Earn More, Stress Less E-Book

Fergus O'Connell

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 248

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

If you heard there was a way to attract all the money you want, would you try it?

It doesn't matter what's happened to you in the past or what your current situation is - you can live the life you want and never worry about money again. Earn More, Stress Less is your practical guide to living the law of attraction. It maps out a series of well-defined, realistic steps to help you get as much money as you want and put an end to financial worries.

Successful people have been using these principles for hundreds of years. By following the powerful and eminently sensible steps outlined here, you can use the science of getting rich to realise your financial dreams too. You'll discover:

• A clear explanation of how the law of attraction works
• A way to decide exactly how much money you want
• Simple, clear actions to start attracting wealth
• Ways to stop worrying about money
• Easy steps to develop a daily routine to maintain your cash flow
• Examples, exercises, templates and how-to's
• Case studies of people who have used the Earn More, Stress Less method to great success

Are you ready to give it a try?

"An astonishing guide to attract all the money you want and transform your life. Highly recommended." Dr. Joe Vitale contributor to The Secret and bestselling author of The Key and The Attractor Factor.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1 - DECIDE HOW MUCH YOU WANT

Chapter 1 - Ask Big

Chapter 2 - Create a Clear and Vivid Picture of What You Want

THE IMPORTANCE OF DETAIL

THE NEEDS METER

THEREFORE, HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED?

Chapter 3 - Put It Out There

MAKING MONEY FROM YOUR PASSION

STARTING TO CONVERT YOUR CLEAR AND VIVID PICTURE INTO REALITY

AFFIRMATIONS AS A WAY OF PUTTING IT OUT THERE

Part 2 - HAVE A PLAN

Chapter 4 - Decide How the Money Will Come to You

HOW CAN MONEY COME TO YOU?

PICKING THE MOST PROMISING IDEA

MAKING YOUR GOAL CLEAR

Chapter 5 - Build a Plan

WHY PLANNING IS A GOOD IDEA

THE EXAMPLE WE’RE GOING TO USE

Chapter 6 - Carry Out the Plan

CARRYING OUT YOUR PLAN

WHAT HAPPENS IF IT DOESN’T TURN OUT LIKE YOUR PLAN SAID?

UPDATING YOUR PLAN

TREAT IT AS A MESSAGE

WHAT IF YOU’RE TOO BUSY TO CARRY OUT YOUR PLANS?

Part 3 - BELIEVE

Chapter 7 - ‘Act As If’

OBSTRUCTIONS/BLOCKAGES

REMOVING OBSTRUCTIONS/ BLOCKAGES

Chapter 8 - Be Grateful

THE NEEDS METER

Chapter 9 - Stop Worrying

WHY DO WE WORRY?

A CASE STUDY IN WORRY

WAYS TO DEAL WITH WORRY

Chapter 10 - Stress Less By Problem-Solving

WHY A PROBLEM-SOLVING METHOD?

WHAT’S THE METHOD?

Chapter 11 - What To Do When Things Slow Down Or Stop

HOW DO YOU KNOW?

Chapter 12 - What Life Is Like When You Earn More and Stress Less

1 DECIDE HOW MUCH YOU WANT

2 HAVE A PLAN

3 BELIEVE

Your Journey Has Begun

Appendix 1 - How Earn More, Stress Less Works

Appendix 2 - Earn More, Stress Less For Children

Appendix 3 - Checklist of the ‘Go Do It’ Exercises

Further Reading

About the Author

Earn More, Stress Less

Index

This edition first published 2010

© 2010 Fergus O’Connell

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

O’Connell, Fergus.

Earn more, stress less : how to attract wealth using the secret science of getting rich / Fergus O’Connell. p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-907293-04-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Money-Psychological aspects. 2. Wealth-Psychological aspects. I. Title.

HG222.3.O36 2010

332.024’01-dc22

2009041784

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 11 on 14 pt ACalsonPro-Regular by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

For Mike, who told me about all this

Acknowledgements

Thanks first and foremost to my case study people who want to remain anonymous, but they know who they are.

It was sheer pleasure working with the people at Capstone/ Wiley – Holly Bennion, Grace O’Byrne, Iain Campbell, and Megan Varilly who did the brilliant cover design. The person I worked most closely with was my editor, Jenny Ng, and I really can’t say enough good things about her. Creative and sensitive, there were times when it was almost as though she was clearer about the book that was in my head than I was. Thanks, Jenny.

Finally, thank you as always to my wonderful agent, Darin Jewell.

Introduction

One thing’s for sure. Over the next few years an awful lot of people are going to spend an awful lot of time, effort, energy and sleepless nights worrying about money. People who never, or rarely, had to do it before are going to have to do it now. The Credit Crunch / Collapse of the Banking System / Second Great Depression – whatever you care to call it – is going to result in, is already resulting in, unhappiness, depression, ill-health, broken relationships – and worse – on a scale that is hard to imagine.

Yet there is a way out and numerous teachers / philosophers / writers, both past and present, have pointed to it. Philosophers like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Emerson and more recently people like Deepak Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne have all shown how anybody can have as much money as they need.

So why this book?

The answer is that this is practical – like all of my previous books. Rather than giving vague or complicated or airy-fairy or new-age sounding advice, it is a how-to book. It provides examples, exercises, templates and how-to’s to enable the reader to get all the money they want. Deepak Chopra will tell you, for example, to ‘release this list of my desires and surrender it to the womb of creation, trusting that when things don’t seem to go my way, there is a reason, and that the cosmic plan has designs for me much grander than even those that I have conceived’ (Chopra, 1996). I will tell you how (and why you need) to do these things.

You’d be entirely justified in asking what my credentials are in writing it. Am I as rich as Croesus? Why haven’t you seen me on Dragon’s Den? Or in the press trumpeting my own achievements?

Well, my credentials are these. First, I have enough money for all my needs. I pay taxes in Ireland and – without in any way meaning to boast – last year, I was in the top 1% of earners in that country. Does this mean I’ve never had money problems? Hell no. I’ve experienced not being able to pay the mortgage, not having money for food, banks regarding me as a lower form of life than pond weed. I’ve had the sheriff call. On January 1 2001, I had a business-related debt of €750,000. I have more first-hand experience than many of the terrors that come with lack of money.

However, between 2001 and 2006 I cleared that debt using the ideas in this book. My income in 2008 was double what it was in 2007 as a result of using the ideas in this book. My next objective, which I expect to see realised this year, is to make a million euros – €800,000 in earnings and €200,000 in debt reduction (i.e. becoming mortgage-free).

In summary – if I’m not any richer than that, it’s because I don’t want to be or need to be. I’m living the life I want on the money I earn and I don’t worry about debt.

And so can you. It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you in the past or what your current situation is. It doesn’t matter what bad luck or lousy breaks or terrible things that have happened to you – and I know that lots of lousy things have happened to lots of people. The central proposition of this book is that if you do the things it shows you, you can live the life you want to live, have all the money you want / need and you won’t have to worry about money. If this idea appeals to you then read on.

If you look around at other books on making money, they generally fall into three categories:

Biographies of successful businessmen

‘Stop buying lattes every day and pretty soon you’ll have a big stash in the bank’ kind of books

‘Principles’ of making money or becoming rich.

This book is none of these. Instead it harnesses what is usually referred to – though other people have other names for it – as the universal Law of Attraction. If that’s already sounding too new-age for you, don’t worry. You won’t find much that’s new age in this book. This book is firmly anchored in the practical.

In this book I will ask you to do certain things. They will all seem eminently sensible and practical. Yet in doing them you will be using the Law of Attraction. From time to time, I will refer to this Law and some books on the subject, to provide a context for Earn More, Stress Less. You, on the other hand, can go through this entire book, make all the money you want and never have to think about the Law of Attraction – if that’s what you want.

For the three months that I was writing this book, some people acted as case studies. They were introduced to the ideas in the book and began to try them out. Their experiences, feelings and reactions are dotted throughout the book. All talk about the benefits they have gained. All have said that they intend to continue.

The book is divided into three parts called:

Decide how much you want

Have a plan

Believe.

These three things – figure out how much you want, build a plan and believe – are what you must do if you want to earn more and stress less. Most of the chapters have one or more sections called ‘Go Do It’. These are where I ask you to do the things necessary to begin getting all the money you want. You can see that these are the most important parts of the book. When you come to do these exercises it would be good to keep them together – maybe in a special notebook or in a particular folder on your computer. Use the checklist in Appendix 3 to keep track of what you’re doing.

Part 1, will help you get a sense of what life will be like as your money starts to flow in. As one of my case study people said, ‘I have to say I enjoyed doing it, and the “feel good” aura is still with me.’ As you work your way through Part 2, you will start to feel really positive. You will be taking action. You will be taking your situation by the scruff of the neck and doing something about it instead of passively taking what life is doing to you. I completely accept that no matter how up-beat you are, there are times when it can all become too much. That is what Part 3 is there for – to stop yourself from worrying, stressing or becoming depressed – and, in the process, undoing all the good work you’ve done in Parts 1 and 2.

As part of my research for this book, I came across a number of examples of well-known people who have used the Law of Attraction. These were people like Oprah Winfrey, Scott Adams (author of the Dilbert cartoons), Jack Canfield (one of the people featured in the book, The Secret) and TV presenter Noel Edmonds. Are these people famous and wealthy because the Law of Attraction applies to them, and only to them? Come on – sounds a bit unlikely really, doesn’t it? Are they famous and wealthy because they have some amazing, unique talent? Well, they have talents – for sure – but we all do, don’t we? We all have talents that make us unique. Are they famous and wealthy because they live in a certain city or state or country or area? Nope – doesn’t seem to be that. Or is it because they are involved in a certain line of work? Uh, don’t think so. Maybe they save a lot and that’s why they’re rich? Well, I’m sure they have savings but I think we can probably assume that that’s not the answer either.

It’s something else, isn’t it?

In conclusion, let me ask this. What’s your alternative to all of this? Well, it seems to me it’s to sit at home, watch day-time television and bemoan your lot. Don’t! Where’s that going to get you? Get out and do something! Do what this book tells you. Then watch the results flow. It may be a bad time for you – it is for many people. But think of your journey through this book as an adventure – a game, if you like. You may not have a lot to lose. You have much to gain.

So, let’s begin – and good luck.

Part 1

DECIDE HOW MUCH YOU WANT

It’s no use saying ‘I just want to have loads of money’ – that’s not going to work. Instead, you must build a picture so real that you can almost see it there in front of you. Having done this, you must then take certain actions to convert this picture into the money you want. (If you want a scientific explanation as to why and how this works, you’ll find it in Appendix 1.)

So this part of the book explains in detail how to (a) figure out how much money you want; (b) build the clear and vivid picture and (c) start attracting the money. This part of the book has three chapters.

Chapter 1 begins by explaining why it’s okay to ask for lots of money. You don’t have to make do with little – you can have as much as you like.

Chapter 2 describes how to figure out how much money you want and how to make this desire ‘clear and vivid’.

Chapter 3 describes how to transmit your request for money so that it has the best possible chance of succeeding.

Chapter 1

Ask Big

You don’t have to settle for‘just enough’ – nothing is stoppingyou from asking for all themoney you want.

Go Do It 1

Make a list of ten things that you want at the moment. Just to give you an example, here is my list:

1. Clear my various debts including overdrafts and credit cards.

2. Buy a house for cash.

3. Have a regular monthly income to cover my outgoings. (Because I’m self-employed my monthly income tends to fluctuate.)

4. Clear my company’s debts.

5. Have money in the bank.

6. Have a pension or equivalent.

7. Buy a really nice drum kit.

8. Have money to give to those I love.

9. Earn a million euros this year.

There – I only want nine! But some of them are pretty big.

Now write yours:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

It’s okay to look for the amount of money that you really want. You don’t have to just settle for ‘enough’ or ‘just enough’ or – as I used to do – that ‘just the right amount arrives just when I need it to’ or ‘it’ll do’. You can look for what would really make a difference to your life.

Have a look at Figure 1.1. The left hand column contains examples of what someone might regard as settling for ‘just enough’. The right hand side is a corresponding ‘asking big’ version.

You get the idea.

In some ways, I find it weird that I should have to write a chapter like this at all. One would have thought that if I said to you – as I have – ‘imagine it and then it can be yours’, you would make a large and complete list of all the money you needed. Strangely enough, this is not what happens. A lot of the people in the case studies had to be pushed to come up with their real lists, as opposed to their ‘it’ll do’ lists.

Figure 1.1 ‘Settling for just enough’ versus ‘Asking big’

The reasons for this are worth looking at because some of them may apply to you. It seems to me that there are seven reasons why you might be reluctant to ask big.

1. To ask big you’re going to have to build a list of all that you owe and – because this is so much – you would find the whole exercise too depressing. If this applies to you, then let’s kill it straight away. The reason you have bought this book is to sort out your debt problem. The first step in doing that is to make a list, not just of what you owe, but everything else that you want. So you’re going to have to get over this one or you’re not even going to get off first base.

2. You don’t believe it’s going to happen. You are sceptical.

You’re not convinced about the subject of this book. You think that if you ask for a modest amount, it might happen, whereas if you ask for everything you truly want, it’s absolutely never going to happen. We’ll deal with this whole issue of belief in Part Three.

3. You don’t see how it’s going to happen. For example, you could be on a fixed salary with a mountain of debt. How are you going to clear that? So again, you ask for something modest because the grander thing couldn’t possibly happen. You’ve heard people begin a sentence with the expression, ‘There’s no way...’. We’ll deal with this issue further in Part Two: Have A Plan.

4. The thinking – which has been drummed into many of us since we were children – that being rich is bad. The abuse of riches is bad but having all the money you want is good. It doesn’t guarantee happiness by itself but it certainly helps. And try being happy when you have no money. Abundance is good. And not only is it good, it happens all the time.

You only have to look around to see the bounty and abundance of the world. Look at a patch of waste ground – say, after builders have left a building site. Then look at it a few months later. All sorts of life has started to grow and live there – flora and fauna. Look at the heavens at night. God/the Universe/Nature – whatever you care to call it or believe in – is massively abundant. It is this abundance we are going to tap into.

5. You feel like you don’t deserve it. This is not the book to go into why people end up feeling this way, but many people do. In some or all aspects of their lives, they feel they are not worthy of love, or respect or – in this case – wealth. But you are. You really, really are. And the best proof of that is to do what it says in this book and find the money coming to you.

6. You think there is a limit on how much you can earn. For example, if you went for an interview for a new job, you might look for several thousand pounds of a salary jump, but you probably wouldn’t even think to look for twenty thousand or fifty thousand. Or, if you earn money based on a daily rate, you put some kind of ceiling on how much you feel you can realistically charge.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I heard a friend say: ‘I couldn’t charge more than a thousand euros a day.’ By comparison, in the last twelve months, I have charged anywhere between 1,950 and 6,950 per day, for services which are very comparable to those of my friend.

7. Wanting lots of money is greed and greed is bad.

Wanting lots of money is not greed. Wanting lots of money is the wish to live as full and abundant a life as possible. And for most normal people this is exactly what they want. Yes, there is the abuse of money – eating too much, drinking too much, gambling or wasting money, and so on. But this is not what I am talking about here and this is not what the vast majority of people want.

What most people want, first of all, are the physical, practical things. A decent place to live, reasonable clothes to wear, good food and drink. Then they want to be able to do the best for those they love – spouse, partner, children, loved ones – to feed, clothe and educate them well, give them treats and surprises from time to time. We’d like treats and surprises ourselves – but not too much. Too much and we (or our children) become jaded.

We want a life reasonably free from worry and back-breaking labour. We want time to rest and enjoy all the richness the world has to offer. We want to do the things that interest and excite us. We have been given talents and we want to explore and develop those talents.

Finally, we want to give and receive love. If, as part of that, we could give money to those less fortunate than ourselves, most people would jump at the opportunity. This is a full and abundant life. To not want such a life would be strange, unusual and weird. So the desire for the money is not greed. Rather, it is the desire to live a full and abundant life and this is completely normal. It is not a bad thing. It is actually a good thing because it is the desire to live the fullest life we can live.

Here’s an example of asking big, taken from one of my case study people.

Figure 1.2 Example of asking big

In the book, The Secret, Jack Canfield tells the story about how at a time when he was earning $8,000 a year, his boss and mentor set him a target of earning $100,000 in a year. Canfield then goes on to describe how he earned not quite $100,000, but $92,327 that year.

It’s an extraordinary and intriguing story, but it’s what happened after that is perhaps the most fascinating. Canfield’s wife then said to him, ‘If it works for a hundred thousand, do you think it’d work for a million?’

‘I don’t know,’ Canfield replied. ‘I think so. Let’s try it.’

Canfield got his million dollar royalty cheque for his book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, sometime after that.

So don’t be afraid to ask big. When I get you to do the exercises in the next chapters, cut loose. Look for all the things you’ve ever wanted. Yes sure, look for the money that will solve your immediate problems, but then go on to look for all the other things you need to make your life the best life it can be.

Ready? Let’s go.

Chapter 2

Create a Clearand Vivid Picture of What You Want

It’s not enough to say thatyou want to have lots ofmoney. Instead, you must createa clear and vivid picture ofwhat you want.

Go Do It 2.1

Take time out. Find a quiet place. Make yourself comfortable. Relax. Now daydream about what it would mean to you to be rich. Imagine the life you would live, what you would do, where you would go, who would be with you. Picture the things you would be able to do that you can’t do now. Do this for five minutes.

Nice, huh?

At some point in your life, you may have felt unhappy, restless, unfulfilled. You may have thought that ‘if only’ something were different – more money, more free time, a different house, a different partner, a particular change in your circumstances, a lottery win, whatever – then things would be different. It’s the When-Then Syndrome: When this happens, then I’ll be happy. So if you are one of these people, this chapter will show how to figure out what the ‘this’ is. Once you know what you really want it’s a simple matter to work out how much money you need.

If you could wave a magic wand and have as much money as you wanted, what would you do with it? If I ask most people that question they’ll say things like, ‘clear my debts’, ‘pay off my mortgage’, that kind of thing.

But if I then say to you that you could have still more – quite literally, as much money as you wanted – what then? Ask most people that question and they’ll say ‘I’d quit my job and never work again.’ Push them more and they’ll say that they’d buy ‘things’ like ‘a house with a swimming pool’, ‘a top-of the-range whatever kind of car’ or the like. Push them still further and they’ll talk about all the other ‘things’ they would buy. Okay, but what happens next? You have all this stuff. What do you do then?

Recently I was having dinner with a friend and we drifted on to the subject of what we would do if we didn’t have to work. She said, ‘Er, I wouldn’t get up so early in the morning to go to work.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but you’re going to have to get up some time.’

‘Okay, so then I’d spend more time with my daughter.’

‘Okay, but she’s fifteen now. She’ll be eighteen soon and going off to college. What are you going to do then?’

Long pause followed by a smile.

‘I’m not really answering the question, am I?’

Some people know the answer to the question, ‘If you could wave a magic wand and have as much money as you wanted, what would you do with it?’ But, in my experience, many people don’t. They have a vague picture of the future involving a lavish house and lots of ‘stuff’. But you can see that that’s not going to work if you want to build a ‘clear and vivid’ picture. If you don’t know what you want, then you won’t know what you want the money for. Because of this, you won’t be able to build a proper picture in your head. If you don’t know what you really want then you will build a list a bit like a shopping list. You don’t have a lot of emotional investment in a shopping list – it’s just a list. Similarly, if you just make a list of stuff, you will have no emotional investment in it. The picture you send out will not be clear and vivid and so the money won’t come to you.

There’s a regular feature in the British publication The Sunday Times called ‘A Life in the Day’ where well-known (and sometimes not so well-known) people describe a typical day in their life. You come across similar features in a lot of magazines and newspapers. I’ve always been intrigued by it. I’m always intrigued by any insight into how people I admire spend their time.

What I really want to do is to earn my living from writing fiction. Thus, I’m always interested in how novelists spend their time. One of the writers I really like is Alan Furst and I read this about him recently. ‘He spends mornings mapping the intricate world of his novels on yellow Post-it notes and pasting them meticulously into a frayed loose-leaf binder and afternoons digging in his wife’s garden.’And looking on the author’s website there is a section called ‘Author Tour – 2008’ listing the cities and bookstores he will be visiting in June 2008. If you want to know what a novelist’s life is like then here is one example.

It has always seemed to me that how somebody wants to spend their days and weeks is the best way of figuring out what they really want. If you can describe what an ideal day is for you, and then an ideal week, an ideal month, an ideal year, then you are a long way towards figuring out what you really want. In addition, once you’ve done this, you’ll then be able to figure out how much money you need to support the life you have imagined.

So how are you going to do that? Begin by answering all of the questions in the following ‘How would you like to spend your time?’ questionnaire.

How Would You Like To Spend Your Time? Questionnaire

A Day

Start with a day – and write down the answers. In the life you want, what would a typical day be like?

Where would you be living? With whom?

What sort of house would you be living in? Describe it in as much detail as possible – the kind of detail you’d find in an estate agent’s brochure.

What time would you get up? Would you have slept well? What would you do first? And then? And then? And after that? Write down your schedule to the end of the day.