[moonrambler]

Thank you for answering my concerns, RT Wolf. I have read Deepak's book (a long time ago), and others by him. I've read The Power of Now. Along with Steve's posting, impaul's site, and more. I'm new to this site, but I'm not new to much of this information. The big impetus for me was reading Richard Bach's Illusions about 25 years ago, and that changed everything. I don't know if you can get the sense here from my postings, because I started posting here in a definitive (and frustrated) search for an answer, that I am a ridiculous optimist, and tend to look at things from a "going with the flow" attitude, that I believe we attract what we are and what we think about and by the way we think/feel about things.

Right now, I have a very practical problem that needs to be solved.

I have read so much lately that I can't even keep track of where I read certain things. There is a website where a woman talks of how she saved a bunch of money when she was a kid, and one day her parents came and asked her for it because her dad was gambling away all their money. After that she made sure never to save any money and always stayed in debt.

I see some of that in me, although it isn't that my dad was gambling away money, but rather that my parents were very fixated on money even though they had plenty of it, and they used it to excuse other bad behavior, such as if my dad drank too much and let me down, he'd tell me I had no right to gripe because he "paid for everything around here." I know I "programmed" myself as a kid that money was unimportant, that I didn't like it, that I wanted to be a hippie and ride around in a van and live off the land. Me & You & a Dog Named Boo. Well, now I'm in my 40s and that is the life I have created, and it has really lost its charm! And it is one gigantic struggle to make the breakthrough to get me out of this situation.

Last night I was talking to a friend of mine who also doesn't have any money and isn't having any success in making money doing what he loves, so he has to do something he doesn't even like very much to make a paltry income, and it is really dragging him down. I was telling him about how I had wanted to be a hippie and ride around in a van, and he said he had wanted to be self-sufficient and homestead.

There are keys here, I think, in our attitudes about money, but neither of us has figured out how to circumvent that and move forward, particularly since we want to do it in unorthodox ways.

Honestly, I know and understand all these points about attitude. That I have more than lots of people (particularly when looking at other countries), and so on. That I actually have so many personal items that I could probably clear up all my debt just by selling all my own stuff. That I can be (and typically am) happy in my current situation.

Howver -- I want my business to make a quantum leap in income generation, NOW. I don't want to be broke anymore. I'm tired of the constant struggle! I want some freedom again.

Although I'd be thrilled beyond words with a $5,000 lottery win this week, I would really rather have the business generate that income, because I want something ongoing and consistent.

Now -- reading the forums here has been fascinating, and I think valuable for me, but also very frustrating, because I continually run across the attitude that, if the LoA didn't work, it's because the person had doubts or did not believe in it or did some other technical thing wrong, or else because the IM was not "meant" to happen and the person should just go along with that like it's perfectly fine. Then you get Napoleon Hill talking about persistence in the face of any adversity. So which is it? It wasn't meant to happen, or you just didn't persist long enough?

Those aspects can be contradictory and especially the first one I don't think is true.

Something like 80 percent of small businesses fail within five years. That isn't attitude -- that's a fact. Can you really say that the 20 percent that make it are mainly because their owners were certain the businesses would be successful and the other 80 percent didn't? I truly do not believe that.

Most musicians, actors, athletes, authors, artists, do not make a living or a very good income with their work. There simply is too much competition.

I have doubts that belief and certainty in an intention manifesting are essential for the law of attraction. I also have some doubts that doubt drives away something a person wants, though this makes more sense to me.

I've been struggling to move my business to a next level as far as income generation, and nothing I do is working. This is why I began immersing myself so much in PD, looking at myself psychologically/spiritually to see where I need to make a breakthrough. I've begun to take a look at situations where I've been very successful, and it has taken a very different stance than what I often see here.

For instance, I was a terrific college student. All I asked for from God/the Universe, at 17 years old and beginning my freshman year, was that I would like all my classes. I loved that semester. Over the next several years there would be classes I didn't like, but I loved the entire experience very much. I occasionally went back and took more courses over the years too.

It didn't take any meditating, visualizing, IM procedures, or anything, to be a terrific student. All it took was loving it. That to me makes the most sense as to what LoA is.

Despite that, it also takes some degree of intelligence, persistence, self-discipline, and study skills, to be a terrific college student.

And I'm really, really, good at that, but it's tough to make a career out of.

You look at people who are the best at what they do, and so often it seems it is happening out of a combination of spectacular talent, and love for what they do. Look at Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Joe Walsh, Eric Clapton, Loretta Lynn, Meryl Streep -- people who excel so completely.

About doubt. Sometimes I had serious doubts about my possibilities of success in certain classes. Once I was so strung out about an upcoming exam I nearly skipped it because I felt so sick to my stomach. I did just fine on it anyways. This is completely opposite of what I read around here. If I had failed the test and come to the forums here, people would say, "it's because you didn't believe you would do well!"

Applying for jobs is another case in point. I can be stressed and worried and anxious about the result of applying for a job, figuring there's no chance in the world they will offer it to me, and get it anyways.

I'm a good writer. Once I won a big-time writing contest, and I didn't do any visualizing, IM'ing, or anything . . . I do think I went into a very intentional flow state which energized me to write an excellent story that was good enough to win. Again, that was loving it, a way of being, that attracted success. Did I think I would actually win that contest? Not really. I was completely shocked that I won. I had acted on the possibility, but there certainly was no certainty.

The reason I am writing all this here is because during the past three months of immersing myself in all this IM'ing, my business is making even less money than it was in September. I don't think this is because of doubt, lack of certainty, or any of that . . . though it may be that my focus on lack is attracting more lack, and that my being strung out about money is making it hard for me to think and thus work effectively.

I do believe in LoA -- and I see it at work in the way I go about things. I work in resale. This means what I do is the legwork so other people don't have to. I go out and find things of value that other people want, and they buy them from me. This can be really fun. And it's also been fascinating to me that I tend to do much better at this when I'm feeling good. That doesn't make any sense at all, because if I go to a thrift shop and I'm feeling lousy emotionally, why would there be a lack of quality items there for me to buy? One day I was all bummed out and I was traveling and went to several stores and found basically nothing, and I told myself I was going to have to haul myself out of that state of depression or I would not find anything. So I played some music on the radio and turned my attitude around, and by the time I got home I had a wonderful carload of things for people to buy.

Nevertheless, the quantum leap has not happened, and I am at a loss (those words!) how to manifest that.

I tell you what, I have believed, completely and totally, that I could/can make an on-line business be very successful, or I would never have invested this amount of time and money and effort into it.