Category: Laws of Success

Alicia Howard’s Graduation Spotlight

I’m pleased to present Alicia Howard as a new Mindset Mastery Honors Graduate! 

I am amazed and humbled at Alicia’s ability to live the principles, particularly the Law of Vibration. Even when she came up against terror barriers, and even when others expressed doubt, she kept her brain “tuned in” to the right vibration until she was able to accomplish a goal she hardly dared believe possible. Well done!

Her phase-one inconsequential goal started with a rainstorm:

My daughter and I were headed to the store…in the pouring rain. On a whim I set a “goal” as I was driving to find a parking spot directly in front of the store within 3 stalls closest to the door. I drove right to where I had envisioned it, and there was an open spot, 2nd stall. It was fun to have that happen.

I love that this goal was small and simple. The laws work for the small and simple things too, and this is one of the best ways to start practicing living the laws.

Her phase-two meaningful goal, however, was a much bigger challenge.

She tells us her story here:

My long term goal was to attend a week-long workshop in October, so my bite-size goal was to have the money to register for the workshop and for the travel by June 26th…. To attend the workshop, seemed impossible. I could see no way I could get enough money at all, let alone by June 26.

I had two “stipulations” for the money. 1) I didn’t want it to come from our family finances, and 2) I didn’t want to borrow it. Although I didn’t build these things into my goal statement, I kept that energy every time I said my statement.

Once I set the goal, I tried to be open to any ideas to get the money I needed. One idea was only going to bring in $20, but I wanted to demonstrate that I was willing to do my part, so I did it. Another idea brought in a couple hundred dollars and also allowed me to sell items from my previous business to make some energetic space for whatever was coming next.

Last Monday, registration opened for the workshop and would close when 50 participants registered, so I felt some urgency, but didn’t panic. The organizers also agreed to pay airfare for anyone who registered by Friday. At this point I had about half of the total I needed.

I got online to look at the hotel where the workshop will be, I scouted out different airfare options. That was the first time I got super emotional about my goal. The excitement I felt made me want to jump up and down and shout it to the world that I was going! It was so real to me.

Up until this point (Tuesday night), I hadn’t told my husband about my goal because I felt that it would be really difficult to keep my head in the right space, with the reaction I was pretty sure he would have. But by Wednesday, I knew I needed to tell him about my goal, if for nothing else, just scheduling purposes because I would be gone for a week.

I told him, and his reaction was just as I anticipated. This was my terror barrier. I spent most of the day Wednesday journaling and using all the tools from the course to keep my doubts and fears at bay. I literally went back through all the notes I’ve taken over the last 12 weeks to keep my head in the right space. I kept reading my goal statement and working to keep my vibration up so I could access the ideas needed to create the rest of the money. It was an all day effort!

Thursday morning, I decided to go ahead and register. Although I didn’t have all the money, they had the option of paying in 4 installments. So as an act of faith that the rest of the money would come, I paid the first installment, and registered!

I began to think about temporary jobs I could get to earn the rest of the money. Although I didn’t love the idea to getting a job, I was committed to doing whatever I felt inspired to do.

Friday morning, I just felt uneasy at the thought of getting a job right now. But again, I wanted to be open to all the ideas. Later that day, I met some of my sisters and Mom for lunch. While we visited, I thought about sharing my goal with them, but hesitated because I was afraid that their reaction would be similar to my husband’s. After a while I felt it was safe to share…so I asked them for ideas of how I could earn money because I was going to this workshop in October, and needed to pay for it. They were very supportive and encouraging.

We parted ways and as I got in my car, my mom called and asked me to follow her home, that she wanted to gift me the $2000 I still needed!

I was so humbled and grateful. It was sort of surreal, I expected that I would be screaming and jumping up and down, but instead I was in awe and amazement that it had worked! (The next day I did the module that talks about how we feel the emotion we expect to feel ahead of time, so when our goal comes to pass, it’s not very different than what we have been feeling all along—so true!).

Alicia’s story illustrates several laws of thought:

She used the Law of Cause and Effect when she said, “One idea was only going to bring in $20, but I wanted to demonstrate that I was willing to do my part, so I did it. Because she was willing to take this small step toward her goal, it took steps toward her.

She lived the Law of Vibration when her spouse struggled to support her, but she spent the day journaling and reviewing tools from the course. Wow. The hardest work we often do is keeping our thoughts right. She was willing to do this work and it paid off.

Finally, I know she practiced the Law of Relativity, which states that nothing we experience is fundamentally good or bad, from this message she sent me:

I’ve learned how to be curious about my thoughts without getting emotional…. It was therapeutic to take a look at my fears and answer them. As I took the fears to a worst-case scenario and answered them, they lost all their power, and I was extremely hopeful that I would figure it out, no matter the outcome. I knew that my fears were just emotions that were a lower vibration, so I became proactive in finding new thoughts that would put me in a higher vibration to find the solutions I needed.

Following is how Alicia ended her story, but I have a feeling it’s a beginning as well:

So there is my story…I love it! One phrase in my goal statement was ‘the story of how the money came to me will always be a testament to the power of laws and faith, and God’s desire and willingness to bless me with the desires of my heart’…

Thanks so much for this course!  I’m grateful the Guided class came online just at the perfect time when I was ready to move forward! I love looking back and noticing how small little events, that didn’t seem to relate to each other, in the end, worked together to facilitate my experience! I’m so grateful for the things I learned.  Hearing from the other class member in the guided group each week was key to my own success.  I’m not sure what is next for me, but I’m confident that whatever it is, I will be successful with the tools you have given me! Much thanks! Alicia

Again, congratulations, Alicia! You’ve done an amazing job!

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What’s YOUR story going to be?

I want to see YOU graduate, too!

Learn more about the Mindset Mastery program HERE.

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The Mindset Mastery Program is not to be confused with the Mindset Fundamentals Ecourse.

The Fundamentals Ecourse provides an introductory exploration into the principles that govern success for effective goal setting. It also fills the gaps to give you a basic but complete understanding of the principles, so that you have a solid foundation on which to develop true mastery. 

By contrast, the Mastery Program is focused on the *implementation* of those principles and the *achievement* of your goals. It is full of interesting assignments that take you step-by-step through two experimental goals, challenging your thought processes, helping you experience success, and setting up a pattern in your thinking that you will be able to utilize over and over for effectiveness with all of your future goals. There is a self-paced version, but we also have a GUIDED version if you want to go through the lessons on a weekly basis with an expert guide. View all your options here.

I hope you’ll join me in one of these programs, so I can help you take your understanding and success to the next level in ALL areas of your life!

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Avoiding Debt-Payoff Self-Sabotage

Today’s Question comes from Allyson. She wanted to know:

“How do I visualize paying off debt, without creating a subconscious desire for MORE debt to pay off?”

In her words:

I’ve been listening to your Science of Getting Rich Program over the last couple of weeks and have a question for you.

This next year my husband and I want to create financial freedom, which to us looks like a zero balance on all the credit cards and everything paid off. What we’re bumping up against is we keep visualizing the victory with paying off credit cards, and we don’t want to train our mind into seeking more debt for that thrill of paying it off.

But financial freedom feels so esoteric to us that I am having a hard time pinning down an emotion associated with financial freedom. I’ve thought about what I want life to look like when there are no more debts, and it’s just that everything is normal, I feel secure and I sleep well every night, we are able to invest, and we’re able to pay a lot in tithing and fast offerings and so forth… but it doesn’t carry the emotional thrill that having zero debt has.

Can you help me reframe this, please? I KNOW we can create financial freedom this year. I want to make sure we’re not future sabotaging by the emotion we’re connecting to the visualization, or that we’re visualizing the wrong thing.

Thank you so much! – A.C.

Here’s my Answer:

One of the best pieces of advice I got on this was to spend energy picturing and planning the details of life “after”, and get excited about the feelings associated with normal life. But sometimes nothing else sounds quite as exciting, so I do get that it’s important to be emotionally invested in getting out of debt. I don’t know if this is necessarily the best way, but I’ll tell you how we finally did it. And I’m sorry, it’s kind of rambling without editing, so I hope it’s helpful:

We listened a lot to Dave Ramsey (which was painful at first, but eventually allowed us to get REALLY excited about being out of debt, WITH the new mindset that also kept us from sabotaging ourselves when the goal was achieved. It’s good medicine. Best of both worlds, in my opinion.

We first made a commitment to stop using credit to tide us over if we came up short in any given month. This commitment was before we tried to pay anything off, I think. It meant that we had to use “rare faith” a LOT. Every month, for a while in fact, until we started noticing that miracle after miracle, the principles were proving to be dependable, as long as we kept to the commitment and expected another miracle. …I had never realized what a shift in mentality that required for us, because we were coming from an “investing” mindset – using other people’s money to invest for high returns. (Which, we did really well at for a while, until we got caught in the recession and people couldn’t pay money that they owed us, and the dominoes began to really fall.)

We also had to get serious about budgeting. How on earth would we do that when our income was unpredictable?? We decided we’d just do our best. So it meant looking back over the year and coming up with average monthly dollar amounts for all the predictable expenses. We were barely making it with our business income, and when we came up short, I’d just run a promotion or something, so how do I budget when I’m so used to being reactionary to our needs? We got those monthly figures, and then decided on a monthly amount that the business had to make – so it meant setting up an automatic transfer from business to personal every two weeks.

This freaked me out at first because I thought, “Well, what if the business doesn’t make that much?” and “What if I don’t feel motivated to make more than the bi-monthly draw?” And the first month, it was patchy. I had to scramble to make enough before the transfer hit, which was new because I wasn’t scrambling to pay a bill, I was scrambling to pay myself.

Something about that helped with another mindset shift I needed – because I was scrambling to pay MYSELF instead of scrambling to pay a bill (even though the result was the same). I scrambled again to make enough in time for the second draw. And I didn’t really earn more than the bare minimum.

But after that first month, something felt different. I started working for the joy of it again, knowing that the draw would automatically cover my bills, and I found myself wondering how much more I could make, just for fun. Our financial planner told me to “Let the business account build up”, so no matter how much I generated, I was still only allowed to spend the fixed monthly budgeted amount. That was a new concept to me. (Because previously I was always just reacting to our needs.) So that’s what the budget did for me – it stopped me from thinking so much about bills, and helped me get back to just creating.

The next month I did really well, but still only received the fixed draw into my personal account. The business account started to grow and grow. THAT did a lot for my psyche. Out of the budgeted amount, certain amounts went to paying off bills, and as things started going better, I got a real charge out of paying off debts early. We started to get a bigger charge out of saving, too. This was a new experience for us. I made more rules for myself – like if I generated a certain amount of revenue by the end of the year, I’d give myself a bonus. Otherwise the money stayed in the business account, which was nice because then I had reserves I could use for investing more in my business – product, hired help, etc. It also made it so that the tax bill at the end of the year wasn’t a giant blow to our pocketbook – there was money saved and enough to cover the tax bill and to spare.

Anyway, we felt like step one had to be learning how to live with the new system of paying myself, and within these budgeting restrictions (something that ran counter to the “abundance mindset” – but again, it felt like necessary short-term medicine for our long-term wealth plan).

So the short answer is this. If you want to be really excited about paying off debt, you CAN. But keep it paired with a constant reminder of the principles that build a wise and solid foundation. Follow Dave’s Baby Steps. I used to think he was only about budgeting for people on limited incomes. But he’s more about wealth building – it’s just that too many people skip the steps that build a solid foundation, so that’s why he hammers that part so much. Too often I see people get caught up in the excitement about paying off debt without the education (and pants-kicking) that keeps them wise afterwards, and they get sucked back into the same problems over and over again. Pulling rabbits out of the hat to keep fixing debt problems does work, but it becomes exhausting.

So if your vision is a normal, peaceful, joyful abundant life, then submit yourself to Dave’s podcast (if you aren’t already listening to him). Like I said, it can be painful in the short term, but it’s really made all the difference for us in the longer term. It keeps us in check, and has really added to my ability to live the normal peaceful life I always wanted.

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By small and simple things

“…By small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.”(Alma 37:6)

What is your goal? 

As I’ve been helping people achieve goals using principles of Rare Faith since before 2002, one thing I’ve seen over and over is the concern that the goal feels too big. The person thinks that they couldn’t possibly do enough to make that big thing happen. But…

What if you didn’t have to do anything big, to make something big happen?

The truth is, big things happen as a result of small actions, and when a person grasps that concept, they stop fretting, and they start doing little things with the confidence that it will be enough, no matter how small the effort.

Take a look at this:

Now, think again:

What is one small thing you can do right now to get yourself closer to achieving your goal?

Do that small thing, even if you can’t see how it will conquer the big problem. You don’t have to know how it will.

Your job is to take a small step in the right direction, and what happens after that may not even be within your view. Movement, progress, and ripples all issue forth out of your one little effort. The more you believe this, the bigger the impact of those little efforts can be.

And one other thing… did you notice how that first domino didn’t even do anything super important?

It FELL! That’s what it did. And it was enough.

So don’t be afraid to fall. Give it your best effort, and it doesn’t even matter if you’re successful. Just take a step forward, and if you fall, make sure you fall forward. Even that can make an impact that is bigger than you may ever know.

What happens out of your fall depends on the image of what you originally intended.

See the end that you intend, imagine how it will feel to accomplish it, and then JUST DO SOMETHING in that direction!

If you struggle to believe there’s really unseen help ready to come to your aid when you need it most, learn more at www.ProsperTheFamily.com.

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Do the Challenges Ever Stop?

It’s thrilling to discover the principles, and it’s especially exciting when you see them work intentionally for the first time.

From there, you feel empowered and encouraged to think bigger and test the principles on more significant tasks.

But when you face a setback, you might be left wondering,

“What just happened here? I thought if I just live the principles perfectly, the rest of my life would be easy!”

I have an answer for this, and I hope it doesn’t burst anyone’s bubble too much, but we were placed on this earth to grow.

All life is compelled to grow and expand. That is one of the definitions that helps us determine whether something is alive: does it grow?

In order for us to grow, we must have challenges that stretch us beyond our present limits. We must work our mental muscles and exercise our mind, body, and spirit in order to have the joy and experience the success that only comes through growth and expansion. There are few joys that exceed the feeling of facing a difficult challenge, and overcoming it.

The truth is, that if we ever found ourselves without challenges, we would become unhappy and restless.

Remember when you were a child, and your mother tried to teach you how to tie your shoe?

Did it work the first time you tried it? Probably not. And it was probably very frustrating, and likely evoked some tears.

In that moment, there had never been so great a challenge in your life. You wanted to throw in the towel, give up, and if it didn’t make you cry, it probably made you growl in frustration. However, in time, it became old hat for you and you could do it without even thinking.

Sixth Grade

Then when you were in sixth grade, your teacher probably assigned you a book report that would take several weeks and had to fill up about 4 pages. You had never done an assignment that big before, and it was overwhelming. In time, and after being required to do a number of similar assignments, it was no big deal. What took several weeks could be completed in a day, because you had experience.

Fast forward to college.

Remember those projects that ultimately determined your final grade? Remember the countless hours on the computer? Remember closing off your social life in order to meet that deadline? It was overwhelming, and the stress was unbelievable. You had never been required to work so hard on something so important! If you were like me, you shed many tears and begged your professor more than once for mercy.

Then for some of you, you started in the work force and had job pressures and bills to pay. Sometimes it was too much to bear. You thought you had it pretty tough until…

You got married and added a spouse to the picture.

Now there were work pressures, bills to pay, and a spouse to please. Who knew that being responsible to one other person could stir things up that much?

Pretty soon, you got into the routine of things, and even though things are tough, you have no idea what tough means until…

You start having children.

Are there words to describe how complicated things became when kids entered the picture??

Now wait a minute. Think back to the time when you were learning to tie your shoe. Oh, if only life were that easy now!!!

But remember, at the time, when you were six and you had to figure out how to pull the string just enough to make a loop and not enough to make a knot, it was as though the world was falling apart and it was nearly more than you could cope with.

One day, today’s challenges will look like child’s play as you learn to conquer them.

All that I do through my books and programs is to provide the tools you need to learn how to succeed in overcoming the challenges you face today. Will challenges in general go away? No.

But you’ll be prepared to handle bigger challenges, and you’ll grow in faith, hopefully learning to rely more perfectly on God in all you do.

It seems that life will only get more challenging.

WAIT!

I didn’t say life has to get worse, or even harder, but it will constantly deliver more and more ADVANCED challenges.

As we learn the laws and adopt them into our habits, we become successful at overcoming them more and more gracefully. Every challenge could easily seem overwhelming, but only relative to what we’ve conquered in the past.

Challenges are important because they help us build confidence.

Imagine a child who never gained confidence in learning something simple. What if they were required to hold office as president of a large organization? Each challenge is intended to lead us along to receive all that God would have us receive. Each is an opportunity to overcome and gain increased confidence in the partnership we are developing between ourselves and God.

You can get good at handling finances and attracting wealth. Learning to achieve prosperity is a skill that can be improved. Just as you got good at tying a shoe, this is one skill that can become a strength.

Don’t get discouraged if new challenges show up. It doesn’t mean you are failing. It means you have grown to a point where God believes you can handle something else. It is an indication of His increased faith in you.

I heard somewhere, “When you are down to nothing, God is up to something.” There is joy to be had in the struggle. As we learn to find peace in each whirlwind of trouble around us, that is success. Then, the prosperity you want begins to flow naturally.

Seek peace and prosperity comes, seek prosperity and peace flees.

Let me help you find peace, by learning the laws and principles that are dependable and sure. Click here to join me in the Mindset Mastery course – as you allow me to walk you through each lesson and corresponding challenge, your life will never be the same.

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When Things Look Bleak

I was in a slump. On the verge of some pretty exciting things, but attacked by new thoughts of concern.

I had set some lofty goals, and as the target date was approaching, things appeared to be bleak, like the feeling in this photo above. It took all my energy to continually push aside doubtful thoughts that the changes I wanted to realize were still possible for me.

For days I was plagued with questions:

  • “What if it doesn’t work out?”
  • “What if I miss my goals?”
  • “What will I do if the resources I need don’t come through?”

Each time an anxious thought came into my head, I rejected it. But just rejecting it wasn’t enough to leave me with burning faith, either.

I was losing sight of my objectives, and felt weak in my ability to apply the principles of prosperity I teach.

“Oh, give yourself a break, Leslie, you’re just pregnant.” I’m acutely aware of my emotional state when hormones are all wacked out, and I learned to trust in God’s mercy in spite of myself. I believe He can bless me even when I’m not perfect (thank heavens) and I’ve learned that because I choose that way of thinking over the more typical, “I’m not worthy of His blessings” mentality, He is then able to send the blessings, by law.

Still, even though I have in the past been able to believe in my goals in spite of myself, that week was especially tough. Hope was fading, and I struggled not to give up.

So I turned to two of my closest friends for support, and to help me fix my thinking. I knew that it was my thinking that needed fixing, even more than the circumstances around me (the lack of evidence that I would succeed). It was my thinking that needed fixing, and my success depended on it.

Marnie’s advice – “Dig into gratitude for what you have and what you know is coming. Also, depression isn’t such a bad thing because it makes you willing to change, helps you see contrast. Also, the whole [law of] rhythm thing: something great’s around the corner. Refocus spiritually. Doctrine and Covenants 6:33-37 really helped me get through [a similar slump]”

(The reference she was talking about reads: “Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail… Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”)

My husband’s comment: “God hasn’t brought us this far to fail now….”

That comment struck me like a ton of bricks. It made me think back to all of the miracles He has performed for us, and it would be absurd to think that He would bring us this far, only for us to give up on our dreams and fail to accomplish the worthy things we’ve set out to do.

Suddenly, the struggle seemed like a waste of time and energy. No longer did I feel like I was IN the struggle; I felt like I had just set it aside as something I chose to have nothing to do with.

I found a quiet place and took Marnie’s advice to think on all the things I have to be grateful for. And you know what? It wasn’t just a nice exercise, it was literally an action step that helped me get back on track. Because I have a growing understanding of the laws of success, I knew that to take a half hour or an hour to allow myself to feel gratitude to God for all He has done, even to the point of tears, was to put myself in harmony with Him again, and prepare myself to receive the blessings He wants to send me.

Positive Thinking Tip: Reflect with gratitude on your current blessings and previous victories.

No matter how far we come in learning these principles, we will be challenged our entire life to continue exercising those “muscles.” They can atrophy if we let them. Once again, I became excited about my dreams.

It’s true: we can make of our life anything we want it to be!

Above all, the only things that really needs fixing when things look bleak are our thoughts.

0795_Leslie-author-FB-sq-rotated-flippedGet your thinking right, and everything else falls into place.

Download a free copy of The Jackrabbit Factor or Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters, and I’ll help you make the transformation, one step at a time.

If you’re ready to put what you’ve been learning to the test, join me in the Mindset Mastery course and participate in two powerful experiments using these principles. Discover for yourself the power of your thoughts as I coach you step-by-step through how to use them with intention to make significant changes in your life. The first experiment in phase one is a practice run so you get a feel for how it works. The second experiment is phase two, where you apply what you learned in the first phase to something more difficult, important, or meaningful. With this practice, you’ll gain the confidence you need to apply the principles to any life change you desire.

Learn more and get started now at www.ProspertheFamily.com

See you on the inside!

Leslie

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