Browsing Category: "Jerry Gillies"
Deeper Truth for Wider Success
A Lesson Presidential Candidates Could Learn
“Aloof.” “Out of touch.” “No Passion.” “A stick.” “Can’t connect with regular people.”
These are some of the comments and criticisms one hears about some of the current field of presidential candidates gearing up for the 2012 election, including even President Obama, who seems to give great speeches, but has trouble relating in small groups at a human level.
My Cure For Candidate Disconnect
Coincidentally, or perhaps serendipitously, I may have found a solution for these difficulties some of the candidates have in relating to voters. As the campaign begins in earnest, even though the Republicans are still picking their nominee, and the primary debates are revealing some of these deficiencies to a wider audience than usual, a 1980s tape program of mine reminded me of some answers to this very challenge. It’s on a segment called Prosperous Speaking from my bestselling motivational tape album, Moneylove, produced through Nightingale-Conant and no longer available (except in used copies offered on eBay and other sites).
The coincidence is that, just as this issue is becoming more commonly discussed among pundits, I was deciding on my newest program for my monthly Moneylove Club audio (see details of club by clicking on the Join Moneylove Club link at the top of this page). I am in the process of converting that earlier tape album into a digital mp3 file format. My favorite track from that program was the one on speaking, so I decided to create an annotated audio version of it for my subscription members as this month’s offering. I included the original tape track, broken up into cogent segments followed by some new ideas and comments I added on. In listening to the final edit before sending it out, I realized one three minute segment really could really help those candidates who seem to need more skill at connecting on a human level.
I really believe that if anyone just listened to this short audio segment and started applying it whenever he or she had to speak to another person, a small group, or a large audience, it would change the dynamic in a positive, more impactful way. Listen yourself and see if you don’t agree. And feel free to pass it on to your friends and any candidate you happen to encounter. It starts out with the original material, followed by my new comments.
http://MoneyloveBlog.com/GilliesOnSpeakingTruth.mp3
In an increasingly depersonalized world, the more we can reach out and touch someone, or many someones, with our personal true stories, the more personal power we will manifest.
Happy Speaking!
Jerry
Don’t Be An Iffing Idiot!
Thoughts of “What If” In Your Head
My latest “what if” thought was “What if I wrote a post about what ifs?” This was inspired by a beautiful woman friend who commented on Facebook that thoughts of “what ifs” were running around in her head. I don’t know if these were troubling “what ifs” or uplifting ones. But it got me thinking, and the phrase I use as my title above just popped into my head. It’s serendipitous and spontaneous mind eruptions like this that allow me to sometimes think of myself as an iffing genius.
We all have what ifs pop up from time to time, and these are colored by what is going on in our lives at the time, and whether we come from a basic emotional foundation of optimism or pessimism. And some of us swing back and forth between those two states. My own life model, which I am elaborating on in the prison memoir I am now writing–as well as the one man show I recently presented in a short workshop form at San Francisco’s famed Marsh Theatre–is to get the negative what ifs out of the way to make room for the positive ones. A way I do this is by my old Moneylove strategy of drowning out the negative little voice in my head, the one Buddhists call “monkey mind,” and I call simply Stanley, with a sea of positive voices.
Translated into a What If format, this means dealing with the worst case scenario before moving on to the best case scenarios. At least in my life, I find there may be one huge worse case possibility, but many best case alternatives. For instance, sitting in a cell in the depressingly dreary and dilapidated Folsom State Prison, I could easily conjure up a what if scenario that had me fading, losing my creative powers, emerging from incarceration a broken man as so many fellow inmates seemed destined to do. Instead, I visualized many positive What Ifs. For instance:
1. What if I could be paroled after turning my debilitating experience into an immensely positive one, so that I could inspire others into transcending their own obstacles and adversities?
2. What if I could write a bestselling book about my prison experience that was filled with humor, and wisdom, and practical strategies for anyone to use to escape their self-imposed prison sentences?
3. What if I could be a guest on Oprah and amaze her with my story?
4. What if I could be released after 12 years of incarceration looking and feeling and acting smarter, healthier, and younger than when I went in?
5. What if I could turn this experience that many viewed as tragic and catastrophic into a spiritual and creative awakening that took me to new heights in consciousness and allowed me to leave an even larger thumbprint on the world?
Obviously, in 12 years, I came up with a lot more “what ifs,” but most were in this spirit. I didn’t run away from the bad ones, just diminished their potency by inundating my imagination with positive ones. After all, it’s all fantasy, it’s all a movie we create inside our own heads. If we take responsibility and practice accountability for our own script, cast, and artistic direction–and decide we are making an uplifting, funny, sweet, and loving film, how can it turn out other than inspiring and fun to watch?
Most What Ifs just don’t happen. And if that is so, we may as well enjoy the process itself. I am blessed in that a lot of my good ones turned out to be true. I haven’t finished the book, but a very prestigious literary agent is excited about selling it to publishers and a possible movie producer. I may not look younger, but I feel great and it’s getting better every day. Oprah ended her powerful show, but started her own cable network, so my new What If involves her offering me my own show on that network once my book is out. And since I was already a guest on her show back when it was just on in Chicago, that is not as unrealistic a what if as it might seem. And I am feeling a much, much greater surge of creative energy than I ever did before, as well as a much greater sense of peace and joyful contentment. I turned a lot of my What Ifs into What Is.
Your Inner Feast
Each of us prepares the meal with which we feed our consciousness. If you choose healthy, delicious ingredients, and prepare them expecting it to turn out wonderful, you end up with a joyful feast. If you choose spoiled, ugly ingredients, and carelessly prepare them, you end up with food poisoning. The path you choose (and you can change this at any moment) determines whether you are an Iffing Idiot or an Iffing Genius.
Jerry
MLOs (Missed Learning Opportunities)
How Many Teachers Have You Ignored?
Is it just me, or do most of us have a past filled with lost learning opportunities? Times when we knew someone or were close to someone who could have taught us something interesting, useful, or valuable, and we just missed the boat. I guess I’m ready to admit my abject failure at taking advantage of some of these MLOs in my own life, or I wouldn’t have started this post.
I suppose one of the first such missed opportunities was learning to play a musical instrument. I don’t play any, and my father played at least six. Before he married my mother, he was a member of the famous Ferko String Band appearing in the annual Philadelphia New Year’s Mummer’s Parade, where his instrument was the banjo. He also played the banjo mandolin, accordion, guitar, harmonica, and ukulele. He tried to teach me the guitar, but it hurt my very young fingertips and I gave up quickly. I imagine a psychologist would have a field day exploring what that said about my relationship with my father and how it affected my future life.
My grandmother spoke Russian and I could have easily learned the language in childhood, but I didn’t and to this day only speak English. I’ve talked about my 12 years in prison, but not about the fact that it would have been a great opportunity to learn Spanish from Mexican or Cuban fellow inmates. But other than a few curses, I didn’t.
Back in the mid-1990s, I lived in a commune not far from Silicon Valley and one of my housemates was a young man who wrote articles for WIRED magazine, reviewing new software. He was an expert at surfing the Internet before most people even knew it existed, and offered to guide me through its intricacies and secrets–and I wasn’t interested.
One of the great loves of my life was a yoga teacher, and I never learned a single posture. I had a French girlfriend for a year, but never learned any French (mainly because she was fluent in English and didn’t like speaking her native language outside France). I could go on and on. Considering this, it is amazing how many different things I actually have learned over the years. Looking back, I am sorry I didn’t take the time to benefit from all this additional available knowledge. I suppose this just confirms all the research that says that at the end of a life, we don’t regret what we did, but what we didn’t do.
There’s Still Time
So here’s my point: unless you are fading and faltering and on your last legs, you still have lots of time to learn lots of things. You could start by going back and making a list of perhaps 10 Things I Could Have Learned, or 10 Of My Missed Learning Opportunities. And then pick out one you are willing and able to learn at this point in your life. Another one for me is from my life just after high school, when I attended The American Foundation of Dramatic Arts. I took a one year program in radio and television broadcasting. They also had some classes on improvisation, a relatively new art form at the time. I was fascinated when I saw the students having so much fun in class, but still having a lot of my childhood shyness remaining, I did not take the risk to explore improvisation. 2012 looks like a good year to remedy that, and I am checking out some improv classes in San Francisco.
This goes to something I have long maintained, that there is no such thing as a missed opportunity, merely a delayed one.
Jerry
Happy New Year With Lots More To Come!
Happy Final Year?
A lot has been made of the fact that the Mayan calendar ends with 2012. Those doom and gloomsters who like to continually predict the end of days, the end of the world, the end of civilization as we know it, have been having a field day with the so-called apocalyptic date of December 21, 2012, or the Winter Solstice in 2012, which is supposedly the date it will, or rather WE will all go down.
This all strikes me silly rather than striking me down. Many Mayan researchers have disputed even that date from the calendar that was created in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and also used by other ancient peoples like the Aztecs. The one thing all predictions of doom and the end of the world have in common is that they have all been proven 100% wrong when the supposed date actually arrives.
But I’d like to suggest that we use this as a positive instrument for change. What if you imagined that 2012 actually was the end of the world as you know it, or rather the beginning of a whole new world, a whole new paradigm, a shift in the way everything operates in relationship to you, and you in relationship to everything and everyone else in the world. In other words, to paraphrase cartoon cliche, picture a white-bearded prophet carrying a sign that reads:
The Beginning Is Near!
After all, the end of anything is always the beginning of something else. So here’s an exercise you can use to manifest this new paradigm in 2012. It’s one you can begin right now and continue for as long as it takes. There’s no hurry, you will definitely have a lot more time than just the months leading up to December 21st. Make a simple list of 100 things you can support the end of in 2012, leading to a lot more opportunity and space and time in your life to make wonderful new beginnings, changes, and breakthroughs in your life. You can choose any heading you like. I started mine like this:
The End Of…..
1. All restrictions I create for myself on what I can do.
2. Waiting for friends I want to stay in touch with to reach out to me.
3. Telling people I am a technical idiot.
4. Being stingy about using the words, “I love you.”
As you can see, they don’t have to be profound endings or life-changing declarations. That’s it, just four so far, but I am thinking about quite a few others. I am in no hurry, I have all year to reach 100. As I compile my list of endings which can lead to beginnings, I plan to read it over and over again. This is a big year we’re talking about. A major election in the U.S., and major continuing upheavals around the world. While no apocalypse is planned or expected or likely, those who are not willing to look at their reality in a new way could be left behind. Not by The Rapture, but by the changing world passing them by. I don’t intend to be in that group, and I don’t think you do either.
Happy New Endings and Beginnings,
Jerry
The Magic of It All
Who’s Performing The Magic In Your Life?
The idea for this post came to me in the wake of producing my latest Moneylove Club audio. That, in turn, was suggested by a set of affirmation cards I created in the 1980s called Seminar-In-A-Package. The set consisted of twenty powerful affirmation/declarations. I was excited to find how relevant they all still are, and how each one triggered some brand new thoughts and ideas on the subject of prosperity.
When you’ve spent over thirty years speaking, writing, and doing workshops–and always strived to create new material frequently, the older ideas sometimes get lost or temporarily misplaced in memory. One I hadn’t thought of for a while from that original set of positive statements was:
I CREATE
MY OWN
MAGIC
We all have the capacity for magic in our lives, and the best magic is that which we draw from some inner core of personal commitment, imagination, and power. Someone writing about magicians and the public fascination with them, suggested that at some deep level we know there are magical powers to be had, and seeing a magician perform the apparently impossible, reaffirms that knowingness for us. If someone can turn a bird into a flower, or make a person disappear, then how simple it should be to produce money and love and health and all the other human aspirations. Jesus used magic to illustrate the power of God, but he also consistently said that all of us have the powers he demonstrated.
As we approach a new year, we can all benefit from starting to get ready by having the intention that we will create more magic in 2012 than ever before in our lives. Every day from now until January 1st, say I Create Magic to yourself. Even if you don’t believe in magic, you can create it. Watching a talented magician perform requires a leap of faith, so why not give yourself the same benefit of the doubt?
For myself, it doesn’t matter whether magic is real or not; possible or not; easy or very, very difficult to accomplish. My intending to create it will make a difference in how 2012 starts out and turns out. Are you willing to manifest next year as your own experimental laboratory in making the impossible possible?
Happy Holidays and Abracadabra!
Jerry
The Thought Exchange
An Important and Impactful New Book
Back in March, I did a post on award-winning composer/conductor/coach, David Friedman. I also had an amazing discussion with him on a Moneylove Club audio. I was so impressed with his very unique and particular perspective on how to get what you want that I just sent out a bonus audio of a talk he gave a few weeks ago at Unity San Francisco. He is very much in synch with the New Thought Movement that started with Emerson, and evolved into such nondenominational churches as Unity and Unitarian.
During his recent talk, David said four things that are very much related, but very powerful as individual thoughts:
1. “Whatever you are looking for you already have.”
2. “Prosperity is not caused by money or success or achievement.”
3. “The experience of prosperity is the ability to think any thought we like.”
4. “The point of life is to know that we have everything.”
I also like the opening of the Author’s Forward in the new book by David, The Thought Exchange:
“Our thoughts create our reality. What we think appears before us in the world. Change your thoughts and you change your life. We all know this. Why don’t we do it?”
And David has a great subtitle for The Thought Exchange:
Overcoming Our Resistance to Living a Sensational Life
The word “sensational” has a double meaning here. One is the common definition of something unexpectedly exciting or wonderful. The other is related to the senses or sensations we feel. David has taken the concept of The Law of Attraction a step further than the bestselling, The Secret, maybe several steps further. He says he much prefers the term, The Law of Noticing, to The Law of Attraction, since attempting to attract something to us reinforces the idea that it is missing from our lives right now. And as you can see by the quotes above, David believes it is all there right now, but we just have to pay better attention. And it has to do with sensations related to feelings. I watched him work miracles in a singing workshop, in which in just a few minutes he took several singers, amateur and professional, to new levels of performance, even to higher notes than they believed they could hit, by having them focusing on the sensations they felt when attempting to do so, and the thoughts behind those sensations.
David Friedman says it isn’t about changing the sensations, which might be sweaty palms, tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, butterflies in the stomach, etc. It’s about, he asserts, changing the thought behind those feeling sensations.
It can sound rather metaphysical and esoteric, but in practice it is very simple and down-to-earth. I suggest you buy the book and check it out further. Or you can visit David’s website:
http://www.thethoughtexchange.com
Jerry
Occupy Your Own Mind
What You Can Learn From the Occupy Wall Street Movement
I think a lot of people observing and commenting on the current protests, which have happened in over 100 American cities, as well as hundreds more overseas, have gotten it wrong. The demonstrations don’t have strong individual leadership at the top, nor did they start out with a specific agenda–other than bringing attention to the disparity between the haves (or the 1%), and the have-nots (the 99%) in economic poverty or stagnation. Looking at former such demonstrations, however, this has been the most remarkably disciplined and focused series of mass rallies ever organized. Almost no violence, other than when a few police have been less disciplined than the demonstrators and responded to rude comments with ruder behavior, (and some of these involved non-police, security toughs brought in by the very corporations being picketed.) In New York, these were the guys in the white shirts, one of whom was shown to shockingly slug a female occupier, knocking her to the ground. But all of that is not what’s really essential about Occupy Wall Street.
The Results So Far–And How You Can Internalize
I think the biggest and longest-lasting result is and will be for some time, the increased discussion of the great disparity between the highest earners and the middle class and low income Americans. The figures just released show middle-class income went up 40% in the past thirty years, while the highest income levels increased 275%. And I don’t think we would even be paying much attention to that shocking figure if it weren’t for this new movement. Nor would there have been such discussion of the deficit and spending cuts if it weren’t for the Tea Party. Both these movements have demonstrated that demonstrations work. If the Occupy Wall Street people can come up with a political agenda, and considering that from 75% to 90% of the population agrees the financial gap has to end, we could be looking at a wave election that will totally confound all current predictions about next year’s election.
So what do I mean about occupying your own mind and internalizing it? Well, I suggest you imagine a demonstration going on in your mind. First make a list of everything you would like to see changed in your life, everything you want, everything you want to eliminate. And then picture a group of demonstrators holding signs to describe these aspirations. Signs like:
A Bigger Audience For My Creative Efforts
Someone to Market My Products and Services
A More Supportive Relationship
It doesn’t really matter what you choices are, and they can be changed as you continue. To take it further, imagine all your brain cells are watching these demonstrations inside your head and being impacted by them. In other words, you are campaigning directly to the audience that will most likely help you change your results. It may feel strange or silly, but try it anyway. The great thing about an internal process like this is that no one else knows you are doing it. And what you are doing with this exercise is what the Occupy Wall Street protestors have done with the economic disparity issue, brought into a glaring spotlight the major issues holding you back. A discussion started is the first step toward effective resolution.
Jerry
A Less Than Narrow Escape
Turning Insanity Into Incentive
Well, we made it. The October 21st End of Days/The Rapture prediction by the Rev. Harold Camping has been, as every sensible, rational human suspected, a big flop. As it was on May 21st. In fact, Camping has now predicted the end of the world twelve times. And I’ve predicted it won’t end, so I am hereby claiming the mantle of prophet from his sorry ass.
But wait, Prophet Jerry isn’t just predicting that the world won’t end. I categorically assert that all of us can benefit from the quirky, flaky, kooky Camping’s miscalculations. Let’s just take him seriously for a moment–what if the world had ended as scheduled? Or even almost ended. Doesn’t that qualify as a narrow escape, and isn’t that the kind of event we normally would celebrate? Isn’t that exactly the kind of Whew! moment that would give us the incentive to appreciate every day as a gift of time we weren’t supposed to have? Sure, it wasn’t really a narrow escape, but remember the ultimate truth as I declared in Moneylove, that our subsconscious minds do not know the difference between fact and imagined fact.
So why not take this opportunity to imagine that the end of the world really was about to happen, and somehow we escaped, the catastrophe was avoided, we’ve been given another chance. Isn’t this a perfect opportunity for you and I to create a new sense of appreciation and joy and momentum in our lives? I’ve been thinking about this, and find my thinking about it has heightened some of my senses (or maybe I’m just paying closer attention). Every bite of food I’ve eaten since the deadline passed has seemed suffused with stunning bursts of flavor. I’ve been looking at some beautiful photographs, and find myself pulled into them at a deeper level than usual. I’ve also been immersed in the life and the words of Steve Jobs, as I prepare my next Moneylove Club audio based on his quotes and philosophy of life (and death).
I had started collecting his quotes a few years ago, as his take on life and creativity and the path to success was unusual and inspiring. As part of my research for this audio project, I’ve watched many clips, including the famous 15 minute commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005, in which he talked about his own mortality. In that talk, Steve Jobs called death “Life’s change agent,” and said it “clears out the old to make way for the new.” Well, why can’t a less-than-narrow escape from death do the same? It can if we say it can.
We even have a theme song for our triumphant survival of the End of Days. Stephen Sondheim wrote it for Follies, and it starts out:
“Good times and bum times, I’ve seen them all, And I’m still here.”
I’m still here, how about you? For thousands of years, false prophets have been predicting the end of the world. It’s even become a cliché in magazine cartoons, the bearded, sandal-clad man holding a sign reading: “The end is near.” We weren’t there, and neither was Google, so we can’t really look it up, but I have a feeling that when one of these doomsday predictions didn’t come true back in ancient times, the populace went crazy with joy, dancing in the streets, preparing celebratory feasts. You don’t have to prepare a fatted calf, but a little hedonistic indulgence would not be inappropriate in this moment of deliverance from a fiery demise for the planet.
Oh, there are still some false prophets left. A number of them are predicting the end of the U.S. and global economies. We humans do seem to have trouble learning from history. Just as every doomsday prophet has been wrong about the End of Days, every economic pessimist has been wrong about the collapse of the economy. Prophet Jerry says they are still wrong. In fact, I find it hard to take them seriously since so many of these so-called financial gurus have a vested interest in that collapse, either through hoarding commodities like gold, or selling stocks short, or selling survival courses. Hundreds of the members of his pseudo-church gave Harold Camping their life savings, so he could spend millions advertising the Apocalypse. He’s remaining silent now that October 21 has come and gone and we’re all still here.
You’re still here, and so is Planet Earth. What are you doing to celebrate the good news?
What Is Money?
A Great Question From South Africa
In addition to the audios, one of the features of The Moneylove Club is the monthly question members get to ask me directly. And these are often empowering to me, both the questions themselves and the thinking I have to do to come up with an appropriate answer. This is especially true because a large proportion of my members are leaders and teachers and mentors in their fields. The “What is money?” question came from a member from South Africa, and it had me thinking for a couple of days. After all, this is the primary subject I write and speak about, so any new thoughts I can come up with on the subject will serve me well in many venues. My answer:
When you ask: “Is it consciousness, is it an invisible force, is it just bits of paper that we covet and kill for?” I think the narrow definition is your final one–in the physical reality, it is just bits of paper. Money is about agreement, my agreeing and your agreeing that $100 is worth a certain amount in terms of what it can purchase or be exchanged for. Without that agreement, there is no money, there is no perceived value.
For instance, when I was in South Africa in 1989, the rand was disagreed on in terms of its perceived value compared to the dollar, it was devalued because of the boycotts around apartheid–which of course was to my advantage as a visitor with dollars. But South Africa was still a rich country by African standards, it still had its industry and its natural resources, but what was missing was what you might call your “invisible force,” which I would call universal agreement as to its stability and financial future. Money consciousness, on the other hand, as I talked about during my programs in SA at the time, transcends reality and economic statistics. Just as now in the U.S., there is this contentious deficit debate going on, and it doesn’t have to impact to the slightest degree someone’s individual financial situation. Whenever you are depending on someone else or on some institution or employer for your financial well being, you are taking away some of the power of money consciousness.
In other words, to the degree that you believe money is an outside event controlled by outside forces, you will have more difficulty manifesting it as a result of your inner vision, consciousness, and belief system. Very rich people rarely see actual cash, and don’t even have to carry it around. They have cut out the middleman, money, and focus instead on what’s really important, the lifestyle and results that lots of money can produce. We miss the point when we think what we want is a million dollars–what we want is what a million dollars can buy. Though in our mixed-up beliefs about money, we might not think we are successful even if we have all the good stuff without the actual cash.
I’ve never had a million dollars, but I have often lived a lifestyle that felt like a million dollars–traveling the world, living at the beach, waking up most mornings and doing exactly what I wanted to do with my day. In fact, I have had a few millionaire friends who weren’t nearly as successful as I was in creating that personal environment. So, in that sense, money is an invisible force, or at least money consciousness is.
Money is the physical manifestation of money consciousness–but without that consciousness it can also be just those bits of paper–and pretty narrow in its capacity to bring us what we want.
Money consciousness is a more permanent asset than money can ever be. Agreement about the value of money can change, but belief about your value as an income producing person can be permanent and keep on increasing.
Jerry
Prosperity Conscious View of U.S. Economy
Finally, Some Adult Opinions On The Way Things Really Are
Thank goodness for some sensible information now coming at us from Forbes, The Daily Beast, and Newsweek. Victoria Pynchon at Forbes called the Daily Beast article, Stop The Panic, It’s Not 2008, the “best economic news in several months.” I would have underlined “news,” as this is just what it is rather than all the doom and gloom opinion we’ve been getting from all sides of the political spectrum.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/14/economic-recovery-is-on-the-horizon.html
