Course held in Los Angeles, California 11-13th April 2008
Introduction
My intention with this report is not to tell you everything we did (I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who might want to attend yourself) but rather to give you my impressions from the point of view of a coach who attended wanting to learn not only for myself, but also so that I could pass on what I learnt to other people. I was also interested in learning different techniques, how they ran the course, and how they used it to sell their other courses.
The course was based on a book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, that I first read in early 2007, having being recommended it by one of the members in my Mastermind Group. I was very taken with the book; it was organized well and clearly stated that we all have what T. Harv Eker, the author, calls a financial blueprint – in other words, a level of income set in our minds unconsciously, beyond which we don’t venture. I hadn’t come across this way of thinking about income before, and was very keen to identify what my level might be and how to break through it. I had some ideas already about it, but thought I could do more.
I visited his website, www.peakpotentials.com, to discover that one of his marketing techniques is to invite those who buy a copy of the book to attend a Secrets of the Millionaire Mind course for free, along with a partner. Again, I’d not heard of this way of marketing before – in fact, I didn’t believe it and rang them to confirm! I ended up booking two places on the May course, to be held in Los Angeles. My husband Philip and I decided to make a holiday out of the trip and stay over for two weeks with friends living near by (making some of the costs of the trip tax deductible of course – one good reason for having your own business, by the way).
I returned just a few days ago, with loads of ideas buzzing around, so here’s this report, fresh from my attendance.
THE COURSE: DAY ONE
We were booked into the Los Angeles Hilton, Universal City. It’s perched on a mound above the city, with views from the 11th floor over the LA valley, very beautiful in spite of smog and six lane freeways with fast moving traffic!
Imagine you’re in a large seminar room in the hotel; one of over 1200 people. Then imagine that because you’ve upgraded (for a small amount of money) you have a badge saying VIP, which gives you the right to sit in the middle and at the front, plus a whole bag full of free goodies and discount offers. And now imagine that as you walk to your seat to settle in for the beginning session, you’re met with loud music, people dancing in the aisles and on the stage, and people shouting out as the leader on the stage invites us to celebrate each other. Definitely not very traditionally British! And in fact it took me some time to adjust, particularly as it was still only about 8.45 in the morning! Well, you know, I thought, “This is America; this is how they do things here.” I’d attended larger events than these in America before, so it wasn’t a shock in that I had told myself what to expect. But it still didn’t prepare me for the actual reality! However, I adjusted and soon found myself swaying to the music in front of my chair. Eventually the music stopped and the presenter came on stage.
Kieron Sweeney is a successful businessman; he told us a bit about himself (I would have preferred more) and then launched straight in to a description of the mind’s purpose being survival, and hence it is not open to us changing much. Which is why we all find it difficult sometimes to change our habits. Our minds think along the lines of “You’ve always managed all right, why do you need to change at all?.” He also introduced the idea that “How you do anything is how you do everything”, a favourite quote throughout the weekend. The teaching is fast-paced, so there’s not much time to question these statements until after, but this one I could agree with straight off.
Financial Freedom
The focus on day one was defining Financial Freedom for ourselves. For me it is: to lead the lifestyle I wish, with the expenses for that covered by passive income sources (passive income being income that is either from investments or from a business working for you, such as rental properties, automated businesses, or anything that doesn’t need your involvement on a daily basis). I call this Freedom Income, it being any income that brings you freedom from having to work.
A clear way to define how much that is (also outlined in the book) is to take the amount of money you need to earn per year, add on 50% for inflation and taxes; then work out how much capital you need at 10% interest or return on investment. For example, if you decide you need $100,000 per annum to live, then multiplying this by 10 will give you the total capital required, i.e. $1million. I suggest now that if you haven’t done this calculation already for yourself, that you stop reading and do it. It makes for a clear starting point if you’re interested in creating Financial Freedom for yourself. He outlined the five areas that contribute towards Financial Freedom: working income, savings, investments, passive income and simplification. We were asked to identify which of these areas we needed to focus on to move towards Financial Freedom.
Managing your money with Jars
A lot of time was also spent on what is fondly called The Jars! This is a way of separating out your money into different accounts, either online, in actual jars, or both. I first experienced this thinking in my twenties, having just received a pay rise, and when I got to the end of the first month with the extra money, I still didn’t have any money left in my account! Given that it was a substantial rise at the time, I was pretty horrified, as the money had just disappeared without me noticing it. This was my first introduction into the part the mind has to play in this game about money, as I understood that no matter what amount of income I had, I’d always spend it, unless I changed my thinking and behaviour. The following month I had set up a savings account and a standing order for the amount of my rise. I’d been living OK before the rise, and now I was going to continue to live like that, but knowing I was saving something too.
The Jars system is a more methodical and sophisticated version of this, and it’s outlined in the book, so look there if you want to know more. For now, I’ll just say that you set up accounts to represent several different categories, namely:
. Financial Freedom Account
. Long Term Savings for Spending Account
. Play Account
. Give Account
. Necessities Account
. Education Account
. And if you run a business, a separate Taxes account.
And divide your money into these accounts according to the percentages laid out in the book, adjusting them according to your circumstances. For instance, he suggests putting 10% into your Give account (for giving towards charities, causes etc). I donate six hours of my time every week as a volunteer (giving can be money or time), and I consider that is my Give account, so I put much less into this jar. I strongly suggest buying the book if you want to know more about this; also, although I’ve been operating a smaller and less defined version of this myself for some time now, I have now put the full system into place and will be reporting on how it’s going on my blog from time to time. A lot of time was spent on this system as it is a demonstration to the world that you are serious about managing your money. (And by the way, managing your money well is crucial to becoming a RichThinker. I read just the other day about a course that Coutts Bank offers for those inheriting millions at a young age. Having plenty of money brings with it the need for knowledge about what to do with it, and they are endeavouring to instill useful ideas into people who haven’t had their own access to this kind of wealth before).
Usefully, Kieron then covered how to operate this system if you run a business, the prime point being to keep your personal and business income separate – i.e. pay yourself a salary if you run a business. This is hugely important. If you don’t do this (and I have personal experience of this!) then you risk getting your personal and business finances completely muddled up, making it much more difficult to budget and allocate monies in a way that is truly effective. It’s OK – you can manage; but it’s not a demonstration of being a good money manager, nor is it the mark of a good business person. So if you’re self-employed and reading this, take note! Arrange to pay yourself a set amount of salary directly from your business income. This can be worked out as an average over the year if you have fluctuating income. He also covered how couples living together can manage their money in this way, and encouraged the education of children in this method too.
The importance of creating a business
Financially speaking, most people think that the primary reason to work is to earn money to pay for their current way of life. However, rich people (and RichThinkers) know that the primary reason to work is to bring in money to invest and to create passive income vehicles so that they can become financially free. Hence the importance of having a business as a step along the way – if for no other reason than the tax benefits! Our friends we were staying with in LA have a consultancy business. No employees, and actually not much passive income either (although they’re being affected by our studies and experience in this area!). However, for the amount of income their business brings in on an average year, they are able to live at a much higher standard than their friends who are on the same amount of money, paid to them as salary. Why? Because when you have a business, many expenses can be put through the business, for example, some living expenses, much travel, office costs, some entertaining etc. These costs come out of your earnings FIRST and then you pay tax on what is left. Employees pay tax on their salary at source, and AFTER that have to pay for living, travel etc. Message – create yourself a business. Everyone interested in a passive income generating business has to start at some point. So start now! In fact, all those on the course who were not already running a business were invited to make a commitment to start one within the five days following the course. If you’re reading this and haven’t got a business yet, as a first step I encourage you to at least think about what you would like to do; what your skills are; and how you could bring these two things together to make an income. For example, a student on one of my courses in Scotland is a maths teacher. He had never thought about being a tutor, and the benefits that might bring to him financially. He finished the course about 6 weeks ago, and I just got an email from him saying he now had 8 clients, and was turning people away. His next step is employing other tutors. Success!
Declarations
Then we were introduced to Declarations. In the book, Harv writes about these as a different take on affirmations. He doesn’t like affirmations because they state that the goal is already happening. He says, “I’m not crazy about (using affirmations) because often when we affirm something that is not yet real, the little voice in our head usually responds with ‘This isn’t true, this is BS.’” He describes declarations as a positive statement that you say out loud with energy.
I have written at length about affirmations in my book Choose Your Thoughts, Change Your Life (currently being revised and updated) and I use and teach them differently from many. The real power of affirmations comes when we do notice any negative responses we have, bring them out into the open and therefore lessen their power over us. When we know what is getting in the way of a statement being true for us, we can at least do something about it. We don’t need to use affirmations for what we already believe; we don’t need to – if you truly believe that you are a good money manager, and your actions show that is true, then why would you need to affirm that? Or even declare it? If you want to know more about this, sign up on my website to receive information when the new edition of the book is ready. Affirmations are NOT used to make you feel good necessarily – although that may well be a by-product, and indeed, when you have changed your beliefs, you will certainly feel good.
Anyway, we were using declarations, a positive statement that you say out loud with energy. And boy, did we say them with energy! The impact of 1200 people all shouting out “I am an excellent money manager” and so on was incredible. It reminded me of the training course I did with Louise L. Hay way back in 1990, when 150 people were all stating together “I love and approve of myself exactly as I am” into their little hand mirrors. (This was one of the most transforming experiences of my life by the way – and why I advocate stating your affirmations/declarations, or RichThoughts as I now call them, into a mirror). It creates amazing energy and excitement, and at that point it’s easy to believe it’s true. Back home, on your own, it can be more difficult to believe them. Which is why regular support in the form of genuine friends, support networks, coaching, or attendance at seminars is so important.
The power of our beliefs
Kieron talked a lot about the power of beliefs, which is of course where the mind comes in. It is composed of our beliefs, and they, of course, come from our past. So when you’re behaving frugally by saying ‘Oh I can’t afford that today, better leave it for another time’, you’re operating out of a belief that’s been instilled into you in your past. The point of this is that NOW is not the past, and you can change your beliefs NOW, so that in the future you can behave differently. Or at least have a choice! Much of the work that I do with people is rooted in this, (click here for FREE first 2 chapters of my emanual) as without attending to the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions we have in our lives, we don’t get that far.
Choosing beliefs we DO want in our lives, and letting go of those we don’t want is crucial. There were many exercises offered to help us with this, most of which I had done before, and a variety of which I offer in courses I have done, but it’s always good to do them again and see if something else pops up.
At this point we had our first introduction to how to sell. Not that it was put quite like that of course! I’d already understood that part of the course would be them selling their other courses (Peak Potentials has over 12 courses on offer), so I wasn’t surprised by this. What I was impressed by was the ability to seamlessly sell within the context of the course we were doing. From a business point of view, it was a great lesson in how to sell, and indeed this was pointed out to us as an opportunity to observe how they were selling (This maybe took care of some of the sceptics, who could pretend to only be interested from this point of view).
I had determined that I wasn’t going to sign up to any other courses – ha, ha! I could easily have signed up for them all! Is this an indication of their selling skills, that I’m gullible, or that I was just carried away on the day? Or perhaps a combination of all three? Even despite the fact that I didn’t want to fly so far again, in the end I signed up for the Guerrilla Business School next spring (in New York, not so far). The content of the course was exactly what I was interested in, and the deal was too good to miss, especially combined with the low exchange rate against the pound at the moment. (That’s a good way to run a business – get paid for the product almost a year in advance – great cashflow management!)
We ended the day with an exercise about how attached to money we can get. No more to be said about this one, except it was challenging! It was, however, an intriguing exercise demonstrating the power our minds have over us. The day ended about 11pm, they really try and pack stuff in. I was exhausted, and as I believe in the power of space and time for integration of ideas, the intensity in itself was a challenge. Looking back on the day, I was disappointed that Kieron used many of the examples from the book, so I’d already heard about them. I would have preferred hearing more from his own life as demonstrations of the theoretical point he was making. It also took some time to get used to the particular style the Peak Potential trainers have been trained in, where they constantly ask for audience participation in the form of filling in the missing words in sentences, and asking the audience to shout out ‘yes’ when asked the question ‘yes or yes?’ And I’m not sure about the benefits of using a lesser known speaker on day one; surely captivating your audience is crucial on day one? However, setting these aside, this course was definitely one of the better ones I’ve attended (and there’ve been many!); the quality of content was very high indeed, the organization very smooth, and the inspiration gained was enormous.
DAY TWO. The man himself
We were apparently fortunate in having T. Harv Eker himself teaching us on days two and three. He doesn’t teach much on these Millionaire Mind courses any more, his time being taken up more with other courses and running the business.
It was easy to see why he’s been successful (although he’s had many business failures as well). He’s probably one of the most passionate speakers I’ve seen; even could be described as angry sometimes (he calls it adamant). Whatever, he’s a small man with a huge amount of passion. And he can tell a great story, knowing when to pause and for how long, telling just enough to get the audience’s attention, and then timing the punch lines perfectly. Doing all this while using personal examples of some of the things that have happened to him was a winning combination. I won’t tell them here, as they’re his stories, but suffice to say I learnt that I need to improve my story telling skills! Not that they’re bad – just not as good as his, yet!
Regarding beliefs, he had an interesting analogy about how long it takes us to learn a new belief. He asked us to imagine putting our hand into a jar and getting bitten by a spider. Result – we immediately take our hand out, and understandably feel very nervous about putting our hand in again. We now have a belief something along the lines of ‘I might get bitten if I put my hand in that jar’, making us hesitant about doing it again. This was used as a demonstration of how we can easily change beliefs in a split second – it doesn’t have to take ages. I remember at the time being impressed with this analogy and agreeing with it. Due to the speedy nature and intensity of the course, I didn’t give this example any more thought, but now I’m writing about it, I realize that if I were to want to change the new belief (I might get bitten if I put my hand in that jar), it’s going to take longer to change than the other way round, simply because I’m going to have to have several experiences of putting my hand in the jar without getting bitten before I will begin to feel confident again that my hand will be OK. That’s OK, nothing wrong with that, but it does take longer. Say I have a belief ‘I’m not a good money manager’, to change that I first have to want to, secondly have to set myself up properly to demonstrate to myself that this is so, and then have some positive experiences about this being the case. So it does take some time, and a willingness to persist. Again, regular support from self-help groups, friends on the same journey, coaching, all helps to keep us on track.
Harv used quite a number of NLP techniques (neuro-linguistic programming), all of which are useful, to demonstrate letting go of beliefs, for instance putting an elastic band round your wrist and pinging it against yourself every time you notice you’re thinking something negative. You then replace the negative thought with a positive RichThought, and kiss your wrist, or rub it lovingly. The thinking behind this is rooted in behavioural therapy, as is much of this kind of work, and presupposes that an undesirable thought (the negative belief), when matched with an unpleasant stimulus (the pinging of the band), will lessen the likelihood of thinking this kind of thought. This clearly had value for some people as I saw them pinging away during the rest of the day. For me, doing it the positive way, and using an ‘anchor’ such as painting your little fingernail red to remind you of a positive thought, is preferable.
We also learnt about the benefits of hypnotherapy and listened to a wealth conditioning CD. The benefits of using particular physical movements when stating our declarations was also demonstrated, so at one point, the whole room was fiddling with their ears (addressing the auditory sense) while saying ‘I am an excellent money manager’. Might have seemed very odd indeed to the casual onlooker! However, the point is that by addressing the visual, auditory, kinesthetic and spiritual functions in our bodies, we are imprinting our cellular memories with the words of the declarations. This makes them much more powerful.
Why get rich? – the purpose of money
That afternoon we concentrated on why we would want more money. Initially, it was disappointing to hear people calling out ‘to buy a Ferrari, to own a boat, to go on exotic holidays.’ But when encouraged to think big, people started shouting out their big dreams, eg ‘I want to set up a camp for underprivileged children to have regular holidays’, ‘I want to fund a residential school for autistic school leavers’, ‘I want to teach people how to live their dreams’.
It is crucial to know why you want more money, and I don’t mean enough to cover your expenses (although that’s OK too). The thing is, if you don’t know why you want it, and it’s not a strong enough reason to want it, you won’t have anything to pull you through when the going gets tough. Harv was very strong on this (as I am). He defined an entrepreneur as ‘someone who solves problems for people at a profit, or for pay’. In the examples above, all the big dreams would be solving problems for people. He mentioned that while it’s OK to enjoy the fruits of your labour in the form of more ‘stuff’ for a while, ultimately it gets boring. After all, you can only wear one shirt at a time, drive one car at a time, live in one place at a time. So contributing to other people’s lives is one thing that many entrepreneurs find themselves doing, sooner or later.
In my experience, defining your purpose in life is crucial to get the most out of it. And it might have little to do with money. On the surface, my purpose says nothing about it at all. Here it is:
My purpose is to awaken and inspire others to live their lives in abundance, pleasure, joy; happiness, peace and contentment.
I do this through teaching people about RichThinking and why that is important, and by being a demonstration of this as best I can in my own life. At the time of writing this, RichThinkers is offering products etc about money only, but over time we will be entering into other areas of life, such as relationships, the body, time, the natural world, health, the spirit, etc etc. Because being a true RichThinker involves being it in every aspect of your life. ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’. A true RichThinker lives a life of abundance in every area, overspilling into other people’s lives and inviting others’ to play at that level.
So getting clear about who you are and where you’re going, financially, is a necessary first step in this money game. Sign up to receive regular emails, for products associated with helping you determine what your financial (or any other) purpose in life is.
Receiving
Oh this is a biggie! MUCH bigger than most people realize. So big that lots of people might dismiss this section just by thinking things like “I’m great at receiving”, or “Of course I want lots more money!”, or “Why wouldn’t I want to win the lottery!” If you belong to this category, then do something different from what you usually do and read this section. Not only read it, put into practice the suggestions! Remember – to get something different in your life, you have to do something different.
One of the easiest and most common ways we can practice receiving is with compliments. Some of you may have done the exercise that Harv invited us to do Ð mill around, giving people compliments with the receiver only allowed to say “Thank you”, and keeping their lips shut after that. We do it in my courses too. It is a hugely important way of receiving that we all dismiss easily, and on a daily basis! Honestly, just think about the last time you received a compliment — how did you actually receive it? Did it just flow in and you felt good? Or did you swat it back with a comment such as ‘You look good too’, or ‘I’m not really that good at _______, actually’. If you think you do the latter, then try just keeping your mouth shut and accepting the present of the compliment. And if you really want to practice this, do what Harv next suggested and keep your mouth shut the next time someone says ‘I love you’. If you’re not practiced in this, it’s difficult, I tell you! I am now comfortable with this – just because Philip, my husband and business partner, tells me he loves me, doesn’t mean to say I have to respond in kind. I wait until I feel moved to tell him I love him. But it took some practice I can tell you, because in our society we are not geared up for this. And what’s worse, we teach it to our kids! One of my nieces tells me at the end of a phone call ‘Love you!’ — this always feels strange to me; I know I’m expected to say ‘Love you’ back, but I’ve never felt it yet. It’s too prescribed, like saying ‘How are you?’ which is simply a form of greeting Ð usually people do not want to hear the full description of how you really are, they just want to hear ‘Fine, thank you’. Then the social niceties are over and the conversation can really begin. I won’t use those precious words ‘I love you’ in this ‘polite’ form. I think they’re worth more than that. There’s further you can go with this example, but that’s for another time.
Another part of Receiving is acknowledging your successes, and the Success Song was fun Ð and something you can do right now. Simply, make up your own words to a tune you know, affirming your positive relationship with money. That’s the fun bit — now you have to make sure you sing it in the shower every day. That sounds like fun too, but you’d be surprised how many people will have forgotten they ever created a song to be sung in the shower, let alone do it. Other ways you can use this is to set your own words to the tunes that get stuck in your head (this happens to me a lot). If you’ve got a tune going round and round, you might as well personally benefit from the words. For instance, if your tune is Baa Baa Black Sheep, you might make up words like these:
Thank you for my wealth and riches
I am very very grateful
I am wealthy
I have money
I am rich
I feel sunny
I am financially free and happy
Thank you for my wealth and riches
OK so it won’t win any awards, but it’s fun! And better than the original words which aren’t going to be giving you anything at all.
On the Saturday evening we watched a short video about Money Personalities; unfortunately I was so knackered by this time that I didn’t take much of it in. I’ve earmarked this concept for further exploration, so again, watch my website for further info. At 10pm, even though the evening hadn’t finished, I gave up and went to bed.
DAY THREE.
Money and Emotions
Think of your relationship with money as if it were a relationship partner. Assuming you really liked this partner, you’d want to treat them well wouldn’t you? At least ideally! However, as we know in our relationships with people, often our negative emotions get in the way. Sadness from past hurts can keep us shying away from commitment; fear of being hurt again can keep us pushing others away; shame can make us avoid intimate relationships altogether. And anger can cause disruption in all sorts of ways. We were introduced to this essential topic very visually by Kieron, who staggered across the stage with a heavy suitcase, demonstrating the weight of the emotions we carry round with us. Harv then took us through a variety of partner exercises involving our feelings around money, and particularly relating to past incidents that might be still informing us now. He had his own story to tell around this, which was poignant and very funny in the end. I had difficulty with this exercise as I couldn’t recall any incident from my childhood which associated money and anger. So either I’ve blocked something out completely, or not much happened! In truth, I had quite a lot of reasonably positive experiences around money from my family, which has probably resulted in me always finding I’ve had enough for what I wanted to do. Up until now, though, my ‘wants’ were pretty minimal, so money wasn’t an issue. Read more about my motivation for learning about this subject under ‘About Me’.
Later, again in partners, we were asked to identify a specific incident that had happened to us with regard to money and to release this in various ways. As with all energetic exercises, it was as good as the amount of energy you put into doing it. Needless to say, I gave 100% and ended up shouting at the top of my voice about various things, including my anger with myself about thinking I have to have my husband’s permission to run a business! As I write this, I’m thinking ‘Ridiculous!’ but that was what came up. It’s not to do with him in that he doesn’t stop me, or want to stop me. Rather it’s to do with my holding back from being a business woman in my own right. I tell you, I felt great when I fully entered into letting this go. I had shared about it to the whole group on the first day, and had loads of women afterwards came up to me, saying how they’d appreciated me sharing about a subject that was relevant to them too.
The impact parents had was touched on also – we tend to either be in rebellion against our parents, or have taken a different stand by ‘being good’ and not standing out. There was lots more about this, and there’s lots more that can be done too. Childhood relationships with parental figures can play a large part in this!
Harv also introduced the concept of forgiveness and told his story about this in relation to his Dad. Again, I’m not going to relate it here, it’s his story. We must have been running out of time, because we didn’t do any exercises around this hugely important topic, as forgiveness, ie letting go of something, is really important in moving on from past events.
Success!
If you can’t acknowledge your successes, then you’re not going to get very far. That was Harv’s basic message about this topic. Hence the importance of noting your successes every day. Again, this is a well-known technique, but the question is — do you do it? That is, list five successes you’ve had at the end of every day? Mine yesterday were:
1) Said no to someone inviting me for coffee, as I wanted to write this report
2) Listened to an inspiring marketing seminar on the internet
3) Went for an early morning walk
4) Cooked a tasty dinner
5) Had a challenging conversation with the autistic teenager I help look after
I’m writing this bit at 5.30pm the next day, and so far my successes today have been:
1) Went back to bed for a cuddle after jumping out when the alarm went
2) Spent three hours writing with no interruptions
3) Attended a mastermind meeting and received useful feedback re my products
4) Made an appointment for a dance session
So your successes don’t need to be about money or finances – it can be anything. Start celebrating now! High fives, handshakes, pats on the back, giving yourself a nourishing treat, all in recognition of your successes, are important. Physical reinforcement is vital to ensure we want to be successful again.
We had to list 3 of the greatest successes in our lives. Mine were:
. I overcame my negative thoughts and fears about being in a committed relationship and not only found a man but got married (that was 17 years ago, and I’ve had to face all kinds of other challenges to the commitment fears since! Little did I know what I was letting myself in for!!!)
. I sold my last business, a successful complementary health clinic, for a healthy sum of money even though I needed not only to find a new owner, but also new premises, and everyone around me told me it couldn’t be done (guaranteed to make me prove them wrong, of course!)
. I wrote, published and sold several thousands of copies of my book ‘Choose Your Thoughts, Change Your Life’, plus accompanying audio tapes And I could list lots more. If you’ve never done this before, I suggest you do it now. And if you have done it before, then start keeping a ‘Success Journal’ Ð where you can write down 5 successes every night before you go to sleep. Nice way to drift off!
Action
The last topic of the whole seminar was of course, action. There is limited value in attending a seminar such as this and then not putting into practice what has been learnt. But that is exactly what happens. And often what gets in the way is fear. We took part in a very effective physical exercise regarding this which I won’t spoil by sharing about it; suffice to say it was instrumental for many people in understanding that when fear is present, just go ahead and do what you’re afraid of anyway. The point was made that successful people, RichThinkers, wealthy people, don’t not have fear Ð they do, of course they do, simply because they’re human. The only difference is they don’t let their feelings of fear stop them doing what they want to do. It is not necessary for fear to subside or go away in order to be successful, financially or otherwise.
Summary
On the whole, the course was excellent. The idea of a financial blueprint level of income was not defined as an amount of money in the end, which was disappointing, but perhaps that’s because it’s difficult to do with a group that size. I’m going to explore more about this to see whether it really is viable for people to identify, so visit my website for details about that. I personally prefer less intensity in terms of course content, with more time for discussion and integration of new ideas, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a place for this kind of learning. And I did learn a lot Ð new techniques, variations on things I’d already experienced, and of course, my own process regarding moving forward with my business was helped hugely by me addressing various old beliefs which were still lurking around. I’d definitely recommend this course to anyone interested in mental wealth. If you don’t live in America, it’s a drawback because of the travel, but while Harv is still offering the course for free, it’s a very tempting opportunity. Perhaps the real question is, why wouldn’t you do it?
Conclusion
The importance of taking action with all this information is huge. Do you know how many people buy self-help books and never read them? Or never do the exercises? Or do the exercise once and then forget about it? It’s well known that most people who buy these books don’t actually put the learning into regular practice. That’s because it takes effort to overcome years of thinking in a certain way, and then transforming it into a different way of thinking, because the way we think is a habit, and it takes time and practice to change a habit into another one. Often, we just don’t want to get out of our ‘comfort zone’ and experience the relatively uncomfortable feelings associated with change, even if we know intellectually that we’ll be better off having made the change. To make changes in our lives, we have to be really motivated. And it helps ENORMOUSLY if we have support to make those changes, and continued support to ensure we don’t slip back and can carry on making progress.
It’s why I offer regular coaching; I’ve experienced all the challenges documented here, and for me it’s really worked to have weekly support. Over the years I’ve done this in different ways, sometimes psychotherapy sessions, sometimes groups, sometimes coaching. One thing they have all done is enabled me to get clear about what I wanted, where I was going, how I was going to get there, what was in the way, and helped me stay on track. Note that the different ways of doing this mean that I was working with different kinds of support, from different people, at different times, in my life, but that the common denominator was me. I am at the centre of my life. You are at the centre of your life. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But the consequences of getting this into your head are enormous. Once you get it, you stop waiting for someone else to make changes for you. And then fear and other emotions are just another stone in your path, around which, usually with help, you can find a way, because you are going to let nothing get in the way of where you want to go.
So I would strongly encourage you to get support, either with me, or with another coach or group. The difference it will make to your life is enormous. See details of my new course, TheRichThinking Way, a 12 week teleclass, to help you take this next step.
Now the other thing I want to be upfront about is this. I get a small percentage from any of Harv’s products/courses that people order, if you use my Ambassador number when ordering. Do quote it, please, if you order anything off his site as a result of this report, or from visiting my site. Ambassador No: 584203
However, that is not why I’m writing this report. Nor am I doing it only as a promotional offer for my work and Harv’s. I’m doing it because I really believe all this material is hugely beneficial, and I want to share it. I feel really passionate about spreading the word about RichThinking, and writing this report to share some of the things I learnt on this course is part of that.
Thank you for reading it. I hope you’ve been inspired to make some more changes in your financial life!
Copyright Jane Duncan Rogers 2008
I have used the principles I write about here in RichThinkers to bring about all kinds of things in my life, including running a successful counselling practice and health clinic business. Coming from a place of inspiration has enabled me to bring meaning and magic into all that I do, and my background in psychotherapy and counselling, combined with practical business skills, means I am uniquely positioned to help you in both the inner and the outer levels of success. (more…)
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind Course Report
Course held in Los Angeles, California 11-13th April 2008
Introduction
My intention with this report is not to tell you everything we did (I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who might want to attend yourself) but rather to give you my impressions from the point of view of a coach who attended wanting to learn not only for myself, but also so that I could pass on what I learnt to other people. I was also interested in learning different techniques, how they ran the course, and how they used it to sell their other courses.
The course was based on a book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, that I first read in early 2007, having being recommended it by one of the members in my Mastermind Group. I was very taken with the book; it was organized well and clearly stated that we all have what T. Harv Eker, the author, calls a financial blueprint – in other words, a level of income set in our minds unconsciously, beyond which we don’t venture. I hadn’t come across this way of thinking about income before, and was very keen to identify what my level might be and how to break through it. I had some ideas already about it, but thought I could do more.
I visited his website, www.peakpotentials.com, to discover that one of his marketing techniques is to invite those who buy a copy of the book to attend a Secrets of the Millionaire Mind course for free, along with a partner. Again, I’d not heard of this way of marketing before – in fact, I didn’t believe it and rang them to confirm! I ended up booking two places on the May course, to be held in Los Angeles. My husband Philip and I decided to make a holiday out of the trip and stay over for two weeks with friends living near by (making some of the costs of the trip tax deductible of course – one good reason for having your own business, by the way).
I returned just a few days ago, with loads of ideas buzzing around, so here’s this report, fresh from my attendance.
THE COURSE: DAY ONE
We were booked into the Los Angeles Hilton, Universal City. It’s perched on a mound above the city, with views from the 11th floor over the LA valley, very beautiful in spite of smog and six lane freeways with fast moving traffic!
Imagine you’re in a large seminar room in the hotel; one of over 1200 people. Then imagine that because you’ve upgraded (for a small amount of money) you have a badge saying VIP, which gives you the right to sit in the middle and at the front, plus a whole bag full of free goodies and discount offers. And now imagine that as you walk to your seat to settle in for the beginning session, you’re met with loud music, people dancing in the aisles and on the stage, and people shouting out as the leader on the stage invites us to celebrate each other. Definitely not very traditionally British! And in fact it took me some time to adjust, particularly as it was still only about 8.45 in the morning! Well, you know, I thought, “This is America; this is how they do things here.” I’d attended larger events than these in America before, so it wasn’t a shock in that I had told myself what to expect. But it still didn’t prepare me for the actual reality! However, I adjusted and soon found myself swaying to the music in front of my chair. Eventually the music stopped and the presenter came on stage.
Kieron Sweeney is a successful businessman; he told us a bit about himself (I would have preferred more) and then launched straight in to a description of the mind’s purpose being survival, and hence it is not open to us changing much. Which is why we all find it difficult sometimes to change our habits. Our minds think along the lines of “You’ve always managed all right, why do you need to change at all?.” He also introduced the idea that “How you do anything is how you do everything”, a favourite quote throughout the weekend. The teaching is fast-paced, so there’s not much time to question these statements until after, but this one I could agree with straight off.
Financial Freedom
The focus on day one was defining Financial Freedom for ourselves. For me it is: to lead the lifestyle I wish, with the expenses for that covered by passive income sources (passive income being income that is either from investments or from a business working for you, such as rental properties, automated businesses, or anything that doesn’t need your involvement on a daily basis). I call this Freedom Income, it being any income that brings you freedom from having to work.
A clear way to define how much that is (also outlined in the book) is to take the amount of money you need to earn per year, add on 50% for inflation and taxes; then work out how much capital you need at 10% interest or return on investment. For example, if you decide you need $100,000 per annum to live, then multiplying this by 10 will give you the total capital required, i.e. $1million. I suggest now that if you haven’t done this calculation already for yourself, that you stop reading and do it. It makes for a clear starting point if you’re interested in creating Financial Freedom for yourself. He outlined the five areas that contribute towards Financial Freedom: working income, savings, investments, passive income and simplification. We were asked to identify which of these areas we needed to focus on to move towards Financial Freedom.
Managing your money with Jars
A lot of time was also spent on what is fondly called The Jars! This is a way of separating out your money into different accounts, either online, in actual jars, or both. I first experienced this thinking in my twenties, having just received a pay rise, and when I got to the end of the first month with the extra money, I still didn’t have any money left in my account! Given that it was a substantial rise at the time, I was pretty horrified, as the money had just disappeared without me noticing it. This was my first introduction into the part the mind has to play in this game about money, as I understood that no matter what amount of income I had, I’d always spend it, unless I changed my thinking and behaviour. The following month I had set up a savings account and a standing order for the amount of my rise. I’d been living OK before the rise, and now I was going to continue to live like that, but knowing I was saving something too.
The Jars system is a more methodical and sophisticated version of this, and it’s outlined in the book, so look there if you want to know more. For now, I’ll just say that you set up accounts to represent several different categories, namely:
. Financial Freedom Account
. Long Term Savings for Spending Account
. Play Account
. Give Account
. Necessities Account
. Education Account
. And if you run a business, a separate Taxes account.
And divide your money into these accounts according to the percentages laid out in the book, adjusting them according to your circumstances. For instance, he suggests putting 10% into your Give account (for giving towards charities, causes etc). I donate six hours of my time every week as a volunteer (giving can be money or time), and I consider that is my Give account, so I put much less into this jar. I strongly suggest buying the book if you want to know more about this; also, although I’ve been operating a smaller and less defined version of this myself for some time now, I have now put the full system into place and will be reporting on how it’s going on my blog from time to time. A lot of time was spent on this system as it is a demonstration to the world that you are serious about managing your money. (And by the way, managing your money well is crucial to becoming a RichThinker. I read just the other day about a course that Coutts Bank offers for those inheriting millions at a young age. Having plenty of money brings with it the need for knowledge about what to do with it, and they are endeavouring to instill useful ideas into people who haven’t had their own access to this kind of wealth before).
Usefully, Kieron then covered how to operate this system if you run a business, the prime point being to keep your personal and business income separate – i.e. pay yourself a salary if you run a business. This is hugely important. If you don’t do this (and I have personal experience of this!) then you risk getting your personal and business finances completely muddled up, making it much more difficult to budget and allocate monies in a way that is truly effective. It’s OK – you can manage; but it’s not a demonstration of being a good money manager, nor is it the mark of a good business person. So if you’re self-employed and reading this, take note! Arrange to pay yourself a set amount of salary directly from your business income. This can be worked out as an average over the year if you have fluctuating income. He also covered how couples living together can manage their money in this way, and encouraged the education of children in this method too.
The importance of creating a business
Financially speaking, most people think that the primary reason to work is to earn money to pay for their current way of life. However, rich people (and RichThinkers) know that the primary reason to work is to bring in money to invest and to create passive income vehicles so that they can become financially free. Hence the importance of having a business as a step along the way – if for no other reason than the tax benefits! Our friends we were staying with in LA have a consultancy business. No employees, and actually not much passive income either (although they’re being affected by our studies and experience in this area!). However, for the amount of income their business brings in on an average year, they are able to live at a much higher standard than their friends who are on the same amount of money, paid to them as salary. Why? Because when you have a business, many expenses can be put through the business, for example, some living expenses, much travel, office costs, some entertaining etc. These costs come out of your earnings FIRST and then you pay tax on what is left. Employees pay tax on their salary at source, and AFTER that have to pay for living, travel etc. Message – create yourself a business. Everyone interested in a passive income generating business has to start at some point. So start now! In fact, all those on the course who were not already running a business were invited to make a commitment to start one within the five days following the course. If you’re reading this and haven’t got a business yet, as a first step I encourage you to at least think about what you would like to do; what your skills are; and how you could bring these two things together to make an income. For example, a student on one of my courses in Scotland is a maths teacher. He had never thought about being a tutor, and the benefits that might bring to him financially. He finished the course about 6 weeks ago, and I just got an email from him saying he now had 8 clients, and was turning people away. His next step is employing other tutors. Success!
Declarations
Then we were introduced to Declarations. In the book, Harv writes about these as a different take on affirmations. He doesn’t like affirmations because they state that the goal is already happening. He says, “I’m not crazy about (using affirmations) because often when we affirm something that is not yet real, the little voice in our head usually responds with ‘This isn’t true, this is BS.’” He describes declarations as a positive statement that you say out loud with energy.
I have written at length about affirmations in my book Choose Your Thoughts, Change Your Life (currently being revised and updated) and I use and teach them differently from many. The real power of affirmations comes when we do notice any negative responses we have, bring them out into the open and therefore lessen their power over us. When we know what is getting in the way of a statement being true for us, we can at least do something about it. We don’t need to use affirmations for what we already believe; we don’t need to – if you truly believe that you are a good money manager, and your actions show that is true, then why would you need to affirm that? Or even declare it? If you want to know more about this, sign up on my website to receive information when the new edition of the book is ready. Affirmations are NOT used to make you feel good necessarily – although that may well be a by-product, and indeed, when you have changed your beliefs, you will certainly feel good.
Anyway, we were using declarations, a positive statement that you say out loud with energy. And boy, did we say them with energy! The impact of 1200 people all shouting out “I am an excellent money manager” and so on was incredible. It reminded me of the training course I did with Louise L. Hay way back in 1990, when 150 people were all stating together “I love and approve of myself exactly as I am” into their little hand mirrors. (This was one of the most transforming experiences of my life by the way – and why I advocate stating your affirmations/declarations, or RichThoughts as I now call them, into a mirror). It creates amazing energy and excitement, and at that point it’s easy to believe it’s true. Back home, on your own, it can be more difficult to believe them. Which is why regular support in the form of genuine friends, support networks, coaching, or attendance at seminars is so important.
The power of our beliefs
Kieron talked a lot about the power of beliefs, which is of course where the mind comes in. It is composed of our beliefs, and they, of course, come from our past. So when you’re behaving frugally by saying ‘Oh I can’t afford that today, better leave it for another time’, you’re operating out of a belief that’s been instilled into you in your past. The point of this is that NOW is not the past, and you can change your beliefs NOW, so that in the future you can behave differently. Or at least have a choice! Much of the work that I do with people is rooted in this, (click here for FREE first 2 chapters of my emanual) as without attending to the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions we have in our lives, we don’t get that far.
Choosing beliefs we DO want in our lives, and letting go of those we don’t want is crucial. There were many exercises offered to help us with this, most of which I had done before, and a variety of which I offer in courses I have done, but it’s always good to do them again and see if something else pops up.
At this point we had our first introduction to how to sell. Not that it was put quite like that of course! I’d already understood that part of the course would be them selling their other courses (Peak Potentials has over 12 courses on offer), so I wasn’t surprised by this. What I was impressed by was the ability to seamlessly sell within the context of the course we were doing. From a business point of view, it was a great lesson in how to sell, and indeed this was pointed out to us as an opportunity to observe how they were selling (This maybe took care of some of the sceptics, who could pretend to only be interested from this point of view).
I had determined that I wasn’t going to sign up to any other courses – ha, ha! I could easily have signed up for them all! Is this an indication of their selling skills, that I’m gullible, or that I was just carried away on the day? Or perhaps a combination of all three? Even despite the fact that I didn’t want to fly so far again, in the end I signed up for the Guerrilla Business School next spring (in New York, not so far). The content of the course was exactly what I was interested in, and the deal was too good to miss, especially combined with the low exchange rate against the pound at the moment. (That’s a good way to run a business – get paid for the product almost a year in advance – great cashflow management!)
We ended the day with an exercise about how attached to money we can get. No more to be said about this one, except it was challenging! It was, however, an intriguing exercise demonstrating the power our minds have over us. The day ended about 11pm, they really try and pack stuff in. I was exhausted, and as I believe in the power of space and time for integration of ideas, the intensity in itself was a challenge. Looking back on the day, I was disappointed that Kieron used many of the examples from the book, so I’d already heard about them. I would have preferred hearing more from his own life as demonstrations of the theoretical point he was making. It also took some time to get used to the particular style the Peak Potential trainers have been trained in, where they constantly ask for audience participation in the form of filling in the missing words in sentences, and asking the audience to shout out ‘yes’ when asked the question ‘yes or yes?’ And I’m not sure about the benefits of using a lesser known speaker on day one; surely captivating your audience is crucial on day one? However, setting these aside, this course was definitely one of the better ones I’ve attended (and there’ve been many!); the quality of content was very high indeed, the organization very smooth, and the inspiration gained was enormous.
DAY TWO. The man himself
We were apparently fortunate in having T. Harv Eker himself teaching us on days two and three. He doesn’t teach much on these Millionaire Mind courses any more, his time being taken up more with other courses and running the business.
It was easy to see why he’s been successful (although he’s had many business failures as well). He’s probably one of the most passionate speakers I’ve seen; even could be described as angry sometimes (he calls it adamant). Whatever, he’s a small man with a huge amount of passion. And he can tell a great story, knowing when to pause and for how long, telling just enough to get the audience’s attention, and then timing the punch lines perfectly. Doing all this while using personal examples of some of the things that have happened to him was a winning combination. I won’t tell them here, as they’re his stories, but suffice to say I learnt that I need to improve my story telling skills! Not that they’re bad – just not as good as his, yet!
Regarding beliefs, he had an interesting analogy about how long it takes us to learn a new belief. He asked us to imagine putting our hand into a jar and getting bitten by a spider. Result – we immediately take our hand out, and understandably feel very nervous about putting our hand in again. We now have a belief something along the lines of ‘I might get bitten if I put my hand in that jar’, making us hesitant about doing it again. This was used as a demonstration of how we can easily change beliefs in a split second – it doesn’t have to take ages. I remember at the time being impressed with this analogy and agreeing with it. Due to the speedy nature and intensity of the course, I didn’t give this example any more thought, but now I’m writing about it, I realize that if I were to want to change the new belief (I might get bitten if I put my hand in that jar), it’s going to take longer to change than the other way round, simply because I’m going to have to have several experiences of putting my hand in the jar without getting bitten before I will begin to feel confident again that my hand will be OK. That’s OK, nothing wrong with that, but it does take longer. Say I have a belief ‘I’m not a good money manager’, to change that I first have to want to, secondly have to set myself up properly to demonstrate to myself that this is so, and then have some positive experiences about this being the case. So it does take some time, and a willingness to persist. Again, regular support from self-help groups, friends on the same journey, coaching, all helps to keep us on track.
Harv used quite a number of NLP techniques (neuro-linguistic programming), all of which are useful, to demonstrate letting go of beliefs, for instance putting an elastic band round your wrist and pinging it against yourself every time you notice you’re thinking something negative. You then replace the negative thought with a positive RichThought, and kiss your wrist, or rub it lovingly. The thinking behind this is rooted in behavioural therapy, as is much of this kind of work, and presupposes that an undesirable thought (the negative belief), when matched with an unpleasant stimulus (the pinging of the band), will lessen the likelihood of thinking this kind of thought. This clearly had value for some people as I saw them pinging away during the rest of the day. For me, doing it the positive way, and using an ‘anchor’ such as painting your little fingernail red to remind you of a positive thought, is preferable.
We also learnt about the benefits of hypnotherapy and listened to a wealth conditioning CD. The benefits of using particular physical movements when stating our declarations was also demonstrated, so at one point, the whole room was fiddling with their ears (addressing the auditory sense) while saying ‘I am an excellent money manager’. Might have seemed very odd indeed to the casual onlooker! However, the point is that by addressing the visual, auditory, kinesthetic and spiritual functions in our bodies, we are imprinting our cellular memories with the words of the declarations. This makes them much more powerful.
Why get rich? – the purpose of money
That afternoon we concentrated on why we would want more money. Initially, it was disappointing to hear people calling out ‘to buy a Ferrari, to own a boat, to go on exotic holidays.’ But when encouraged to think big, people started shouting out their big dreams, eg ‘I want to set up a camp for underprivileged children to have regular holidays’, ‘I want to fund a residential school for autistic school leavers’, ‘I want to teach people how to live their dreams’.
It is crucial to know why you want more money, and I don’t mean enough to cover your expenses (although that’s OK too). The thing is, if you don’t know why you want it, and it’s not a strong enough reason to want it, you won’t have anything to pull you through when the going gets tough. Harv was very strong on this (as I am). He defined an entrepreneur as ‘someone who solves problems for people at a profit, or for pay’. In the examples above, all the big dreams would be solving problems for people. He mentioned that while it’s OK to enjoy the fruits of your labour in the form of more ‘stuff’ for a while, ultimately it gets boring. After all, you can only wear one shirt at a time, drive one car at a time, live in one place at a time. So contributing to other people’s lives is one thing that many entrepreneurs find themselves doing, sooner or later.
In my experience, defining your purpose in life is crucial to get the most out of it. And it might have little to do with money. On the surface, my purpose says nothing about it at all. Here it is:
My purpose is to awaken and inspire others to live their lives in abundance, pleasure, joy; happiness, peace and contentment.
I do this through teaching people about RichThinking and why that is important, and by being a demonstration of this as best I can in my own life. At the time of writing this, RichThinkers is offering products etc about money only, but over time we will be entering into other areas of life, such as relationships, the body, time, the natural world, health, the spirit, etc etc. Because being a true RichThinker involves being it in every aspect of your life. ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’. A true RichThinker lives a life of abundance in every area, overspilling into other people’s lives and inviting others’ to play at that level.
So getting clear about who you are and where you’re going, financially, is a necessary first step in this money game. Sign up to receive regular emails, for products associated with helping you determine what your financial (or any other) purpose in life is.
Receiving
Oh this is a biggie! MUCH bigger than most people realize. So big that lots of people might dismiss this section just by thinking things like “I’m great at receiving”, or “Of course I want lots more money!”, or “Why wouldn’t I want to win the lottery!” If you belong to this category, then do something different from what you usually do and read this section. Not only read it, put into practice the suggestions! Remember – to get something different in your life, you have to do something different.
One of the easiest and most common ways we can practice receiving is with compliments. Some of you may have done the exercise that Harv invited us to do Ð mill around, giving people compliments with the receiver only allowed to say “Thank you”, and keeping their lips shut after that. We do it in my courses too. It is a hugely important way of receiving that we all dismiss easily, and on a daily basis! Honestly, just think about the last time you received a compliment — how did you actually receive it? Did it just flow in and you felt good? Or did you swat it back with a comment such as ‘You look good too’, or ‘I’m not really that good at _______, actually’. If you think you do the latter, then try just keeping your mouth shut and accepting the present of the compliment. And if you really want to practice this, do what Harv next suggested and keep your mouth shut the next time someone says ‘I love you’. If you’re not practiced in this, it’s difficult, I tell you! I am now comfortable with this – just because Philip, my husband and business partner, tells me he loves me, doesn’t mean to say I have to respond in kind. I wait until I feel moved to tell him I love him. But it took some practice I can tell you, because in our society we are not geared up for this. And what’s worse, we teach it to our kids! One of my nieces tells me at the end of a phone call ‘Love you!’ — this always feels strange to me; I know I’m expected to say ‘Love you’ back, but I’ve never felt it yet. It’s too prescribed, like saying ‘How are you?’ which is simply a form of greeting Ð usually people do not want to hear the full description of how you really are, they just want to hear ‘Fine, thank you’. Then the social niceties are over and the conversation can really begin. I won’t use those precious words ‘I love you’ in this ‘polite’ form. I think they’re worth more than that. There’s further you can go with this example, but that’s for another time.
Another part of Receiving is acknowledging your successes, and the Success Song was fun Ð and something you can do right now. Simply, make up your own words to a tune you know, affirming your positive relationship with money. That’s the fun bit — now you have to make sure you sing it in the shower every day. That sounds like fun too, but you’d be surprised how many people will have forgotten they ever created a song to be sung in the shower, let alone do it. Other ways you can use this is to set your own words to the tunes that get stuck in your head (this happens to me a lot). If you’ve got a tune going round and round, you might as well personally benefit from the words. For instance, if your tune is Baa Baa Black Sheep, you might make up words like these:
Thank you for my wealth and riches
I am very very grateful
I am wealthy
I have money
I am rich
I feel sunny
I am financially free and happy
Thank you for my wealth and riches
OK so it won’t win any awards, but it’s fun! And better than the original words which aren’t going to be giving you anything at all.
On the Saturday evening we watched a short video about Money Personalities; unfortunately I was so knackered by this time that I didn’t take much of it in. I’ve earmarked this concept for further exploration, so again, watch my website for further info. At 10pm, even though the evening hadn’t finished, I gave up and went to bed.
DAY THREE.
Money and Emotions
Think of your relationship with money as if it were a relationship partner. Assuming you really liked this partner, you’d want to treat them well wouldn’t you? At least ideally! However, as we know in our relationships with people, often our negative emotions get in the way. Sadness from past hurts can keep us shying away from commitment; fear of being hurt again can keep us pushing others away; shame can make us avoid intimate relationships altogether. And anger can cause disruption in all sorts of ways. We were introduced to this essential topic very visually by Kieron, who staggered across the stage with a heavy suitcase, demonstrating the weight of the emotions we carry round with us. Harv then took us through a variety of partner exercises involving our feelings around money, and particularly relating to past incidents that might be still informing us now. He had his own story to tell around this, which was poignant and very funny in the end. I had difficulty with this exercise as I couldn’t recall any incident from my childhood which associated money and anger. So either I’ve blocked something out completely, or not much happened! In truth, I had quite a lot of reasonably positive experiences around money from my family, which has probably resulted in me always finding I’ve had enough for what I wanted to do. Up until now, though, my ‘wants’ were pretty minimal, so money wasn’t an issue. Read more about my motivation for learning about this subject under ‘About Me’.
Later, again in partners, we were asked to identify a specific incident that had happened to us with regard to money and to release this in various ways. As with all energetic exercises, it was as good as the amount of energy you put into doing it. Needless to say, I gave 100% and ended up shouting at the top of my voice about various things, including my anger with myself about thinking I have to have my husband’s permission to run a business! As I write this, I’m thinking ‘Ridiculous!’ but that was what came up. It’s not to do with him in that he doesn’t stop me, or want to stop me. Rather it’s to do with my holding back from being a business woman in my own right. I tell you, I felt great when I fully entered into letting this go. I had shared about it to the whole group on the first day, and had loads of women afterwards came up to me, saying how they’d appreciated me sharing about a subject that was relevant to them too.
The impact parents had was touched on also – we tend to either be in rebellion against our parents, or have taken a different stand by ‘being good’ and not standing out. There was lots more about this, and there’s lots more that can be done too. Childhood relationships with parental figures can play a large part in this!
Harv also introduced the concept of forgiveness and told his story about this in relation to his Dad. Again, I’m not going to relate it here, it’s his story. We must have been running out of time, because we didn’t do any exercises around this hugely important topic, as forgiveness, ie letting go of something, is really important in moving on from past events.
Success!
If you can’t acknowledge your successes, then you’re not going to get very far. That was Harv’s basic message about this topic. Hence the importance of noting your successes every day. Again, this is a well-known technique, but the question is — do you do it? That is, list five successes you’ve had at the end of every day? Mine yesterday were:
1) Said no to someone inviting me for coffee, as I wanted to write this report
2) Listened to an inspiring marketing seminar on the internet
3) Went for an early morning walk
4) Cooked a tasty dinner
5) Had a challenging conversation with the autistic teenager I help look after
I’m writing this bit at 5.30pm the next day, and so far my successes today have been:
1) Went back to bed for a cuddle after jumping out when the alarm went
2) Spent three hours writing with no interruptions
3) Attended a mastermind meeting and received useful feedback re my products
4) Made an appointment for a dance session
So your successes don’t need to be about money or finances – it can be anything. Start celebrating now! High fives, handshakes, pats on the back, giving yourself a nourishing treat, all in recognition of your successes, are important. Physical reinforcement is vital to ensure we want to be successful again.
We had to list 3 of the greatest successes in our lives. Mine were:
. I overcame my negative thoughts and fears about being in a committed relationship and not only found a man but got married (that was 17 years ago, and I’ve had to face all kinds of other challenges to the commitment fears since! Little did I know what I was letting myself in for!!!)
. I sold my last business, a successful complementary health clinic, for a healthy sum of money even though I needed not only to find a new owner, but also new premises, and everyone around me told me it couldn’t be done (guaranteed to make me prove them wrong, of course!)
. I wrote, published and sold several thousands of copies of my book ‘Choose Your Thoughts, Change Your Life’, plus accompanying audio tapes And I could list lots more. If you’ve never done this before, I suggest you do it now. And if you have done it before, then start keeping a ‘Success Journal’ Ð where you can write down 5 successes every night before you go to sleep. Nice way to drift off!
Action
The last topic of the whole seminar was of course, action. There is limited value in attending a seminar such as this and then not putting into practice what has been learnt. But that is exactly what happens. And often what gets in the way is fear. We took part in a very effective physical exercise regarding this which I won’t spoil by sharing about it; suffice to say it was instrumental for many people in understanding that when fear is present, just go ahead and do what you’re afraid of anyway. The point was made that successful people, RichThinkers, wealthy people, don’t not have fear Ð they do, of course they do, simply because they’re human. The only difference is they don’t let their feelings of fear stop them doing what they want to do. It is not necessary for fear to subside or go away in order to be successful, financially or otherwise.
Summary
On the whole, the course was excellent. The idea of a financial blueprint level of income was not defined as an amount of money in the end, which was disappointing, but perhaps that’s because it’s difficult to do with a group that size. I’m going to explore more about this to see whether it really is viable for people to identify, so visit my website for details about that. I personally prefer less intensity in terms of course content, with more time for discussion and integration of new ideas, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a place for this kind of learning. And I did learn a lot Ð new techniques, variations on things I’d already experienced, and of course, my own process regarding moving forward with my business was helped hugely by me addressing various old beliefs which were still lurking around. I’d definitely recommend this course to anyone interested in mental wealth. If you don’t live in America, it’s a drawback because of the travel, but while Harv is still offering the course for free, it’s a very tempting opportunity. Perhaps the real question is, why wouldn’t you do it?
Conclusion
The importance of taking action with all this information is huge. Do you know how many people buy self-help books and never read them? Or never do the exercises? Or do the exercise once and then forget about it? It’s well known that most people who buy these books don’t actually put the learning into regular practice. That’s because it takes effort to overcome years of thinking in a certain way, and then transforming it into a different way of thinking, because the way we think is a habit, and it takes time and practice to change a habit into another one. Often, we just don’t want to get out of our ‘comfort zone’ and experience the relatively uncomfortable feelings associated with change, even if we know intellectually that we’ll be better off having made the change. To make changes in our lives, we have to be really motivated. And it helps ENORMOUSLY if we have support to make those changes, and continued support to ensure we don’t slip back and can carry on making progress.
It’s why I offer regular coaching; I’ve experienced all the challenges documented here, and for me it’s really worked to have weekly support. Over the years I’ve done this in different ways, sometimes psychotherapy sessions, sometimes groups, sometimes coaching. One thing they have all done is enabled me to get clear about what I wanted, where I was going, how I was going to get there, what was in the way, and helped me stay on track. Note that the different ways of doing this mean that I was working with different kinds of support, from different people, at different times, in my life, but that the common denominator was me. I am at the centre of my life. You are at the centre of your life. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But the consequences of getting this into your head are enormous. Once you get it, you stop waiting for someone else to make changes for you. And then fear and other emotions are just another stone in your path, around which, usually with help, you can find a way, because you are going to let nothing get in the way of where you want to go.
So I would strongly encourage you to get support, either with me, or with another coach or group. The difference it will make to your life is enormous. See details of my new course, TheRichThinking Way, a 12 week teleclass, to help you take this next step.
Now the other thing I want to be upfront about is this. I get a small percentage from any of Harv’s products/courses that people order, if you use my Ambassador number when ordering. Do quote it, please, if you order anything off his site as a result of this report, or from visiting my site. Ambassador No: 584203
However, that is not why I’m writing this report. Nor am I doing it only as a promotional offer for my work and Harv’s. I’m doing it because I really believe all this material is hugely beneficial, and I want to share it. I feel really passionate about spreading the word about RichThinking, and writing this report to share some of the things I learnt on this course is part of that.
Thank you for reading it. I hope you’ve been inspired to make some more changes in your financial life!
Copyright Jane Duncan Rogers 2008