“The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires; and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.” ~James Allen, As A Man Thinketh.
Thoughts create feelings, and your feelings shape your circumstances.
Fear is natural, but conquerable. The feeling of fear can be dismissed.
Do you fear bills? What if I were to tell you that when you put too much emotional energy into that specific fear, you will attract more bills? They might come in the form of car repairs, medical bills, or increased debt… but no matter what the form, they will be drawn to you.
Do you love peaceful family time? Do you love that more than you fear stress? Which of the two circumstances do you experience more?
As we learn the laws that govern prosperity, and live by them, we come to recognize just how much God’s hand is in everything around us. God is a god of order; this is an orderly universe. Outcomes and situations that seem sometimes so random or difficult to predict, are not so random and difficult to predict after all. If we learn the laws and live by them, we can expect our lives to take dramatic leaps forward towards greater prosperity.
“The Young and the Thoughtless!” …It Wasn’t the Dream
If you missed the first two parts of this new series, start here.
Here I present you with Part 3 of the ongoing series, “The Young and the Thoughtless.”
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DISCLAIMER: Before continuing, I would like to make a note. At this point in our story, Trevan and I had joined a network marketing program. We felt that if we could do what the leaders had done, we could enjoy the lifestyle they lived: savoring a passive income, early retirement, and lots of time with family.
As I share our story, please be aware and bear in mind that we are NEITHER discouraging NOR promoting any particular network marketing program.
We gained much from the training that we received; we learned many valuable life principles and strengthened our interpersonal skills. We count our experiences with the program as positive ones. However, we are no longer involved with the program… though in this disclaimer, we mean to note that our experiences with the program were instrumental and did, indirectly, lead us to the information I now share through my website.
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From the last segment you read:
“…We came home from the conference with a lighter attitude toward our struggles, and a firm resolve to never miss another opportunity for personal growth. The facts didn’t change, our income hadn’t changed either, but our outlook had definitely been altered. And that was only the beginning! To see how quickly we could regress, be sure to watch future posts for the next installments of “The Young and the Thoughtless.”
Coming home from that first weekend conference, Trevan and I were firmly determined to rapidly build our business. By day, we worked from home for the mentally handicapped and went to school part time. By night, we were out promoting our business, talking with as many people as we could. Right up until the day I went into labor I was presenting for prospective clients; in fact, my first contractions began during one such presentation.
Every month we attended a seminar for further tips and motivation. Every month we came home re-committed to our success.
After my first son was born, I quit working. We had decided long before that I would stay home with children once they started arriving, and though we were financially strapped even before I had quit, my being a stay-at-home mother felt like the right decision for us. Firmly hanging all of our hopes on the support of our business leaders and the monthly seminars, and after a year of living life this way, going further, and deeper, into debt… my husband was laid off. All at once, it seemed there was no other choice but to put our son into daycare so that I could find some work through a temp agency and help keep us afloat.
I remember dropping him off in the dark of the morning and picking him up, again, in the dark of the evening. It all seemed to reflect the darkness of our situation… and the despair that I felt inside. Though Trevan did eventually find work at a garage and was also then re-hired at the gun-safe company. Meanwhile, I found permanent part-time work at a junior high school, teaching math.
Through all of this, we continued to work on our business with what little spare time we had. We had been told that we should be able to create an income of $2,000/month if we would consistently give 15 presentations a month. We felt awfully busy, but in reality, our productivity was awfully low. For some reason, we just couldn’t, or didn’t, maintain the kind of pace we were told was necessary. At only 4 or 5 presentations a month, we blamed our lack of success on our inability to achieve more.
We determined that if perhaps we could just get excited enough that we’d be out doing presentations all the time! We remembered other things we had been excited about and accomplished in the past… and remembered that we hadn’t needed to psyche ourselves out to get the job done. We didn’t have to force ourselves to do anything; when we were in love with the dream, we naturally did everything it took to make it happen!
Think with me for a moment of your own experience, specifically the experience of courting your spouse, if you are married…
If you were like me, you didn’t have to attend a monthly seminar to learn how to make time for your love interest, or to learn how to keep them in your thoughts. You thought about them constantly! You slept less if it meant you could spend time together. You were constantly thinking of things you could do to nurture the growing relationship. You were happy and excited about being with him or her… and joyful at the prospect of the relationship possibly becoming permanent!
Well, how on earth do you develop that kind of passion, attention, and enthusiasm for a business idea? or for a lifestyle that you don’t already have or know anything about?
This was our dilemma. (Can you relate?)
After three years of business (busy-ness, more accurately stated), I wrote the following in my journal.
June 14, 1995
I know that all it would take is for us both to get excited -naturally- the way we have been about other things. That’s why we’ve been told to get a dream -a vivid one- else all the work is in vain. But it’s been 3 years, and we still haven’t found whatever it would be to affect us the way our dreams of the past have. I’m sick and tired of trying to force a dream! Can we please be given a dream strong enough to make us effective? Something that will make us excited anytime we think about it? Something we can believe in consistently! Something right for us… Something that inspires us to go with little sleep and motivates us to become better people… We’ve tried to fake it and force it for so long.
I prayed hard for a dream… and by the end of another weekend seminar, I had developed one to make a large sum of money and donate it to the Primary Children’s Medical Center where my second son had recently undergone heart surgery at 4 days old. The thought burned within me, and I knew that this was a powerful and worthy desire. One month later I wrote:
July 23, 1995
Why am I so weak. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for me to stay committed to a principle. I still believe in my goal, but I’ve lost some belief in my ability to change my habits permanently. I’m happy in my soul when I set goals and accomplish them, but I’m so fallible. I do good for a short time and then just fall deeper and harder. I’m discouraged. I try not to think about my role in falling… it’s too easy to get depressed when I do. I want to excel…
As for the basic schedule I outlined a few pages ago? Well, that lasted a week. Near the end of the week I had already forgotten why I thought it would be such a good idea. As for my dream to give the hospital a bunch of money–where is that dream’s power now? Why don’t I feel as strong about it now? The motivation has to be bigger than the obstacle… why do my puny obstacles seem so big? I used to take challenges and stay so focused on them until they were conquered. What drove me? Why do I feel so average now?
If only I knew then what I know now about the seven laws of prosperity. I had an idea of what I needed but didn’t know how to get it–the vision, the dream, the motivation. All I lacked was knowledge, but it took another five years before I gained that knowledge. I learned that for me, at least, I needed to know better how the universe operates…so that when I lost faith in myself, I could depend and anchor myself on universal laws.
I am not constant, but the laws are. I needed something outside of myself to rely on.
Yes, I relied on God, but what does that mean if I don’t understand the laws by which He operates? If I don’t understand all of His laws, then I might find myself saying,
“Oh well, I guess God didn’t want me to prosper anyway.”
Once I decided that I was at the bottom with discouragement, and that I had nowhere else to go but up, things began to change that would lead us towards eventual relief. Changes were incremental, and the blessings were disguised. Things actually seemed to get worse. But in reality, it was all a great part of our progression towards deliverance.
Stay “tuned” for our next segment of “The Young and The Thoughtless” to find out how something far seemingly worse could actually be the best thing that could have happened to us!
The lessons minus the story, which took us 8 years to learn, are available in the book Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters. I hope you can appreciate how inexpensive this information is. The cost of our “tuition” was 8 years and somewhere around $40,000 in debt, not to mention income lost during that time that we might have enjoyed, had we learned these principles sooner. Save yourself time and money, and learn the lesson now!
“THERE IS A SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches, and once these laws are learned and obeyed by anyone, that person will get rich with mathematical certainty.” ~Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich.
If you are ready for a landmark, life-changing program… and if you have felt familiarity in all that you have read so far and are ready to finally make the difference in your own life… if in your hunger for truth and understanding you have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on education and are willing to spend just a little more for some real applicable wisdom, then I highly recommend that you check out the Family Time & Money Freedom program (our Mindset Mastery course). For more information, visit ProsperTheFamily.com.
Click the navigation link below to enjoy the next Episode of “The Young and The Thoughtless”…
- Rare Faith What we do to ourselves - April 19, 2024
- Rare Faith Waiting for the other shoe to drop - April 15, 2024
- Waiting for the other shoe to drop - April 12, 2024
