“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

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

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

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

If I were asked for a quick one word answer, I would have to say, “Yes!” We live in a world where cash is the main medium of exchange, and life with restricted cash flow can become difficult in the extreme.

At the same time, a total dedication to building wealth, excluding all other human values and joys, is a pretty empty endeavor. It isn’t the pursuit of wealth or capitalism that is the evil force in this equation, but rather the imbalance that a devotion to accumulating wealth produces in many people. Obviously, multi-billionaire Warren Buffet has his head and values screwed on straight. For him and Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs and some others of immense wealth, there is a wisdom and balance in how they handle it. But these are exceptional people, and even a larger number of the wealthy haven’t had the training, education, or upbringing that gives them the tools to maintain their prosperity equilibrium.

I just came up with that term as I was writing this, and immediately decided it was the perfect title for this post. Equilibrium is described as the condition of a system in which competing influences are balanced. Capitalism and entrepreneurship are what made our nation great, and are good forces for enriching and even ennobling. But not when they are tainted with greed, selfishness, pathological obsession, lack of human compassion and lack of any uplifting vision.

What set me off on this tangent in the first place was a question posted on a religious blog someone sent me:  ”Can cash console you at 1:00AM?”  And my answer there, too, is an emphatic “Yes!” If I am feeling lonely, depressed, upset, or anxious at one o’clock in a dreary morning, having access to lots of discretionary funds can console me a lot. And I don’t have to even go the route of that poor emotionally disturbed creature, Charlie Sheen, and buy hookers and cocaine to do the job of making me feel better. If I have piles of cash put aside, I can invite a bunch of friends to visit me from all over the world, fly them in from London and Panama and South Africa and Hawaii and all across the United States–put all of us up in a beautiful resort and just visit and play together for several days or a week or two. Or I can fly myself to a poor village in a third world nation and dispense gifts that would mean something, like a good water system, a medical clinic, computers for all the children. I guarantee, either of these expensive ventures would take me out of myself and whatever real or imagined troubles or anxieties I had. But even simpler and smaller exchanges of money could do the job. I’m sure you can think of many ways you could use some extra money to console yourself at 1:00AM no matter what was happening. And even some that wouldn’t take cash.

A basic rule of human existence that we all learn in one form or another is that if you are having a good life, money can do things to make it even better–and if you are having a bad life, money alone can’t help. But it certainly can console us in many of life’s travails.

If I haven’t convinced you of my basic premise, then I will make you a special holiday offer. In this time of generous good cheer, I will be happy to receive any extra cash you want to send to me, and I will use it to console myself in very positive, enlightened, and highly pleasurable ways–and send you a full report of how I used your cash so you might learn what to do with it in the future.

Jerry

And that is, after all, the essential question that I don’t see fellow prosperity teachers and authors asking. I have been very fortunate in that a large number of people have seemed to have gotten some valuable information from my books and audios and even this blog. But I have always maintained that such success is to be only partially credited to the material offered. It really has more to do about whether the student is willing and ready to absorb the information; whether it strikes a compatible and resonating chord within him or her–and maybe most importantly, whether the timing is right.

This latest musing on my part was triggered by a question asked by one of my Moneylove Club audio subscribers. He has put some of the ideas from my audios into practice to great prosperous effect in his life. He wondered whether I got frustrated or upset that with such powerful stuff to share, some people just didn’t bother checking it out, or joining the club. Actually, the only thing that frustrates me, and I mean the only thing in my entire life right now, is that I haven’t figured out a way to reach the two million people who bought and read Moneylove over the past thirty years. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect to eventually connect with twenty to thirty thousand of them. And if I could get 500 to 1000 people, out of the original two million, to be as excited about my new audios as they were about the book or my earlier cassette programs, I would feel I had achieved a major accomplishment. And especially if those people, already predisposed to the Moneylove concepts, were ready to put some new strategies and ideas into practice right away.

But a lot of people aren’t ready to do that, even if I could reach them and tell them about what I am offering. And this is true for everyone in the information, training, motivational and inspirational business. We can be arrogant and suppose people who don’t immediately sign up or enroll in our programs are idiots, or we can accept the reality that no matter how great something is, it isn’t for everyone. And it certainly isn’t for everyone at this exact moment in time. Moreover, if we are honest and aware, what any of us offer out into the world may not be the most effective or valuable product or service or information that a specific individual can successfully use.

For whatever reason, there are millions of people out there who will respond more positively to someone else’s prosperity ideas. I’d be a fool to suppose otherwise. Or to let it bother me. This is why I never take for granted someone’s positive feedback, and cherish every compliment. If I share something I have learned or created and it makes sense for you, and you decide to try it out and it works in producing positive results, then we are joined in that moment in a very precise and mutually inspiriting way.

And while I have been spending almost all my time on producing my audios rather than promoting or marketing them, so cannot expect a very big audience yet, there is one major blessing I celebrate. My internet guru friends tell me that I have one of the lowest attrition rates in the information field. Most of my original subscribers are still members almost two years after I started the Moneylove Club. I think we can all do a lot better job of appreciating the people who stay rather than being concerned about the ones who got away, or never showed up in the first place.

Jerry

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

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

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

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