to Charlie’s, but I decided to go anyway. I am not sure what it was, but I was a little scared, and my intuition told me that something bad was going to happen. What frightened me was not just meeting in some bush garden outside in the evening, or the words Grade A, and the fact that they signified trouble, but the fact that Dave was involved. I knew if he was involved it was likely to not be good.

It was cold that evening and I arrived at the massive topiary collection at the appointed time. It is hard to know exactly how many ten-foot-high bushes there were, all carved and organized in the backyard–but it was quite a site. I stood next to a particularly menacing bush for some time, and then Charlie came out, wearing earmuffs and fancy wool gloves. Charlie was a country club kid, who wore things like earmuffs when the other kids wore dime store hats.

“David should be here in a few minutes,” Charlie said. “He left for the grocery store around 15 minutes ago and called me before he left. Did you bring your three dollars?”

“Of course. I have the three dollars right here.”

“Ok. Give it to Dave when he gets here.”

A few minutes later Dave pulled up on his crappy bike. He was holding on to the handlebars with only one hand. He had a giant brown paper grocery bag, which he was supporting with his other hand.

“Excellent!” Charlie exclaimed as Dave pulled up.

“Nothing but Grade A!” Dave responded.

Dave put down the bag on a curb and then, for reasons I did not understand, he went and hid his bike across the street in a neighbor’s yard. Charlie grabbed the bag and proceeded to unload several cartons of eggs. He handed me three cartons. Stamped on the packaging in giant letters, of course, were the words “Grade A”.

I quickly realized that we are about to start throwing eggs at passing cars, and it looked like it was going to be a lot of fun. I actually got pretty excited about the prospect of doing this. Given the massive amount of bushes, I realized that it would be next to impossible for anyone to catch us after throwing the eggs, because we could disappear into the bushes so quickly and easily.

Since they had been doing this for some time, Charlie and Dave had a ritual of sorts. Dave would watch for the cars and then hit them in the side, while Charlie would aim for the windshield. The cars would typically stop after getting hit. Then the owner would get out and look around, and then drive off. A few people tried to chase us, but the topiary collection was so extensive that we were able to hide behind one of 100+ giant bushes, and when people ran in there they would typically give up looking for us after a few minutes.

After around 30 minutes of this foolishness, it was dark outside, and we were down to our last few eggs. We saw a car coming down the street extremely fast, with its lights off, and it seemed peculiar, to say the least. The car must have been moving at least 60 miles an hour, and we were on a 25 mile-per-hour speed limit street. The vehicle was moving so fast that we certainly did not think we would be able to hit it–but we were all in position. The car approached rapidly and then, all of sudden, screeched to a halt directly in front of us. The door of the car opened and we ran into the bushes. Whatever was going on did not seem good.

We all went in separate directions, and as I took my hiding space I saw a man climbing along the ground with a flashlight, moving very rapidly. I realized that, because he was crawling, he could see our feet and where we were hiding as he got closer and closer to us. It was one of the most terrifying episodes of my life. As we did a military crawl through the bushes the man spotted us one by one, yelling, “freeze” every time he saw us.

He was a policeman.

Within minutes he had put us in the back of a police car and, one by one, he proceeded to drop us off at our homes and give our parents serious lectures about how we had frightened people by throwing eggs at their cars.

“The eggs are frozen on their paint and some of the people may need to have their cars repainted!” he told us.

I actually felt pretty sorry for Dave when we got to his house. He did not seem at all upset about being caught by the police because he had apparently been through it so many times before.

“Just chill out,” he told us. “This cop will just take us home and that’s it.”

Dave’s mom and current stepfather were not home when we got to his little house. His brother came outside holding one of Dave’s many little brothers and sisters. This one was around 2 years old. The policeman lectured the 14-year- old brother about Dave, then Dave went inside and that was it.

I was very upset with myself after that episode, because it was no fun getting brought home by the police. My mother was extremely upset with me and, if I remember correctly, I was grounded for a few weeks for this episode. I also felt after this that I could not associate with Dave or Charlie ever again. I stopped speaking with them and their friends and, consequently, was a bit of a loner for the rest of my time in elementary school. I probably overreacted to what had happened, because I had never been in such serious trouble before. Getting brought home by the police left an indelible impression on me that took me years to shake. While this episode may not seem that significant in the grand scheme of things, for better or for worse, it made me more guarded and afraid to have fun doing stupid things throughout the rest of my life.

What was most upsetting to be about all of this was that I knew I should have listened to the voice inside of my head that had told me not to go over there that night. Intuitively, I just knew that something was very wrong, and that I was going to get into serious trouble.

Each day we have intuitions about various things. Many of these intuitions are about various areas in which we want to improve, or about things we want to avoid. These areas could be our finances, our relationships, or our careers. In most cases these little pieces of intuition are right. By trusting and following our intuition each of us can generally avoid bad things.

There are many famous episodes of intuition throughout history:

• Halley’s comet was seen the day Mark Twain was born. He predicted that on the day he died Halley’s comet would also be seen, and it was. Twain had also had a dream that his brother would die, and he pictured him being placed in a casket in a certain way. Shortly thereafter, his brother was killed in an explosion. When he reached the funeral, Twain’s brother was in the casket the same way he had been in Twain’s dream.
• Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Ceaser, dreamed the night before Caesar was killed that he would be stabbed by a friend the next day. She warned him not to go meet his friend.
• Abraham Lincoln had a dream of his death 10 days before he died.He dreamed that he had been assassinated, and that his body lay in the East Wing of the White House–just as it was after Lincoln’s assassination.
• Adolph Hitler dreamed that his trench would be struck by a shell. His dream caused him to quickly jump out of his trench right before a shell hit, killing everyone inside.
• Nostradamus correctly predicted the day he would die, and also the day that his casket would be opened.

In addition to these episodes, there have been numerous cases of airline passengers refusing to fly on planes when they get to the gate, due to a premonition, or intuition telling them that something bad is going to happen. Oftentimes the airplanes end up, in fact, crashing.

Every single one of us has strong intuitions about this and about that throughout the average day. We get an intuition not to do something, to do something, or to change something. These intuitions are incredibly powerful, but most people simply ignore them and go about their business, doing this or that.

I believe that your intuition is something you need to connect with at all times in your life. The reason I think it is so important is that our subconscious mind is always at work, even when we may not realize it. Our subconscious mind is making all sorts of calculations, observations, conclusions and so forth about this or that, and is picking up all sorts of things in our surroundings, which we might not otherwise be aware of.

Every single one of us knows our weaknesses and what is holding us back. It is just that not everyone is willing to acknowledge these weaknesses and to improve upon them. Knowledge of our weaknesses, of what we should and should not do, comes to us through intuition. You need to listen to your intuition and follow it.

The people I have known to be truly successful, generally listen to that intuition, and when it seems right they follow it. Listening to our intuition is not easy and it often takes effort; however, when you listen to that intuition, you will take actions in your career and in your life that are to your benefit. Anyone can rise higher and become the person they want to become. All they need to do is pay the price–which is usually a determined and focused effort. Each success, or other benefit that we seek out of life, will only come to us if we pay the price. Acting on our intuition often requires us to pay a price; however, acting contradictory to our intuition is often far more dangerous than doing nothing at all.

Most people do not realize the importance of listening to their intuition and, therefore, these people remain in the same place and never move forward. Whether it is their intuition about their career and a change they need to make, their intuition about a relationship, or an intuition about something even more important.

I remember once meeting a very beautiful girl who I became involved with a short time later. I was involved with her for several years. After knowing her for around 15 minutes, I thought to myself: “This woman will cheat and cheat again on any man she is ever involved with.” This was just something I knew and understood instinctively. I had never had this thought about someone like this before, but it was just something I sensed. I have no idea what it was that made me figure this out. I completely forgot about this major intuition and went full steam ahead with the relationship.

I ended up falling in love with the woman and, at one point, I proposed to her. On the night I proposed to her and she accepted, we had gone out for dinner. When we returned from dinner, she started crying. I asked her what was wrong.

“I have been seeing someone else behind your back!” she told me.

This was one of the most upsetting and devastating moments of my life. I was so upset that I actually punched a hole in a wall and almost broke my knuckles. This announcement had come out of nowhere, and apparently her affair had been going on for months without me realizing it. It took me some time, but I eventually got over it and forgave her.

Then it happened again.

Then it happened again.

Then it finally ended our relationship forever.

She had done the same thing before with other men, and I am sure she continued with the same pattern of behavior. It was just her nature, and I picked up on it within moments of first meeting her. That relationship was something that I should have avoided. Had I followed my intuition, I would not have spent a good portion of my life as unhappy and confused as I was during my time with this woman. Not following our intuition can literally ruin our life.

Intuition has also been incredibly good to me. Several years ago, I had been practicing law with a large law firm and no longer wanted to. I decided I would be much better off if I formed my own law practice. Instead of diving head first into my own law practice, my law firm suggested that, since I was so unhappy in their law firm, I should talk with recruiters to see if I might be happier in another law firm–before starting my own practice. This is exactly what I did. By the time I left my law firm I had many clients and more than enough work to keep me busy. Looking at what recruiters did, however, I realized that I would be far better off doing recruiting work than practicing law. It felt more natural to me, and I understood instinctively what the job entailed.

I ended up turning down several law firm job offers, and gave away all of my legal cases. To the astonishment of everyone who knew me, I started legal recruiting. I loved it, did very well at it, and was incredibly happy. The decision to become a legal recruiter changed my life and enabled me to start a business in the career industry–which I love. None of this would have happened had I not followed my intuition.

• You may have intuition about friends. You may believe that certain people are good and that you could benefit from associating with them. You may believe that other people are bad, and that associating with them could hurt you. In most cases, your intuition will prove correct.
• You may sense that you would be good at a certain job. You may sense that you will be bad at a certain job. In these cases, your intuition will also usually be right.

When you trust your intuition in your career and life, you will always come out far more ahead than if you do not.

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