My friend and author of The Thought Exchange, David Friedman, has a great story about a woman telling her friends at a dinner party that her husband had ruined her financially during their divorce. She said he had gotten everything, except the apartment in New York City, and she was going to have to sell that, and so she was destitute. Someone asked her what the asking price was for the apartment and she responded that it was seven million, seven hundred thousand dollars. People usually laugh at this point, but it illustrates that we all have our own unique way of looking at life and whether we consider specific events as blessings or curses.

We are often told the importance of gratitude, and around the Thanksgiving holiday each year, there is a lot of talk about being thankful, expressing gratitude, counting our blessings. But in order to see these positive events, we need to be able to focus on the good even when bad things may surround us. I had a graduate course in this during 12 years in prison. I’m now working on a memoir about how I used that time as a strengthening, empowering experience. And it was all about building my focusing skills.

In any given moment, many things are going on in my life and yours. Some are good and some are bad. If you view your life through a focusing filter of disappointment and defeat, that is what you will see as your reality. But for any negative experience, you have a hundred positive ones. These are happening in the present, in the place where you are and in all the places where you aren’t. In the time you are currently living in, and in the vastly more expansive times you have already lived in, and the many moments, hours, days, and years that lie ahead. No matter how terrible something seems in your current environment and timeframe, it is a fraction of what has gone before, what is going on now all around you, and will happen in the future. Your experience seems bad primarily because that’s the part you are seeing and thinking about and focusing on.

I know, it’s hardest to focus on good things when bad things seem to be bombarding you. But even if you are pretending, you will see a change by focusing on all the good things. After all, there’s a good chance you woke up today, that your life is not in imminent danger, that at least one other person loves you, that you will get to eat what and as much as you want, perhaps for three entire meals.

Many people exaggerate their disappointments, failures, missteps, and unrealized hopes and dreams. Imagine what would happen if they exaggerated their successes, good decisions, plans that worked out. Just by changing the focus, they could be changing their lives and core beliefs.

Longtime friends and fans and readers know that each year around this time, I make a list of Ten People And Things I Am Most Thankful For In The Past Year. A real challenge for me this year is narrowing it down to just 10, and I may expand it to 20. It’s my list after all. One of those things is the fantastic feedback I get from my blog readers, which often includes great ideas and suggestions that I can build on for future posts, or use on my Moneylove Club audios. I am very thankful that I have an audience for my creative output.

Here’s another fantastic reason to practice gratitude and thankfulness. Every time I choose to focus on a positive aspect of my life, and feel grateful for its existence, I am creating a model that I can then share with others. If it works for me, it is likely to work for others, and therefore will generate more acknowledgment coming back to me. And more people will want to read my blog, my books, and listen to my audio, which will give me even more to be grateful for. We could call this The Circle Of A Focused Life.

Jerry

In the previous post and on my April Moneylove Club audio, I talk about the need to be more selective and discriminating about what we let in from the huge amounts of information bombarding us. And I just was reminded of another set of criteria that can help us decide what is essential. What remind me was a comment made by Rev. Sonya Milton of Unity SF

Sonya told the story of Socrates and his Three Filters, which goes like this:

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.
One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”
Hold on a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything, I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Three Filter Test.”
Three filter?”
That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the three filter test.
The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”
No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”
All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”
No, on the contrary…”
So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”
No, not really.”
Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”

So applying this to our lives in this era of information asphyxiation would seem to make even more sense than doing it in ancient Greece. If an email shows up, or a blog, or a person in your business or personal life, you might ask yourself, “I what I could get from this addition to my life True? Is it Good? Can it be Useful to me? Anything or anyone clearly not fulfilling any of these filters can be subtracted from your mind, eliminated from your life to your everlasting benefit.

And wouldn’t it be great if these three filters could be applied to political discourse in this country?  Imagine saying to Donald Trump or Rush Limbaugh, “Is what you want to tell me about Barack Obama true? Is it something good about our President? Is if information that will be useful to me in living a better and happier life?”  And you probably could have asked the same questions about some liberal pundits talking about George W. Bush during his term in office.

And not only making room in your mind for good ideas to develop and gestate, and cleaning up the political atmosphere, but this simple set of filters could also have a profound impact on our relationships. What if you and your significant other agreed that you would on speak the truth, only say good things about the other person, and only give them information or thoughts that were useful? Would that change your life or not?

My Law of Attraction is about taking away or keeping out that information that does not serve you well. It seems to me that avoiding or terminating the thoughts and ideas and information that are untrue, are not good thoughts and ideas and information, and are worthless and tiresome rather than useful would be a good way to start putting the Law to work.

Jerry

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I’ve done several recent posts on my Law of Subtraction, and it was the subject of the new audio offering of the Moneylove Club sent out to members this week. As I ponder and reflect on this concept, I can see an entire book focused on this approach to dealing with our information asphyxiation from the data onslaught online and elsewhere. So I wanted to share with you here a few thoughts from that 45 minute audio, plus a brand new strategy I just put into place in my own life this morning.

A Morning Stroll Through Cyberland

For a personal approach to implementing The Law of Subtraction to my life, this morning I instituted a process that puts a cap on the hundreds of possible Internet explorations and adventures I can have in any given day. For ten minutes, I am free to roam among the dozens of websites friends and colleagues send me, the interesting sites linked on Facebook, the sites linked to media articles I check out online. And that’s it, a ten minute visit. Now, if there is a site of particular interest that I think there’s any chance at all I will want to explore further, I just bookmark it, or put it in my “Not Now Folder.”

Normally, I don’t like to put caps or limits or restraints on any activity, but we’re getting to a point where enough is enough. We all need to create a Room With A View in our brains, to let in light and enlightenment, to reflect on our life experiences and aspirations, to create new ways of seeing and being. I may well decide to add an evening cyberland stroll to my schedule–this is, after all,  just an experiment in how to more effectively use my time and my brain.

Some specific thoughts from the Moneylove Club audio on The Law of Subtraction (which you can also read about when you download your free copy of the Moneylove Manifesto by clicking on the cover in the right margin):

you owe it to your brain to give it some relief from this constant cacophony of other people’s thoughts…

your computer can be the back-up memory for your brain…storing all that stuff that is jammed in there now.

We need to ask ourselves this basic question:  What information do I actually need to take into my mind, so that I can bounce it around, ponder it, may use it to spur creative thinking in certain areas, or give me a better sense of direction in my life, or bring me pleasure, profit, or useful knowledge. Everything else can go into files and folders in my computer’s hard drive.

And a quote that sums it all up from Swami Vivekananda at the end of the 19th Century in India:

Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.

Of course, in the 1890s, when Vivekananda said this, books were the main source of information and knowledge. Today we are inundated with multiple sources available every moment of every day, so even more selectivity is required. To take what is essential. The definition of “essential” is “of utmost importance” “basic” “indispensable.”

And here’s the essential question: How much of what you take into your mind, or are holding onto in your brain’s magnificent memory banks is essential?

Jerry

It is a lot easier to become prosperous in today’s world–thanks to the immense number of choices and successful people willing to teach us how they did it. Conversely, it is also a lot harder as our brains become filled to overflow with all the material being thrown at us 24/7. I talk in The Moneylove Manifesto about what I call The Law Of Subtraction–the need to remove extraneous thoughts and ideas and information from the congested traffic pouring into our heads. And I use one of my major mentors in this area to illustrate the point, Arthur Conan Doyle, in the persona of his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes. Here’s the quote I used, just one of many on the same subject throughout the Sherlock Holmes library:

“The mind is like an attic, you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which
might be useful to him gets crowded out.”

A Joke To Learn From

And I was reminded of this when a friend sent me the following joke that was selected as the funniest joke in the world by over 40,000 people online. It speaks to the same point:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal
and a bottle of red, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some
hours later, Holmes woke up, nudged his friend and said, “Watson, I want
you to look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions and
millions of stars.” Sherlock asked, “What does that tell you?”

After a minute or so of pondering, Watson said “Astronomically, it tells
me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of
planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I
deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning.
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small
and insignificant. Metereologically, I suspect that we will have a
beautiful day today. What does it tell you?”

Holmes was silent for about 30 seconds and said, “Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!”

This also reminded me of one of Holmes’ comments in one of the books in which he asserted he knew nothing at all about astronomy because he couldn’t find a use for that information in his life and his work, so he never studied it.

A List Of Knowledge You Need

A useful practice is to make a list of what you really need to know to achieve the goals you desire. Gone are the days when knowing a little about a lot of things was a good path to success. This is the era of the expert, and you can become an expert in any specific area you choose. But being picky, being selective, being discerning about the knowledge you let in is vital in this process. And you must be willing to shut out even interesting, useful information if it doesn’t serve your primary purpose. There just isn’t enough time to know it all, so you must make choices. Even in selecting whom you want to learn from. I see people downloading internet marketing courses from several different “Internet Gurus” at the same time, and trying to go back and forth. In this instance, more is not better, just confusing. Choose a teacher the way you would choose a mate for life, very very carefully. But I would also use my Ninety Day Trial Period strategy. If you don’t learn what you want to know within the first ninety days, it is time to move on to another teacher.

And no matter what information you take in, no matter how profound or entertaining it is, make certain you don’t take in so much you won’t even notice when your tent’s been stolen.
Jerry