The Road to Riches is Paved by Your Mind

America is truly the golden land of opportunity. For over two centuries, men and women have been immigrating to this great land seeking to make names for themselves. American history is full of stories about those whom, through hard work and patience, paved their own way from rags to riches.

You and I both know that you're looking for the same thing. Everyone wants to make money. It's desirable to have the means to both look after yourself and your loved ones. Unfortunately, not everyone is born with the knowledge necessary to get ahead in life. That's where I come in, along with this blog.

I'm here to help you. But I can’t promise you this success. The fruits of prosperity never come in an instant. The labor put forth to produce those fruits is entirely in your own hands. All I can do is motivate you with my own knowledge and experience and perhaps give you some of the great tips that have led to my own personal success.

Creating wealth is much like constructing a building. There has to be a basic structure but what's primarily important is the foundation that you lay. The foundation to building wealth is the development of your own personal outlook on the world around you.

I’m sure you've heard that before from other motivational writers and speakers. It's very true. The only limit upon the wealth you can earn lies within what you choose to believe about the reality around you.

You must decide at the outset the answer to a question that is purely a matter of choice. Which do we live in -- a Malthusian world of limited wealth or a world of abundant prosperity?

I wouldn't dare answer that question for you. I've got my own answer to that question which defines my own reality, but it'd simply be out of place for me to define your paradigm for you. All I'll say is that if wealth is limited and money making opportunities are both risky and few and far between, then your ability to prosper and make your fortune is severely hampered. If you believe in a world of limited wealth, I can't help you. That wealth is obviously spoken for. I guess some of us just lucked out in the wealth game and the rest are doomed to scraping together their existence from our table scraps.

In such a scenario, there just isn’t much material with which to build your foundation and you might be better off sticking to your boring 9 - 5 job, whatever it may be. There is no shame in that.

If, however, you are willing to live in a reality of ample prosperity, where opportunities exist wherever you are willing to make them, then there is hope! The next step for you is a very big one. It'll sound very hokey, but it's quite necessary for a wide variety of reasons.

Just do it and don’t ask questions… don’t even entertain questions for a second.

Close your eyes and imagine the wealth you desire. Imagine yourself living in the house of your dreams, sitting on the couch of your dreams watching TV on the big plasma TV screen of your dreams. Your son or daughter calls - they need you to pick them up from school. You walk out to your garage, in which sits the car of your dreams. You pull out into the driveway, stopping for a second to appreciate your beautiful yard… as you pull out into the road, the mechanical gate shuts behind you.

You get the idea.

You have to imagine the wealth you desire, but that’s only the first half of this step. The second half is that you must force yourself to realize that this wealth already belongs to you! It's yours, even as you read this blog entry! The trick is that you must accept that all you have imagined really belongs to you. It might not be in your possession right at this very minute, but you have to open your eyes and see that it's truly yours!

God WANTS for you to have your hearts desire. The catch, however, is that it can't simply drop these things in your lap. Due to some hidden clause in the Contract of Life, you have to be both willing and able to receive what God wants to give you. I’m not going to get into details, but it’s not as simple as God inspiring some wealthy stranger to write you a check for several million at random… the intricacies of THAT occurring are far too complex.

Instead, what's required is that you help things along. Your goal, in making wealth, is to find ways to enable God to funnel your wealth to you. This isn’t about getting rich - it’s about enabling the world to give you that which is rightfully yours.

If you take that to heart, this blog will certainly be an aid to you in your journey. If it is simply beyond the bounds of what you are willing to accept as your reality, however, then perhaps that reality is just not for you.

Determine Your Value in Life

In one of my posts yesterday I spoke about the importance of creating wealth within your inner world as a prerequisite for manifesting wealth in the world around you. I'd like to expand upon the importance of that concept for you today.

We spend much of our lives being programmed by the society around us. Society programs us to believe that we amount to very little and that we're worth what it decides to give us. That doesn't tend to be very much. We are further trained to believe that there isn't much we can do to rectify this. We just have to accept it as our lot in life. When we have no job, we beg for what we can get and we eagerly accept whatever they throw our way to prove our worth.

Yesterday I spoke of the principle of "As Within, So Without." The thing about principles such as this is that, depending on the circumstances, the inverse can be true instead. If you don't take the time to form your inner world and develop a true sense of your own will, the principle at play within your life will be "As Without, So Within." You can see the effects of this everywhere you look. People are constantly defined by the circumstances of the world around them. It forms their sense of whom they are. Most insidiously, it forms them in such a way that they're powerless. The society around them defines the value of their life and they merely accept it, along with whatever price tag comes attached.

When you take the time to change your thinking and to shape your inner world you fundamentally change this dynamic. How much would you like to be making right now? Choose a number, higher than your current salary. Keep it realistic so that your mind will have no trouble accepting it. Congratulations, you've just changed your value! Now justify it. Sit down and list all of the reasons as to why you're worth this new value. It might be hard at first but whatever you do don't talk yourself out of believing it. List your education, your concrete accomplishments, and your various proven talents. Keep it worded in positive language -- write about what you are and not about what you're not. Make every statement an "I" statement. "I graduated from high school at the top of my class." "I have a doctorate in chemical engineering." "I was responsible for designing the new office mailing system that improved efficiency by 10% last year." Include even the small accomplishments that you don't think are worth much on their own -- taken together, they'll turn out to be substantial! At the top of this list, write, "I am worth $[insert your new value here]."

Now keep this list in a safe place where you'll see it every day. Read it out loud, once when you get up and once when you go to bed, every day. Read it more than once if you have the time. Embed the new amount and the reasons for the new amount deep within in your head.

When it comes time to ask for a raise or to negotiate a salary for a new job, keep this number that you have set in mind and do not settle for anything less. Make sure to do your homework before going in. Look at your list and determine the ways in which the qualities you listed apply to the job in question. "I graduated from high school at the top of my class" might not mean much twenty years after the fact, but it does translate into you being a motivated hard-worker who can meet deadlines and memorize loads of useless information! Tailor your list beforehand and, when you're asked to justify your new value to your employer or potential employer, name off the items. Don't beg for the new amount -- sell yourself like a polished marketer. Explain the reasons as to why you've assigned this particular value to your services. Convince your employer that this is really what you're worth.

If you want to be in the driver's seat of your life, it all starts in your head. Set a value in your head. Justify that new value with the facts. Assert that value in the world around you so that it is set in the heads of others. Look for ways to offer the service of your talents when opportunities arise, both around work and outside of work. When you start to think and act in this manner you'll find yourself on a road towards greater success than you had previously imagined.

The Keys to Financial Success: PT 2

In Part One I spoke about the dangers of liberalism and the dangerous effects that secularist materialism will inevitably have on your potential for prosperity if you make the mistake of buying into it. Liberals can be wealthy, but it's the type of wealth one earns by taking advantage of others because one believes no one is watching from above. Their game is all about gaining and holding power in what they believe to be a godless world. They do their best to force the rest of us to live by their rules.

True wealth comes as a result of understanding that there's a God out there who wants our happiness and prosperity and that our thoughts have a powerful influence over the world around us. The world is a Thought -- a Thought of God in which he has made us a part. He created us in His image and has allowed our thoughts to take part in His Thought. Through constant affirmation and proper patterns of thought, we open up opportunities for great success.

This is not to say, of course, that we get rich just by wishing for it. I wish to make that perfectly clear. Thinking otherwise is a fatal blunder which leads to certain failure. Proper thought leads to the opening of doorways but it's up to you to actually step forward and walk through them. Proper thought shapes the course of events in such ways that they will work in our favor if we apply proper and continual action. It sets off chain reactions in our minds that lead to ideas that will be worth good money. Most importantly, proper thought shapes and reinforces a personal will that is willing to walk through fire and ice to attain its goals.

Proper Thought is critical because it's the foundation for properly focused intense action. God rarely just hands us what we want. He does, however, provide us with the tools to obtain it if we are sincere enough in our desire. He guides us along every step of the way. This's the key to success. The only means to achieve a Communion between your thoughts and the Thoughts of God is through vital action. Vital action is sacramental in every way.

Secularist naysayers, with their purely materialistic understanding of the world, will claim that it was only the action that mattered all along. They'll claim that "thinking" and "will" had very little to do with any of it. This, of course, is coming from a group of people who tend to be very liberal and believe that significant action can only be accomplished at the direction of the government. They do not believe that individuals are capable of significant action in the first place. Yet, despite their ballyhooed attempts to argue the contrary, great men have existed and have gone one to do great things all on their own. They were able to do so because of the force of their thoughts, which in turn shaped their subconscious reality and their personal wills. This enabled them to carry forth with actions which most liberals would decry as impossible. One need only look to the grand successes of our American Founding Fathers to know the truth of what I'm saying.

If you want financial success, first learn proper thought. The thought exercises mentioned in The Master Key System (referenced in my last post) are a good starting point if you want to develop this skill. Just as importantly, however, you must become a doer -- a person of action who thinks positively and never puts off until tomorrow what he or she can do right now.