The Millionaire Course

by Marc Allen

  There are many answers to these questions, and within these answers again are opportunities, benefits, and gifts for all.

  OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE: Dominator or partnership? Are we consuming too many resources? Or even the right resources? Are we living within the means of the ecosystem? We have a partnership with our mother Earth that cannot be ignored, and we must find the ways to change all of our current dominator-based behavior.

  Once we have a partnership with nature, she has so much to give us, including the secrets of a life well lived.

  OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SPIRIT: Are we in partnership with our spirit? Are we fully aware that we have a spiritual nature as well as a physical, emotional, and mental nature? Do we acknowledge and respect our spiritual nature? Do we let it guide us in our lives?

  Do we respect the spiritual choices others have made?

  To fully realize the promise of this Course —

  living the life of our dreams —

  we have to apply the partnership model

  in every relationship we have.

  FREEING OURSELVES FROM DOMINATION

  Breaking free of the dominator model in all of our vast array of relationships offers us plenty of challenges and obstacles — yet as we’ve seen, repeatedly, buried within these obstacles are great opportunities for a better life and a better world.

  When we look for these opportunities, all of us can find practical solutions to our problems. When we look at our lives and the world in terms of partnership or domination, respect or control, we discover the tools to make a huge difference in the quality of our lives — and even in the evolution of our world. It doesn’t matter whether we consider ourselves to be conservative or liberal, religious or secular, communist or capitalist, worker or employer, rich or poor, or categorized with any other current label for the divisions between us that you might care to name. So many of our problems stem from old traditions of domination — and the solution to all these problems is found in creative new ways of partnership.*

  We can make it an affirmation — feel free to change the words in any way you wish:

  All my relationships are loving partnerships —

  my life and my world are better and better,

  every day, in every way.

  PARTNERSHIP WITH EMPLOYEES

  IF YOU’RE AN EMPLOYEE

  Make sure you’re in partnership with other employees, as well as your employer, customers, and everyone else you deal with. You’re all on the same team: you all have the same goal of creating a successful business and fulfilling lives.

  If you don’t have a right-thinking employer who understands the power of the partnership model, respectfully but firmly lobby for the employee benefits below, which every business should have, whether large or small.

  IF YOU’RE AN EMPLOYER

  Practice partnership in every way you can. It’s by far the best way to operate — the finest, easiest, healthiest, most fun way to build a business.

  Keep this in mind: Your whole company reflects your consciousness. If you are, on a deep level, still fearful and feel a sense of scarcity and struggle, if you believe it’s “everyone for themselves,” and you have to hoard as much as possible for future security, you may think that your company isn’t able to adequately provide for its employees, and you can’t afford to give the kind of benefits an employee deserves — benefits you certainly want for yourself. If you feel this way, your company will reflect your fears, and you’ll find yourself in constant struggle.

  If this is the case, the most important work you have to do is within yourself. Do some honest self-examination. Ask yourself these questions, and look at the answers you come up with:

  • Do I have an underlying belief that business has to be a struggle? Is it necessary to struggle in business? Is it helpful or useful?

  • Do I have an underlying belief that our world is one of scarcity, and so I have to hoard as much as possible for future security for myself and my family?

  • Do I have an underlying fear behind many of my thoughts and actions?

  • Can I imagine creating a business that works smoothly, with an underlying harmony and enjoyment, rather than one filled with conflict, with an underlying struggle and fear and attempt to control?

  If you want to be really successful as an employer,

  set it up so your employees get rich.

  In the process, you’ll create a great success — a business filled with partnerships of inestimable value.

  A POINT TO PONDER

  There are many very successful people who are not struggling in the same way that most people are. They prove that other options are available — and we can choose an option that works better for all concerned. That option is called partnership.

  I have tried for years to move toward greater partnership in my company, New World Library. My book Visionary Business can be summed up as my attempt to instill the partnership model into the business world. As a result, I have a company that runs so smoothly I don’t even have to show up — it continues perfectly well on its own, with or without my input or support.

  I have found over and over that when I believe in someone’s abilities — when I see the full side of the glass, their greatest potential — they end up proving me right and demonstrating those abilities. Creative, competent people handle everything in my company, so I am free to do what I’m best at: focusing on the big picture, coming up with new ideas, writing, speaking here and there, editing projects I enjoy, playing music, goofing off — and having a family life and personal life as well, with lots of time for solitude, rest, and relaxation.

  With the partnership model, things work so harmoniously and smoothly that it soon becomes obvious a much greater force is at work, a powerful whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Working in partnership inevitably surrounds me with people who are far more capable than I am at what they do. Working in partnership, with love and respect for all, unleashes the creative force of the universe, and it is bigger than all of us combined.

  CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSING ABUNDANCE

  Being aware of the prosperity and abundance available to us helps us move into partnership more easily and gracefully. Later on (in Lesson 8) we’ll look in depth at the power of our beliefs and see how, even when they are not true in themselves, they become self-fulfilling for us if we believe them. It’s very important, then, to ask ourselves this core question:

  Do we live in an abundant world, or is it one of scarcity and lack?

  The irony is that some people live in a perfectly abundant world while others live in scarcity — and that we have the power, whether we know it or not, to choose which world to live in.

  In fact, we do choose the world we live in, but for most of us, the decision is subconscious — we’re not even aware we have made the decision to live in a world of scarcity and lack. We’re not even aware that we have decided in advance what our level of income and our lifestyle will be. It was, up until now, an almost entirely unconscious choice.

  We can make it a conscious choice. As Barbara Marx Hubbard makes so clear in Conscious Evolution, it is our choice whether we want to improve our lives, whether we want to evolve, whether we will have a more fulfilling, peaceful, and satisfying life experience.

  Up to now, most of us have chosen unconsciously, and many of our choices have been affected by poor, limited beliefs, all of them based on fear. We now realize we no longer need to make the same old choices, over and over. We realize we have the tools — you’re holding one right now — to make new choices that result in a far more expansive, abundant, fulfilling way of life.

  I can think of no finer lens to see the world through

  than conscious evolution.

  It expands our horizon to see humanity

  moving toward a higher dimension of life itself.

  — Barbara Marx Hubbard

  Conscious Evolution

  IT’S SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK

  I realized one day tha
t attaining true, deep, lasting success — as I choose to define it — is really much simpler than I used to think it was. Having a mansion on a hill has nothing to do with it. Having a growing, balanced portfolio has nothing to do with it.

  In fact, nothing out there in the world has anything to do with deep, lasting success and fulfillment. All the rewards are really found within us, within our minds and inner spirit, and so the most important work is within us as well. The work is in creating ever-better partnerships with ourselves and our spirit.

  It might be much simpler than you think to create a successful, wonderfully fulfilling life for yourself. Most likely you don’t need all the stuff you think you need in order to achieve the happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment you are ultimately looking for.

  What do you want ultimately?

  Let’s think it through: Many of us taking this Course, and many others throughout the world, want more income. Certainly financial security is a worthwhile goal.

  But what do you want all that money for? We think that money will make us happy, content, but as soon as we make any money we discover that it brings no lasting happiness. Yes, there are sweet, heady moments when the big checks first roll in, when our first major goal is achieved, but those moments pass quickly, and we find we’re the same people with the same number of problems, and the size of our bank account doesn’t change that one bit. Having money doesn’t affect all our habitual ways of thinking and usual ways of acting; it doesn’t affect our ways of being.

  When you use these tools and make the money you want, you’ll discover this for yourself. For many people, this is depressing. But it doesn’t have to be that way at all, for it can lead us to a great key to success and happiness if we look at it in the right way:

  We don’t need money to be happy or fulfilled.

  In fact, money has nothing to do with it.

  Once we understand this, isn’t it good news? We can do what we want, and be who we want, and we may not have to change our financial picture at all. We might need more money to have what we think we want, but having these things, we soon discover, isn’t important: It is who we are and what we do — it’s our doing and being, not our having — that ultimately matters in life.

  GRACE, EASE, AND LIGHTNESS

  What do you want ultimately? Who are you in your ideal scene? I always get a picture of someone strolling peacefully around a quiet yard, feeling perfectly content. Someone fulfilled, living with grace, ease, and lightness.

  What do you want, deep down? Contentment? Peace of mind? Fulfillment? Can you describe it in your own words?

  Once we learn a few of these keys and apply a few of these tools, we can take a shortcut to success: We can have the fulfilling life we dream of now, in this moment. We see that the necessary work is inner work — and that makes it much easier than doing all that outer work we thought we had to do. As we have seen before, once we get the inside right, the outside takes care of itself.

  A great key to this inner work is given in The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It’s worth repeating until we remember it, and live it — I’ve been reflecting on this phrase every day for over two years now:

  To offer no resistance to life

  is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.

  — Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

  Keep in mind that Eckhart is talking about our inner resistance to what is, rather than actions of resistance in the outer world. He doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be activists, or we shouldn’t speak up and confront injustice and unfairness when we see it. But he shows us so clearly that the answers to our problems are found by letting go of the resistance we have within us and accepting what is — regardless of what we do in the outer world, even as we work for positive change.

  When we offer no resistance to life, a great shift happens in our awareness, and in our whole physical, mental, and emotional being. Eckhart uses three beautiful words to describe what happens: Grace, ease, and lightness.

  Aren’t these the things you want in your ideal scene, ultimately, underneath everything else?

  What good is being a millionaire if you’re miserable? What good is having a great deal of stuff if you are constantly agitated, or endlessly driven to get more stuff, and fix that stuff, and maintain that stuff, and never find the time to relax and enjoy life?

  No one on their deathbed has ever said, “I wish I would have made more money.” No one on their deathbed has ever said, “I wish I would have spent more time at the office.”

  We are all going to be on our deathbeds far sooner than most of us wish. Are you going to have regrets? What can you do today to live your life in a way that will allow you to die peacefully? These questions are not morbid — they lead us to discover what is truly important in our lives. They lead to a life well lived.

  James Allen was, as usual, tremendously insightful about this:

  The more tranquil we become,

  the greater is our success, our influence,

  our power for good.

  — James Allen, As You Think

  EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

  The owners and managers of truly successful companies — companies that are a fulfilling experience for those involved with them — live in a world of abundance. There is plenty for all, and that includes all employees. Good employers remember the visionary advice Henry Ford gave: He said he paid his auto workers much better than he could have paid them because he needed them to be wealthy enough to afford his cars. This is the vision that created the great American middle class, and the tremendous prosperity our nation has enjoyed.

  Good employers remember the Golden Rule, and treat their employees as they would wish to be treated if they were employees. They understand this great bottom-line fact: The partnership model is far more effective than the old dominator model; the result is a more successful company.

  There is a very good reason for all of the following employee benefits: they all help the bottom line. The result of having an excellent benefits package is that it retains excellent people in your company, and the bottom line is enhanced as a result. It is a win-win arrangement: Give your employees great benefits, and they’ll help you create far more profits than those benefits cost. This has been proven over and over, in my experience and in the experience of many other employers as well. Employees who are well rewarded stay with the company and become valuable assets to that company, and everyone wins as a result.

  This is an important key to success, brilliantly stated by H.S.M. Burns:

  Take care of those who work for you

  and you’ll soar to greatness on their achievements.

  — H.S.M. Burns

  A fulfilling partnership with employees certainly includes everything in the list that follows.

  RESPECT. Every person in the company deserves respect. There are no exceptions to this rule.

  At New World Library, we state this (and the other benefits that follow) clearly in writing in the employee handbook everyone is given when they join the team. Everyone deserves to be listened to; no one deserves to be shouted at. It is a cause for termination in our company if one employee swears at another, or in other ways shows disrespect. Respect is the most basic quality of the partnership model; fear and the need to control, with its resultant inevitable disrespect, are the basic qualities of the dominator model.

  A CHANCE TO GROW ON THE JOB. Treat people like adults, give them opportunities to grow, and their productivity will soar. Make them managers of their position — regardless of the job — and give them the challenge of improving their contribution to the company.

  Invite them to add their creative ideas to the mix. Create an environment that encourages brainstorming on all kinds of ideas — thinking outside of the box — and even encourages disagreement without fear of some kind of disapproval. This is the partnership model in action.

  LIVABLE WAGES. The book Fast Food Nation points out that a great number of big businesses have a policy of hiring mainly part-t
ime people at low wages and giving them no benefits. This is just plain stupid; it is a shortsighted business policy. It leads to a badly run business. These employers don’t understand what Henry Ford understood; they don’t understand the power of partnership.

  Every business should pay its employees a livable wage and give them a full benefits package as well: Isn’t it obvious to everyone how much better a business thrives when employees are treated well? The increased efficiency, energy, and enthusiasm that come from well-trained, motivated employees contribute substantially to a company’s financial success, and more than pay for employee benefits. To have a win-win partnership with your employees, you’ve obviously got to pay them a wage they can live on.

  GENEROUS PAID VACATIONS. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what everybody wants? Every company should make it a priority. In the long run, it’s even cost effective, for vacations are great therapy that help prevent chronic stress, illness, and burnout. And, as everyone knows, the best ideas for solving problems and the most expansive ideas for growing the business are often discovered on vacations.

  If you’re a business owner, don’t forget to take vacations yourself! It may be the best thing you can do for your business, in the long run.