Relax into Wealth
Alan Cohen has quickly become one of my favorite teachers and favorite people. If you’ve been conditioned to believe that creating wealth requires high levels of stress and all that, I think you’ll love it. It’s a great, easy-to-read and practical look at how we can flow with life and welcome more of the good stuff into our lives. In the Note, we’ll have fun learning how to build our wealth consciousness by investing in ourselves, taking small steps, and lightening up!
Big Ideas
- Building a Wealth ConsciousnessTime to build it.
- Invest In YourselfIt's a good investment.
- Small Steps Are GoodAre very very good.
- Time to Please Our SoulsIt’s time.
- Rejection ScmejectionRejection is part of the process.
- Lighten Up!Now’s good.
- Go all OutDon’t be a hold-out.
“If you, like me, have been taught that the only way to get what you want is through combat, or to trudge through life playing catch-up ball, the book you are holding will assist you in making the crucial shift from an uphill-battle mentality to the deep knowing that you can have what you want without sacrificing your soul in the process. Success, wealth, and harmonious relationships can be a lot easier than you have been taught, and here you will find many examples of how good it can get, along with practical tools to draw such experiences into your own life.”
~ Alan Cohen from Relax into Wealth
Alan Cohen has quickly become one of my favorite teachers and favorite people.
As I mentioned in the Note on Why Your Life Sucks (and What You Can Do About It), I was introduced to Alan and his work via a documentary we’re both in called Finding Joe. I was blown away by his story-telling ability and asked the Director of the film to connect us. Since then, Alexandra and I have gotten to know Alan and we enjoy him as much as we do his books!
This book is a great look at, as the title suggests, how to “relax into wealth.”
If you’ve been conditioned to believe that creating wealth requires high levels of stress and all that, I think you’ll love it. It’s a great, easy-to-read and practical look at how we can flow with life and welcome more of the good stuff into our lives. :)
For now, let’s have some fun with a few of my favorite Big Ideas!
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Get the BookBuilding a Wealth Consciousness
“This is not a book about getting money. There are lots of books and courses that offer you investment advice. This is a book about building consciousness. When you have a wealth mentality, wealth follows naturally. Money gained without consciousness will quickly turn to the place it came from. Awareness is the steering wheel of your wealth and your life.”
Alan and I are both big fans of Eric Butterworth, the great 20th century Unity minister.
Here’s how Butterworth puts it in his classic, must-read Spiritual Economics (see Notes): “The goal should not be to make money or acquire things, but to achieve the consciousness through which the substance will flow forth when and as you need it.”
Alright.
So, if we want to create wealth we need to work on our consciousness. Got it.
T. Harv Eker says the same thing. In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (see Notes), he tells us we need to work on our subconscious financial blueprint—which will influence our thoughts which will influence our feelings and actions which will influence our results.
Eker also likes the steering wheel metaphor. He tells us: “If you want to create wealth, it is imperative that you believe that you are at the steering wheel of life, especially your financial life.”
How do we take control of the steering wheel??
One essential key: We need to shift from a victim perspective to a creative perspective. We have to realize WE, ultimately, are responsible for our success in our lives and we need to quit complaining about external circumstances that we think are holding us back.
How’s YOUR consciousness?
Are you in control of your steering wheel?
What’s the #1 thing you could start doing more of that would put you more in control of shaping your consciousness?
(Now a good time to get on that? :)
If you stay true to the spark of enthusiasm that makes you feel happiest and most alive, life will reward you in miraculous ways.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Invest In Yourself
“Six hundred and seventy-two hours of inner work to profoundly improve every waking moment of the rest of your life is quite a bargain, don’t you think? Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make. It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.”
Brilliant.
Invest one month to truly LIVE the ideals you’re studying. Six hundred and seventy-two hours to affect the REST of your life and EVERYONE in it. Seems like a great investment to me. You?
So… That begs the question: To what do YOU need to commit a month? Is it getting up early? Making time for your kids? Making time for your self in the morning? A meditation practice? Working out? (All of the above? :)
(I hope you don’t say “shucks” or what follows but… :) You might say: “Ah, shucks. I’m just way too busy to invest time in this stuff.”
Where will I find the 15-30 minutes for meditation? The 30-60 minutes for exercise? The time for journaling? For scheduling my priorities into my days?
Robin likes to say that suggesting you’re too busy to slow down and invest in yourself is like saying you’re too busy driving to stop for gas. MAKES NO (!!) SENSE!!!
Your car needs to be re-filled with gas. YOU need to re-fill your soul with mojo.
So: Commit to living your ideals. One month. Rock it.
No man is free who is not a master of himself.
Small Steps Are Good
“Small steps are good—they add up to big ones. Small steps are especially helpful to overachievers, who need to learn that life is less about getting somewhere, and more about being somewhere.”
Baby steps.
As a recovering perfectionist/overachiever, this is EASILY one of the most powerful ideas I’ve integrated into my life.
It’s always been relatively easy for me to get all geeked up about a big vision. And, I’ve never really had a problem with working hard. But, it wasn’t until I really understood the power of simply taking the next step (and the next…) that I found my groove and got out of the oscillating cycles of being really inspired and then really overwhelmed.
How about you?
Do you ever find yourself all fired up one day and then all burnt out the next?
Then you might dig a couple other thoughts on the subject that have deeply inspired me!
Here’s how Russell Simmons puts it in his great book, Do You! (see Notes): “I knew it was unrealistic to think I could build an institution overnight. But if I took baby steps, eventually it would happen.”
Amen to that.
He also tells us: “The pain that’s created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don’t begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you. You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success.”
And, David Emerald, who first introduced me to the idea of “dynamic tension,” says this in his great little book The Power of TED* (see Notes): “It is the Baby Steps you take, the everyday things you do, that eventually lead to the manifestation of your outcome.”
Baby steps.
It’s such a Big Idea that I’ll often fill up an entire journal page writing lines and lines of this phrase to groove it into my consciousness:
“Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps. Baby steps.”
So, what baby steps can YOU take today?
And tomorrow?
And the next day?
And the day after that?
And… :)
Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
There is one among you or within you who is not afraid. Let that fearless one guide, and you will remain safe and be successful.
Time to Please Our Souls
“No one has ever succeeded in pleasing everyone, and you won’t be the first. Even Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, and many pure-hearted world change agents incurred the wrath of those who did not understand them. You can be absolutely correct, and some will scorn you. When Galileo asserted that the Earth was round, not flat, the Church considered his proposition heresy and sentenced him to life imprisonment. (To this day there is a society of “Flat Earth” believers who argue that all of the photos from space are contrived and the moon program was a hoax.) Great world-movers do not turn back or compromise their integrity for the sake of popular opinion. They are true to their inner guidance and their relationship with their Higher Power. Rather than please people, they please their soul, which is all that really matters.”
—> “No one has ever succeeded in pleasing everyone, and you won’t be the first.”
Good to know. :)
And, it’s not just Alan who tells us this.
How about Harry Truman? He advises us to remember: “How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he had taken a poll in the land of Israel? What would have happened to the Reformation if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s right and wrong and leadership.”
In his classic essay Self-Reliance (see Notes on The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson), Emerson tells us we need to trust ourselves and offers this gem: “‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
Well, there ya go. We’re not going to please everyone.
So, let’s courageously trust ourselves and please our souls!
P.S. I have to share this anonymous quote Paulo Coelho shared on his blog not too long ago: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.”
All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail.
Rejection Scmejection
“Rejections, even multiple rejections, are not necessarily an indication of the lack of worth of your project. They may simply be indications of a mismatch of the applicant and rejecter. Or lack of good taste on the part of the person denying your request. Some of the greatest works of art and literature were overlooked by many people. In his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh sold but one painting, for a pittance. In recent years, one of his paintings sold for $135 million—the highest price ever paid for an oil painting. The film Dead Poets Society was turned down by eleven studios, twice each; the film went on to receive seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor. The blockbuster parable Jonathan Livingston Seagull was rejected by seventeen publishers before Macmillan acquired it, and went on to sell many millions of copies. And on and on and on.”
Did you know this little story about Paulo Coelho’s great book, The Alchemist?
From Wikipedia: “Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house who made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint. He subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist became a Brazilian bestseller. The Alchemist has gone on to sell more than 65 million copies, becoming one of the best-selling books in history, and has been translated into more than 70 languages, the 71st being Maltese, winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.”
Not bad for a book that went out of print, eh? :)
Rejection.
The fact is that, as we push our edges and dare to follow our hearts on our hero’s journey, we’re going to experience set backs and we’re going to get rejected.
That’s not fun.
But, we’ve got to KNOW that all the people we admire have experienced their own rejections and that it’s not about avoiding failure, it’s about continuing to move forward—to take the next baby step. And the next. And the next.
That virtue is called persistence.
Here’s what Napoleon Hill has to say about it (see Notes on Think and Grow Rich): “If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan; if this new plan fails to work, replace it in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”
He adds: “Those who have cultivated the habit of persistence seem to enjoy insurance against failure… The hidden Guide lets no one enjoy great achievement without passing the persistence test. Those who can’t take it simply do not make the grade.”
Plus: “One thing we all know, if one does not possess persistence, one does not achieve noteworthy success in any calling.”
Ah, I can’t resist. One more from Mr. Hill: “The majority of people are ready to throw their aims and purposes overboard, and give up at the first sign of opposition or misfortune. A few carry on despite all opposition, until they attain their goal. There may be no heroic connotation to the word ‘persistence,’ but the quality is to the character of man what carbon is to steel.”
Winston Churchill is pretty direct. He tells us: “Never, never, never, never give up.”
And finally, here’s some wisdom from the great Vipassana meditation teacher, S.N. Goenka. It’s one of my favorite thoughts that I silently repeat to myself many times a day: “Work diligently. Diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently. And you’re bound to be successful. Bound to be successful.”
Begs the question: How’s YOUR persistence?
The game of success is less about *getting* good things to happen and more about *letting* good things happen.
Lighten Up!
“While most people believe they are not doing enough, their real problem is that they are too hard on themselves. In our culture, stress, overly high personal expectations, and nagging self-criticism put unnatural and debilitating pressure on us from within. The greatest gift you can give yourself, your wealth, and your life is to lighten up.”
So, baby steps are important. And, so is persistence.
AND so is lightening up. :)
In fact, the “lightening up” part is what makes the whole thing fun.
If we need to be hitting crazy goals in wacky time frames while never having a setback of any kind, we’re in trouble. (Obviously.)
How do we lighten up?
Alan gives us one way: To set more reasonable goals.
He says: “While it is helpful to have goals just beyond your current reach and to strive to achieve them, if you use the process as an excuse to beat yourself up, you sabotage your success and undermine the joy of your journey.”
Tal Ben-Shahar also tells us about stretch goals vs. panic goals. Get out of your comfort zone and stretch but don’t go so gonzo you’re going to snap!
How can you lighten up as you have fun relaxing into wealth?!
Are you setting unreasonable expectations? Constantly nagging yourself with self-criticism?
It’s time to let go of that.
Lighten up!
Go all Out
“Because we are spiritual beings, it is the spirit of what we do that determines how much fulfillment we derive. You can be going through all the motions and doing all the appropriate and expected actions, but if you are empty or absent inside, your deeds mean little. Only soul satisfaction can fulfill you; everything else will leave you hungry. Spiritual teacher Paramahansa Yogananda noted: “Manners without sincerity are like a beautiful but dead woman.” Essence is more important than appearance.”
—>“Manners without sincerity are like a beautiful but dead woman.”
Yikes!
Reminds me of the Buddha’s wisdom (see Notes on The Dhammapada) who tells us: “Like a lovely flower full of color but lacking in fragrance, are the words of those who do not practice what they teach.”
Be an all-out, not a hold-out.
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