Let's say you grew up in a family that, for whatever reason, imparted a lot of money fears on to you.

Maybe your parents never had much, or maybe you felt their fear that the rent wasn't going to get paid, or the utilities were going to get turned off, or all they talked about was not having enough money, and how frightening it was, or all the things they had to do just to get by; and you picked up on that. In addition to that, everything that was said to you--"money doesn't grow on trees you know"--all those things that were said to you, pounded it deeper in. So this generated a great deal of fear in you as a child.

Now as you grow up, you have a little mastery over that, just from growth alone, and so it now becomes anger. Now most people who are just flat out angry at wealthy people. Or angry that someone has made money on some idea, and angry about the whole concept of figuring out a way to make money. And so the fear has now been converted to anger, resentment--a kind of slow burn on the subject.

But that, too, is profoundly dysfunctional. It won't lead you to success to indulge all of that. Success comes from the lighter touch, from being much higher on the ladder, so that money is just simply numbers that come and go, and there's a feeling of flow to it. Money doesn't make you happy. It's the opposite. Happiness makes you money.

Money flows in very easily when I am joyfully serving people, and it flows out nicely to good causes. There is a sense of flow, instead of a sense of hoarding and clinging and grabbing. The grim clench. It comes from a childhood fear that permeates adult life.

I want to see all the positive aspects of converting my talent into prosperity. How many people it really helps, including me and my family, and how much it makes me more creative, and gives me more options, than if I'm angry, and fearful, and just clinging to the very little bit I have, and resentful, and mad at the government, and wondering which program is going to be there to take care of me, and how come my health care and mortgage can't be free, and how come this, and how come that. It's just a mass of worry and resentment around everything that has to do with money. And none of it is necessary.

So step one in succeeding financially is to lose the fear. To reflect back on my childhood and notice where the fear came from so I can laugh it away. What was my original belief system around money? How big a deal did I make it in my mind? And how can I free myself from all those fears and those terrifying belief systems that have been built up over the years?

I want absolute freedom. Financial fearlessness. I want to create wealth from a beautiful present moment awareness of grateful living. So I can just create it through inventive, imaginative service of people.

So step one is to address the fears, to de-program them, and then re-program them into courage and creativity, the watchwords of an upcoming mastermind experience. It will border on the surreal.

***************************

Financially Fearless

A 6 Month Money Mastermind with Steve Chandler and Michael Neill

Has anyone told you there’s a recession on? Did you think it was important to know that?

Join supercoaches Steve Chandler and Michael Neill for this extraordinary opportunity to:

- Reduce your financial anxiety by 75% or more.

- Master the money game as a game — from creating to accumulating to managing to using your money to create even more of what you want in your life.

- Get past — and move beyond — every single fear and superstition you may have around money, regardless of how deeply engrained they may seem to be. Financially Fearless is a six-month mastermind experience specially designed by supercoaches Steve Chandler and Michael Neill to take you beyond your current limitations and fears around money to bring your best self to bear in any aspect of life that is currently undermined by money worry and money "problems."

Here's how Financially Fearless works:

The program begins with our intensive three-day Financial Independence weekend, from July 9 through 11, 2010. This fun, scary, and transformational weekend is designed to assist you in breaking through ALL your money fears and re-creating your financial life from the inside-out, and will cover a variety of topics, including:

· Creating the impossible

· Owner/Victim applied to your prosperity

· How to ask for what you want in life

· The four masteries of money

· How to create wealth, wherever you are and starting from nothing

· Becoming financially fearless

· The art of the bold proposal

· Coaching yourself to ongoing financial success

· The secrets of the happy millionaires

You notice in our society we reserve the word "problem" for the worst, most troubling kind of thing.  It's like somebody walks home and they have been listening to the radio and they say, "Hey, have you heard about Tiger Woods?" 

"What?" 

"He's got real problems." 

"Oh, my gosh." 

"His life is threatened by real problems now." 

And so "problem" is the word we use when people encounter the most dire, horrible circumstances.

So no wonder I feel tightness in my chest whenever my mind believes it has a PROBLEM. 

Notice how, in our society, we call the worst things "problems."  "How is the government?"  "It has integrity problems." "How is John Edwards?"  "He's got problems."  "How is your brother?" "He's got problems, I don't know if he'll ever survive them." 

I don't want to think that way. 

Because the truth about problems is that problems are actually good for us. 

Let's say your child is in math class and you go in at the start of the year for its open house and the parents are meeting the teacher and the teacher says to you, "We're going to give your boy more problems this year to solve than last year's class had.  We've got it set up so that this year's children will be working a lot more math problems and solving twice as many problems before the year is over than last year's math class solved.  We're able to do this because of the computer system we now have and some new teaching methods so your child will emerge as being much better (more masterful) than last year's or any previous class because of this new problems-enhanced program we have."

Now if you are a parent you are thinking "Hey, that's terrific.  I love that.  That sounds great.  Did you hear that, Hon?  Our kid's going to work more problems by the end of the semester." 

So when our child has "problems" to solve at school -we think it's great because we know from a distance that problems are good for people. 

Problems actually build skill levels up.  We know that. They make us strong! Self-reliant!

Problem-solving turns us into more self-confident people. 

So perhaps replacing the word "problem" is a really important step toward building a fearless and creative life.  Problems are good for us but we don't really know that anymore because of the emotional baggage we've attached to the word "problem."

So we want to quickly take that negative emotional charge out of the word and redefine the situation as a project. 

Staring at my PROBLEM I am depressed. Working on my PROJECT I am excited.

***************

When my songwriting partner Fred Knipe and I wrote a song called "I Can't Get To You From Here" we, of course, never knew if anyone outside of our families would ever hear it. We created the song anyway. We didn't think about the approval of others, we could not afford to, because that would have stopped the creation of the song.

Now more than 46,000 people have watched the YouTube version of the song which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzrljQ0Euto

***************

On April 10, 2010 I will be giving a LIVE seminar on CREATING YOUR FUTURE in Phoenix at the Airport Hilton....Club Fearless members get in free and because it only takes a monthly payment of $19 to be in Club Fearless some folks have figured out that it is smarter to join the club than to pay $300 at the door. Some people have done the math.

My seminar will identify the two kinds of people in the world, creators and reactors. Creators create their day based on a compelling, irresistible future. Reactors are reacting to the opinions of others all day.

Creators are always to be found in the middle of another bold creative move while reactors are on the phone reporting another travesty or injustice they have just suffered.

Creators create their futures by what they do today. Reactors are obsessed with talking about the immediate unfortunate past. The best future a reactor ever produced was simply a bandaged-up version of the past.

Fearlessness and creativity are the same thing. Children are all creative. Then society convinces them to have a life based on worry and fear and doubt. They are taught to cultivate an absolutely huge obsession with other people's opinion of them and other people's treatment of them. They spend their precious time trying to win the approval of others. They are the reactors. For them, the future is never created.

For them the future is something they dread.

They dread what might happen. That's how their precious, divine minds are used: they are biocomputers used to dread with.

I was one. A reactor. Big time. I was sick, ruined, bankrupt, addicted to drugs and alcohol, lying to everyone I knew, especially the ones closest to me. A life of fear and more fear. The best I could ever feel, on my best day, was just worried. I was okay with being worried. It was better than being flat-out terrified. But the terror would always return. And the honeymoon of constant worry never lasted.

My life was saved by a recovery program.

Then, from there, I had the stunning privilege of learning to live free. I never knew how before. I found teachers. I found books. I found friends who were learning the same thing. I found a mentor.

I found creativity.

I work with people now who are learning to create their own futures. I coach them. People call it life coaching, and that's just a handy term. Who knows what really happens when two people work with each other to create a future?

Now my work is also to take my subscription Club Fearless to the whole world so that the whole world can learn to form stunning, compelling visions and then start creating. Which is to say they start acting courageously, because it's the same thing ...  this thing we know as courage and this thing we call creativity.

If I was born in the image of my Creator then I know what my job is, it is to create. It's that simple.

If, on the other hand, I was born in the image of my destroyer, then my job is to react. To figure out how to please people and react to everything they say to me. To worry constantly about how to win their approval.

(Until the worrying finally, totally, destroys me.)

That's when I want to talk to my Destroyer. "Why," I ask him desperately, “are you leading me down this path of constant people-pleasing? Why am I on this quest for total approval? Because the more approval I win the worse I feel."

What I got in my spiritual recovery was that winning the approval of other people is a descent into cowardice as a man. It's the act of going pathetic in the face of circumstance. Surrendering my own power to the judgment of my superiors, who would be just about everybody. Such activity had me despising myself and hating others. So how can it be the good thing everybody recommends so strongly? I can't tell you how many well-meaning people tried to get me to read books on how to win friends and influence people.

If you look at me today I will be doing one of two things the moment you look at me. I'll either be creating my future or reacting to my past. One activity leads to strength and happiness and the other leads to worry.

But I'm so lucky now to see that choice. I am so lucky that God granted me the courage to change the things I can.

My new book is now available for the first time on Amazon and in book stores, and this is a book that Club Fearless members already have received a copy of because it is the sequel to FEARLESS.

Once you can grasp being fearless, you can start shifting your mind and the new book has over 100 mindshifts you can make.

I know what you're thinking. You'd rather just win the lottery. Right? Well, no, hold on. That's the whole reason our country is in debt. And that's the thoroughly corrupted thought inside the head of our favor-buying, morally bankrupt politicians.

 Winning the lottery would do you more harm than good.

(I know, you are saying, "Let me be the judge of that! I want to find out for myself!")

However, I think it's important to see this.

A recent news story about a person named Abraham Shakespeare is instructive. Winning $30 million in the Florida Lottery should have been the best thing that ever happened to him. Would you agree? (Actually, I hope not.)

Because with Abraham's newfound wealth came a string of bad choices and hangers-on who constantly hit him up for money. Nine months ago, he vanished. Friends and family hoped he was on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

On Friday, detectives confirmed that a body buried under a concrete slab in a rural backyard was his.

****************

When you really study The Seventeen Lies we tell ourselves to maintain our stories in life, you see that Lie Number Eleven may be the most fascinating of all the lies:

Winning the lottery would solve everything

*****************

The whole concept of the lottery is based on what Gandhi insisted was one of life's true evils: unearned money.  The concept that ruins more businesses and individuals than any other: something for nothing. A bubble-leveraged greed grab for instant financial payoff.

When people begin to tell themselves that money itself is what's missing in their lives, the lying has begun. Because money is not what's missing.  What's missing is the ability to make it and save it. The personal effectiveness is what is missing. The inner strength.

Action builds that strength, and we lie to ourselves to stay out of action.

In his book about lottery winners in the state of Michigan, Money For Nothing, Jerry Dennis documents many sad stories of people who won millions only to have their lives become much more difficult. One couple won a fortune, only to face tax complications that prompted them to quit their jobs and invest in a small resort. The main resort house began falling apart as soon as they moved in, and the whole thing turned into a nightmarish money pit.  The people started treating them differently. Even the grocer who used to smile and give them a nice deal on vegetables or throw in an extra orange, never did that any more.  People regarded them coldly.

Lottery winners often have to move to another state and start over. Go somewhere where people don't know how they got their money.  Because people treat lottery winners much differently than they treat people who have earned their wealth. Distant relatives call and ask for financial help.

"Come on! It's for my daughter's medical bills. It's not as if you earned that money. You ought to be willing to share some of it! I can't believe the selfishness and greed you're showing. After all, it's just by pure chance that you have that money. I could have won as easily as you. It's pure luck. You didn't do anything at all to deserve what you got. And now you won't even share a small percentage of it! I know people who work hard for their money who are more generous than you. Boy, that lottery really brought out the worst in you. At least we know who you really are now. At least the rest of the family knows your true selfish uncaring unsharing character."

A wealthy person who has earned the money is usually treated with respect. I was watching TV and I saw a show on which Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both multi-billionaires, went to the University of Washington to share the stage and speak to students about their businesses and life experiences.  When the two men arrived in the auditorium, they were greeted with a standing ovation.

People who become millionaires in the lottery are often treated with jealousy and a kind of contempt. (The universe has a great deal of fun unmasking these lies that we tell, like the lie about the money solving everything.) Most people who win money quit their jobs and try to spend their way to happiness and fulfillment only to find themselves growing less and less happy.  Many realize that they were not even being truthful with themselves every morning when they said, "I hate this job."

Joe Mullich, writing in Business First, recounts the horrible misadventures of lottery winner Buddy Post who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania State Lottery.

When Buddy Post won his sixteen million dollars he was a cook and a carnival worker, working for every cent he had, and treating his money as if he had earned it (which he had.)

After winning the lottery, Post began a life of pure trouble.  He started up a bar and a used-car lot with his siblings, but those businesses went under.  Post's landlord then claimed that Post owed her half the lottery money, and Post was restricted from taking any more of his winnings. Eventually she got a third of it.  Around the same time Post's brother, Jeffrey, was plotting to kill Post and his wife.  He was trying to get the rest of the lottery money for himself. The brother was eventually convicted of his murder plot in 1993. Post then declared bankruptcy with debts of $500,000, not counting money owed for taxes and to lawyers. 

Mullich concludes his story about Buddy Post, "Today? Post lives in a mansion, but the gas was shut off when he couldn't pay the bill.  Post now says he feels lucky his phone and electricity weren't shut off too. Post has been trying to auction off his future lottery payments but the Pennsylvania Lottery is trying to block the auction. Post says he will devote the remainder of his days to filing lawsuits against lawyers and others who have conspired to take his money."

The reason lottery winners are blindsided by the unexpected horrors of winning is that they have tried to equate their discipline problems with money problems. They tell themselves money is the answer, when it's not.  The answer was action. How to develop a reliable course of action that would provide more than enough money. The lie is used to avoid this action.

In Money For Nothing, Jerry Dennis concludes that "many lottery winners have been disappointed to find that, instead of a free ride on a gravy train, they've only been given a new pair of shoes for the same old dusty road, or, as one winner put it, 'the same problems, just with bigger numbers.' "

In a shocking study done by Dan Coates, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman and Philip Brickman the well-being of lottery winners was compared to those who had suffered accidents resulting in quadriplegia (loss of the use of arms and legs) and paraplegia (loss of legs).  They wanted to find out whether people who won the lottery would have huge increases in happiness, and whether people who suffered such devastating physical traumas would have huge decreases in happiness.

Neither thing happened!  The increases didn't occur, and the decreases didn't occur.  People kept their happiness quotients, on the average, at the same level no matter whether they lost their legs or won eight million dollars. The two groups reported nearly identical levels of happiness.

So, people could win the lottery. Or they could lose their legs.  The two events would have the same effect on their happiness in life.  I think that proves that happiness is a separate thing. It's totally separate from outside events, good or bad. It's an internal adventure, and it's based on our ability to grow a sense of purpose that we can fulfill every day. Every day.

To continue to tell myself that I'd be happy if I won the lottery is to continue to lie to myself about where happiness comes from.

Meanwhile, friends and family puzzled Friday over Abraham Shakespeare’s rapid rise and fall. They said their friend lived a humble life, and just before he bought the winning ticket, he joined a church and was baptized.

At that moment, he was perfect just the way he was.

Then he won the lottery.

The same one we all want to win.

His unearned riches drew all the wrong people into his life with all the wrong motives. He started telling people he wished he had never won. Soon after that he wished he had never been born.

Build. Your. Strength.

"There will come a time when you believe that everything is finished.
That will be the beginning."
~Louis L'Amour

When I was in the army years ago we took training in bayonet combat, and they told us that there were two kinds of soldiers in combat, the quick and the dead.

When I coach clients today in my business coaching and life coaching jobs, I have two kinds of clients. The QUICK: those who are interested in effecting a quickening in the success curves.

And the DEAD: those who repeat the past day after day.

I, myself have been both in my life. And I can assure you that quick is better.

Better than this form of dead: buried alive. In unfinished tasks and obligations.

But any of us can be either one. That's the fundamental choice at the heart of everything. You've got to get to the heart of it first.

**********************

I'm starting a wealth mastermind that will focus on one thing, money. How to make it. How not to be afraid of it. How to create a quickening. How to have a fully prosperous life. Because how much life is there? Do you know? (Anyone.)

This group will focus on the law of creation, not the law of attraction. I love the law of attraction but it's only a paper moon.

The law of creation says if you want to make more money figure out better ways to serve. And better ways to ask.

Better ways to ask! A mastermind in asking and serving.

Byron Katie says, "You could have anything in life you wanted if you were willing to ask 1,000 people for it."

But we stop asking.

Sometimes we don't ask big enough. Or, we ask only once. 

No one ever holds us accountable for how much productive asking we do. (This group will change that.....email me at SChandler@cox.net for me to send you more info on how to join, and it will be a small group, only nine people plus me, starting February 16, we sit around a table monthly...we do other cool things together...there is a quickening......email me.)

We don't ask for money because we fear rejection. As if there were such a thing! Rejection is a feeling we produce by believing certain erroneous thoughts. It doesn't exist in reality.  (People are stopped from becoming prosperous by something that doesn't even exist. The universe has a wicked sense of humor.)

I love going to Vancouver to work with my partner Sam Beckford helping people grow their wealth through the law of creation.

Places like Vancouver always feel so lovely, rain-drenched, dappled in shades of green you never see in Arizona. So my travel there is good. It refreshes. But we also don't want to miss Ralph Waldo Emerson's point about how much we shape our traveled-to beauties by our inner life and perception. Rain can be overdone. It can get dreary. So many songs tell you. Here's that rainy day.

I forget and take for granted the magnificent light in Arizona. Ever see the Native Americans do a sand-painting?

 Glorious.

They take a fistful of rust-colored sand and let a stream come out on top of an ivory mandala of sand and soon every shade of light in the world is being eaten and reflected by the sand.

Wealth is everywhere.

Emerson said, "To the dull mind, all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light." 
   

The illumined mind has shifted to the light. 
   

Once many years ago when I was depressed about not making enough money in my business I talked to my friend and mentor Steve Hardison. Hardison said, "To shift your mind you might want to simply shift your body into the light, literally." 
   

He recommended I get out of Wayne's World (my nickname for the office I had at that time in my garage) and into the outdoors, so I could experience more light. More light on the outside, more light on the inside.

So I reluctantly followed his advice, and started doing my work out on the back patio in the sun and it shifted! My mood picked up and I started having the conversations that generated new business.

Wealth is everywhere.

So let's travel to India to follow this thought through. Not literally, but through the Indian poet Tagore who said, "Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."

My mastermind will put nine people plus me in the light. There is no rejection in the light. There is only faith.

Michael Neill's Supercoach Academy has only a FEW openings left so please click here now: http://www.supercoachacademy.com/

Michael is a close friend of mine, and an author I admire. I can assure you of the quality of his program. Here's what he says:

"Beginning in January, 2010, I will be guiding a small group of people through a gentle yet rigorous training program designed to unleash the most powerful, impactful difference maker that is there inside you."

"Whether you are already a coach looking to take your practice to the next level or if coaching is something you’ve always thought would be wonderful to do and you want to learn to do it to a phenomenally high standard, this program will take you from wherever you are to a place where you can consistently transform the lives of your clients."

I will be one of the presenters/facilitators at Michael's academy and I intend to thoroughly rock your world when it's my turn at the plate. I'll be swinging for the fences. I won't go down with the bat on my shoulder. (My baseball metaphors are coming easily these days because I'm doing the final edit on a baseball book I have just written with co-author Terrence N. Hill).

But enough about me.

Back to Michael's academy: Here he is in his own words, "Along the way, you will find your own life transformed as you literally see the world and other people in a whole new way. The program will be delivered through a combination of monthly live events, weekly teleclasses, online forums and virtual masterclasses and will be a comprehensive education in some of the most powerful technologies for change ever created."

Here's the link again in case you missed it.  I look forward to maybe seeing you (come on! just go for it!) in New York City:   http://www.supercoachacademy.com/

 "I haven't had a bag of M&M's all season," Nash said. "It's been about 10 months now, and I've never felt better. I recover and feel good almost every night."

Dan Bickley in the Arizona Republic writes about Nash: "A seeker with a great intellectual curiosity, Nash made the change for many reasons. A friend urged him to visit Dr. Suneil Jain, a naturopath in Scottsdale. He was told refined sugars break down the immune system, and that one teaspoon can paralyze white blood cells for many hours, making it much harder to remain healthy.

"(Refined sugar) is complete crap," Nash said. "We keep stuffing it in our bodies in great abundance almost habitually, without even thinking about it anymore. There's an immediate sensation with these foods, but 20 minutes later, the sensation isn't so great. And once you cut them out, it becomes a lot easier to live without them.

"I think everything I do shares in why I feel great. I really prioritize sleep. I watch what I eat, and not just cutting out refined sugars. Physically, I'm at a point now where I understand my body, how to train, and how to recover. It takes a big commitment, but it's rewarding to feel good, to be happy, to be mentally clear and creative."

"I feel as good as I've ever felt. I don't know if there's any difference from when I was in my 20s," said Nash, who will turn 36 in February. "Maybe this proves you are supposed to feel this way at this age, if you watch what's going on around you.

***********

My favorite books on this subject are:

 and this one:

************

" We must all suffer from one of two pains:
the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."

"A good plan enthusiastically executed now
is better than a perfect plan next week."

-General George S. Patton

***********

"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult,
and difficult as if they were easy."

This 2010 will be an easy year. It has to be. I can't wait for the first task of the new year.

When I take on the easy task as if it were difficult, I slow down and look at the task differently. I bring more consciousness to it. I see more opportunity in it. I look for hidden potential in the task. I dance with it a little more slowly and have more fun. Most people rush through their easy tasks just "getting through" them without "getting anything from them."

When I take on the difficult tasks as if they were easy, it makes them easier to start. I just waltz right in.

"...to express her faith in a social order that combats chaos through civil grace, decency and wit."   

---From the dust jacket of Mansfield Park, one of the two Jane Austen books read and celebrated by the infamous two guys.

Jane Austen was an OWNER and this woman, down here, is a rather hilarious example of a VICTIM:

KERRVILLE, Texas, (AP) - Prosecutors will review the case of a woman authorities claim has called 911 30 times over six months for non-emergency reasons, including a call to complain that her husband refused to eat his dinner. Last Friday, the woman allegedly made a pair of calls to 911, including a hang-up and another where a woman was heard screaming. Police were dispatched to the residence and officer Paul Gonzales said police were told by her that "her husband did not want to eat his supper." A police report said the 53-year-old woman was also yelling "about things that happened two weeks ago." The woman now faces charges of 911 abuse.

* * * * *

As I tried to explain in SHIFT YOUR MIND, Owners take responsibility for their own happiness, while victims blame everyone else for everything. Owners are independent, self-reliant creators of circumstances and victims react to circumstances.

I'm often asked to give a public speech or a workshop on OWNERS versus VICTIMS. 

My workshops are always about contrasting distinctions. The workshops are never just downloads of information. People already have too much information.

Clients who are considering whether to hire me have asked, "What's the information in your speech?"

"There isn't any."

"Are you joking?"

"No. There's no information, just a distinction."

"You'll have to explain that."

A distinction is different than information.  If I went in front of a group of people for an hour and gave them a ton of new information, they'd simply have more information. Now they'd have to try to remember it all!  They might have taken notes, but a month later they would have forgotten most of the information. Sounds like a waste of time. No wonder most leaders tell me, "Training comes and goes and nothing's ever different."

I agree with that. How could anything be different when you're working with information?

These days people already receive more information than ever before in the history of humankind. We are overwhelmed with information. We get so much. The minute we wake up, the television is on, or the radio, or we flip the computer on to get our early morning information, or receive a series of texts, and soon the information just overwhelms us.  It's like a rush of water…a tsunami of information.

And then throughout the day we are given more and more information. 

So if you go into a seminar and I give you even more information, then it's a disservice! 
A distinction is different than information. Because a distinction is simply a separation. It's a surgical slice down the middle of your mind. A good presenter of distinctions becomes a diamond cutter! She uses a distinction as a sharp, sparkling device to divide the mind in a clear, liberating and ultimately healing way.

It never leaves you with anything you have to "try to remember."

Like the distinction between thinking like an owner and thinking like a victim.  A clear distinction. An unforgettable contrast.  When you see it and when you "get" the contrast-it is yours forever.

Like the young Arthur of legend pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone. (Now the sword was his, and he would be the once and future king.)

When you clearly get how distinct two things are you'll never lose that distinction. 

For example, life and death.  It's a distinction! I believe you've already gotten that one. Because when you were a young child there was a point at which you learned about death, and how it was different and distinct from life.

I remember when I was three years old and there was a dead bird on the road.  My father was pushing me in a stroller and I pointed at the bird and he explained to me that that bird was dead.  And for the first time, I got the distinction. Something could be living or something could be dead. 

Once you get a distinction, you've got it. You don't have to revisit it and continuously remind yourself of it.

I have had people contact me who were in an owner-victim distinction seminar over ten years ago and tell me that the main distinction has stayed with them throughout all these years. It's something they've been able to use every day since then.

When the sun goes down, it is night time. We know that because we learned the distinction between night and day. We only had to get it once. We never had to put a sticker up on our refrigerator saying, "Remember: dark equals night time and light equals day time."  We never have to remind ourselves of a distinction.  We've already got it.

Distinctions are like good jokes. I get it! When you get it, you own it.  It's yours.  You are now moving through the world interacting with others with a distinction in you that you have and can use.  Distinctions help you simplify life. You have new mental leverage that wasn't there before. Shifting becomes easier.

Club Fearless was designed to be a way to KEEP the distinction alive and active in your mind every single day so you can be Jane Austen instead of the woman calling 911 because her husband wouldn't eat her food. So you can be a diamond cutter, and live life from a sense of inner power instead of collapsing in the face of imaginary problems all day.

Am I worried about selling you this club? No. Sales is missing now. We are focusing, instead, on bailing everyone out. At enabling people to be victims forever. (Victims vote consistently for the people who victimize them...it's like having our formerly powerful nation of proud, productive individuals now in the thrall of Stockholm Syndrome).

Selling is an exchange of energy and value. It is a proud and brave practice and only people who wish us all to become government workers would attack it as a practice. I have no problem having this blog be nothing but excited, enthusiastic selling. To make a point.

In the meantime, I wish you a happy new year. And a prosperous one. And even if you are a government worker, sell something in your spare time. See how it feels to be part of the economic recovery:

A member of my favorite support group (a club called fearless) sent me a song to play. I can't stop playing it. Usually someone sends me something nice, and I play it and thank them.
 

But this one is mesmerizing and I got more lost in it every time I played it.

There are those among us who will object to this song because they believe it only applies to followers of one religion. But they would be politically correct (and morally wrong) once again.  This touches the spirit and the soul of all living beings. Anything that has a heart.

Then send it around to everyone who might be feeling a little helpless this bleak midwinter. The helpless are forgetting, of course, the heart that resides inside.

Helplessness is a learned state, and never "caused" by circumstance. It comes from repeatedly giving up, day after day. You learn it.

Dr. Helen Smith is a forensic psychologist in Tennessee. She writes, "A reader emailed me today to ask if the American people were experiencing a kind of learned helplessness ..........much like the dogs in psychologist Martin Seligman's studies. For those of you unfamiliar with learned helplessness--it is a technical term that "means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected."

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On an unrelated note (or maybe not), I have ONE more opening for the January coaching prosperity program for those of you who are coaches and want to start 2010 off with a major dose of increased prosperity..(....and learned optimism.) Email me if you're interested: StephenDChandler@CS.com.

The Woman Who Attracted Money is a murder mystery with a coach as the central character.

Dale Dauten recently wrote this, and it went into a lot of newspapers, and so this book has made its move.

This is what Dale Dauten wrote:

MOSSI: Are you some sort of consultant?

CHANCE: Life coaching.

MOSSI: Of all the phony-baloney fake professions that we're so proud of in California, that one takes the cake. What, people don't know how to live? They need a coach for that? What are your credentials? I bet you don't even need a license to do it.

CHANCE: No, it's not psychotherapy. It's just coaching. That's why they call it coaching.

MOSSI: Just another racket, in my book. For people who don't want to take the time to get a degree in psychology.

CHANCE: It differs greatly from psychotherapy.

MOSSI: In what way?

CHANCE: You have to get results.

That bit of dialogue (altered a bit to make sense out of context) is from a new mystery novel called "The Woman Who Attracted Money." What makes the book more than just another murder mystery isn't that the main character is a "life coach" but that the book is by Steve Chandler, who's written a number of impressive leadership and motivation books.

Coaching, outside of sports, has always garnered easy cynicism. If you are fortunate enough to have people around you who have the time, insight and interest to regularly enlighten and inspire you, then seeking out professional uplifting might be unnecessary.

Meanwhile, many people I admire have coaching help. (Harvey "Swim With the Sharks" Mackay once told me that, at that time, he had 18 coaches.)

But while I can see how some people would be anti-coaching, no one is anti-wisdom. And it's Chandler's wisdom that makes "The Woman Who Attracted Money" special. It manages to be a case study in coaching, inside an intriguing and fascinating story that arises out of this simple predicament: A life coach has a dead client.

I've been writing about Chandler for more than a decade now, and along the way, we met and became friends. (Indeed, in his novel, my new company makes a brief appearance, when a character mentions having settled a business dispute by seeking mediation at Agreement House.) Further, I confess to being a bit skeptical when Steve first told me he was starting a series of detective novels. I didn't doubt his writing ability; I hated to see him take the time away from his nonfiction work. I shouldn't have worried.

The book's title comes from one of the hero's coaching clients talking of her unsuccessful efforts to "attract abundance." The main character, Robert Chance, asks her, "What if, instead of trying to attract abundance, you are simply earning money?" He adds, "Rather than the law of attraction, we went to try on the law of cause and effect." He then persuades her to stop passively hoping for success and start undertaking practical experiments with a new career.

There is other advice on the theme of "just start," including this: "Stumble right in. Take some small, immediate action. Do it wrong if you have to, but do it. Fail forward. Don't worry about how you're coming across, because it's not about you."

Later the narrator tells us: "He felt a little flurry of butterflies in his stomach. Go toward it, he thought. Whenever there is fear, go toward the fear, because it wants to show you something."

Well, I feared Chandler was making a mistake by turning to fiction, but Chandler shows us something — something more than entertainment and more than instruction. . . . He shows us that wisdom is a good story.

Opinion by
Dale Dauten

Dale Dauten is co-founder of AgreementHouse.com, a company that resolves business disputes. Write to him in care of King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., 15th floor, New York, NY 10019, or at dale@dauten.com

George Hamilton III had a song back in the 50's I always liked called "Break My Mind."  It was also later sung by Linda Ronstadt and more than 20 other recording artists. I love it because it captures the image of how we freeze ourselves with our beliefs. Those beliefs crystallize and the mind becomes like a sheet of ice.

I remember growing up in Michigan and after a freezing rain you could lift sheets of ice, about the size of record album covers, up from the sidewalk. They were translucent and crystalline. You would hold them in wonder, then fling them against a Maple tree and shatter them. That's how our minds get! Our minds are like ice when we can't shift. Like a picture frame full of ice. That's when I need to break my mind. And then shift who I am.

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But what if I don't know how to shift? What if I don't know how the mind works? Then I have a problem. For most people that problem is lifelong. All the way to the end. Follow them into the nursing home. Then listen. Still victims. That's the mind that never knew how to work itself.

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But as members of club fearless know (because to them the book has already been sent for free on request) Lindsay Brady's book is the key to how the mind works. How it sends perceptions to the brain. And how those perceptions drive ALL (not some but ALL) of our behavior. And how to change a perception.

You can get the book on Amazon, it's called As The Pendulum Swings.

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"How amazing will you feel
when you develop a deep, lasting,
natural confidence others only dream about?"

~Rich Litvin

Rich Litvin is an amazing coach that you can find here: http://thatconfidenceguy.com/ and you can also find him in my next coaching prosperity school that begins January 8th. If you are a coach and would like to join Rich and the other coaches in that prosperity program, then email me right away here SChandlerInc@cox.net and I'll send you more information or else we'll talk and sign you up.

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Rich Litvin continues: "Self-confident people inspire confidence in others: their bosses, their peers, their clients, friends and lovers. Gaining the confidence of others is one of the key ways in which a self-confident person finds success… Natural Confidence isn’t the kind of confidence that some people put on like a suit of armor. It’s a deep, lasting confidence. There’s a sense of ease and well-being that seems to emanate from naturally confident people...

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin

How do I find my freedom?

How do I find my purpose in life?

A lot of people ask that. In our club fearless we have lots of questions and answers and it's great fun to live and play at that level of intellectual freedom and inquiry.

Instead of being "safe" and asleep.

One question recently was, “How do I find my purpose in life?” So I can live a purpose-driven life? Where do I find it?

Purpose is whatever you say it is when you wake up in the morning.

It is not to be "found" anywhere.

It is a creation.

And purpose doesn't carry over from day to day. You have to create it fresh when you wake up. And that's good news because it puts you in complete control.

If we all had a purpose that we "found" in a dream or in our hearts or under a mossy stone in the forest, we wouldn't be creative.

We wouldn't get to do the most fun thing on the whole planet! And that is to create and then produce our own purposeful project we love working on that day.

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My favorite Ayn Rand quote:

"Robin Hood is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don‘t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors."

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Recently a friend told me that his coach had asked him to check out the last lie, of the seventeen lies. To read the last of the 17. And so he contacted me and asked me what the last of the seventeen lies was. So I sent it to him. And it occurred to me that I might want to read that lie again to myself, so why not drop it into my blog. Then I'll have to read it again when I proofread the blog. Brilliant.

Lie Number Seventeen:

We are helpless

There are lies that make news: lies told by public figures and celebrities. There are also simple everyday lies, lies told by everyday people to avoid embarrassment.

And then there are lies to the soul.

A lie to the soul runs deeper than any other kind of lie. It is like a river. Like a river designed to chill something deep down inside us.

It's a lie whose unconscious mission is to kill the spirit. To remove the passion, and to deny our uniquely human power.

The lie is created to convince us that we have no power. That we are helpless.

But it is not true that we have no power. The truth is, we have so much power, it sometimes scares us.

As Nelson Mandela said in a speech, quoting Marianne Williamson, "Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

Because of that fear, we lie. We are powerful, but we lie and say we are not.

I, too, am a liar.

Not as much of a liar as I used to be. I don't lie as often. Not as bad. Not as deep. But still, I am a liar.

I lie to make myself feel helpless.

I lie to stay out of action.

I lie about the power of circumstances. I say "circumstances prevent me." I say circumstances and other people are more powerful than I am. I claim they are always favored over me. By as much as 20 points.

Then I turn the lying inward. I say that I am defective. So defective that I am helpless. More helpless than Neil Young at his most helpless.

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

On a dark and lazy level it seems to work for me. If I seem helpless enough, maybe someone will help me. Someone powerful. Someone with money. Someone with love.

I then become ashamed of how helpless I am.

That's when my friend Steve Hardison looks me in the eye and says, "You are in the habit of making yourself feel ashamed because it keeps you out of action. Shame keeps people out of action. You shame yourself in order to remain passive."

I am ashamed to admit that he is right.

And in the end, the "helpless" lie works. It chills the body. It works! The body curls up. The body goes to sleep. The mind follows suit.

Because I am a human, the main racket I run in my life is convincing myself and others that I am a victim. That circumstances hold me back. That other people don't appreciate me. They don't thank me enough. They don't pay me enough. They don't understand me.

In this practice, I am not alone. In this practice, I am joined by everybody else. All of us do this. Some of us do it all the time. Some of us do it some of the time.

The way out for me was to finally allow myself to listen in on my own conversations. To become a total eavesdropper on my own talks to myself. I became more and more aware of what I was doing to myself. Which felt good. Because awareness was the way out. It was the way out of the deception. Because awareness will always provide an opening for action.

The goal of self-honesty is just this awareness. Awareness first of the lies, and then awareness of the truth. I can say that there are 17 lies we tell in life but, underneath, there is just one lie. All lies to the soul are the same lie.

The lie is: we are helpless.

The truth is: we are powerful

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My coaching prosperity school is filling up...email me if you want to be in it: stephendchandler@cs.com.  They always fill up and I always turn people away. I like to keep the school small and powerful so that the word "prosperity" really means something.

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Many great people have applied to become my apprentice. Still time to get into the running, but the financial commitment is huge, and so is the time and effort you'll need to give it. Don't apply if you don't want to pay a lot of money and then work harder than you've ever worked on your career.

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Club Fearless on the other hand costs next to nothing, and the benefits are bountiful.

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There are people on this planet who have never experienced the true joy of selling.

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I will leave you with these wonderful words from Howard Thurman,

"Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”