Gratitude

I always believe in being grateful. There are just soooo many benefits, not only to yourself, but to those around you as well.

Here is an article written by one of my early mentors Kim Reilly on the the subject of gratitude. Again we look at servicing our millionaire mindset and exercising our emotional intelligence muscle.

Please enjoy.
Cheers
Brian

You are no doubt aware by personal experience, it is impossible to create something from the formless without first creating the vision in your mind. In doing this you set the wheels of creation in motion. All that remains is for its delivery to you.

I will use the analogy of the internet to explain how GRATITUDE fits in to this process. Gratitude is like your internet connection. If you want to download something from the formless, or the internet, you must have a solid connection. Any breaks or disturbances in that connection will result in a failed transmission. Well the same is true of gratitude.

Gratitude keeps you ‘connected’ to the formless intelligence which is about to deliver your request. Gratitude also ensures that you rise above any competition and maintain your faith and purpose. This is critical to your success and it requires some thought and contemplation.
It is easy to be grateful after the event. Real GRATITUDE is not simply paying lip service to thanking something, or something. The words ‘Thank you’ are so overused in our society that they have become meaningless. Have you ever counted the amount of times two people say ‘thank you’ during an ‘Eftpos’ or electronic payment transaction. You hand over the goods and the attendant says ‘thank you’, you then hand them your card and once again, ‘thank you’.

They process your card and hand you a receipt, you respond, ‘thank you’. They hand you a pen to sign with and you say ‘thank you.’ You sign the paper and hand it back, they say ‘thank you.’ They put your goods in the bag and hand them to you saying yet again ‘thank you.’ You feel awkward if you don’t respond, so another ‘thank you’ is necessary before you can leave the building. A total of 7 ‘thank you’s’ accompany every transaction you do so if you average 4 purchases a day, its no wonder ‘thank you’ is meaningless.

Gratitude, on the other hand is seldom apparent. Most of my life was spent moaning and complaining about how bad the country was and how bad the government was and essentially how bad everything was. Until I began traveling through Asia . I began to realize that things were not so bad at home, and that I was really grateful to be who I am, living where I live and doing all the things I was doing. This is the rock upon which most become shipwrecked. For gratitude to truly work, it must be truly given. I must also be evident before any events take place. The mind which is constantly focused on gratitude is the mind which is drawing closer and closer to the formless intelligence.

To let your thoughts wander to those of lack or of poverty or hardship, is to undo any creative work you have done. This was another crystal clear realization for me to discover that not only had I not been patient, and invested the required time doing what was necessary, at the first sign that something was not going to plan, I would react by blaming someone or something else for it. Not once did I consider the possibility that what I thought should happen, may not necessarily be the most effective, or productive way for the natural order of things to work.

Every event is perfect in and of itself. This is not to say you must give all you power over to fate. You always have a choice. That is to say that although you have an outcome in mind, you may not necessarily be aware of the most expeditious or beneficial way to see it through. For me, it seemed as though the more clarity I would get on an event, an the more rehearsed and definite I saw it, the more times it would fail in a completely perfect manner. That was until I was able to step back and look at the ‘big picture’.

This way of thinking was illustrated to me during my time as a navigator at sea. For a ship to successfully transit from one port to another, it is essential that a plan be drawn out onto the relevant charts. To begin this ‘passage plan’ I would start with a chart that preferably showed both the destination and the port of origin. To this chart I would apply a ‘mean’ line of approach, to give me a basic calculation of course, speed etc. Once this line had been created I could then transfer the ‘mean’ line to the larger scale charts. These charts would only show a portion of the journey, although they give a much clearer representation of any impending dangers, or things to be avoided, which are not apparent on the large chart. Sometimes, a detour of several miles may be necessary to avoid a reef or a shipwreck or some other hazard.

By looking at the big picture alone, these minor course alterations seem wasteful and even useless, yet they are vital for a safe passage. On the other hand, looking at each chart individually, the destination is not always apparent.

In a sense navigating at sea, is much the same as the processes which I am discussing here. It is vital to have a ‘big picture’ which contains both where you are, and where you want to go. During the voyage, however, things happen which at the time seem senseless or even wrong. At these times, more than ever, you must rely on Gratitude, Faith and Purpose, that your plan is definite, your ship is sound, and every day you are closing the gap between you and your destination.

Gratitude is the only method by which faith can be borne. In constantly fixing your mind on the formless with gratitude for what you have not yet received, you guarantee it will come to you, or you will arrive at it. Everything in your world has been brought to you in exactly the way you have asked for it. This may challenge your beliefs, or even cause you to become angry or frustrated. This is the regression of which I speak. The moment your mind is allowed to look on things as less than perfect is the moment all creation is brought to a halt.

Don’t concern yourself with the misery of others or their wrong doings or shortfalls. See your world as constantly expanding and experiencing more life. The life force has worked long and hard to bring humanity to the stage it is at and it is perfect. Like our passage plan, sometimes it may not look or feel how we would like it to, yet the infinite intelligence, which is in all and works through all, has a script with which you are playing the lead role. Put your unwavering Faith in the Director and fix your mind in constant Gratitude that you have been chosen to deliver the star performance. This is the source of all power.

Fear Of Success

Psychologists studied "fear of success" in the 1970s and this topic received a great deal of attention in the popular media. Today, some trading websites have had discussions as to whether traders secretly fear success. Do some traders fear success? There are no published studies on fear of success and trading, and we don't have a definitive answer to this question, but we can look at this issue with information from our Innerworth archive.

What is the scientific basis of fear of success? Where did the idea come from? In a classic study, researchers presented a group of women with a scenario in which a young women student ranked at the top of her class in professional school. Interestingly, women participants predicted that the young women would face unpleasant consequences as a result of her success. "Pop" psychologists in the 1970s said that these women participants had a "fear of success" in that they expected adverse consequences to follow success. Perhaps this research finding was restricted to a particular cohort of people who lived in a particular time. Maybe women would feel differently today. Nevertheless, the research continues. In subsequent years, research psychologists have studied fear of success in many different groups of people. Fear of success is correlated with low self-esteem, and unpleasant emotions. Women and minorities seem to experience fear of success more often than Caucasian men. The general idea is that some groups of people in our society may receive the message that they "should not go where they do not belong," and by doing so, they will experience adverse consequences: they may need to make new friends and that could be difficult, or they may be afraid to discover that they cannot accept the burdens of a new role. Or they may feel that some people may not accept their success and may spite them because of it. Whatever the reasons, some people may believe that adverse consequences tend to follow success.

Some traders may believe that disaster may follow their success as traders. If they are wealthy, they may want to move to a new upper class neighborhood, or make new friends that are more fitting with their higher wealth and status. These changes may be hard to make. It's much easier to stay where you are and feel comfortable. Others may be afraid that if they make huge profits, they will become accustomed to the luxuries of financial success, only to lose their fortune and have to go back to a modest lifestyle. As the old saying goes, "It's better to have never been wealthy at all than to become wealthy and then lose it all." In other words, once you've been rich, it's hard to be poor. Other people may feel they don't deserve to be successful. This deep-seated feeling of unworthiness may unconsciously lead one to secretly fear success.

We asked a group of our subscribers their opinions. Here's what we found. Many people in our sample, 90%, felt they deserved the profits they make as a trader. It seems that relatively few traders had a fear of success. It may be as little as 15%. For example, only 12% thought that if they made huge profits that others would try to take advantage of them. Only 10% indicated that they thought that if they were successful traders, their lives would change in adverse ways. Only 12% thought that other people would envy or spite them for having increased wealth. We asked several other questions about fear of success, and our estimate is that over 80% of our subscribers don't fear success.

As you can imagine, a fear of success can be a problem for trading. Investment success requires a relentless desire to succeed. Secretly believing that unforeseen disasters will occur if one succeeds, however, is bound to interfere with cultivating and maintaining a peak performance mindset. Fortunately, few of you seem to have a fear of success. But for those who do, it's worth gaining awareness of this issue. If you believe that profitability is the precursor to catastrophe, you'll hold back. You won't put in your best effort, and you will probably fail in the end. Don't let fear of success get the better of you. Identify your fears, and conquer them. You'll be more profitable in the long run.

This Article was originally posted on Innerworth.com and has been reproduced with permission.