A friend recently sent me an email that contained one simple sentence that jumped right off the screen and hit me in the face.

When I wrote back to thank her, she was surprised because she hadn’t thought of it as anything particularly profound — just something she’d been thinking about, had maybe heard somewhere else, “just a thought” she barely remembered writing down.

Here’s what she wrote:

“If you think you have to get THIS in order to have THAT, then what you REALLY want is THAT, not THIS.”

OK, maybe it is really simple, but the most profound statements usually are.

So read that again and think about it for a moment, please, then let me flesh it out a bit in light of what I hear so often from readers and students of The Science of Getting Rich.

Here’s a sample of what new (and not-so-new) SOGR readers frequently express as their “clear mental images” of what they desire to impress on the Formless:

• “A million dollars in the bank.”
• “A new job that pays $100,000 a year or more.”
• “An advanced degree in _________.”

Now, as the saying goes, “There’s nothing wrong” with any of those desires. And yet, when I probe a bit further and ask, “WHY do you want that million dollars?” I usually get an answer back that goes something like this:

“So I can buy a new home for my family, pay for my kids’ education, and …”

The same kinds of reasons often turn up for wanting that new job.

And the reason for wanting more education is usually to get a better job to get more money to get … well, I think you’re probably starting to catch on to the theme here, right?

So let’s plug any of those into what my friend wrote:

“If you think you have to get a million dollars in order to have a new home, then what you really want is a new home, not a million dollars.”

Yup, it’s simple. And profound when you go more deeply into it.

You know how you can often save a lot of money on a purchase if you’re able to go right to the source — get it wholesale or better instead of paying the marked-up retail price? Well, the same thing applies when you’re “placing your order” with the Cosmic Supplier (the Formless, the Supreme Mind, the Universe).

In other words, cut out the middle-man!

Why waste time, energy, and effort clarifying a mental image of something that’s not REALLY what you truly desire? Why not go right for the real thing instead?

After all, money itself has no value of its own, and the value we assign it today can change in a heartbeat. Back in 1929 there were plenty of people here in the United States who thought their security lay in the vast amounts of money they controlled.

But on October 29, when the stock market crashed and their money vanished overnight, they were throwing themselves out skyscraper windows.

Who needs THAT kind of “security?”

You may THINK you want money — a LOT of money, even a particular and very large amount of money. And you may very well end up getting it.

But when you focus on money rather than on what you TRULY desire to be, do, or have, what you’re really doing is getting caught up in the HOW rather than the WHAT of your true heart’s desires.

My friend, you have to let go of the “how.” If you don’t, you’re handcuffing the Universe and telling it, no thanks, don’t bring me my heart’s desires THAT way. The more tightly you try to hold onto the how, onto figuring out how everything has to happen and how you can make it happen that way, the more you slow down the process of manifestation.

What are your real, innermost, perhaps long-deferred dreams?

If you think you don’t know, please realize that you DO. They may be deeply buried, but the dreams are still within you. Those dreams are, as Mr. Wattles puts it, “life seeking expression,” just as in the little boy he watched trying to bring music out of a piano. Remember?

Sometimes, people even come up with an amount of money as their “dream,” to AVOID having to go within and see what they find there. But as author Neale Donald Walsch has noted in a neat play on words, if you fail to go within, you will go without.

If you’ve been unconsciously substituting some amount of money for your true desires, then you’re trying to take a shortcut that can’t lead where you want to go.

Here’s the thing: When you get absolutely clear on your true desires, you will know it at a very deep level. You’ll FEEL it with an odd mixture of enthusiasm and peaceful calm. It’ll just feel right — because it is.

When you feel that way, your “mental image” will be powerfully impressed on the Formless.

And when you go right for the REAL dream instead of all that you THINK you need to have in order to get that real dream, you are throwing open all the doors and windows and secret passageways for your good to come to you. You are getting yourself, your old ideas, and other unnecessary limitations out of the way so that you can receive, recognize, and ACCEPT the fulfillment of your desire as it appears.

Here’s a delightful example from Practical Geniuses^TM course member JAIN BRAND in Sydney, Australia:

“I have been studying The Science of Getting Rich for a few months now and have had lots of nice little surprises. But I got a big one a few weeks ago which taught me a lot.

“I am a mad keen horse person and one of my dreams was to own a horse for trail riding. I originally thought about just getting a basic, cheap, scrubby little horse but then realised I might as well ask for the whole dream.

“I began to think, instead, of riding a beautiful, tall, well trained horse. I would picture myself on this horse several times a day. I would walk along the trails that I would like to ride the horse. I visited saddleries and looked at gear that I would like to buy for my new horse.

“And then it happened.

“I was offered a beautiful, tall, well trained horse. He is worth a lot more than I could possible pay for him. He has a small injury that would prevent him from competing at top level, but won’t in any way affect his trail riding ability and the owners just wanted him to go to a good home.

“Anyway, I waffle on, but the point to this story is that I went into a mild panic when I was offered this magnificient horse. Where could I keep him, how would I look after him, how could I afford to keep him??? Because I had to make a decision about whether I wanted him in just a few hours I nearly said no.

“But then I thought this is what I’ve asked for, here it is and I have to accept this gift.

“And it all worked out perfectly. I found a really good place to keep him and he’s turned out to be very cheap to look after. To think …

“I nearly missed out on this wonderful horse because I wasn’t ready for when it happened.

“Now when good things are offered to me, I accept them immediately and know that the ‘hows and whys’ will work themselves out.

“Needless to say, every time I ride my beautiful horse I am extremely grateful!!

And notice how neatly all the other bits and pieces necessary to the “big picture” have worked themselves out, too: Where money itself was needed, there was money enough.

Odd as it may seem, by not focusing on money or the other means by which your dream may be fulfilled, money itself may very well show up — and often in amazing ways and bigger amounts than you imagined. The thing to remember is simply that how your dream is delivered is not up to you!

Wallace Wattles writes: “It is not your part to guide or supervise the creative process. All you have to do with that is to retain your vision, stick to your purpose, and maintain your faith and gratitude.”

Realize, too, my friend, that whatever it is you desire to be, do, or have, ultimately you are aiming for a feeling. In other words, you believe that achieving this desire will cause you to feel good in one way or another — perhaps happy, powerful, loved, competent, successful, and so on.

So look at what Mr. Wattles tells us about how THAT works:

“Think and speak of all the things you have asked for in terms of actual present ownership. Imagine an environment and a financial condition exactly as you want them, and live all the time in that mental environment and financial condition until they take physical shape.

“… In the mental realm, enter at once into full enjoyment of the things you want.”

“… Be as thankful for it all the time as you expect to be when it has taken form.”

You see, when we think the good feeling is the result of getting what we want, we’ve got the process exactly backwards!

Create the feeling first (as Jain did). That’s what powers the impression of your clear mental image on the Formless and starts the process of bringing it into physical form.

Now some teachers and writers express this by saying that the key is for YOU to give first — and then the Universe will respond.

But really, when you consider that everything you already have — including your life and the very air you are breathing right this minute — is a gift, then you can see that it’s not about you giving first. That’s not even possible!

The key is understanding that the process often called manifestation (and that we call the science of getting rich) is an ongoing cycle of giving and receiving, of cause and effect, and that, as Mr. Wattles says, “Substance is friendly to you, and is more anxious to give you what you want than you are to get it.”

If you’re thinking you have to get this in order to be, do, or have that which you truly desire, it may be time to think again!

The situation looked grim for Johnny Yokoyama. The seafood market where he had once been an employee but was now the owner was more than $300,000 in debt and sinking deeper fast. In fact, employee morale was at an all-time low, and the business was almost as dead as the fish no one was buying.

Now fast-forward to today and imagine yourself in Seattle’s lively landmark, the Pike Place Market, overlooking Puget Sound and the snow-capped Olympic Mountains beyond. As you walk closer to the crowd gathered near the open-air center of this sprawling bazaar you can’t help wondering what all that laughter and shrieking are about …

… until you see a hefty two-foot long salmon flying over the gathering and into the waiting arms of the young man behind the counter — and the crowd goes wild!

Someone asks another rubber-aproned fellow for two pounds of halibut. “TWO POUNDS OF HALIBUT!” the order-taker calls out. “TWO POUNDS OF HALIBUT!” comes the reply, in unison, from EVERYONE else on the fish market crew.

Tourists are snapping photos like crazy, even handing their giggling toddlers up to pose with fish bigger than they are. And every so often, someone leans in for a closer look at that giant monkfish — the one there on the lower shelf, that prehistoric-looking fish with a mouth as big as a saucer. But that someone doesn’t stay there long because one little tug on the string that’s tied to the fish’s tail and hidden under the ice makes that fish MOVE — and makes the curiosity-seeker straighten up fast!

This is certainly like no fish market you’ve ever seen before. Then you notice that in addition to all the silliness and good-natured clowning, something else is happening here.

People aren’t just laughing, they’re buying fish.

A LOT of fish!

Now, in his life-changing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles has laid out for us the basic principles by which the Pike Place Fish Market crew has turned what appeared to be failure into a stunning “World Famous” success. No, they didn’t have the book to guide them; they just happened onto some of these principles in an instinctive way. Their backs were against the wall and they clearly saw that SOMETHING had to change.

Amazingly, they didn’t focus on the obvious question, how can we sell more fish? Instead, they imagined a thriving market filled with happy customers and happy employees. And then they realized that if visitors were to enjoy the experience, first THEY had to change their own thinking and their own behavior. Sound familiar?

Oh, you see those two dozen executive-looking types over there, giggling like little kids? The ones wearing the matching jackets emblazoned with their famous corporate logo? They’re here as part of a seminar on how to revitalize their customer service teams.

Turns out the fish flingers have stumbled upon some “secrets” that big corporations spend millions looking for. In fact, there are now several seminars, a couple of training videos, and even a best-selling book endorsed by some of the world’s top business and motivational speakers and authors — all aimed at spreading this “fish philosophy” to other businesses.

So what exactly happened to turn a dark, dingy, dying seafood store into the star attraction of a famous city’s famous landmark?

Well, listen up to the four main principles as outlined by Charthouse Learning Corporation’s CEO John Christensen. Not too long ago Mr. Christensen wandered into the Pike Place Fish Market craziness just as I did (although I don’t know if they hooked him with that monkfish gag the way they “caught” me!). ;-D

Mr. Christensen is the man who immediately realized that there was something special going on here that needed to be “world famous.” Here’s what it boils down to:

1. “Play: We put more energy into what we enjoy, and finding ways to “play” can lead to greater productivity and creativity. Play is NOT about acting irresponsibly. In the livable workplace, it is about finding ways to have more fun accomplishing serious goals.”

Now Mr. Wattles doesn’t say anything about “play” at all — and it’s a little difficult to imagine it being taken seriously back at the turn of the last century when the “efficiency movement” was the darling of the industrial world. But today we can easily see that a light-hearted sense of “play” can be a major component of achieving consistent “efficient action.”

2. “Be There: The glue in our humanity is in being fully present for one another. Being there also is a great way to practice wholeheartedness and fight burnout, for it is those halfhearted tasks you perform while juggling other things that wear you out.”

“Put your whole mind into present action,” Mr. Wattles says. And when one of the fish market guys stops goofing and turns to help a customer, that customer becomes the only other person in the place. Don’t you wish EVERYONE you deal with in the course of a normal day had that kind of focus? (Don’t they wish YOU did, too?)

3. “Choose Your Attitude: When you look for the worst you will find it everywhere. When you look for the best you will find opportunities you never imagined possible. You have the power to choose your attitude. If you find yourself with an attitude you don’t want, you can choose another.”

Mr. Wattles says, “You must learn to see the underlying truth in all things,” and we know that our prevailing attitudes make this either possible or impossible. If your attitude is negative, you’re expressing faith that what you do NOT want is on its way to you. But as Mr. Christensen notes, if the attitude you have at the moment isn’t serving you — or anyone else — you can always choose again!

4. “Make Their Day: When you ‘make someone’s day’ (or even moment) through a small kindness or unforgettable engagement, you can turn even routine encounters into special memories. Few things are as rewarding and infectious as lifting another person’s spirits, and the act of serving others quickly returns a feeling of satisfaction.”

What a wonderful way to embody Mr. Wattles’ advice always to “give more in use value than you take in cash value.” The fish guys add value to every transaction in many ways: By letting the customer know that s/he is important (whether s/he buys anything or not!), by providing a light moment of entertainment (simply by being themselves and not taking themselves too seriously), and in countless other ways, large and small.

See, making money selling fish isn’t just about selling fish. And it’s the same with ANY business. (And if you think you aren’t “in business” just because you work for someone else or some big company, look at it this way: You ARE in business, even if it’s a one-person business with you as CEO, employee, and perhaps even the product!)

You can learn a lot from a bunch of fishy guys in Seattle, and in a moment I’ll send you off to do just that. But first, let’s wrap this up with a brief excerpt from the book, Fish!, a modern “business parable” that teaches the valuable lessons at the heart of the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market’s stunning turnaround:

“Let me tell you about my grandmother. She always brought love and a smile to her work. All of us grandkids wanted to help in the kitchen because Grandma was so much fun. In the process a great deal of kitchen wisdom was dispensed. Us kids were given something truly precious, a caring adult.

“I realize now that my grandmother didn’t love dishwashing. She BROUGHT love to dishwashing, and her spirit was infectious.

“Likewise, my buddies and I realized that each day when we come to the fish market we bring an attitude. We can bring a moody attitude and have a depressing day. We can bring a grouchy attitude and irritate our coworkers and customers. Or we can bring a sunny, playful, cheerful attitude and have a great day. We can choose the kind of day we will have. We spent a lot of time talking about this choice, and we realized that as long as we are going to be at work, we might as well have the best day we can have. Make sense to you?”

Makes sense to me! And if you agree, my friend, take a closer look. See, what the Pike Place Fish gang intuitively discovered is that if their situation was to change, first THEY had to change. And so they did. They decided to turn their dreary and unprofitable work into fun. Fun for themselves and for everyone who steps into their world, whether they buy fish or not.

Ask Johnny Yokoyama what he’s most proud of these days and he’ll tell you: “My employees and I made Pike Place Fish ‘World Famous!’”

Then ask him what “World Famous” means to him, and you get the real scoop: “It means that we never stop creating possibilities — every day gives us the opportunity to grow, to learn something new, to get better than we were yesterday. We are gonna make your day!”

Why not make it YOUR objective to become “World Famous?” To find ways to bring the same “sunny, playful, cheerful attitude” to YOUR job or business — and to begin to revel in the delight of seeing the very same kind of RESULTS, including the ones you can take to the bank?

If the fish guys can do it, so can you! Here’s where to learn more:

• Meet the guys and gals, see and hear the fun, and get some great seafood recipes, too!
  http://www.pikeplacefish.com
• Learn more about the seminars, videos, etc.:
  http://www.fishphilosophy.com
• Find out more about the book, Fish!, or get your own copy here:
  http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net/reading.html#Fish

Have FUN — and remember to watch out for those low-flying fish!

Quick! What’s the very first thing that springs into your mind when you read or hear the M-word? (M-o-n-e-y.)

For many people that first thing isn’t necessarily pleasant. And for others there’s a fleeting flicker of delight as they imagine having plenty of it, winning the lottery or the like, which just as quickly fades into a more familiar “not enough” feeling instead.

It’s not surprising. After all, most of us have been carefully trained, taught, even indoctrinated our whole lives to believe that money is scarce, that it’s hard to come by, that only people who have any ever get more, that it’s the cause of all the world’s troubles … and on and on and on.

Loads of heavy baggage packed with negativity on the simple subject of something we really cannot do without.

And it’s all just so SERIOUS and HEAVY and … ugh.

So since we already KNOW that we attract/create our own experience through our thinking, how about we just UNpack some of that mental baggage and ditch some of the seriousness so we can stop creating and attracting more stuff like THAT?

How about we just lighten up and have some FUN with all of this? When you’re having fun your thoughts aren’t focused on lack of anything, right?

(And believe me, when you get the hang of The Science of Getting Rich and start to see your life transforming in amazing ways, it’s FUN!)

For myself, I have decided that whenever the M-word comes up in conversation or my own thinking in any way that doesn’t thoroughly delight me, I am going to quietly, secretly substitute another word — a silly word that has NONE of those negative connotations.

I’ve been doing this for a while now with family and friends, too (not just quietly and secretly), and it’s not only fun, it highlights immediately just how silly all the negativity is.

I highly recommend the practice!

You can choose any word that strikes you as ridiculous. For me, the funniest word in the English language (and I don’t know why) is this:

Underpants.

(I know, I know. Totally juvenile. Pretty much the humor of a seven-year-old. And that’s probably why it works so well!)

Try it for yourself:

• “I’d like to have a new car, but I don’t have enough underpants.”
• “Invest in THAT? No way! It’s too risky. I could lose all my underpants.”
• “Do you think underpants grow on trees?”
• “I like the job but the underpants are awful.”
• “Underpants can’t buy happiness.”
• “He’s got more underpants than he knows what to do with.”
• “Never throw good underpants after bad.”
• “Underpants aren’t everything, you know.”
• “I wouldn’t do that for love nor underpants.”
• “Always be sure to save some underpants for a rainy day.”
• “No matter how hard I try or what I do, I just NEVER have enough underpants.”

Oh, I could go on and on! In fact, a couple of days ago I introduced this scathingly brilliant concept to my mom and brother, and we sat out on Mom’s patio playing with it until we had tears streaming down our faces from laughing at ourselves so hard.

(I suppose goofiness runs in the family. Later that day when Mom said she was getting ready to throw a load of “delicates” in the washer we accused her of money laundering.)

And my friend Alexandra (Dr. Gayek, founder of The Science of Being Well Network) and I have giggled ourselves silly on the subject of abundance of all kinds by substituting my nutty word for almost ANY word having to do with wealth or health.

Ah, yes: We live in a world of infinite underpants!

But when I told her I was going to share this craziness with you she hesitated a moment and then asked, “Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “We just get so SERIOUS about all this stuff. But you and I both know it’s so much better to let it be FUN.”

“Well, you’re right,” she conceded. “But Rebecca, just try to be … brief.”

Ack.

Yes, she really said that — and cracked herself up laughing. Took me a moment to get it. You know, a pun truly IS the lowest form of humor … ;-D

In the days of the mighty sailing ships, when brave souls voyaged into the unknown, dependent on the winds and their as-yet incomplete knowledge of geography and navigation, one of the greatest and most dangerous challenges was to traverse the area known as “the doldrums.”

Extending about 30 degrees on either side of the equator, the doldrums are subject to days, weeks, even months of no wind at all. After a long and difficult crossing from Europe to South America, lying becalmed in the doldrums — with no land in sight and with the ship’s supply of fresh water dwindling — was a terrible and life-threatening situation.

But history and legend offer us some fascinating insights into the power of our own thinking and belief. Back then no one had yet figured out how to determine longitude, although latitude was easily calculated. So if you could not see recognizable land, you could only know in what band of latitude you currently were. Exactly where you were in that ring around the earth was, at that time, unknowable.

And so it happened that at times a ship would fetch up off the coast of South America, out of sight of shore, fresh water supplies exhausted and death knocking at the door. Then, with what must have been the sweetest sound those sailors could ever have hoped for, the lookout would suddenly call out that a ship was approaching in the distance.

Once the ship was within hailing distance, the cry went up: “Water! Give us water!”

And the reply would come back, “Lower your buckets over the side.”

You see, although the sailors didn’t know it, they were afloat in a virtual river of drinkable and life-sustaining water flowing from the mouth of the powerful Amazon River, which carries nearly 20 percent of all the earth’s runoff water into the sea with such force that the fresh (or brackish but safe) water flows as far as 100 miles out into the Atlantic.

The sailors, dying of thirst, only THOUGHT they were experiencing lack. The REALITY was that they were afloat in a literal sea of abundance. Exactly what they needed was within their reach the whole time, but the APPEARANCE of scarcity and their BELIEF in that appearance threatened to overpower them.

They could have died — and many certainly did — believing in lack while surrounded by abundance.

In his amazing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles writes:

“I have said that people get rich by doing things in a certain way, and in order to do so, people must become able to think in a certain way.

“A person’s way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things.

“To do things in the way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think. This is the first step toward getting rich.

“And to think what you want to think is to think TRUTH, regardless of appearances.

A couple of months ago, my friend TERESA ROMAIN of Access Abundance [ www.accessabundance.com ] wrote in my ezine, The Certain Way, about how Galileo changed the world by looking at things from a new perspective. By dropping the prevailing attitude that the sun revolved around the earth, he was able to see that the opposite was, in fact, the truth.

The key to finding the truth, she noted, was choosing to cast off the old notion and look at the situation anew, through a new lens. Teresa wrote:

“The path that lies before you is one of unlimited abundance. And it begins by SEEING the abundance available all around you.

“As you begin to experience life through the new lens of abundance, you’ll find that many of the problems you face today will simply disappear. As for the ones that remain, your relationship to them will have changed profoundly, empowering you to take actions that are congruent with and support abundance.”

What old beliefs, what old ways of looking, seeing, and perceiving do YOU need to cast off right now, my friend? If you find yourself “in the doldrums,” how can you take a fresh look today and begin to see the abundance that surrounds YOU so that you are empowered — not becalmed and hopeless?

The choice is always available. If you have chosen unwisely before, remember that every moment is new and the great power lies in your ability to CHOOSE AGAIN, no matter the appearances and no matter what it seems everyone else thinks or does.

Teresa says that this choice “is the path that leads, ultimately, to the fulfillment of your dreams.” Mr. Wattles says this choice is “the first step toward getting rich.”

And, bearing in mind those long-ago sailors, I would add that this choice can be the ultimate choice — for death or for life itself.

That choice, every moment, is yours. Which way do you choose — right now?