Thinking and Growing Something

I meet many people in my personal and professional lives who have a fairly negative view of the world and their position in it. I will hear things like "my life sucks", "I hate my job", and, worst of all, "what can I do about it?" Indeed, they are all correct, but not usually for the reason that they think.

Perhaps you have heard of the book The Secret, which discusses the Law of Attraction. Some people have objected that the topic of the book is no secret as it has been discussed in ancient philosophy for thousands of years. It is true that people have known this secret for a very long time, but it is also a fact that most people today either do not know or do not believe the fundamental truth that thought makes reality.

This past summer, I was in what one might have referred to as a bad place. My fiancée and I were living off of about $400 a month, earned by working a stressful, dangerous job that I disdained, falling about $1000 into debt with each passing month. My hope of salvation, the position with New York Life turned out to be a waste of time, and no better prospects lay on the horizon. I still carried $7000 of credit card debt from running Phoenix Games as well as $25,000 of business debt. Add to that the fact that the worse things went, the more my fiancée despaired and lost patience with me.

One day, Annie told me that it was time to act. Rather than thinking of myself as someone who could not make money, rather than thinking of my situation as insoluble, it was time to change things. She is a smart one, and I do well to listen to her, so I did. After an entire summer of my wheels being stuck in the mud, I made the decision to turn things around. I decided to find a new job. Not to look for a new job, but to find one.

15 days later, I was signing the paperwork at American Income, a company I am still with and enjoying immensely. The most amazing part of this whole story is that a week after I made my decision to change my situation, American Income contacted me based on my resume online. This same resume had been online for all of 2010, but it was only after I made the decision to climb out of my rut and get back on the highway that the Universe saw fit to place the opportunity before me.

If we resign ourselves to failure and misery, we will have failure and misery. People who expect the worst are rarely disappointed. People who expect the best are, likewise, rarely disappointed. This does not mean that you just need to change your attitude and suddenly money will rain from the sky. There will be road blocks and obstacles, but, remember, a detour means that you are going somewhere in the first place. You don't get anywhere until you start driving, so drive on.


I have been reading Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. It is like The Secret, but much better written, so I highly recommend it.