A Midwest Journal

You basically have to know where you’re going and where you are at.

A friend sent me this cute story which basically tells off all these people with their drive to “make money online” and “become a millionaire overnight”.

An older blog post I wrote asked the question “What if their is no mountain?”

And as well, you may have noticed my continuing posts on the Sedona Method release technique.

The point of all this is coming out in my new book, “Freedom Is — (period).” All the Happiness, Peace, and Freedom you could ever want is already in you. You just have to let it out.

And while you are releasing all these negative thoughts to just be yourself, you also meanwhile learn how to get all the wealth, success, and loving relationships you could ever want as well. But the trick is to get beyond the “get rich quick” mindset (which Sedona helps you to do) and really concentrate on that peace of mind which money can’t buy.

All religions and philosophies (even those the money-hungry Wall Street bankers use) – all these point to the same thing: you only get peace of mind from yourself. And how you get it is to start getting really accepting and grateful for what you already have.

This is what I’ve learned over the past year, in all my various escapades. People aren’t really working against you, unless you are working against them. But the joke is that since we are all connected, you are just working against yourself.

Here’s where the Golden Rule really points out the humor in our lives. All this work with politicians and lawyers in order to “make money” when you already have all the abundance in your life you could ever ask for… You just have to treat others as you want to be treated. And then they will. Because you are “they”.

Or, look at it this way: there are a great deal of people out there who want to help you – if you will only let them.

Cheers!

PS. This also works for the “Law of Attraction”. Same ‘diff…

One might think so. Look how they are treating the people who elected them.

The conspiracists are having a hay-day – it seems to get worse with every new administration. I’ve even begun to think that the end of the Mayan calendar coinciding with 2012 was perhaps intended that way – it is an election year and all that…

If there is a self-esteem problem with the government, it is reflecting on the people it is supposed to serve. Look at these town hall meetings where the representatives are nominally supposed to sample their constituents’ collective pulse. Unfortunately, they were apparently sent out with talking points about how to “sell” the government health care reform package. And got widely booed. But then they booed back with Pelosi making references to brown-shirts and “astro-turf” (meaning Nazi’s and fake grass-roots). Unfortunately, the problem is within the government officials we elected to represent us.

So, by extension, their lack of self image is our own lack of self confidence and esteem.

But lets look over government closely. Government exists on a reverse Golden Rule basis. While you are treated only as well as you treat others, and so you get only as good as you give – our elected politicians can only give after they receive. That’s called taxes and pork-barrel spending.

Lobbyist seem to be an exception to this, since they have to deliver a service first in order to get sufficient fund so that they can donate them to re-election campaigns and get the favor of various officials so they can continue to give good service. Company’s with bad service, lobbyists or not, won’t stay in business long – people vote with their pocketbooks.

But government officials (not career employees) and lobbyists have that in common: government exists only to the degree that we put up with them. We give, and expect a return to the degree that we give.

The trick in this, if you study Wallace Wattles’ “Science of Getting Rich” – is that we’ve not actually “taken care with every single bit” of the job we expect them to do. We don’t ask to get a copy of the bills they are voting on in order that we can tell them our opinion of how they should cast our represented vote. We probably aren’t sending them a letter, email, or fax, or phone call about the issues of the day.

To the exact degree we don’t pay attention to them, they won’t then pay attention to us. And so they run on auto-pilot – and listen to lobbyists who see them on a regular basis to pay attention to them.

Now, just ignoring government might or might not make it go away. If people home-schooled their kids, or set up cooperatives to do this on local levels, then concern about public funding of schools would be negligible. If states didn’t accept federal “match this or else” grants, then we wouldn’t have to listen to government mandates for how states should do this or that.

There is a whole course in whether government is even necessary over at TOLFA.us – a fascinatingly logical approach to this.

With no (or severely limited) government, we’d be able to take advantage of more business opportunities – as well as home-based businesses. Simply because there wouldn’t be excessive taxation just to keep all those government employees and programs running.

And you’d be able to simply contract with your doctor for regular primary care without insurance companies and lawyers making your fees go out the roof.

To paraphrase Pogo: We’ve met the government esteem problem – and they is us.

Whatever we want to do for ourselves, it’s usually done more efficiently and effectively if it’s done on a individual or corporate basis than waiting for or expecting the government to get involved. (Katrina aid got worse after the government arrived.) Check this out for yourself and see if it isn’t true for you as well.

And we’d be able to get away from a very small, select group of people putting through some inane mandate that affects people who they don’t even know. Like the HSUS shutting down animal shelters and then killing all the animals in it – while they try to tell us all to be vegans. Or ACORN – what a mess. Not to mention what they are trying with Health Care instead of allowing more competition between state insurance companies and restricting lawyers from frivolous lawsuits (but you probably can’t expect elected lawyers do anything about that…)

My favorite approach would be to really pay attention to the elections and always vote the incumbent out. Public-enforced term limits.

But your own mileage on this may vary widely.

This doesn’t mean you should drop all your Sedona Method release technique approaches and quit releasing on the approval, control, and security that having a government might give you. Practically, we should just work at releasing on having a government at all. And then look what shows up. Allow ourselves to have an orderly, sensible, self-managed planet which lives at peace and constantly works to improve everyone’s abundance.

By working at this, making it a goal, we can all use our personal improvement skills to create this new age for humankind.

That is my hope and wish for this world. I am confident it succeeds.

Boy, that was a mouthful. Good thing I don’t have my titles that long all the time – Twitter would ban my updates for sure (or people would think I never finish anything…)

OK, the reason I got inspired to write this was exactly what was in my in-box – another endorsement (read: affliliate link) for someone I hadn’t heard of before and how many glowing testimonials with some incredible, don’t-pass-now offer reduced for a limited time…

Like I’d never seen these before.

Actually, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve been opting out of way more mailing lists than I join now days. Usually right after the first worthless offer.

Because these guys are in the same ego trap as their customers – and you can tell in the way they are writing.

You have to ask yourself – what’s all this money for? Sure, having good health is a near necessity – but are you trying to be perfectly healthy all the time, or would minor aches and pains every now and then (like sore from playing a long game of tennis, or being tired after tromping around in the woods all day keeping up with grand children – would those be acceptable?)

Charles Haanel held that money was only a symbol, and that chasing a symbol would cause it all to disappear. Money only stands for what you did to get it. Earl Nightingale said at least once that money only says how much value you’ve been giving others.

Figure that people who only are telling people how to get all the money they want, all the success they can stand – these people are caught up in the same trap.

They’re all symbol-chasing. Why? So the people around you will think better of you?

When you don’t have to take any medicine, and all your bills are paid for months at a time, then what?

And when you get along with the people you like and the other ones mostly leave you alone, then what relationships are you still needing to improve?

The question you want to ask yourself is: “What happens when I get there?”

What do you dream about? How do you look at life? How well do you sleep at night?

What “pops into” your mind, what you dream about – all these things are the result of how you thought in the past, how you’ve programmed your own mind to think.

But the good thing about this is that in order to change what you think about all the time, you just have to change what you’re thinking about now.

OK, let me fill in the logic of all this.

Your thinking process is composed of mental habits you’ve adopted. Shortcuts so you don’t have to re-figure out how to do things. Chronic anything, bad or good, is just a mental habit – a pattern you adopted.

Any habit can be changed. It takes about four weeks of regular action on a new line of thought. If you want to wake up smiling in the morning, all you have to do is to immediately start smiling first thing every morning for 30 days.

Hating whoever is currently President is also the same result – at some point, you’ve started assuming that this person couldn’t be trusted, so everything that person did or said was untrustworthy. And every thought about that person which comes up is tainted negative.

The trick is that when you pursue the negative about anything, you get more negatives showing up in your life.

To the degree you work on the positive, optimistic approach to anything, you wind up getting more good things into your life.

See Christian Larson’s books on this subject. This was the guy who wrote was was later adopted by Optimists International as their creed.

A recent earlier post here told you that a negative is only a misapplied positive – that you don’t shovel out the darkness, but turn on a light (an old, old proverb I first ran across in Haanel’s “Master Key System”)

And the reason I’m up in the middle of my night writing this is some sort of mental loop which kept giving me a “nightmare”.

But being rational, I saw that this was my own fault – I had adopted some sort of mental habit which was bringing me these “bad” thoughts – about some elected politicians, of all things.

Now this doesn’t mean I have to find good things to think about the government or our elected politicians (a clear, un-biased, logical explanation of how government and politicians actually work can be found at TOLFA.us, if you’re interested in sorting out your thoughts in this area.) My own personal policy on this was best summed up by Jesus: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…”

This is why I’ve always worked with individuals directly, in all the years I spent as a counselor and personal consultant – and now as a book writer/editor/publisher.

Any person – you, me, the people around us – they all can control their own thoughts on an immediate and longer-term (chronic) basis. All you have to do is to practice positive thinking to get more positive results in your life. While Dr. Norman Vincent Peale became famous for a book by this name, I’d suggest you read Larson above, or get a copy of Earl Nightingale’s Strangest Secret to understand more of the theory and practice of this idea.

“You become what you think about all day long” – that’s Nightingale’s simple statement of what he found in an old Napoleon Hill book he found in a Chicago used-book store.

If you are having nightmares, or bad thoughts entering your head during the day, you may want to change your attitudes toward whatever you’ve been thinking about.

If you are “stressed-out” over something (which is the prime reason for the bulk of dis-ease which settles in a body, proved over and over by a multitude of scientific studies) – this stress is arguably too many negative thought accumulated as habits in your mind.

All you have to do is to start changing how you think right now in order to change those “bad” thoughts which keep coming in on you.

Start smiling and you’ll start getting happier thoughts entering. You’ll find more happy things to think about. If you develop this as a simple method of approaching life, then you will start finding many better, more optimal solutions to the problems which come into your life.

And if you encourage others around you to smile when they face adversity – and to encourage others around them to do the same – our whole society could evolve quite rapidly.

Because life operates exactly as Earl Nightingale pointed out: You become what you think about. And his own prescription follows this – get a note card and write out on it exactly what you want to achieve, but write it in the past tense as if you’ve already achieved it. Now, on the other side of this card write the three lines from the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek and ye shall find, Ask and it will be given, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” And then read that card – both sides – several times every day for 30 days.

That is the way life works, isn’t it? If you are looking for answers, you find them. If you are asking for trouble, it comes your way.

If you have nightmares, get up and start thinking about some great things you’d like to bring into your life. (And if you have a government job, you might consider finding a more optimistic line of work…)

But the more you think about the great things coming into your life, the more likely these great things will come to pass.

And if you cherish your nightmares, and like to lead a life out of a Stephen King novel – well, I’m not going to tell you to change anything… Life is full of choices and your current condition is only and directly the result of choices you’ve made. Any chronic condition you are experiencing – good health or bad, riches or poverty, happiness or sadness – these are all the result of choices you’ve made, which all began with how you chose your thoughts.

Take this advice: choose to change your mind. Put your attention on the most positive side of anything you face, how you can turn any adversity into your advantage. This is how you can win at anything you attempt. Look up winners and you’ll find that this was their constant attitude during any competition or effort – they only had attention on that positive goal they were going after.

I could go on for hours on this subject.

The deal, the bottom line is you. What you think right now determines your life and what happens to you from here on out. Fill your thoughts constantly with the negative aspects of the world around you and it will turn sour. Constantly find the optimistic side – that silver lining behind every dark cloud – and your life will be filled with joy.

Chose wisely. It’s your life you’re running from here on out.

Can you think of a nicer way to say “Online World Peace Plan” than in Web 2.0?

Had a brainstorm last week to get a lecture out so I could hit the radio interview circuits. So I created one (free MP3 Online World Peace Plan download), made a video out of it, made an optimized Online World Peace Plan mini-web for the transcript, created a PDF (in order to make that video) and have the whole thing up and running now.

So, here I blog about the whole thing and so “Jiggle the web” to use Michael Campbell’s phrase.

Let me tell you the sequence of it:

1. Bright idea. Came from my “day job” telling me I had the weekend “off” (meaning: without pay). Needed to create some income. Already had been working up some Web 2.0 examples of my speaking ability so that I could send reporters that way. So I decided to just let it all hang out with a lecture that told everyone about my latest results. (These philosophic breakthroughs tend to make you a big edgy until you vent them creatively – muses are an insistent bunch…)

2. Wrote a rough outline and then cranked out nearly 6K words in an afternoon. Polished it up a bit.
3. Sent this to TTS to make a cheap-and-easy MP3. Wasn’t happy with the results. Sounded stilty and the emphasis was unreal.
4. Scraped out a proper outline and practiced giving this speech a few times. Then recorded it using one program and another to edit some of the odd-ball mistakes out of it. This took a couple-three days.
5. Made a PowerPoint (actually OpenOffice Impress presentation) from that outline. Converted this to a PDF and then to individual images. Meanwhile, started adding in notes for a second PDF (still needing completion).
6. Imported those PowerPoint PDF images and the edited speech (MP3) into Camtasia. Boring. Opened up Picassa to look through all the clip art and stock art I have on my machine. Where I was missing any particular image, I searched the web – quick and dirty, plus I’m using it for free advertising, so shouldn’t be a particular problem. With all this stuff in there, I then created the video – a version to send up on YouTube and another I can set up on-site (though I prefer to host the bandwidth otherwise). Started the video uploading.
7. Using Dr. Andy William’s SEO Website Builder, I took that original 6K words and split it up into several pages – then optimized these for a mini-web. Once I had tweaked all the keywords, theme words, and so on, then I uploaded this mini-web to my main site – in it’s own directory (which matched the link at the tail end of the video). By now the YouTube has finished loading, and when the processing is complete, I’ll have the links ready for updating, etc. Meanwhile, I tried uploading to Blogger, but just got an error (not the first time).
8. Went back and finished the PowerPoint Notes PDF, and tweaked the mini-web to include the video embed, plus the PDF link, and ensured the Online World Peace Lecture MP3 was linked. So the home page is all tricked out with all the Web 2.0 stuff. Updated the other menus to have a live link to YouTube as well (just in case). FTP’ed all these to my server and tested them.
9. Now, as I get this blog done, and when I test the site – I social bookmark it. Onlywire, Digg, De.licio.us, whatever.
10. Get out that press release I’d earlier laid out – post it to as many free press release sites as I can find/have collected.
11. Now I go and create a Squidoo lens for this video, it’s MP3, the site and everything. Social bookmark that lens as well. Link to everything and it’s brother here.

So now you see the whole scene unfold. Web 2.0 meets organic SEO.

Next up? I’ve got some choices, like videos of commentaries on my books. But I plan to do up a children’s book based on that same lecture. It has a plot – but each chapter is illustrated and can be a video on it’s own (search for the whole set…)

But really, I need to get some emails out to some radio producers who need good talent. That is the key analysis point of how to improve my book sales.

You can see, however, that the childrens’ books would fly down this line quite nicely. The video’s all link to a mini web for each chapter (some wild keyword work here), making a mini-net for the book. Those mini-webs/net all link to the Lulu.com book – which would then be shipped off to Amazon. And I’d start another round of radio interviews. Not to mention the point that I can actually blook this one, with the ability to put images up with the text. Now THAT would make some interesting radio angle – first childrens’ book to be blooked and videoed before it went to hardcopy press. (Not to mention that every chapter will have a puzzle – which could be an online Flash game, possibly. But that is really getting the cart before the horse…)

Now, all of this still points back to my original Go Thunk Yourself Self Help Library and the Personal Development Library of the same name.

Because that’s the name of the game – promotion. Not just enough to write great books if people don’t know about them, is it?

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Update: Took me close to 1 1/2 weeks to get a lecture outline, written and recorded (3 times until I was happy with it!), video produced, powerpoint produced (and exported to PDF), all these uploaded, linked, etc. Then the whole thing Squidoo‘d – while I still have the social bookmarking to do, plus getting out the press releases.

And then we’ll check the Google rankings…

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Yes, within minutes, I had #1 and #10 spots! I know on a blog search, it said I had submitted this blog 44 minutes ago – and it had the #1 spot. But I was busy on the Squidoo lens on Online World Peace… So it takes some time. What was #10? My Online World Peace Lecture video…

Now, if I can get it to get me some sales…

(Reminder: do this technique for your other videos, like the one on New Business Ideas – Genius.)

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Update: next day – (2/14/08)

Today searched for Online World Peace, with and without quotes. Fascinating. My Digg story on Squidoo showed up tops or in the top five both ways. Have to do more testing with this.

When you look for something in quotes, you are narrowing the competition immensely – and so skewering your results. People don’t look with quotes, unless they know a certain phrase is in that site or page they are looking for. So don’t kid yourself. Luckily, I wound up on top because I used Digg – which linked to Squidoo. Two social sites together. We’ll see how long they last. But this particular post – even searched as “online world peace plan”? Nope.

Problem is that “world peace” has too many competitors. So I get buried even with the exact wording when looking for an online plan. “Online world peace lecture” (with or without quotes) stands above all of them.

Lesson is to pick your keywords carefully – and social bookmark everything you do.

But this still gave me optimism that a person could actually start getting wider niches if you use social bookmarking in connection with videos, MP3’s, etc.

Next work is to get a mailing list that plugs into these – if I’m promoting “Go Thunk Yourself!” books, then it would make sense to have an opt-in page for that book series… There’s my money line.