Posts Tagged ‘Law of Attraction’

By Seamus Anthony

Everything has an opposite. Every Yin has its Yang. Therefore it makes sense that if there is a Law of Attraction there must also be a Law of Repulsion.

Well a quick Google search revealed plenty of articles about this, but here’s my take, a little counter-intuitive mind game to motivate myself to do those things that will lead to great results, but which can be hard to do (or not do).

Attract What You Want By Focussing On What You Don’t Want

The seed of anything lies in it’s opposite. This is described nicely in the Yin Yang model: a spot of white in the black half and vice versa.

Therefore if you are having trouble motivating yourself to get things done, or if you don’t even know what you want out of life, try focussing on what you DON”T want.

But Wait … Isn’t That Back-To-Front?

OK Stop: First let’s digress, in order to clear something up. There’s a lot of superstitious hokey-pokey about how if you focus on what you don’t want you attract that very thing into your life. This is probably true on a level.

For example if you focus on how miserable your life is day-in day-out, then your life will probably be miserable.

But on the flip-side if you just go around fibbing to yourself and every body else that you are as happy as a lark, that doesn’t mean it’s true. I am sure you have known people who put on a happy face but you get the feeling they are perpetually and deeply bummed.

On another level that kind of thing is unscientific hogwash. If you have a phobia, say reoccurring nightmarish thoughts about being bitten and killed by a poisonous spider, the chances are you are going to make it through life without this happening the same as everybody else. And if it does happen, well, you lucked out, but your thoughts had nothing to do with it (unless they drove you to put yourself at risk).

Know What You Want By Knowing What You Don’t Want

Sometimes it is easier to define what you don’t want in your life than it is to define what you want. A classic example of this is if you hate your job, but have no idea what your true career calling is.

If this is a problem for you, in any area, ask yourself this: What is it you don’t want?

Now ask yourself: what is the opposite of that? Does it make sense that this, being the opposite of what you don;t want, is actually what you want?

Sometimes I find that this just instantly clears up any foggy thinking about my direction or desires in any area. For example, I am supposed to be losing weight this year, but in fact I have been slowly gaining it. A couple of weeks ago I decided to start exercising again every morning.

Now, the best time of day to exercise is early, before breakfast, so I set my alarm. When it goes off I groan and moan – it’s cold out there!

I find asking myself what I don’t want helps me get up. What don’t I want? To be an obese man who never exercises. So what is the opposite of this? To be a trim and terrific man who does exercise. (Ok I would rather be a skinny man who never needs to exercise but this is not an option.)

So I want to be the guy who jogs every morning and looks sweet in a t-shirt. Better get out of bed then.

“Attracting” What You Want Really Means Getting Off Your Butt And Making It Happen

The reason I am hard on the whole Law of Attraction trend is because I believe that the purveyors of this school of thought twist words to sell books, seminars and DVDs.

They write on the blurb “Attract wealth, happiness, sex, etc into your life” like they are going to teach you how to build a success-magnet. And then they spend ages going on about affirmations, focus and positive thinking, and then they add “oh yeah – and you gotta work your butt off too”.

Truth is you can skip the daily affirmations, just work out what you want, write it down once, refer back to it when you need to focus, and work your butt off and make it happen, without spending hours each day repeating “I am a walking God, I am a walking God” over and over.

So if you want money – go get some money. And if you don’t feel like picking up the phone and making a sales call or whatever, ask yourself “What don’t I want?”

I do this everyday, I look at the phone and think “Oh God, I can’t be bothered calling people I don’t even know to try and build my SEM business“.

Then I think “What don’t I want?” and the answer is I don’t want to be an impoverished Dad who can’t provide for my little girl.

“So what do I want?” I want to be the guy who gets on the phone and builds his business so that he has enough money to provide a safe and comfortable life for his family.

This is one way that I use to motivate myself. There are plenty more.

Click here to find out about a great ebook about motivation that I totally recommend and use all the time. Check it out and good luck getting what you want!

By Seamus Anthony

If you are anything like me then you are sometimes a messy blob of anxiety, stress and over-imaginative worry.

Between you and me, I think we should get over ourselves already and get on with enjoying our lives while we still have the chance. Easier said than done? Here are some unconventional ways to help you live a little:

Take Some Time Out To Really Imagine The Worst

There’s a lot of advice out there about setting aside some time to visualize all the good things that you’d like to come into your life – you know – the whole Law of Attraction thing.

Have you ever actually watched The Secret?

I mean – pluh-eeez … as IF!

I think far better advice is to throw out your superstitious hokey-pokey and get real. Spend some time conjuring up all the worst things that could happen. I do this sometimes and I find that by naming my fears I somehow strip them of their power.

I think ‘what if “that” happened?’ And ‘what if ‘THAT” happened’. After a little while of doing this I just get fear-fatigue and I realize there is nothing to do except A) take all reasonable precautions, B) hope for the best and C) relax and get on with enjoying the moment as best I can.

Oh yeah – and in case you are worried that by focussing on the worst you will magically attract the very scenarios you want to avoid – put that out of your mind – it’s woo-woo nonsense.

Seriously – that’s like worrying that airline safety teams are in fact inviting distaster by going over all the possible malfunctions that might beset an aircraft. If those guys didn’t do exactly that there is NO WAY I would get in a plane!

Just Do Things When and If You Feel Like It

One day you’ll be dead – and will it matter that you did or did not have the self-discipline to power through all those boring to-do list items that really sucked? Probably not.

Go Out and Get Pissed

Or go bungy jumping or whatever. My point is, you gotta just let it all hang out and be a hairy beast for a while every now and then.

I was at this (very nice) guy’s house the other day and he was proudly telling me how he never drinks very much and how he has a nice new white carpet and a nice new beige car . And I kid you not – his trousers were beige too.

Lovely guy mind you, I really like him – but for God’s sake – do you want to be like that? Are you already? ‘Cos being boring is fine some of the time – even most of the time – but for the love of Pete you gotta have some fun sometimes!

So get amongst it, I say. Hang out with the hairy people for a night. Live a little.

And beware of becoming one of the beige people, take it from Billy Connolly.

Dwell In The Angst

This is similar to focussing on the worst that can happen but this is more about focussing on the bad feelings that are messing with you.

I accidently came across this liberating technique way back when I was first experimenting with meditation. I was trying to establish a routine of meditating every day whether I felt like it or not. Well, on one particular day I certainly did not feel like it: I was so depressed and anxious that I could barely think (I was partying very hard at the time, even for me, and this was leaving me strapped out).

Nevertheless, I sat down to try and meditate anyway but I couldn’t get into it because I was squirming with an angst that was so acute it was manifesting itself physically: I literally felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

I felt like giving up and lighting a joint. Even though I knew that this wouldn’t really help much, I was just about to get up and do that when a “voice” said to me “Stay and dwell in the angst”.

Listen To The Voices In Your Head

Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear “voices” I listen up good. Maybe they lose their impact if they never stop, but thankfully my voices keep to themselves most of the time, so I just went with it and tried to “dwell in the angst”.

At first it was horrible. I focussed all my attention on how horribly stressed and anxious I felt, and for a few minutes it was almost more than I could bear. I  was in tears (and I usually find it very hard to cry properly).

But then all of a sudden the angst just lifted. It was gone and I felt quite calm and relaxed – quite fine.

Somehow by listening to the voices in my head and dwelling in the angst like I was told, I worked through the stress and anxiety that was knocking me around. Instead of pushing it down with more drugs or distraction, I acknowledged and paid attention to how I felt. To my surprise, that was pretty much all that was actually required to quell the bad feelings.

So there you have it – no doubt the sanest advice you’ve ever read: Imagine the worst, get pissed, be irresponsible, listen to voices in your head and meditate on feeling really crap. Regulation stuff really.

Photo by StuartPilbrow

By Seamus Anthony

So you’ve downloaded our free eBook, Curly’s Law, about the need to identify your One Thing, your True Life Purpose – but did you actually read it?

And if you did read it – have you managed to actually identify your One Thing?

It’s not always easy is it?

I gave my method for figuring out my One Thing in the book, but that was just one way.

I don’t really know what other ways there are, or at least I didn’t until I read Brian Kim’s excellent “How To Finally Find What You Love to Do AND Get Paid For Doing It!”

The Trouble with the “Do What You Love” Theory

When it comes to careers, the clichéd advice is to “do what you love” if you want to succeed BUT what do you do if you don’t know what you love?

And hang on a second – don’t you know plenty of artists, writers, healers, musicians and wannabe-entrepreneurs who know very well what they love to do but just can’t seem to make it pay?

Well, if that’s you – relax. Brian’s excellent little eBook (with the very long title) is a Godsend for those who are undecided as to what their true purpose is or who haven’t got a clue how to make their passion pay-up some cold hard cash.

4 Reasons I Highly Recommend this Book

I don’t know Brian Kim personally, but I have been twice now impressed with his work (read about the other time his writing blew my mind here). The reasons I so heartily recommend “How to Find What You Love To Do AND Get Paid For Doing It” are:

• There’s no hippy-drippy nonsense; no “open your mind to the Universe and let the love flow in” crap. In case you haven’t woken up and smelled the coffee yet, all that Law of Attraction baloney doesn’t work – not on its own anyway. You can sit around and wish for success all you like, but if you do, all you’re really doing is settling for a life of mediocrity. Instead you need concrete, practical advice about how to get off your butt and make it happen already. This book provides just that.

• It’s a very structured book, a practical workbook that gets you to work it out over a period of time. Brian will have you delve deeper and deeper into your own nature until you find your True Purpose inside of you, just sitting there like a brilliant diamond waiting all this time for you to discover it.

• It’s specific – you’ll learn “What” and then “How”. First you find ‘what’ it is you truly should be doing with your life – your calling. Once you know what this is (and you will) then you move on to ‘how’ to make it pay. If you know you can’t be happy while you’re working a dreary, dead-end day job that doesn’t leave you with enough energy to pursue your dreams, then take my advice – buy this book now and get moving. Life is short! Stop wasting time!

• There’s no fluff. Coming in at 52 pages, this book gets straight to the point and will have you up and at ‘em in no time. In fact Brian says that the book was originally over 200 pages long but he boiled it down to the bare essentials so as not to overwhelm you with too much superfluous information and padding. If only more authors would do this! I don’t know about you but I am a busy man and I like to just get in, get the information I need, and then get on with it.

Who Else is Ready To Get On With Fulfilling Their True Life Purpose?

If you’re happy in your work or have figured out what your life’s passion is – and how to make it pay so that you don’t need no stinkin’ day job, then don’t buy this book. It’s not for those who are content with their station in life and feel they have no more learning to do, no more adventures to go on.

But if that isn’t you then you need to find out what your One Thing is now and how to go for it and succeed. What are your other options? Keep working for the man forever?

Consider these pertinent questions from Brian’s website:

Why sacrifice almost half of your day (if you include commuting) 5 days a week just to enjoy your nights and weekends?

Why sacrifice the best time period of your life so you can enjoy your golden years?

Why put yourself through all this pain and misery for the majority of your adult life?

When did people lie down and accept drudgery, boredom and dissatisfaction as a fact of life?

It doesn’t make any sense.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I already know my true life purpose – and I am making it pay already – but reading this book made me feel even more resolute to move on up to the next level and “go for gold” as the cliché goes.

Now – I paid 25 bucks for “How to Find What You Love To Do…”, but for a short time Brian has reduced the price to about $19 so click through now to check it out and ask yourself this – if you spend $19 on a book that finally brings you the success you have craved all your life – then isn’t that worth it?

I reckon it is, so hop to it and Click Here Now to find out more about the book.

Photo by kirtaph

Have you read Think and Grow Rich and felt infuriated by Napoleon Hill’s “hidden secret” to success that he claims is in the book? I know I have. Well, look no further because here I am going to offer you two solutions to the problem, it’s just up to you to decide which you feel is correct.

For the uninitiated, Think and Grow Rich is pretty much the definitive work on applying your self to get what you want out of life (you can substitute “Rich” for any goal you want, be it “Lose Weight” or *ahem* “Get Laid”). And yes, with a title like that, it does sound like the kind of shit that any sane person would avoid at all costs, but then I am not sane and neither are most successful people.

First – Get Your Freebie

This book was researched and written over a period of twenty odd years and was first published waaaaay back in 1937, but don’t let the antique nature of the book put you off, it is easy to read and as punchy as the latest “thang” to hit the shelves. AND it’s in the public domain which means it is really easy to get it for free as an eBook and legally too … so whatever you do NEVER pay for an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich.

I read it a couple of years ago and have become a fan of the process contained within. Despite the cheesy title, it is really quite a great system for getting what you need and want out of life and while it isn’t too complicated it certainly is the real thing as compared to miserable rubbish like the Secret that has been doing the rounds lately.

And yes it IS about Law of Attraction but that is just one component of the book. It is also about other things, much more down-to earth things, like *gulp* hard work and persistence.

So all-in-all Think and Grow Rich is an awesome book and I totally recommend it. It is also quite challenging to follow, but as I will explain soon, it doesn’t need to be.

But What About the Hidden Secret?

When you read Napoleon Hill’s book, you will no doubt become intrigued by the way he hints that there is a secret for success that was handed down to him by the then Richest Man in the World title-holder, Andrew Carnegie. Hill doesn’t spell it out for us because he believes that you will know it when you are ready and then it will jump right off the page at you.

Well, you guessed it, I have my own theory as to what this hidden secret is…

BUT

So does Brian Kim in his eBook “The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich”.

My Version of The Hidden Secret

Well I have to say it has never jumped off the page for me but without really doing any serious re-analysis of the book I did read this quote by Carnegie and just assumed that this must be the secret that he told Hill and which was somehow contained within the book:

“Here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it: adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. This is the great secret…” Andrew Carnegie

Now it seemed to me to be obvious that when he said “this is the great secret” that he meant what he said and that there wasn’t likely to be some other great secret out there that he also believed in. After all he said “THE” great secret not “A” great secret. And this was where I got the idea for my Curly’s Law eBook which, by the way, you can download free here.

However I recently saw the sales page for Kim’s “Hidden Secret” book and I couldn’t resist buying it to see what he made of all this … and I must admit I was pretty skeptical at first.

But as I read through it last night I came to see that while the above version of Carnegie’s secret is a pretty good one, Brian Kim’s analysis is also a very strong case in point.

Brian Kim’s Version of the Hidden Secret

I guess the main difference between Kim and me is that I am pretty darn lazy in a lot of ways and I was never going to sit down and analyze the crap out of some self-help book just to figure it all out – and good thing I didn’t because Kim has done it for me! He explains in his book how he became obsessed with the secret and poured over the book for weeks and months on end until he finally believed he had ‘got it’.

And while I still like my Curly’s Law version, the “just do one thing” approach, I can see now that Brian Kim has shown that this is really just one aspect of a 5 step process that Napoleon continually hints at over and over again throughout the book.

Kim reveals the secret pretty early in the book, and at first I was under whelmed, but the more I read through his painstaking analysis of what Napoleon Hill means and why it is so powerful and obvious (in the way that all great ideas seem obvious once some other genius has revealed it to you) the more I was convinced.

Once You Know The Second Version of the Hidden Secret Your Success Comes Naturally

Getting back to my comment earlier about how the Think and Grow Rich system can be hard to follow, Kim actually shows how it isn’t hard to follow at all once you realize that there is a specific order that you MUST follow in order to see the kind of massive success you desire. Then he challenges you to think about a time when you DID succeed in something and analyze the process you went through to see if it correlates to the Hidden Secret’s 5 step process. I did this for a few examples of my own success and was pleasantly surprised to note that I ABSOLUTELY DID unwittingly follow this process every single time I was ever successful in meeting a goal and that it wasn’t really hard work, but rather a spontaneous and enjoyable process of getting what I really truly wanted out of life.

So I am sold. The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich isn’t one of those Rah-Rah-Rah books that leave you temporarily and artificially inflated but is rather a fantastic companion to the already brilliant original work that will make you feel both relaxed about your natural ability to succeed in life and will also motivate you in a very steady and true fashion that will last for years until the job is done. I have just signed up as an affiliate seller of the product (makes no price difference to you) and I have no problem in heartily recommending you pop over to the Hidden Secret webpage and invest in a copy right now. I have no doubt that it will really move you in a deep way, and if you haven’t read Think and Grow Rich yet then never fear because you get a free copy with the Hidden Secret Ebook.

And there is a money back guarantee so how can you lose? You can’t – so get to it. You have dreams to make happen don’t you? Well I don’t recommend any old shit so do yourself a favor and make a tiny investment in your own success already – you won’t regret it – click here now.

Cheers, Good to be back after some time off.

Seamus Anthony

P.S. Hold the Phone!

My brain must be suffering from the effects of all those tasty beverages I had during my holidays because I didn’t even realise that when you buy the Hidden Secret eBook now you get two other free bonuses THAT I MISSED OUT ON! Man! That sucks for me, but it’s good for you I guess! (I might have to write to Brian and ask if he will send me mine.)

Now I haven’t read them yet so I will just cut and paste what he had to say about these two bonuses:

BONUS#2: ($12 value) Get a FREE copy of my special report: The Three Biggest Mistakes People Make With The Hidden Secret – make sure to read this so you don’t make the same mistakes!

BONUS#3: ($15 value) – Get a FREE copy of The Hidden Secret Workbook – This 26 page workbook will help you apply the Hidden Secret and become consistent. It also contains helpful notes and summaries to help you remember and understand the information from the book.

If you are still reading this then you KNOW you want that eBook so click here to get your hot little hands on it now.

3rd post in the three part Curly’s Law series by Seamus Anthony (here’s the first and the second)

This is a bit of a long post with two parts: 1) How the Mega Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness and 2) How To Discover Your True Life Purpose.

How the Mega-Successful Use Curly’s Law To Achieve Greatness

The great over-achievers of this world don’t just use wishful thinking or hard work to get to the top, they use the ‘real’ secret which is Curly’s Law. Curly’s Law states “Do One Thing” and is essentially the act of having laser-like focus on what you want. It is about identifying your One Thing and just going for that at the expense of other areas of interest. It’s about the power of mono-maniacal obsession, and if you want to achieve great things, then you can use this trick to get ahead in leaps and bounds.

The Richest Man in the World and His Great Secret for Success.

Long before Billy Crystal and his mates saddled up and rode of into the the sunset, Curly’s Law was known by some as ‘Carnegie’s secret’, after Andrew Carnegie, the old-world steel tycoon and philanthropist who advised people to ‘put your eggs in one basket – and then watch the basket’.

Carnegie, at one time the richest man in the world, and a self-made man, was said to have a ‘great secret’ about how to become rich. This was popularised by Napoleon Hill in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich”. The secret was not explicitly revealed in the book but was rather hinted at and the author said it was important that you figure it out yourself. People have since thrown a bunch of guesses around as to what the secret was, from the whole Law of Attraction thing to the less glamorous suggestion that you just need to get on with it and work hard. Searching around I found this quote, and as far as I am concerned it puts the stamp of authenticity on the worthiness of Curly’s Law and also puts an end to the speculation about what Carnegie’s secret was:

“Here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it: adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. This is the great secret…” Andrew Carnegie

I don’t understand the conjecture myself. the man’s exact words were “This is the great secret”. End of story.

All Great Achievers Use Curly’s Law to Make it Big

Whether they know it or not, I propose that all of the mega-successful use the Law of One Thing to get to the top of their chosen field.

Here’s an exercise: choose one of your greatest heroes and ask yourself this – do they have what you would describe as obsessive single minded determination, laser-like focus on what it is that they do?

I would be willing to place a bet that the answer would have to be ‘Yes’. Let’s take a few of my personal heroes as examples (in no particular order – and you may wonder why these people are my heroes but all I can say is, each to their own!).

• Jerry Seinfeld – obsessively cared only about and worked only towards being a stand up comedian for his entire life until he became the most successful stand up in the US and went on to become the wealthiest comedian ever.
  
• Steve Jobs (Apple Computers) – obsessively strove to achieve innovation in the world of computer design until he finally got it right and made Apple what it is today. (And tell me he didn’t lie up all night scheming about how to win Apple back when he got kicked out for a while!)
• Nick Cave – this guy has pursued a singular artistic vision relentlessly for his entire adult life and I’d be willing to bet that he’s artistically satisfied (although I doubt he’d admit it) and probably doesn’t get too stressed out about paying the mortgage off either.
  

Now these are just three of my heroes, and despite the twists and turns in their journeys, all three of them have always returned like a heat-seeking missile to their One Thing. They knew what it was – and they sure as hell weren’t about to let anything trivial stand in their way.

I challenge you to come up with a list of ten mega-successful people who achieved greatness by being wishy-washy, choppin’ and changin’, unfocussed, undetermined, people who could never make up their minds about what it was they wanted to do. I’ve never tried to do this, but I am willing to take a punt that it wouldn’t work.

Madonna: was obsessed with becoming the number one female pop star. Stephen King: wrote compulsively his whole life and only ever wanted to be a novelist. Bob Hawke: gave up alcohol so it wouldn’t get in the way of becoming Prime Minister of Australia. Abraham Lincoln, lost something like 8 elections before he went on to be President of the United States. The list goes on…

How To Discover Your True Life Purpose

But I can hear some of you already thinking “But I don’t KNOW what my One Thing is! That’s the whole problem!” and I don’t know either. But I have been through all of this and have some suggestions that may help you.

First get yourself into a contemplative, relaxed frame of mind. Have a bath, turn the lights down low and stare at the fire or go for a walk in the woods by yourself. If you know how to meditate, do some before you start this process.

There are a lot of techniques out there for discovering your true life purpose, but here is the one I used. It is deceptively simple but the key is not to move on to the next question until you have answered the one before it to your full satisfaction.

1. What do I want to be?

A very simple, short and open question. If you are in a relaxed, contemplative mood, the answer may come to you directly. Just like that. Your own voice in your head may just serve up the answer like a piece of pie on a plate.

Or it may not come for a while. If you don’t manage to hear your True Self straight away then it is up to you to simply wait. Wait for the answer. Wait for a number of days in need be but be sure to find quite time to contemplate this answer. Or talk to somebody you can be open with as this often helps you to unlock the inner workings of your own mind. Tarot cards or other oracles are also great for this kind of thing. They don’t tell you the answer they help your mind expand, provide the catalyst for the expansion of your consciousness.

When the answer comes you will know.

And here’s a hint. It won’t be about your career. By asking yourself what you want to be, the only honest answer lies much much deeper than that. We are talking about the true meaning behind your life, behind all of our lives.

I have to admit, my process was backed up by years of spiritual and personal development – reading, meditating and inner work – so if you’ve never gone this deep before, give it some time. Who knows, it could take years for the answer to come.

But listen very carefully to your inner voice when you first ask the question because it will without a doubt answer you straight away, without a doubt, but the question is whether you can be quiet enough inside your mind to hear what your true-self wants.

Once you know what you want to be, then ask…

2. “Why do I want to be what I want to be? Why have I chosen this as my main sub-conscious motivator?”

Here is where you will get into your own psyche and discover why you are who are why you behave like you do and why you want to be the person you want to be. Again, make sure you are quiet inside before you ask and then listen very carefully to the answer that will come directly from your True Self.

When you listen to the quiet voice of your True Self, you will not only know WHAT you want to be but WHY and this will be a great liberation to you.

If you listen softly enough, you just might be lucky enough to hear your own voice identify your true purpose in life. Good luck!

And remember what Curly the Cowboy said:

“Do One Thing … you stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit”.

Part Two of a Three Part Series (here’s the first)

By Seamus Anthony

One line from the cheesy 1991 movie City Slickers (yes, the one starring Billy Crystal) helped me to achieved absolute and total spiritual enlightenment in a blinding flash of inspiration.

And no, I am not kidding you.
Well, actually … maybe just a little bit

But the point is I did get something amazing out of that film and this is a thing that I later came to see being referred to as “Curly’s Law“.

Curly’s law states simply this: Do One Thing

Curly was the tough old cowboy character played by the late Jack Palance. Here’s the scene from the movie where Curly espouses his life philosophy to Mitch, Billy Crystal’s character:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

Curly: This. [holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.

Now that little nugget of wisdom is so simple, that I dare say you’ve watched that movie more than once and never really gave that statement much thought at all. But I am telling you now that – unconventional source that it may come from – there is enough power in that little statement to change the world for ever, and to make the difference between you achieving your dreams or not.

The reason it blew my puny little mind so hard is because for years I had been struggling with the fact that I never seemed to be getting any real lasting results, either in terms of income or of artistic satisfaction, when I was always running around busy on a number of awesome projects. If I had so many great projects on the go, then why wasn’t i getting he pay off?

Well, when I watched that old cowboy hold up his finger I suddenly got it – I had a Zen-like Satori moment. Satori is a blinding flash of insight that brings instant enlightenment. I suddenly saw that my problem was that I wasn’t ever truly focusing with the kind of laser like intensity that I should have on just One Thing. I needed to discover what my One True Thing was and just do that.

But this wasn’t an easy thing to do. I am a musician who loves writing who loves entrepreneurship who loves personal development and spirituality – that’s four things! Which was I going to do? I tried to make myself just choose one but I couldn’t because this just seemed forced and I knew I would always be wishing I could write something if I just chose music or that I could start a cool business if I was only writing or whatever. So I decided to chill out and get to the bottom of the problem.

To cut a long story short I eventually came to the realisation that beneath my different interests lay a common factor – everything that I loved doing (career wise) revolves around media. If I am doing a music gig, well that’s about promoting my recorded work and it also leads to people being interested in buying my writing. And my writing is most often about personal development. And my personal development entrepreneurial ideas tend to be about selling media products designed to enrich people’s lives. So essentially my One Career Thing is media and the different aspects of that all complement the single main career purpose, so whatever I am doing, whether it be writing, making music, or working on my personal development business interests, I am always working away at my Career One Thing which is Media.

But What About The Meaning of Life?

Oh yeah, that.

Well, above and beyond the career question, I felt the need to go deeper and find out what my One Thing for my whole life is. My Definite Major Purpose as Napoleon Hill calls it in Think and Grow Rich, and as it is more commonly known, my True Life Purpose.

Whoa … a heavy question. In City Slickers, it is basically implied that Billy’s Crtsytal’s One Thing is his family, but to me that seems a bit one dimensional. Family is certainly one of the most important aspects of life to me but yet I still felt that there was something deeper, or higher, that underpinned everything like Family, Career, etc.

I had to go through a process to find this out (the complexity of which is beyond the scope of this article) but I did come to a realisation of my true Life Purpose, One Thing, or Major Definite Purpose.

I don’t believe it helps me to go telling every person in the world what this is, because it would read trite compared to the intensity of the the experience of discovering this One Thing and the power that keeping my focus on this thing brings into my life. But I am here to tell you today that if you can go back and discover what your One Thing is, well you will never look back and a lot of your problems and frustrations and confusion will dissapear into thin air once and for all.

So by now you may be thinking “Gee how did we get from a cowboy whose One Thing was simply ‘bein’ a cowboy’ to deep and meaningful shit like the above? And where’s the one-thingness gone anyway? You’ve been talking about all kinds of things…”

Well, to clarify: What I am saying is that when you discover what your overall One Thing is in your life, you will then find it easier to identify your lesser One Things, or if you like, your Sub-Things. For example, underneath your Major One Thing might come four headings “career” “family” health” and “society” (you might have more headings, or different ones, it’s just an example). And each of those could be broken down into smaller and smaller subsections, like in a family tree or the random company employee-structure diagram below that I grabbed off the ‘tubes.

And you can keep breaking these things down until you get to the level of your daily To Do List. And here’s where the power of Curly’s Law really kicks in on a couple of levels.

Firstly, you will know that everything that is on your To Do List is congruous with your One Major Thing, and that if it’s not, then you should just shaft that thing out of your life.

Secondly, when you are doing anything, JUST DO THAT ONE THING. Here’s where all of the Zen stuff you’ve ever read comes in. Zen masters say that true enlightenment comes from Present Moment Awareness which means only putting your focus on whatever is happening in this moment right now. That’s what the Zen dudes are on about when they are doing archery or flower arranging or of course meditating, they are just focussing on the thing that they are experiencing at this precise moment now.

And that’s how they find such contentment and fulfimment and inner peace. Think about it, when you are doing something that you enjoy so much that you are absorbed in the ‘flow’ of what you are doing to the exclusion of everything else that is there to distract you should you allow, don’t you feel at peace? Maybe you love knitting, and when you knit you just count and twiddle your needles and stare at the wall and become very peaceful because you are just knitting, you are not knitting while checking your emails, while wondering what you are going to have for dinner while talking to your husband, you are just knitting and that is why you are at peace.

Simplicity brings peace because it eliminates tension. Complexity causes tension.

Just Do One Thing.

The cowboy said it, the multi-millionaire said, and I am saying it.

Just Do One Thing and you will experience greater success and inner peace in your life than ever before.

“Wait A Minute? What multi-millionaire?”

I didn’t I mention him yet? Well you will have to wait until the next post in the series about Curly’s Law, where I show you examples of mega-successful dudes and how they used mono-maniacal obsession to get to the top of their chosen fields.

By Seamus Anthony

Part One in a Series of Three

Do you struggle to achieve mental clarity in a world of busyness, complexity and clutter? Do you find yourself chasing your tail, always busy but never seeming to get around to doing the things that are most important to you, like discovering your True Life Purpose, achieving your dreams, or devoting the time and energy to your family that you know deserve?

Wouldn’t you love to know what the secret is that the great achievers of our age use to move mountains? What it is that your heroes know that keeps them at the top, the thing you are missing, the thing that holds you back? How do they manage to churn out such amazing work, and rack up win after win while you chase your tail and struggle to pay the bills?

Well, despite the hype of recent times, the ’secret’ that these people have is NOT simply magically focussing on the end results that they desire. It is NOT simply a case of ‘ask, believe, receive’ or else we’d all be running around being fabulously rich and have all the time in the world to do whatever the hell we like (and look good doing it). Creative visualisation and the Law of Attraction are part of the overall process for success, no doubt about it, but there is another closely linked secret that gets overlooked.

And no, it’s not ‘hard work’. That’s an obvious, a given. Of COURSE you have to work hard – and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. (That doesn’t mean that some things won’t come easy to you, they can and will if you set yourself up to attract that, but my point is you’d be a gormless ninny to sit around and expect everything handed to you on a silver platter.)

No, the OTHER secret is called Curly’s Law, and Curly’s Law states simply this:

“Do One Thing”.

Curly’s Law is the concept of “One Thing”, it is a concept that can help you identify your life’s purpose and make all of your dreams come true. It is the power of Obsessive Mono-Maniacal focus. It is also one of the great secrets of spiritual enlightenment. It means that you focus on one thing at any one time, with laser-like intensity, until the job is done. It works on a macro and a micro level to move mountains or just clean up all those little molehills that keep getting in your way. You can use this concept to do anything and as I will show, the greatest characters in history have used Curly’s Law to achieve some of the greatest things ever in human history.

And the funny thing is: Curly’s Law, in all it’s glorious Zen greatness, was invented by a fictitious character. A Hollywood cowboy in fact!

Now if that ain’t Rebel Zen in action, I don’t know what is!

I will explain further in tomorrow’s post