I've had a reasonable amount of behind-the-scenes interaction with other people who work in the PD field. I've encountered some people whose obsession with money, status, and ego gratification creeps me out. But I've also met people I really respect and consider to be of high integrity. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, polarized neither one way or the other.
One person I greatly respect in this field is Marc Allen. He struck me as incredibly authentic, both in his writing and during a phone conversation. I think his authenticity comes across in his
interview too. I know someone who turned down a substantial six-figure book deal from a mainstream publisher in order to have it published by Marc Allen's company, New World Library, since he knew he could trust them.
When I asked Marc Allen why he wanted to be a millionaire, he replied:
I always knew that being a millionaire was not all that important — there are far more things that are far more important, such as family, friends, and doing what you love to do in life. I knew early on that the most important thing for me was to do what I loved to do in my life, and make that work somehow. And it always has. That bit of knowledge has served me very well.
Kent Nerburn said a brilliant thing about money in his book Letters to My Son:
“Money is central to our lives.
Yet money is not of central importance.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the lasting values
that make life worth living.”
This is good to keep in mind, always. It helps us keep money in the proper perspective. It is a very, very good servant but a terrible master.
That being said, I realized in my early thirties that being a millionaire is a very good goal. It’s a solid, concrete number that your subconscious mind can grab hold of. My motivation for that goal was simple: It dawned on me one day that I wanted to write books and write and record music, and be successful enough to continue to do it for the rest of my life — and doing what I love to do is far easier with substantial reserves in liquid assets than it is with no money. So I decided to become a millionaire. That became a clear goal in my mind.
When you make a clear goal, and when you remind yourself of it enough so that your subconscious mind grasps it, an amazing, mysterious thing happens. Some part of you starts working backwards from that number, and finding how to achieve it. It’s difficult for me to explain how I feel the process works, but when you decide to become a millionaire, you automatically start asking yourself how you can reach that goal. And once you start asking that question, you start getting answers. All kinds of possibilities become obvious to you — they were always there, but you never saw them before because you weren’t looking for them.