To Toot Or Not To Toot, That Is The Question

It’s Okay To Toot Your Own Horn As Long As You Don’t

Think You’re The Only Instrument In The Orchestra!

So this line of thought started for me when I read a Facebook post by my friend, Michael Dunlop, the brilliant entrepreneur son of my brilliant entrepreneur friend and mentor, Barry Dunlop. Michael was venting a bit about seeing so many people bragging on themselves on Facebook, talking about how amazing they were. And I posted the following comment:

I know exactly what you mean, but it is sometimes true that people will have to toot their own horn because no one else will do it. You and I and your dad are so fortunate to have others who sing our praises and appreciate what we are putting out into the world. I think we need to be super sensitive to those who are not so fortunate, who are maybe just starting out, who may be insecure, or may just be untalented or uninteresting. And I think what separates us from some of these others is the fact that while we may think we’re amazing, we are very willing to acknowledge how amazing other people also are. If you toot your own horn, don’t act like you’re the only instrument in the orchestra!

And I was reminded of some long ago conversations with Jack Canfield on the subject of self-esteem. This was Jack’s passion before Chicken Soup For The Soul or The Secret, and the subject of his first book, way back in 1978. I’ll date myself, too, by mentioning that he featured one of my original exercises in the book.

So one of the main issues in the whole discussion about self-esteem in those days was whether it wasn’t about the annoying and destructive bragging Michael (and all the rest of us) is put off by. Fear of offending society by bragging led to a whole generation of meek kids unwilling to toot their own horns. And then studies showed that self-esteem had a lot to do with learning ability, and even more to do with future success in life. And sometimes self-esteem means you have to be the one to toot your own horn, though it’s always better if someone else volunteers to do it for you. For instance, my old friend Jack Canfield, has had some really nice things to say about me and my work, and will mention both prominently in his newsletter in a few weeks. And this is also why I decided to gather all the endorsements and testimonials you’ll find in The Moneylove Club link at the top of this page.

It can be a fine line between coming across as confident and self-assured, or appearing arrogant and self-aggrandizing. This latter terms refers to enhancing or exaggerating your attributes. Politicians do this all the time. It’s tooting one’s own horn out of tune and much too loudly. But if you’re someone with some authentic skills and talents, someone who lives by what is becoming my main mantra–Saying what you can and will do, then doing it–no one will be upset or offended when you toot your horn a bit. A friend of mine is about to enter into an online partnership with a very successful entrepreneur who she describes as a “blowhard.” Every time she engages him in a conversation about their mutual goals, he spends most of the time telling her how wonderful he is and listing all his many accomplishments. Because it can be a big breakthrough for her business, she is still planning to go ahead with the partnership, but trying to figure out how to put buffer zones between her and this major horn tooter. In this situation, no matter how successful their partnership is, it will be less than it could have been if he weren’t a horn tooting blowhard. And perhaps the saddest thing of all is that he doesn’t have to be. Whatever his deep-rooted insecurity at the foundation of this need to impress, he has actually accomplished a lot and would receive much more in the form of other people tooting his horn if he only allowed the room for it to happen and be heard. He drowns out almost every other sound with his noise.

I’ll bet you know of a few people like this, talented people who give the impression they aren’t by how loudly they toot their horns right in your ear. I could mention a couple of my own quite famous and successful friends who are guilty of this, and all I could ever think of when it happened, often, was how sad that they have so little faith and belief in themselves that they have to keep trying to fill the space around them with loud self-accolades.

So by all means, toot your own horn once in a while, but keep it somewhat muted, and in tune with what is going on around you. And it always makes good sense to sing your own praises a little more softly than the world arounds you sings them.

Jerry

A Novel Approach to Success

You May Be Severely Limiting Yourself by not….

Reading novels! This is a bone of contention I’ve had during over thirty years’ worth of discussions with fellow self-help authors, motivational speakers, success coaches, and others who think reading self-help and personal growth and other nonfiction books is the only key to enlightenment and a life of fulfillment. Wrong! Oh, all of those books make a valuable contribution to our knowledge and awareness of the way life works, but a good novel can do this just as effectively and sometimes more so.

Learning More From Novels

This may sound strange from someone who has written six books on success and self-development, seven if you count the free ebook offered here, but I think I have learned more from the literally thousands of novels, mainly mystery novels, I have read since first encountering Sherlock Holmes at the age of eight, not to mention the wonderful OZ books, Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and even Tarzan–much more adult in novel form than in the movies. My mother, a writer herself, though she only had a couple of short stories published prior to her marriage, read mysteries and suspense thrillers. E. Phillips Oppenheim was one of her favorites. My father read nonfiction books, and Dale Carnegie and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale were among his favorites. So I luckily was exposed and attracted to both forms.

A good novelist is also a good psychologist and philosopher, understanding much about human behavior and observing it as intensely as any social scientist. I was made keenly aware of this when I did a college term paper for a psychology course on the Travis McGee detective novels of John D. MacDonald. He was a master at summing up the emotional motivations of his characters, as well as an early and masterful proponent of environmental reform. I got an A+ for that paper.

Anne Perry, Novelist and Fellow Ex-Convict

This piece was inspired by something I just read today in a mystery titled A Breach of Promise, by the bestselling mystery novelist Anne Perry, who has two series featuring mysteries set in 19th Century England. I loved these when I was in prison, as they took me far out of my real physical world into a totally different time and place. And also, I felt a certain rapport as Anne Perry was actually Juiet Marion Hulme, who served five years in prison after committing perhaps the most notorious and brutal murder ever recorded in New Zealand in 1954. She and her best friend, Pauline Parker, conspired to bludgeon Pauline’s mother to death because she wanted to leave the country and thus separate the two inseparable friends. A movie based on the case, Heavenly Creatures, was made in 1994, starring Kate Winslet as the teenaged Juliet, aka Anne Perry. It was only when the movie was released that a reporter found out what happened to Anne Perry, who was living in a remote area of England and writing bestselling mystery novels. Though her crime was much more serious than mine, and as a teenager, she served less than half the time I served in prison, I felt a certain connection to Anne Perry and sought out her books. Ironically, one of my friends who doesn’t make a practice of reading novels, ordered those from Amazon.com and had them sent to me. That was Mark Victor Hansen, who provided dozens upon dozens of books during my incarceration, both fiction and nonfiction.

And what did she write that inspired me to write this?  A brilliant statement, I think, about the nature of time–a favorite subject of mine:

Time was a peculiarly elastic measurement. It was an empty space, given meaning only by what it contained, and aferwards distorted in memory.

Tell me that can’t stir your thinking juices.  One of the activities I started in prison was a composition book filled with lines that particularly moved or stimulated my imagination that were contained in the novels I read.  These formed a large segment of the more than one thousand books I read in those twelve years.

I’ll share a couple of those quotes from my collection:

Most of us come from the past, and we re-create the present. Those who excel come from the future, their vision, their mission, and it pulls them forward.

J. F. Freedman, House of Smoke

We wouldn’t care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did.

John Lanchester, Mr. Phillips

Of course, sometimes novelists will quote actual philosophers or other great thinkers:

Heidegger says that life is action and passion, and that a man fails to take part in the action and passion of his times at the peril of being judged not to have lived.

Jack Higgins, Day of Reckoning

And I’ll let Mark Twain have the final word on the subject:

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

Now get thee to a library or Amazon.com!

Jerry

Accentuate The Positive

Significant Early Programming Delivered by Bing Crosby

In traditional psychology much was made of the negative messages we got when we were young children, and not enough attention was paid to positive messages that were conveyed early on. That’s still largely true. I never, until quite recently, even made the connection between the first “favorite song” I had as a child and my attitude toward life.

It’s obvious to me now, of course, that listening over and over again, on an old 78 RPM record to Bing Crosby singing Accentuate The Positive had an impact. At that tender age, of maybe four or five, I didn’t really understand or pay much attention to the lyrics, which were written by the great lyricist Johnny Mercer (the music by Harold Arlen of Over The Rainbow fame). But take a look and you’ll see what I mean:

 You've got to accentuate the positive
 Eliminate the negative
 Latch on to the affirmative
 Don't mess with Mister In-Between

 You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
 Bring gloom down to the minimum
 Have faith or pandemonium
 Liable to walk upon the scene

A Whole Consciousness Training in One Song

It really is pretty potent stuff. Not only accentuate the positive, but eliminate the negative and latch onto the affirmative–and just as powerful, don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.

Interestingly enough, my other favorite song was also sung by Bing Crosby. Of course, nowadays, many people are not aware of how this crooner dominated entertainment in the 1930s, 1940s, and well into the 1950s. In fact, he was still going strong as an actor and TV star until his death in 1977. At one point in a career never duplicated, he had the number 1 record, the number 1 radio show, and was the top box office star at the movies. That other song probably also had an impact, now that I think about it. I certainly have lived my life devoted to personal freedom. And that song, Don’t Fence Me In, probably also was programming me unawares. There was also a third Bing Crosby hit, sung with The Andrews Sisters, that I loved, Pistol Packin’ Mama, and I have no idea what impact if any that had on my life.

What Were Your Powerful Positive Programming Events?

It would be useful for you to go back and remember some song or book or movie, or even TV show that was a special favorite, and then explore what positive message it may have given you that you may have been too young to fully understand or appreciate.

And now, thanks to the Internet, you can find those old songs or books or movies, and relive the childhood experience.

And though this was a pretty personal blog post, I did want to let you know that I have another blog that is even more personal, and not necessarily focused on prosperity consciousness. You can check it out by clicking on my name under Blog Roll.

The Law of Attracting People

Who Shows Up And Why Should You Care?

I want to elaborate on some of the ideas in my comments three posts back on The Power And Potential of The Company You Teach.  As a subject for consideration in your quest for more of anything good in your life, I did it less than full justice. I got this in a conversation with Rupa Cousins, one of the brightest and most intuitive and most beloved people I know.

http://www.RupaCousins.com

Rupa said, in our conversation this morning, that she now seemed to be attracting clients who could take her services as a bodyworker extraordinaire (my description of what she does combining The Alexander Technique and Rubenfeld Synergy Method) and therapist and integrate them in a way beyond even her expectations. During a coaching session, we came up with the title The Connected Self to describe what she does.

Old friends who know of our long history going back to the 1970s asked me whether I charged Rupa for that coaching session. My answer is that, though I am always available to discuss anything with her and advise her in any way, of course I charged her–full price–and that was the way she wanted it, to reaffirm her commitment to take what we discovered together seriously.

Advice From John F. Kennedy

This follows some advice I took from JFK, who was inundated with friends asking for free copies of his first book, Profiles In Courage. He said that if they were true friends, they would be happy to buy the book as a measure of support for him.

Rupa pointed out a sentence in that earlier post that perhaps I didn’t give enough emphasis, when I discussed the fact that we should all have a new aspiration: “To attract a select group who will love what we do and use if for their highest good and that of others.” She repeated this line in a comment she just added to that post, and came up with her own realization about the clients that seem to be showing up after our coaching session:

They love what I do, and I love who they are and who they are becoming.

No Greater Aspiration

I ask you: Can there be any greater aspiration for those of us in the teaching, writing, speaking, and motivational/inspirational professions–or in any field where we provide human services of any kind–than to attract people who love what you do, and are so exceptional at taking in what you offer that you can’t help but love who they are and who they are becoming as a result of what you and they create together?

If you think about it, that’s pretty essential and profound stuff we’re talking about here, and it could make all the difference in the world to how your life is working.

In Moneylove, I talk about loving yourself enough to be willing to receive abundance in your life, loving what you do to earn your money, loving and serving those to whom you offer your products or services or information, and loving the prosperity you therefore create. But I didn’t talk about attracting an audience who loved what you did, and perhaps took whatever you were delivering to a new level, thus honoring you and validating the value of who you are and what you do.

And make no mistake about it, you will affect the quality of the people showing up if you have the specific intention to attract this select group of whom you can say, as Rupa says:  ”They love what I do, and I love who they are and who they are becoming.”

Build that intention and they will come.

Jerry

The Power And Potential of The Company You Teach

What A Great Bunch Of Students, Readers and Listeners

Are Now Showing Up

The title of this piece is a play on the subtitle of my book, Friends, “The Power And Potential of The Company You Keep.”  I like the rhythm of that phrase and have mentioned before that I eventually would like to revise that book to focus it on social media, where a lot of people seem confused about what it means to be someone’s friend. But here and now, I apply it to those people who have contacted me since my emergence back into the world after twelve years of incarceration. Those people, and you may well be one of them, who have been positively affected by my books, tapes, seminars, etc. And those adventurous souls who have joined The Moneylove Club or signed up for coaching sessions. I’m really immensely impressed.

No, I’m Not Talking About Being Impressed With Myself

Well, I am of course impressed with myself–anyone who puts themselves out there in the public eye had better be a bit impressed with their own knowledge, skills, and talents–or they have no business going public. But what I’m talking about here is how impressed I am with the quality, intention, and caliber of the people I’m attracting. Impressed with a capital I. Now, I’m fortunate in being able to start out slowly, and haven’t begun to create the major exposure for my ideas that will start happening later this year. It’s a luxury, because it gives me the opportunity to pay personal attention to emails I get, and responses from subscribers and coaching clients.

And I really don’t know if it’s this new information abundant world we live in, or that I’ve somehow raised the standards of the people interested in working with me, but these are not neophytes in the world of personal development or accomplishment. For the most part, they are people who are already more successful than most, living a life and lifestyle they enjoy–but always looking to expand this and explore new horizons and new perspectives and new behaviors.

Choosing Your Audience

Few of us are blessed enough to be able to pick and choose the people we reach with whatever message or information or service or product we are offering. And I honestly feel that if I were able to list the criteria of those kinds of people I most want to reach and teach, those criteria would exactly match the people showing up right now. The entrepreneurs, musicians, therapists, coaches, authors, bodyworkers, dancers, photographers, consultants in every field from physical fitness to education to sexuality–what an amazing and talent array of folks, and what interesting issues they present to me for new ideas, strategies, and suggestions.

And I just had the thought that the people showing up today to partake of the Moneylove material and new prosperity ideas have one quality in common with most of the relationship partners and dear friends who have come into my life in the past. They almost all possess certain skills or knowledge that I don’t. Whether it’s being a whirling dervish, playing classical cello concerts, being a successful blogger or online entrepreneur, they all have stuff they could teach me in addition to learning what I have to offer. That has always seemed to me to be the healthiest kind of cooperative connection.

I’m dwelling on this not just to acknowledge all of my people (or should I say “peeps?” No, I think not.). But to suggest that this be a new aspiration for all of us–to attract a select group who will love what we do, and use it for their highest good and that of others. I’m wary of using the term “friends” too loosely, but I do feel a strong kinship with many of these new respondents and correspondents. So here’s a closing question for you to consider:

“If I could pick and choose my audience, my customer base, my clients–what are the top three things I would like them each to be?”

Jerry

A Dozen Brand New Jerry Gillies Quotes

“I Love Your One-Liners!”

This and a memory prompted this post–and both came from amazing women, former relationship partners who are now dear friends, and who have always taught me well on a variety of subjects. The quote comes from Rupa Cousins, to whom I dedicated Transcendental Sex. Rupa was commenting on my quotes on Facebook.

The memory comes from Maggie S. Davis, to whom I dedicated Moneylove (I just had the thought that I would have written a lot more than six books if I had had even more amazing women in my life.) Anyway, the memory involves Maggie’s late and very wise and prolific father, Dr. Peter J. Steincrohn. If you Google him, you’ll see he wrote many commonsense books about health and was definitely ahead of his time. He also wrote the nationally syndicated newspaper column, Ask Dr. Steincrohn. And he had one of the largest collections I’ve seen of books about writing. Peter always talked about writing a book of aphorisms, and one of his hobbies was writing down his thoughts about life in this short form.

I’ve been very fortunate in that many of my quotes are widely circulated on Facebook and Twitter, as well as showing up on searches via Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines. This certainly kept public awareness of Jerry Gillies alive while I was locked away in prison for twelve long years. And yet, I’ve never thought of myself as an aphorist.

Jerry The Aphorist

I like the Wikipedia definition of “aphorism”:

“Denotes an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form.” And here I’ll make a confession it’s hard for a writer to make. I’ve often read the word “laconic”, am not sure I’ve ever heard it spoken, and I’ve never known exactly what it meant, having never looked it up before. Well, if nothing else, this post added that definition to my knowledge. It means “expressed in few words, concise”.

One Complaint About The Worldwide Sharing Of Many Of My Quotes

They are mostly old quotes. Many from the original Moneylove book, over thirty years ago. Many from the Nightingale-Conant Moneylove tapes, over twenty years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I am flattered and honored that so many people think these are still worth sharing. And, sure, I like to think of them as timeless, and they may well be. But I am still saying things in few words, and Twitter certainly inspires me to continue to hone that skill. So please, if you like what I have to say nowadays, pass it around.

I originally thought I would add comments or explanations to the quotes themselves, but instead I would like to challenge you to provide your own commentary right here.

12 New Quotes From Jerry:

1. I would rather shine my light and go blind than wander around in the dark until I stumble over the truth.

2. Wisdom is the imagination’s application of knowledge.

3. If I told you the secret of success, wouldn’t you be disappointed that there was no longer a secret of success?

4. I find the more I prepare the ideal circumstances and environment to receive a windfall, the faster it comes.

5. Do people smile when they think about you and what you are offering in the world?–Then chances are you are a success.

6. Empty pockets come in handy when the universe is handing out large piles of money.

7. Life unfolds in unexpected ways, but usually for the highest good–if we are willing to move beyond unrealistic demands and expectations.

8. A sea of money is ready to flow toward you if you’ve prepared an attractive enough dock.

9. Enjoying life to the fullest doesn’t mean lingering at the buffet table.

10. To everyone predicting dire economic results: You had your three meals today–stop complaining and start chewing!

11. In other words, words other than our own can guide us or mislead us.

12. The main difference between Wall Street and live poker is that in poker you can see the faces of the folks taking your money.

And if one of these twelve quotes, sayings, one-liners, or aphorisms–whatever you want to call them–leaps out at you, then that’s probably the one you should pay the most attention to, and send me a comment on. And if you tell me you like them, I’ll do it again with a new list.

Jerry

This Busyness Business

The Different Forms of Busy

It was one of my most aware coaching clients who mentioned that she thought I might be advocating hard work as the only path to success after listening to the current audio of The Moneylove Club. On that recording, I said that The Law of Attraction was a lot more than just positive thinking, something I don’t think is stressed enough. Then I went on to say that, and this is from my personal observation, just about everyone featured in The Secret, all those teachers of prosperity and The Law of Attraction, worked their butts off. Many of them are constantly on the go, and it is not unusual for them to do 200-300 talks in a year, practically living in airports. But I wasn’t advocating this behavior, merely illustrating that only part of the story is told in the hugely successful 2006 film.

In fact, one of the phenomenons that uniquely occurs in this group is the “trapped by your staff” syndrome. In order to get that many speaking engagements, a staff is necessary, quite often four or five people whose job it is to book the person, plan the travel arrangements, and take care of all the logistics of a busy speaking career. So if the speaker should want to take, say, a one month vacation in Tahiti, to enjoy some of the fruits of his or her labor, the staff would still have to be paid.

I remember one famous speaker telling me that he missed the days when he and his wife did all his booking and he made $150,000 a year. Now his company was doing about $2 million, but he only got to keep a little over that original $150,000, the rest going for expenses and a staff of six fulltime people. So he was forced to keep a lot busier than he would have liked by virtue of the fact that six people were dependent on him for their income.

For some people, busyness is natural and comfortable, and even relaxing. I think Ray Bradbury, whom I also quote on my audio, is one of these.  I repeated a comment he gave me for my book, Psychological Immortality:

I think busyness is everything–I don’t care what you do as long as you’re busy and as long as you love doing it.

Full Busyness versus Empty Busyness

The dictionary definition of “busyness” is:  active or sustained effort to accomplish something.  It doesn’t say anything about frenetic hyper-scheduling. I think we need to put the whole concept of busyness into two categories, which I’ll label “Full Busyness” and “Empty Busyness”.

Full busyness is the kind of full and satisfying life someone like Ray Bradbury or Richard Branson or The Dalai Lama experience. Lots of creative energy, lots accomplished, but lots of play and the ability to kick back and relax, reflect, meditate when that’s appropriate. This is not the same as someone who fills his or her life with activity for activity’s sake, “busy work” if you will, always operating at a frenetic pace. I think the most important aspect of full as opposed to empty busyness is that the full version always leaves room for unexpected opportunities, wonderful surprises, new adventures and new creative projects and new people.

In Moneylove I talked extensively about Creative Laziness, and in a paragraph entitled, Idleness Is A Myth, I wrote:

Of course, idleness really doesn’t exist. You may be loafing, but you’re not idle. Your brain is still performing its millions of chores, your creative imagination is still going ahead full blast, and your body is still going through all of its changes, Laziness is truly the mother of creativity. If your body and conscious mind are idle, your subconscious mind, your creative mind, can plunge full steam ahead, and your conscious mind will have room for those new ideas to pop up. A busy life will keep you from tapping into a lot of your potential creativity.

For more on achieving Full Busyness rather than the empty version, check out the segment on The Law of Subtraction in my new online book, The Moneylove Manifesto. Just click on its cover at the top of the right margin of this page, or the title under BlogRoll, also in the right margin.

And, finally, here are three questions to ask yourself to see whether you might have too busy a life right now.

1. Have you recently had to turn down a friend inviting you to do something you would really enjoy doing, saying you just don’t have the time.

2. Is there some project that could produce major income or major personal growth that you have put off until some unspecified period, “when I have the time.”

3. Is there something you could learn that would produce a major positive impact on your life, but you haven’t been able to find the time to learn it?

If you said “No.” to all three questions, you probably are not too busy or overscheduled or living a life filled with empty busyness.

And thanks for finding the time to fit my blog in.

Jerry

Jerry Gillies Quotes With Add-Ons

Expanded Comments On Quotes

I’ve often commented that one of the biggest surprises for me when I was released from Folsom State Prison in 2008 (read about this in The Appendix of the free Moneylove Manifesto) was the fact that I was very visible on the Internet, despite having, as far as anyone knew, vanished from the face of the Earth for 12 years. A lot of this was due to many people, including a number of prominent authors and motivational teachers constantly quoting me.

Some of these quotes were from Moneylove, some from my Moneylove Tapes, some even from seminars and lectures. I decided it might be interesting to take three of these quotes most often being circulated and expound on them and what an expanded version of that thought might look like. And I am adding two brand new quotes, from my new Moneylove Club audio series.

1. What you do is more important than how much you make, and how you feel about it is more important than what you do.

I think what this expresses is the fact that we have moved away from the old-fashioned idea that money is the driving force in choosing a career or profession. I remember when I was in high school, many of my friends chose to major in Engineering because it was said that would be a lucrative field–even though they really had no skills or aspirations in that direction. And how many doctors chose their professions because their parents told them it was the way to make a lot of money (which may be the large undiscovered cause of our health care problems) even though they were not naturally inclined toward healing or helping others?  We are lucky living in this era, because even if we made a choice based on potential income rather than what felt right for us, we can now change direction much more easily than in the past. Never before in history has there been more of an opportunity to make bad decisions right.

2. It takes a lot more energy to fail than to succeed, since it takes a lot of concentrated energy to hold onto beliefs that don’t work.

This goes against what a lot of us were taught. That success came as the result of ambition and hard work, while failure was due to inaction and laziness. This is sometimes true, but most often not. People who consistently fail are usually repeating patterns of behavior that require a lot of effort to keep repeating. This is true in relationships, too. Good relationships are a lot easier to maintain than bad ones. How many people have you known who have held onto bad relationships for many years with little or no reward for doing so? And do you notice how fatigued and worn out those people are? This actually fits in well with my next quote, one of the most often repeated of mine on the Internet.

3. You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.

When we’re on the wrong path, even temporarily, we feel stressed, pressured, tired, and often useless. But a tremendous sense of release comes with a shift in the right direction. This sense of release, of almost floating and flowing through life, comes with being on the right path, knowing our true purpose, doing what feels right for us to be doing.

Now For Two New Quotes:

4. The best thing you can buy with money is time well spent.

Hopefully you’ve learned by now that your time is worth more than the money you earn, and the money you spend, and the money you invest. Time well spent is like money in the bank, except often better used. I often said in my Moneylove Seminars that it isn’t how much money you make, but how well you use the money you have that matters. And what underlines my belief that I deserve great abundance in my life, is my knowledge that I will use it well.

5. Our life gets better not necessarily because of the big and significant things we do, but often the small ones that we do with intention and consistency.

Since I came up with this thought for the first audio for The Moneylove Club, I think it is worth connecting it to a thought Jack Canfield expressed in an exclusive conversation I had with him on that audio. He said that, after listening to six hours worth of audio, rather than a large amount of information, he would prefer taking away one action step he could apply to his life. We so often get caught up trying to make big decisions about big events, and wanting big results, that we may not appreciate the small, powerful pleasures in life–the small things that give our lives meaning and purpose. And small things done well often turn into very big things. I can think of a number of small decisions I made in my life that ended up moving me in completely new directions, and that brought powerful changes for the better. I bet you can, too.

Jerry

The Moneylove New Millennium Challenge

The Start Of A New Millennium And None Too Soon!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I have been writing about seeing 2010 as the opportunity to have a do over of The New Millennium, which has been pretty disappointing for most people. Two questions in my 110 Questions For 2010 list address this:

What one word or phrase best describes your experience of the first decade of the new century?

Did you accomplish the following in relationship to your expectations in 1999 for the then impending New Millennium?
___Everything I wanted and more.
___Most of what I wanted.
___Hardly anything I wanted or desired.
___Nothing I planned or expected.

Of course, for me, answering this type of question is a basic no-brainer. On New Year’s 2000, I was in a cell at Pleasant Valley State Prison. I just spent Christmas visiting my cellmate from then, Keith Crawford. We reminisced about staying up all night and watching the festive celebrations around the world for the dawn of the New Millennium. A very hopeful and optimistic time–it just didn’t work out that way for most people.

In one sense, I think it might be useful to adopt for the past decade that same attitude often recommended in talking about another person, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” In which case, you wouldn’t hear a mention of 2000-2009. But, in another sense, it probably is important to put a label on the decade just ending so we are free to move into a new one, and my recommended do over of the entire start of the New Millennium. On ABC’s This Week, in their online Green Room segment, the four Roundtable panelists were asked to name the decade just ending.

David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times, and perhaps my favorite pundit even though we don’t share political views, said he would have to go with The Decade of Hate because of Islamic extremism and domestic political hatred. Nobel Prize winner and Professor of Economics Paul Krugman, also a NY Times columnist, said it was The Big Zero with “zero job growth, zero gain in stocks, zero credibility for our financial system. Lots of things came up empty and we didn’t get Osama Bin Laden dead or alive.”

Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus said instead of a decade called “aughts,” it should be known as The Decade Of Oughts because “We ought to have got things under control and we didn’t. It was a wasted decade.”

And, finally, Republican strategist Malcolm Dowd said it was The Loss Of Illusion Decade “because on 9/11 we lost the illusion that we were safe here in our country, we lost the illusion that we were somehow financially safe, we lost illusions about all the major institutions, and it was appropriate that it was all capped at the end by the Tiger Woods episode, which destroyed the illusion that he was a totally focused and disciplined athlete who only had his mind on his golf game.” But Dowd was optimistic that we are now ready for a decade of reality and truth.

I agree, the dismal performance of these past ten years sets us up beautifully for a new start, a rare and precious time for a do over. So Happy New Year and Happy New Millennium.
Jerry

Moneylove Quote Goes Around The World

A Friday Morning Surprise

So imagine my surprise, having been absent without leave from the world at large for twelve years, to wake up this morning and be greeted by The Motivational Quote Of The Day on my email from Nightingale-Conant, a quote that reaches tens of thousands of people, including many movers and shakers. It was one of my old Moneylove quotes, uttered more than a generation before the popularity of The Law Of Attraction. Here it is:

“Wealth Is Not A Material Gain, But A
State Of Mind.”

In some ways this is no big deal. After all, NC puts one of these quotes out every day. On the other hand, with all the top people in the field of human growth, motivation, and spiritual development–people like Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, even the late Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale and Dale Carnegie–they picked me, describing me as an author and speaker and radio personality (It’s been over 30 years since I’ve been on radio regularly.) I don’t know what archive they searched to find that quote, but as a good friend pointed out to me, they probably don’t even know I recently paroled from 12 years in prison.

So I am not going to let my head get too inflated with this, but I will allow it to re-inspire me, to remind me that a lot of my ideas have a degree of permanence unusual in this “here today, gone tomorrow” soundbite world we live in. And also, it will motivate me to come up with newer and more powerful quotes, as I think this one is a bit archaic, especially considering that it was once a cutting edge thought.

My prison experience taught me some valuable lessons that eventually will be featured in a book, but one thought I will share now, a quote I like even more than my old one:

“Freedom Is Not Wide Open Spaces, But A
Wide Open Mind.”

Jerry