Beyond Abundance To Meaningful Living

Epiphanies Galore

I had an epiphany today, on a Sunday, in church–but it was not a religious epiphany. Rather, it was a secular, consciousness epiphany, inspired by a quote from Reverend Sonya Milton, the minister at Unity San Francisco.  It was about what Unity is about:

Practical spiritual teachings that empower abundant and meaningful living.

A nice turn of phrase, but what hit me right between the eyes was the juxtaposition of “abundant” and “meaningful”. Though this concept is certainly not new, and I even talk in Moneylove about one reason people work in addition to money is to leave a thumbprint on the world, which I guess is a pretty good definition of a meaningful life. But something about the simple placement of these two words in this short phrase made me look at this idea with a sharper focus. Abundant and meaningful. To underline that abundant is not enough, not complete.

All along I’ve been saying that prosperity is about more than a lot of money. But this underscored it for me, and made me think. It coincides with some realizations that have come up in recent coaching sessions. A lot of my clients already have money coming in doing the work they love doing, but they are looking for a higher purpose than merely exchanging their ideas or their time for money. And “A meaningful life” is really what it’s all about, isn’t it? At the end of it all, do you want that marble slab to read “Here lies someone who made a lot of money.” or: “Here lies someone who had a meaningful life, who left a thumbprint on the world?”

The Rich Ones We Remember

When someone asks you to name a very rich person past or present, the names that usually come up are people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson. All of these led or are leading meaningful lives as well as abundant ones. So it looks like the exclamation we should all be making instead of “Show me the money!” is “Show me the money and the meaning!”

Epiphany In A Single Sentence

Many of the epiphanies I’ve had in life were triggered by a single sentence or phrase, and I find that is often true for others. And sometimes very simple statements. The Merriam-Webster definition of the non-religious type of epiphany is:

A usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through something usually simple and striking; an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.

And sometimes the triggering mechanism can be an event, but it often is a sentence or phrase for me. I’ve often mentioned the simple comment from Leonard Orr back in the 1970s that got me into the whole area of prosperity consciousness, in which he just said that our attitudes about money itself dictated how much money we would produce. How simple can you get? But to my knowledge, while a lot of people talked about positive attitudes producing wealth, no one before Leonard specifically said that how you thought about actual cash affected your financial result. That was an epiphany for me, and led to a most lucrative and meaningful career.

Rivers Of Money, Honey!

The Reverend Ike as Inspiration/Catalyst

The title of this piece was a comment I heard the late Reverend Ike make at his church in Harlem back in the 1980s (who ever imagined that Orwell’s 1984 would become a period piece?). He was using Moneylove as the text in a prosperity course he was teaching, and invited me to sit in on the final session. One of his parishioners had done quite well, moving from welfare to her own business manufacturing little fashion booties for women to wear. He had suggested that she was ready to move on to the next level of financial success, and to do this she should start a night shift at her little factory. She stood up in the class of about fifty students, placed her hands on her hips, and said, “Now why, just as I’m beginning to enjoy the fruits of my labors, would I want to take on even more work, and in the dark yet?”  Ike looked at her for a long moment and then said, “Rivers of money, honey, rivers of money.” And he then went on to talk about how she would be able to employ more members of her community, and be using a factory that was lying idle almost two-thirds of every working day.

But that term, “Rivers of money,” stuck with me.  And eventually led me to these thoughts and comments. Reverend Ike would probably smile at the thought he was still inspiring me.

Have You Ever Been Described As “Affluent?”

We sometimes hear reports on the “affluent segment of society.” Do you include yourself in this category? I think it’s important you start doing so.  One of the great things about the word Affluent, or Affluence, is that it conjures up images of flowing water.  One early definition of the word was “running water”, and one of the definitions cited today is “flowing freely: an affluent fountain.” So it fits in perfectly with the concept of “Rivers of Money, Honey.”  An affluent person has an abundance of wealth, property, or other material goods. Another definition connected with running water sources is “teeming”–other than “Give me your teeming masses,” we don’t see that used very much anymore. And of course, thanks to Google, I hereby correct myself. I don’t know why I’ve thought that inscription on the Statue of Liberty said, “Give me your teeming masses…” but it actually says:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. …

And “teeming shore” in this Emma Lazarus poem, The New Colossus, refers to a shore filled to overflowing with people. It’s often how “teeming” was used, defined as “abounding or swarming with something.” And there’s no reason we can’t imagine our lives teeming with prosperity.

Perhaps The Main Point Of All This….

What is Jerry going on about, you might ask. Here it comes, as simply stated as possible. I truly believe that we attract more prosperity into our lives, the more frames of reference we use to describe money and wealth. The more words we can find, ideally ones that evoke visual imagery or emotional response, the more we are feeding our subsconscious minds with the building blocks of attraction. Like any laws, the Law of Attraction doesn’t just happen, it has to be written first.

So I like “affluent” as one of the lively, vibrant words, and now equate it in my own mind with rivers of money. Flowing freely. Flowing sources of water, rivers of cash, an ocean of money pouring in. I don’t think it’s an accident that years of scientific research into subliminal programming has come up with the conclusion that the best masking sound for those messages playing directly to the subconscious mind is the sound of flowing water.

Susannah Lippman, the President of Alphasonics, producers of the most highly rated and respected subliminal programs in the field, uses a rushing mountain stream.

www.Alphasonics.com

I remember how calming, nurturing, and energizing it was for me and my girlfriend to park by a rushing mountain stream for several days in our motorhome at the Big Sur campground. Even my cat seemed to have a little more pep in his aging step. Flowing water connotes energy, and money is energy, after all. So I suggest you start thinking of yourself as affluent (or even superaffluent, if you are willing to dream really big), as someone who has rivers of money flowing. You are a person who has lots of liquid assets.

http://www.JerryGillies.net

Jerry

An Embarrassment of Riches

Every Windfall Creates New Challenges

I’m really enjoying the process of my Moneylove Club subscribers asking me one question a month that I get to personally answer. Their questions are amazingly articulate and interesting and require lots of thought on my part. In fact, I have already jotted some ideas down inspired by these questions that I will use in future monthly audios or in the revised and annotated edition of Moneylove–which I hope to have out by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2011.

So, if someone offered me that same service, this would be my question. “How can I keep this same personal and individualized attention going when I get way past 100 subscribers?”

I’ve said all along that the charter subscribers will be grandfathered in to receive that question-asking privilege for the life of their subscription. But once it reaches a certain point, it will be impossible for me to continue offering this. I arbitrarily picked the figure of 100. This isn’t a ploy to get people to sign up early, but merely a recognition of simple facts. Even answering 100 questions a month is a stretch, but a challenge I will accept. Right now, when we are just starting out, it is a fun adventure. I don’t ever want to get it to be a burden. But, as we approach my first major goal of 1000 members, perhaps as soon as one year from now, that kind of personal service will be impossible. I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions on what I can then do to maintain some sort of connection with those coming into the club at that time.

Of course, I could do what some colleagues do. Ask everyone to submit questions, but only pick a few to answer, perhaps publishing those. I could even have some of the members record their questions and then answer them right on the monthly audios, maybe a five minute section of each program. But I am open to other approaches.

The necessity of planning for this is brought about by the fact that after a very limited marketing effort, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of people who become aware of The Moneylove Club, many of whom may have read the original book or listened to the Nightingale-Conant tapes and are ready for  more. This huge increase in my audience is guaranteed by a couple of upcoming events. For one thing, my friend, student and mentor, Jack Canfield, will be publishing the following in his Success Principles newsletter, which goes to several hundred thousand subscribers:

“Jerry Gillies and I have traded ideas for years, he is one of the pioneers of prosperity thinking and his book, Moneylove, has shown thousands of people how to create prosperity and achieve their dreams of financial independence. His ideas are applicable to everyone, his strategies are proven, and he’s giving a lot of very valuable information away free at www.MoneyloveBlog.com

If you go to that site, you can also download a free copy of Jerry’s new 39 page e-book, TheMoneylove Manifesto. This is packed with enough action steps to change anyone’s financial success for the better. He also tells his enthralling story, about how he went from being one of the most highly regarded motivational speakers in the world to becoming #K46460 at Folsom State Prison. It’s an amazing story, he’s an amazing guy, and I think you’ll get a lot out of his blog.”

You can read more about this connection in my personal blog, in a post called Jack Canfield Prospers Me at http://www.JerryGillies.net

Reaching another large membership is the widely respected newsletter at: http://www.finerminds.com and I will have an article appearing there soon. And other wide distribution exposure is planned, so that if even a small percentage of the readers respond, my numbers should grow exponentially. And thus create new but welcome challenges. Perhaps there’s an affirmation in that:

I  welcome the challenges as new successes and opportunities flow into my life in ever-increasing waves.

And pondering this whole subject after finishing the above, I came up with a realization that led to a total new prosperity strategy/awareness. I love when stuff like this happens, when something just pops into my conscious mind from some deep creative reservoir. We all have these internal sources, but not all of us are accessing or managing them as well as we could. I certainly am not, whereas people I have known and learned from like Ray Bradbury, Norman Cousins, Ken Keyes, Jr., and Leo Buscaglia seem to have another dimension to their thinking process, a more solidly connected bridge between the creative reservoir and the conscious mind. I think I’ll plan on sharing some of my initial thoughts on this new strategy in my next post, sometime in the next few days. Till then……

Jerry

Very Rich Ugly People

Those Golden Days Before Money Bought Beauty

So this is Wallace Wattles, who inspired this post when I was researching him for my latest audio for The Moneylove Club, looking at some of the people who first discussed and wrote about The Law of Attraction. Back in 1910, Wallace wrote The Science of Getting Rich. This is credited as being a major inspiration for The Secret. Rhonda Byrne’s daughter gave her a copy when she was going through some hard times.

In those days, near the beginning of the 20th Century, no matter how rich you were, you couldn’t do much about your looks. No extreme makeovers, sophisticated make up formulas, cosmetic surgery. So Bill Gates and Warren Buffet seem like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck compared to some of their predecessors. Fortunately, there was no TV in those days, but there were newspaper photographs.

Wallace Wattles did have some interesting things to say about prosperity, including:

Man’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental , spiritual, and physical unfoldment, or, in other words, his right to be rich.

I first heard about Wallace Wattles through my friend Tony Busse, who sent me the following link:www.psitek.net/pages/PsiTekSOGRContents.html
to download the entire text of The Science of Getting Rich–definitely a worthwhile read.

This beauty was John D. Rockefeller, founder of a family whose name became synonymous with wealth. And for good reason. At the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller was was worth 1.4 billion (he was the first American billionaire) and the U.S. GDP was 92 billion. No other person of wealth before or since has come close to such a high personal fortune in relation to the GDP. A few of his words of wisdom:

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

J.P. Morgan, whom Forbes calls “the most important banker who ever lived.”
personally led the 1907 bailout that saved the U.S. economy from collapse.
His nose was unfortunate to say the least. It was purple, due to a skin condition, and deformed as well. Though in this portrait, I think he sort of looks like a bloated version of the late actor George C. Scott. In his time and still, Morgan has been quoted extensively.

When you expect things to happen–strangely enough–they do happen.

I made a fortune getting out too soon.

Interestingly enough, these two immensely rich and powerful men, J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller both made rather strong statements about the negative aspects of focusing too much on money. Morgan said:

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

And from Rockefeller:

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

It is said that Rockefeller on hearing of Morgan’s death and the fact his fortune was then estimated at $80 million (though Morgan controlled companies worth billions), said, “Why, he wasn’t even rich.”

And finally, we come to Hetty Green, known as the Witch of Wall Street. In this same period, say around 1910, she was the wealthiest woman in America and perhaps the world. In my attempts at gender balance, however, I probably do a disservice to women. Of course, in those days, few women had the opportunity to create wealth on their own, they didn’t even have the vote. Hetty was a notorious miser, owning just one black dress, eating in very cheap restaurants, but died worth $100 million from her skills in predicting stock market panics and taking advantage of them. She didn’t offer much in the way of motivation or inspiration either. Most of her comments were expressing her opinion on the stupidity of men, and the detestability of lawyers and doctors. For example:

I had rather that my daughter should be burned at the stake than to have to suffer what I have gone through with lawyers.

So there you have my rogues gallery of hugely wealthy and hugely homely figures.
And maybe here is my question of the day, “Would you be willing to go through life with a repulsive face if you had unlimited wealth in exchange?” Of course, today, thanks to modern science, that choice is moot.
Jerry

Unique Path To Prosperity

Your Unique Personal Differential

This is a concept I came up with back in the early 1990s, inspired by marketing guru Harry Pickens, who said that the secret of marketing success was to find the one thing that sets you apart..and then let people know about it.

I was reminded of this by Rupa Cousins, one of the most unique women I know, with whom I am now brainstorming about where she takes her important and transformational work as an Alexander Teacher and practitioner of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method (you can find out more at
www.rupacousins.com). This is also impacted by her deep involvement in Peace Dances, and sacred dance practices, as demonstrated in her highly regarded workshop When Dance Becomes Prayer.

Rupa and I have separately come to the conclusion that this unique synergy of mind-body-spirit work, rather than needing to be a difficult challenge to explain, can be celebrated for its unique difference from anything else anyone else is doing.

So How Are You and Your Work Different?

Which brings us to you, and what you can take from this exploration. Rupa talks about uncovering your uniqueness, and suggests two important questions that we can all ask ourselves as we want to take our lives to the next level:

What is in the way of being your unique self, of living your unique vision?
What am I that is just me, not anyone else?

I wrote back in 1991:

You can do yourself a great service by exploring and exploiting your own uniqueness. What about you is unique, special, unusual, remarkable? When I ask myself that question the answer isn’t that I am successful or prosperous, but rather that I seem to have a lot more fun than a lot of other people have.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from Christopher Morley:

There Is Only One Success:
To Be Able To Spend Your Life In Your Own Way

And isn’t a new year in a new decade, in what I like to think of as a new start to The New Millennium, the perfect time to uncover and discover your own unique personal differential?
Jerry

And by the way, though not always focused on prosperity, you might also enjoy my more personal blog at www.JerryGillies.net

Prosperity Is About More Than A Decent Living

How About An Indecent Amount Of Money?

It just came up in one of my coaching sessions. The client was reminiscing about a time back in the 1980s when he was making “decent money.” I immediately interrupted him and said, in effect, “That’s nothing to brag about–what’s wrong with making some “indecent money?” Like those executives with the huge bonuses on Wall Street, about whom people say, “What an obscene amount of money he makes.” “Decent money” is a limiting concept, as if you need to not offend or incite someone who doesn’t think you deserve to earn that much that easily. I want to go far beyond earning a decent living, far beyond making decent money, and demonstrate that someone producing large piles of money can be a very decent person. In fact, I have found that a decent person making an indecent amount of money can be a pretty decent human being much more easily than can an
indecent human being earning just a decent amount.

And this is more than mere semantics. It’s about labelling your intention–an important aspect of an evolving prosperity consciousness.

And while I fully expect to earn an indecent amount of money, I’m not there just yet. But the whole concept has inspired some of the cartoon gags I supply for four top magazine cartoonists. Like:

TEEN BOY TO FATHER:
“So, do you think the obscene executive salaries and indecent bonuses will come back by the time I get my MBA?”

BOSS HOLDING REPORT AS HE SPEAKS TO EMPLOYEE:
“There’s one thing you don’t seem to understand, Barton, I get the huge bonuses so I don’t have to pay attention to even the good ideas from employees.”

I remember in one workshop having a participant say he would really like to own a Rolls Royce, but would be embarrassed driving it to the homeless shelter where he volunteered several times a month. I told him that was his issue, not that of the homeless people, who would probably flock around his luxury ride with lots of “Oohs” and “Ahhs”. You worry about resentment from those less fortunate? Then teach them how they too can achieve your level of success. My old friend, the late, provocative, and controversial Reverend Ike, was a great example of this. He did not hide his expensive cars or multiple homes from the lower income members of his church. He used these as props to inspire them “If I can do it, you can do it.” And it worked. I personally met several of his church members who made the amazing transition from being on welfare to being millionaires.

Of course, there is no such thing as “indecent money” or “decent money”. Only indecent people and decent people–and it has little to do with the amount of money either makes.

And this coming holiday season, I am ready, willing, and able to receive any indecent gifts.

Jerry