The Millionaire Course

by Marc Allen

  The goal is to move from your current money type to become a money magician.

  • THE INNOCENT — We all start here; many stay stuck here.

  • THE VICTIM — “It’s not my fault.” Forces beyond my control are always messing me up financially.

  • THE WARRIOR — fights and conquers the money world. Often successful, rarely contented or satisfied with that success.

  • THE MARTYR — denies oneself for others’ needs.

  • THE FOOL — gamblers and adventurers who are usually soon parted with the money that comes their way. (This was me, for years.)

  • THE CREATOR/ARTIST — artistic or spiritual, ambivalent toward money, both attracted to it and repulsed by it. (This was my money type as well, from childhood until mid-thirties.)

  • THE TYRANT — uses money to dominate and control. Has a life full of endless conflict as a result.

  • THE MAGICIAN — the ideal — understands how to create money, how to ask for it and receive it. As it is said in Money Magic:

  Using a new and ever-changing set of dynamics both in the material world and in the world of the Spirit, Magicians know how to transform and manifest their own financial reality.

  At our best, when we are willing to claim our own power, we are all Magicians. Magicians are armed with the knowledge of the past, have made peace with their personal history, and understand that their source of power exists within their ability to see and live the truth of who they are.

  Magicians know the source of power to manifest lies in their ability to tap into their Higher Power. With faith, love, and patience, Magicians simply wait in certainty with the knowledge that all our needs are met all the time.

  Magicians embrace the inner life as the place of spiritual wealth and the outer life as the expression of enlightenment in the material world. They are infinitely connected.

  Simply wait in certainty with the knowledge

  that all your needs are met all the time.

  — Deborah L. Price, Money Magic

  If that’s too metaphysical for you and you still have money problems, read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It is filled with powerful tools to master money.

  There is one place where Hill and I part ways, however: He says your desire for wealth must become a “single, burning obsession.” That sounds to me a bit, well, obsessive. It sounds like something that would get in the way of a balanced and fulfilled life that includes time for friends, family, personal expression, and relaxation as well as making money.

  I have realized, I have seen in my own life, that the following simple statement is true:

  You can create money and whatever else you want

  in a sane, balanced way,

  in an easy and relaxed manner.

  There is no need whatsoever to have burning obsessions — clear goals, yes, affirmed in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, but not all-consuming obsessions. We can have a balanced life, time for rest and relaxation as well as work.

  Clearly state to the universe exactly what you desire. Then let it all go, and let the universe work out the details. Go about your day in an easy and relaxed manner, taking whatever steps are in front of you, in their own perfect time, for the highest good of all.

  SUMMARY

  • THERE ARE TWO POPULAR STYLES OF MANAGEMENT: management by crisis and management by goals. There are several fundamental ways to avoid management by crisis:

  • TAKE BREAKS FROM THE DAY-TO-DAY DETAILS occasionally and relax and rejuvenate.

  • MAKE A PLAN. Schedule the first steps toward your plan on your daily or monthly calendar, and begin taking those steps.

  • MAKE CLEAR GOALS, AND AFFIRM THOSE GOALS REGULARLY. When affirming your goals, add these powerful words: In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.

  • WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ALL, and you’ll discover how to turn conflict into harmony. Treat others as you wish to be treated, and management by crisis will evolve over time into management by teamwork.

  • LOOK AT THE HALF-FULL SIDE OF THE GLASS. Acknowledge the crisis, the problems, but then ask yourself, What are the opportunities here? What are the possibilities? Brainstorm freely. Make a list of possible ways the crisis could be resolved, in a healthy and positive way, for the highest good of all.

  • KEEP PICTURING SUCCESS. Those who fail have a clearer picture of failure than of success. As Steven Covey put it, “Begin with the end in mind.” And keep that end in mind, through all the cycles of change that we inevitably experience as we build something over time.

  • LEARN THE GREAT VALUE OF TRANSPARENCY. In all your business dealings, be completely honest to the point of being transparent, so that the others involved know exactly what kind of energy and resources you’re putting into the project, and what kind of return you expect, and you know exactly what energy and resources they’re putting in, and what they expect to get in return.

  • A business or artist that is truly successful in the long run creates an ongoing series of win-win partnerships, and everyone involved supports each other, is willing to give and compromise, and has an open hand.

  • DON’T THINK TOO SMALL. Don’t let doubts, fears, and “small thinking” undermine your goals. If you think small, whatever you create will remain small. Think expansively. Start with your ideal scene — what do you want ideally?

  • LEARN HOW TO SETTLE ARGUMENTS. There is a simple technique for this. It involves the very difficult but highly rewarding task of learning to listen to what someone else is saying, even when they’re angry with you, without interrupting — and without denying what they’re saying, defending yourself, or putting yourself or the other person down in any way.

  • AVOID LAWSUITS. They are unnecessary. Our system of litigation is to be avoided, because it’s a dominator-based system. It is a war. The only lasting solutions to war or any other conflicts are found through creative mediation with everyone involved. If you ever have a conflict you can’t work out between yourselves, find a good mediator and work it out. Mediation is partnership-based. If that fails, go to binding arbitration rather than litigation.

  • UNDERSTAND AND MASTER TIME. This is not an impossible task for people today. It involves looking at our beliefs about time and being willing to change some of those beliefs. There are many people who have a very different experience of time in their lives, including most of the indigenous peoples on this earth.

  • I found I could make a conscious choice to change my beliefs to create more time in my life. I’m almost certain that the single most effective thing I did was to keep affirming these words with my goals: in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time.

  • UNDERSTAND AND MASTER MONEY. Our beliefs about money are self-fulfilling, like all our other beliefs. They are not necessarily true in themselves — our thinking makes them so. Many people have very different beliefs than you do about money — doesn’t that prove that our beliefs are not true in themselves, and can change over time?

  • Take a good look at your beliefs about money, and take the necessary steps to change them. This Course is full of keys that show us how to do this. After I worked with this material for a while something shifted in my belief system about money and its availability. I found I could make a conscious decision to change my beliefs and create more money in my life. The choice was up to me.

  • I’m almost certain that the single most effective thing I did in this arena was to ask, to pray — whatever you want to call it — for a specific amount of money, one that was an expansive leap for me to even imagine.

  • I have realized, I have seen in my own life, that you can create money and whatever else you want in a sane, balanced way — even in an easy and relaxed, healthy and positive way. Keep affirming this long enough, and it becomes true in our experience.

  Act as if

  It were impossible

 
; To fail.

  — Dorothea Brand

  Wake Up and Live

  LESSON 7

  LOVE CHANGE AND LEARN TO DANCE

  THE DAY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

  I’ve mentioned my thirtieth birthday several times. Let me now tell the story in some detail, for it contains within it clear examples of some of the most important keys in this Course. It was a day that changed my life, dramatically and unalterably. I woke up in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe I was thirty already — I felt about twenty-one. But it was undeniable: I wasn’t a kid anymore.

  I was definitely not in the mood for a party or celebration of any kind — I knew I had some serious thinking to do. I spent most of the day prowling restlessly around my little apartment, thinking about my life — the good, the bad, and the ugly. I had always done what I loved — that was one key I knew from birth. I had been an actor, then a student of Zen and various other spiritual things, then a rock’n roll musician. But the band had fallen apart, and several months passed where, when I now look back on it, I haven’t the faintest idea what I did. Time just flew by.

  I was unemployed, scrounging to come up with $65 a month for the rent on a little studio apartment in the slums. I had no money. Worst of all, I had no direction. I had been fired as a busboy and dishwasher because I was too slow. I had a few temporary jobs, weeding gardens and — one of my least favorite activities — spraying and dusting all the plastic plants in a large apartment building. My life was cruising along like a ship on the ocean, but somebody had forgotten to chart a course.

  Then I remembered a little game I had played one time about eight years before, during a short-lived back-to-the-land experiment. We were sitting around a fire and one couple said, “Let’s play a game we played at church camp. Let’s imagine five years have passed, and everything has gone as well as you can possibly imagine — what would your life look like?”

  We all went around the circle and described our ideal scene. I don’t remember a word I said — proof it had no effect in my life. I was given a great key to success, to fulfillment, but didn’t see it, and had no idea what it could mean in my life — until the day I turned thirty, when I remembered the game and played it, by myself this time.

  I asked myself, “What kind of life do you want, in five years? What is your ideal scene?”

  The answer immediately sprang to mind:

  “I want to write books and record music, and have a successful company that publishes them — and I want a beautiful white house on a hill in Marin County, and a peaceful, joyful family life.”

  As important as the words that came to mind were the images and feelings they carried: I had an image of a company that was like a great ship, carried along by its own momentum, and a feeling that it could actually be done in a way that was stress-free, in an easy and relaxed manner.

  I remember that day so well, even though it was over twenty-five years ago. I remember my exact thoughts. As soon as I dared to dream my ideal scene, a huge wave of doubts and fears arose, all based on fear.

  My inner critic or critical parent or whatever you want to call it leapt forward and said, forcefully, “That’s way too much, Marc! Writing books and music, starting a business, dreaming of a big house — just pick one thing, and focus on that.”

  Our inner critic is usually so reasonable and intelligent. Part of me certainly felt that it was far better to focus on one thing at a time, but another part of me disagreed — the part of me that imagined the ideal scene — and I felt a passion for my new dream, a desire to go for the whole enchilada. I wanted it all and, not only that, I wanted it in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way.

  My voices of inner resistance just laughed at that one. “Impossible!” they said, with vehemence. “You know when you start your own business you have to work sixty or eighty hours a week; you have to be totally absorbed in it; it has to be your single burning obsession. You can’t have much of a life — you certainly can’t write books and record music and run a company and have a family life and have time for yourself! Impossible! There aren’t that many hours in the day! You’ll be a jack-of-all-trades, and master of none!”

  Most of my inner voices were absolutely convinced of this, and their arguments were convincing. But then I thought of something: Somewhere I had heard that Buckminster Fuller, the famous inventor of the geodesic dome and other things, decided to live his life as a scientific experiment, where he is the test subject as well as the experimenter.

  So I said to all my inner doubts and fears, “Look, you’re probably right. It’s probably all an impossible pipe dream, I grant you that. There’s very little chance I can do, be, and have everything I want in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way. But it’s a nice dream, isn’t it? It’s certainly worth trying as a little experiment, even though it will probably fail — but what’s lost if I just try it and fail? I won’t be any worse off, and I’ll certainly have learned something.”

  I ended up making a deal, a compromise with all my doubts and fears. I would make an experiment for a year or two. I would attempt to move toward my ideal scene, and I would do it my own lazy ex-rock musician way, easy and relaxed, and see if it worked. If it didn’t work, I would abandon the project. Or try to do it in a different way.

  Without fully realizing it consciously, I had stumbled on a great key:

  Look at your life as an experiment.

  Make a compromise with all your doubts and fears:

  For a year or two, do what you can to move

  toward your ideal scene, in an easy and relaxed manner,

  in a healthy and positive way.

  See what happens!

  I remember thinking that my inner critic was probably right, and I would have to become more hardworking, more Type-A, if I was actually going to succeed in a business, or write a book, or record some music. But it was certainly a worthwhile experiment to try to do it in my ideal way, working when and only when I wanted to, with ease.

  My inner critics were sure I would fail, but agreed to give me a year or two to try my hopelessly idealistic, ungrounded plan to build my castle in the air.

  And so I went ahead with my dream and, on that day, I discovered all of the beginning steps in this Course: I wrote down my ideal scene, and realized it was filled with goals. I wrote down a list of my goals on a separate sheet of paper. There were about twelve of them in all.

  I paced around my room and said each goal out loud, adding to each goal the powerful phrase I have mentioned so many times before, a phrase I had read in a book by Catherine Ponder: In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way.... Sometimes I’d add, In its own perfect time, for the highest good of all....

  I put my ideal scene and goals into a folder, and I wrote on the outside of it: I am now creating the life I want. And I signed it with my name, in big letters.

  I continued nearly every day to affirm my goals. Changes started to happen quickly, various plans came to mind, opportunities appeared — and best of all, I found my inner critic was totally wrong and my intuition was right. I found I could create success without becoming a slave to my work. I could always find a way to choose to do things in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all. In fact, I found it is the simplest and best way to do things in general, both short-term and long-term.

  Now, more than twenty-five years later, I sometimes stroll around my big white house on the hill and say to myself, “Can it really be this easy? Can I really have a life that’s this relaxed, with this much time to goof off and enjoy my family and my solitude?”

  And the answer is obviously yes, because I’ve been doing it for years. But I am continually learning how to relax even more deeply with it all; I am always learning new things, of course, and life just gets easier and easier. My schedule is completely flexible, so I can relax and be lazy whenever I feel like it.

  Life has become a dan
ce, not a struggle. I believe the single most important thing I did and continue to do is to simply affirm, over and over, that I am reaching whatever it is I dream of in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.

  Once I started doing this regularly, my life changed dramatically. New opportunities appeared, everywhere. They had been there all along, but I had not prepared myself to even see them, much less take advantage of them.

  HERE IS A KEY

  Here is a key that affected me deeply; a phrase I’ve played over and over in my mind hundreds of times over several decades, especially during times of disappointment or anxiety. It is an important key, couched in an enigmatic little phrase, that I heard in San Francisco in the late sixties from a spiritual teacher named Satchidananda. I only heard him speak one time, but he gave me something I’ll never forget.

  He sat calmly in meditation as he talked, and he chuckled as he said,

  Make no appointments

  and you’ll have no disappointments.

  — Swami Satchidananda

  We immediately say, What? — what about my appointment calendar? Isn’t that an essential tool? It certainly is for me. The key, of course, is that he meant the expectations that come when we make our appointments. Have no expectations, and you’ll have no disappointments.

  I studied Buddhism for several years after that, and realized that little phrase summed up a great truth that Buddha taught — the first of his four “Noble Truths,” or Great Truths — and it’s still invaluable for all of us today: The world out there doesn’t cause our disappointment. We cause our own frustration and disappointment, because we have expectations of how things should be. If we didn’t have those expectations, we wouldn’t be disappointed.