Million Dollar Experiment
Welcome Your Guests
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi
Do we want to be in debt?
One of the ways we tend to hide what we really want from ourselves, is in connection with our debts. Many of us have one or more debts that seem to remain unpaid or that we pay late each month. This is no accident.
If we have difficulty paying a particular debt, we must assume that we want the debt to be unpaid or to be paid late. Invariably, if we look at the person or company to whom we owe the money, we will notice less than positive feelings toward them. In order to change the result, we must change what we want.
Remember you always receive what you want. When you want to withhold from someone, that is what you do. When you want to give freely to someone, that is what you do. Look at the result and you know what you want.
When you avoid dealing with a situation that is uncomfortable, it does not go away. When you have a need to withhold payment from someone, the need will intensify if you disregard it. You are continuing to focus energy into withholding, so the need to withhold becomes more intense. Remember you are putting energy into thoughts all the time, whether you are consciously aware of the thoughts or not.
Once you notice a negative thought pattern, such as withholding payment from someone, you have the option of releasing the negative thought about the person, or by avoiding the issue, putting more energy into the existing pattern.
Debts are not a general condition. They are a specific condition. No matter how much difficulty we are having with cash flow, we do pay some of our bills. We do manage handling money to some extent, and whatever that extent is, it is not an accident. We benefit those people we want to benefit and we withhold from others. We have the capacity at any time to attract sufficient money into our lives to pay any debt that we really want to pay.
What then is the procedure to master debts?
- Establish a clear intention to have more income than expenses.
- Notice all of the assets you have and all of the abundance in your life.
- Make it a habit to acknowledge and give thanks for everything you already have.
- Remember, what you focus your thought on expands.
- Eliminate the concept of debt from your thoughts.
- When you receive something that requires repayment, such as a loan, think of it as a gift to you.
- When you repay it, see it as a gift to the original giver.
If you notice difficulty in repaying a particular creditor, realize that you want to withhold from him. You must maintain total honesty with yourself at all times. Having accepted responsibility for withholding from that creditor, you then change your thoughts about him. Bring that person or company into mind from time to time and see yourself having positive feelings about him. Practice this until you notice that your feelings about the creditor improve. Then, the cash flow to pay the obligation will also improve.
From You Can Have It All
by Arnold M. Patent
What If?
What if it truly doesn’t matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?
How would this change what you choose to do with your life?
What if you could be more present and open hearted with each person you met if you were working as a cashier in a corner store, or as a parking lot attendant, than you could if you were doing a job you think is more important?
How would this change how you want to spend your precious time on this earth?
What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of your own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?
How would this affect your search for spiritual development?
What if there is no need to change, no need to try to transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving or wise?
How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?
What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature – gentle, compassionate, and capable of living fully and passionately present?
How would this affect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?
What if who you essentially are right now is all that you are ever going to be?
How would this affect how you feel about your future?
What if the essence of who you are and always have been is enough?
How would this affect how you see and feel about your past?
What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?
How would this change what you think you have to learn?
What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying, but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold?
How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today?
What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait?
How would this shape your stillness, your movement, your willingness to follow this impulse, to just let go and dance?
How would this affect how you see and feel about your past?
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Internet Resource Sharing Day
Here is a list of websites that we find useful.
Two Feathers recommends:
Art Deadline: I found lots of good ideas and opportunities here. It’s a good jumping off place if you are looking to promote your original art.
Hoover Web Design: Lots of really good information about website design and how to optimize and tweak your web pages. This is a great resource that I use all the time.
Auction Supplies: This site has a cool color picker and some eBay auction templates.
ProBlogger: the Blog that helps bloggers to add income streams to their blogs. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from this new and dynamic medium from blogs.
5 Star Affiliate Programs: represents a select group of high paying, high integrity affiliate programs. Some of 5 Star affiliates make over $10K per month. Most 5 Star programs offer *FREE datafeeds* and we also datafeed tools that help partners build custom, content-rich pages or complete sites filled with thousands of products quickly and easily.
John Chow dot Com: The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul. The following is a list of the Internet’s eight biggest Google AdSense publishers. The information was compiled from interviews and articles found on the Internet. Very interesting and intriguing.
The Inspiration Gallery: where you’ll find thousands of unique and original borders, backgrounds, wallpaper patterns, buttons and more. If you are designing your own website or blog, this site is a huge resource. Awesome.
Zero Cash, A Little Talent and 30 Days: “The idea is to try to setup some type of business in my free time and see if I can start to turn a profit in a 30 day period. That shouldn’t be too hard, since I’m also going to limit myself to spending zero cash out of pocket. That means that any sales at all will be profit.” A very interesting blog, and the catalyst that propelled me into “The Prosperity Project” and my other blogs.
Firdamatic™: If you are looking to create your own customized template for your blog, this is a cool tool that is really easy to use.
I Work in My Pajamas: This is my favorite work at home website. I go here all the time to get ideas about affiliate marketing, websites, and how to make money in my spare time on my computer.
vflyer: “Post Classified Ads Quickly and Easily for FREE. Create “Virtual” Online Flyers – Now with Customizable Themes.” A great little site, makes it really easy to make a professional looking flyer to advertise whatever it is that you want to sell.
Melissa recommends:
I subscribe to a sweepstakes newsletter at www.sweepsheet.com. I highly recommend it!
For writing tips, I like Jane Espenson’s blog at www.janeespenson.com. She is a working writer and executive producer who gives great advice.
I also use www.inktip.com to find out what types of scripts are being sought currently. It’s a great meeting place for producers to find writers and vice-versa. This site averages eight scripts optioned or sold EVERY WEEK!
Michelle recommends:
I used Bravenet for both my kids homeshool website and The Art of Being an Artist site which isn’t up yet. (www.bravenet.com)
I used www.grsites.com for things such as buttons and graphics and textures.
For than email flyer I created, I used www.sendblaster.com, and downloaded their free software. All these things were simple and easy even for a blonde like me, and totally free. (which I have been accused of, but I swear it isn’t true.)
Shirley recommends:
I have been checking out www.payperpost.com, where you can get paid for blogging about specific products.. this might be especially good for Melissa and Cindy who both have an interest in the travel biz.. you could blog about travel and get paid for posting at the same time and attract potential clients all at the same time..
Important Note:
This post was written in 2007, and so many of these links may be obsolete or outdated.
What about you?
What are your favorite useful sites? Where do you go to find great information that is specific to your projects and goals? Are you looking for information or tools and don’t know where to find it? Let’s share our internet resources.
Our Goal!
Taking Action
Thought is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck – the failure to connect thought with personal action.
By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you; but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.
Your pocketbook is not going to be transformed in to a Fortunatus’s purse which shall always be full of money, without effort on your part.
This is the crucial point in the science of getting rich; right here, where thought and personal action must be combined. There are very many people who, consciously or unconsciously, set the creative forces in action by the strength and persistence of their desires, but who remain poor because they do not provide for the reception of the thing they want when it comes.
By thought, the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it.
From The Science of Getting Rich
by Wallace D. Wattles.
I suppose it’s kind of like having an apple orchard. You plant the trees, the weather cooperates, and eventually there are apples. But unless you harvest and use them, they are just bird food. And if you aren’t ready to go out and get them when they are ripe, and if you don’t can, cook, eat, or sell them, those apples will still end up being bird food.
Setting Goals
Here are some thoughts about goal setting that I found at Steve Pavlina’s website:
A major obstacle that prevents people from enjoyably achieving their goals is that they set their goals incorrectly to begin with. This problem occurs because people don’t understand the nature of time well enough. When people consider a particular goal, they often worry about the time commitment: If I start my own business now, it could take years to make it profitable. I’m so overweight it could take years for me to get in shape. If I break off this unfulfilling relationship, it could take years to get back on my feet again. Such thoughts are clearly demotivating, but more importantly they reveal a total misunderstanding of the nature of time.
We tend to think of time as a resource that we spend, just like we spend money. To complete a one-hour task is to spend an hour on it. How are you spending your day? Where do you want to spend your next vacation? How will you spend the rest of the year? Time is money, a disposable resource.
This is a silly and inaccurate way to think about time, however. Time is not a resource. You cannot spend time. Time spends itself. You have no choice in the matter. No matter what you do, the time is going to pass anyway. It doesn’t matter if you do one thing or another for the next five years. Those five years will pass no matter what you do.
In reality you are never in the past or future. You exist only in the present moment. Even when you remember the past or envision the future, you’re still thinking those thoughts in the present. All you really have is right now. And that’s all you ever will have. You can’t control the passage of time, but you can control your present moment focus. That’s all. No past. No future. Just right now.
The purpose of goal-setting isn’t to control the future. That would be senseless because the future only exists in your imagination. The only value in goal-setting is that it improves the quality of your present moment reality. Setting goals can give you greater clarity and focus right now. Whenever you set a goal, always ask yourself, “How does setting this goal improve my present reality?” If a goal does not improve your present reality, then the goal is pointless, and you may as well dump it. But if the goal brings greater clarity, focus, and motivation to your life whenever you think about it, it’s a keeper.
As you think about how your goals improve your present reality, eventually you’ll feel motivated to take action. At the same time, you’ll begin attracting resources into your life that will help you achieve your goals. There’s no need to force yourself — you’ll find yourself naturally drawn to take action as you keep bringing your focus back to the present. When you think about a goal in a way that motivates you right now, it’s only natural that you’ll begin taking action congruent with the goal.
When you set goals that increase the quality of your present reality, then what does it matter how long it takes to achieve the final outcome? Whether it takes one week or five years is irrelevant. The whole path is fun and enjoyable. More importantly, you feel happy and fulfilled this very moment. This drives you to take enjoyable action, so you’re productive too.
So what do you guys think? If you want to read his complete post, here’s the link. Is he right? What goals have you been successful with, and what goals do you find yourself continually struggling to keep up with?
Getting Motivated
Here is a small piece of an article I found at Steve Pavlina’s website. It’s something that happens to me all the time, so I thought I would share it here and see if we can get some good insights and commentary going.
Do you ever feel there’s a greater being inside of you just bursting to get out? You can feel its presence sometimes, can’t you?
It’s the voice that encourages you to really make something of your life. When you act congruently with that voice, it’s like you’re a whole new person. You feel like a god in a human body. You’re bold and courageous. You’re strong. You’re unstoppable.
But then reality sets in, and soon those moments are history. Where did that powerful voice go? Were you merely suffering from delusions of grandeur?
It isn’t hard to temporarily put yourself into an emotional state of power. Just go to any Tony Robbins’ concert seminar, and he’ll have you dancing in the aisles feeling totally motivated. Put on your favorite fast-tempo music, stand tall, breathe strong, chest out, shoulders back. Strut around like a superhero. Shout, “Yes!” Pound your chest a few times for good measure. You’ll look like a dolt, but this does actually work.
But then you go home, and the emotional motivation fades away. Your great ideas now seem impractical. How many times have you been temporarily inspired with an idea like, “I want to start my own business,” and then a week later it’s forgotten? You come up with inspiring ideas when you’re motivated, but you fail to maintain that level of motivation through the action phase.
So how do you reach the point of high motivation and stay there?
Steve Pavlina has some interesting answers to this on his site, you can look at them here. I’m also curious and interested to know what our own answers are.
Don’t Take No For An Answer
This story is from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich“, written in 1937.
One afternoon, Mr Darby was helping his uncle grind wheat in an old-fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm on which a number of share-crop farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened, and a young black girl, the daughter of a tenant, walked in and took her place near the door.
The uncle looked up, saw the child, and barked at her roughly, “What do you want?”
Meekly, the child replied, “My mama say send her fifty cents.”
“I’ll not do it,” the uncle retorted, “now you run on home.”
“Yes sir,” the child replied, but she did not move.
The uncle went ahead with his work, so busily engaged that he did not pay enough attention to the child to observe that she did not leave. When he looked up and saw her still standing there, he yelled at her, “I told you to go on home! Now go, or I’ll take a switch to you.”
The little girl said, “Yes sir,” but she did not budge.
The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a barrel stave, and started toward the child with an expression on his face that indicated trouble.
Mr Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness an assault. He knew his uncle had a fierce temper.
When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly stepped forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her shrill voice, “My mama’s gotta have that fifty cents!”
The uncle stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out a half dollar and gave it to her.
The child took the money and slowly backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off the man whom she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and looked out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was pondering, with awe, the whipping he had just taken.
Mr Darby too was doing some thinking. That was the first time in all his experience that he had seen a black child deliberately master an adult white person, (remember this is 1937). How did she do it? What happened to his uncle that caused him to lose his fierceness and become as docile as a lamb?
Money In The Mail
At work the other day, a friend of mine told me about how one day she just decided that it would be OK for money to come to her without her having to work really hard for it. And so she just started telling herself, “I get money in the mail all the time.”
They way she said it was just cheerful and upbeat, with the same sincerity and same tone as she might have said, “I go to the movies every Saturday.” Now here’s the interesting thing, she started to get cash in the mail almost right away, and money from unexpected places too.
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