Category Archives: Books

The Game of Life by Florence Scovel Shinn

Experts, CEO’s, successful entrepreneurs will all tell you that to achieve true wealth, you must start from the inside and build outward. Thousands of people over countless generations have realized the secret to creating true wealth. Of course true wealth is much more than money. Love. Health. Happiness. Relationships. These are but a few of the things that happen automatically when you easily but powerfully transform yourself to begin attracting that which you desire.

The Game of Life by Florence Scovel Shinn, will tell you exactly how to do that. This book was first published in 1925, but it is as relevant today as it will ever be. I’m sure that you’ve heard that in order to achieve abundance, you must be open to receive. What this mean is that by changing your inner orientation on how you view yourself and the universe, you tap into the natural wealth that is there waiting for you.

The universe is not random. One of the most famous quotes from Einstein is “God does not play dice with the universe.” The smartest scientist of our time is telling us that the universe does not operate like a Las Vegas slot machine. You don’t pull the lever, cross your fingers and hope, although I’m sure you know many people who unsuccessfully (and sadly) apply that strategy to life, career and even love and relationships. It doesn’t have to be that way. Not for you. Because you are reading this, there is something inside you that wants more. That knows there is a better way.

The universe operates on a set of laws as solid and dependable as the law of gravity. All you need do is learn and easily apply those laws to your life, and reap the rewards. And make no mistake. The rewards will come, and they will be earned. They are not a gift from the gods of prosperity or a loan from the goddess of serendipity. As surely as you throw a baseball up in the air and expect it to come down, when you act in accordance to the laws of universal abundance, the wealth cannot help but to flow.

My laptop sits on a standard sized desk, up against a wall. Just behind my laptop, on either side, sits a row of books that I deem most important so that I can reach and grab them and refer to them often. This book is one of them. At less than 100 pages, this book packs a wallop of fantastic information.

The chapters are as follows:

The Game

You start off by realizing that life is not a battle, but a game to be played, and won.

The Law of Prosperity

The simple yet elegant secret to tapping into prosperity. Universal abundance is yours, if you apply this law.

The Power of the Word

Are the words you speak to yourself every day harming you or helping you? Don’t worry, they are easy to change.

The Law of Nonresistance

The simple frame of mind that will make everything seem easy.

The Law of Karma, and the Law of Forgiveness

Personally, my favorite quote regarding forgiveness comes from Nelson Mandela: “Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”  This will help you tap this incredible power.

Casting the Burden

Here you will learn the secrets of programming your subconscious mind correctly

Love

Easily recognized as the most powerful force in the universe

Intuition

How to listen quietly that will tell you what to do, and when to do it

Perfect Self Expression or The Divine Design

The power of congruence and how to resonate with infinite intelligence

Denials and Affirmations

Some easy samples to get you started. You can easily modify these to your specific situation

If you are at all interested in improving your life drastically by spending less than a latte’s worth, and the hour or so it will take to read this gem, go over to Amazon and have look. You don’t be anything less than completely happy with your decision.

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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

“All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas – not money.”

-Robert Collier

“Wealth is the ability to fully enjoy life.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Would you like money? Would you like a lot of money? What could you do if a thousand dollars appeared out of nowhere, and you had only an hour to spend it? What would you do? Where would you go? How about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? How much money would you need to invest safely so you could spend the rest of your life doing what it is that you always dream you wish you could?

The core teaching of the classic book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is that thoughts are things. Take a look around you, right now. Since you are reading this, you have a computer right? Before this computer existed, it was only a thought in somebody’s mind. Before the chair you are sitting in existed, it was only a thought. Perhaps not an altogether original thought. Perhaps the chair you are sitting in is a slight modification of a different model. Nevertheless, before it was a thing, it was a thought.

How about before there were computers? Somebody had a thought that they could do much better than what they had, right? How much money do you think there is in the world right now? Trillions of dollars? More? How much money do you think there was in the world five hundred years ago? Not nearly as much, right?

Where did it all come from? Thought. The power of thought.

The classic book Think and Grow Rich has been read by so many people it scarcely needs and introduction, or even a description. Written in a beautiful form, unlike many get rich quick books today, it requires the reader to discover for yourself what the secret is. Told in fifteen chapters, each devoted to a specific topic, Hill uses stories and metaphors so make it almost impossible not to miss the secret that lies within. So powerful is the principles in this book that later revisions (it was originally published 1937) were edited for fear of falling into the wrong hands.

That it was published first near the end of the great depression, and still managed to sell 20 million copies is a testament to the powerful principles that lie within. This book is simply a must have for anyone that wants to tap into the basic principles of abundance. And as Thoreau so eloquently stated, wealth is a lot more than money.

Of course, you don’t need to buy this book. If you simply google Think and Grow Rich pdf you will find many websites that allow you to download it for free. But there’s something about having this handy paperback to take with you whenever you want to skim through and read a chapter here or there. They are fantastically organized and can be read all at once or in short bursts of absolute wisdom. Even if you’ve read it before, I highly recommend that you either find your old copy, or buy a new one. Either way you absolutely cannot go wrong by learning and applying the principles in this book.

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What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter, Ph. D.

Today’s book recommendation is a another classic that hardly needs any introduction, but I’d thought I’d give a heads up to the maybe two or three people left on the planet that haven’t heard about it yet.

Are you aware that you have all kinds of voices running around your mind, telling you to do things, and not do things? Don’t worry, you’re not crazy. Well, probably not. When I first heard this, I was quite skeptical, because usually when you think about hearing voices, you might imagine “Get Out!” voices from the Amityville Horror (or the Simpsons.) But the voices I’m talking about go largely unnoticed.

Imagine this, if you will. You are three years old. You are about to try something that you think might be fun. Your mother sees you (as you happen to be leaning way over the railing at the mall or somewhere) and she shouts “Stop! Don’t do that! It’s Dangerous! It’s Dangerous!” Now because of the urgency in your mom’s voice, and because she’s your mom, you listen to her, and trust her that it’s dangerous. The problem is when she did that (and saved your bacon btw,) your mind made an automatic connection between the “this might be fun” feeling, and the authoritative “Danger!” voice from your mom. How many times do you think this played out in your childhood? Likely hundreds, if not thousands.

This can be one of the biggest roadblocks to success as we grow into adults. We still have that “this might be fun” feeling once in a while (hopefully.) You see a cute girl, you think of a fun thing to do, you want to sing out loud in front of people you’ve never met before. These voices can stay with us our whole lives. And one of the reasons they are so insideous, is that most of the time, we don’t even know they are there. We usually just switch (rather quickly) from the “this might be fun” feeling to a “maybe not it might be dangerous” feeling without even realizing what happened.

But don’t fret. There is a way around those old voices. You can reprogram them. You can change them. You can tell them what to say, and in what tone of voice, and what speed, and everything. Imagine what it would be like to have the “this might be fun” feeling followed by hearing Achilles’ voice from the movie Troy, as they were about to land on the beach for the first time saying “It’s YOURS! TAKE IT!”

There is a simple way to do this. There is a fantastic book called What To Say When You Talk To Your Self, by Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D. It’s a fantastic book that goes into the theory and practice of rewriting your own programming. I’ll admit, it is kind of funny because it was published in 1982, so there are all kinds of references to tape players and the like. I create my own sound files using windows media player that came with my operating system, which easily converts to MP3’s that I listen to on the subway or train. This way I can create all kinds of positive inspiring messages for any occasion.

Because one of the quickest ways to let these new messages sink in is to listen in the background while doing other things, I usually listen while I’m reading a book or strolling down the street window shopping. And not only are there several examples in the book of exactly what to say, there are basic outlines if you want to create new statements to run your brain automatically based on your own indiviudal preference.  One thing that I do that is also helpful is to have different voices talking in the right and left ear.  This way they really go in deep, for even more immediate and efficient reprogramming.

There are several websites and articles online for creating your own self talk, but this book was one of the original sources that kicked it off, so I can’t recommend it enough.  This book is just another example of the great truth about human development: The more you start to consciously create the thoughts that go on in your brain, the more satisfying your life will become. This book is a great starting point.

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The Five Tibetans by Christopher S. Kilham

The book I’m going to recommend in this post borders slightly on the esoteric, so if you don’t believe that you can find benefit and value from things of this nature, I would recommend that you do not continue to read this article, because if you don’t believe that those things are possible, then you aren’t likely to receive any benefit.

If you are of the mind that there is always something useful to be found in most anything, read on. 

The book I’d like to bring to your attention in this post is called The Five Tibetans, by Christopher S. Kilham. These are five simple exercises to learn and to do. The book itself is rather slim, but at just over eighty pages, it is absolutely packed with these simple yet ancient exercises that can help you whatever you esoteric or spiritual orientation.

The book covers five exercises called, of course, The Five Tibetans, or sometimes as the Five Rites as they are sometimes called. The story goes that a retired British army officer “discovered” them from the local Tibetans in the early twentieth century. How long they’ve been practiced before that is anybody’s guess.

Christopher S. Kilham is an accomplished teacher of yoga, meditation, and natural healing. He has traveled extensively giving talks on television, the radio, and in front of live audiences.

The first five chapters of Kilham’s concise work is an overview of the background of the Tibetan exercises. He also includes a brief but extremely comprehensive overview of energy, and the relation to the body and the mind. He also discusses Kundalini energy, and how it relates to breathing.

The sixth chapter gives and overview of each Tibetan, with easy to follow photographs. Chapter seven gives you the basics of when and where to practice, and discusses matters of importance such as clothing, time of day, what to wear, etc.

It is the eighth chapter that I personally found the most rewarding and insightful. In this he talks about Yoganidra, which is the control of all the energies that are flowing through the body. Another name for this is yogic sleep. Here he teaches you how to calm the mind and reach states of relaxation so deep that you can start to control body functions that are thought to be wholly unconscious, like your heartbeat, and brain waves. That these advanced techniques were put in after the main exercises, almost as an afterthought is a testament to the absolute power of these simple but profound practices.

The ninth and final chapter is a fascinating introduction to Kundalini energy and Kundalini meditation. Both chapters eight and nine are worth the price of the book in their own rite.

He tells you to start off slowly, doing only one iteration of each exercise, and increase gradually. Similar to beginning a running or weight lifting program. The most iterations he recommends is twenty one of each exercise. That is only one hundred and five repetitions, so they will take you only a few minutes.

If you don’t believe anything about controlling brain waves, or Kundalini meditation, that’s ok. By doing these exercises simply for the physical benefits you will reap the fantastic rewards of better flexibility, improved circulation and digestion, and even deeper sleep every night. You don’t need to buy any equipment, or pay any gym membership dues. These exercises are truly one of the economically efficient and metaphysically profound I’ve ever run across.  When you realize how much you will easily improve yourself after doing these exercises for only a few short weeks, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t discovered them earlier. Go on over to Amazon, and have a look. You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

 

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Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, by Lynn Grabhorn

If you’ve ever heard about the so called Law of Attraction, but have tried with mixed results, fear no more. Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings by Lynn Grabhorn might just be the book for your. Filled with logical explanations, practical exercises, and many examples, this book can easily shape your reality to fit exactly what it is that you want to create in life.

It’s not about intelligence, or the right background, or the right ethnicity. It’s not about whether you went to college or not. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve ever been successful before. This book will show you that the key is to pay attention to your feelings. When you learn how to manage your feelings correctly, you will begin to really change your life in so many positive ways that you will be completely amazed.

Feelings are incredibly powerful, but for some reason, most of  us are taught to ignore or suppress our feelings. Anger, fear, nervousness, desire. We are told early in life that it’s not ok to show anger. You shouldn’t ever let them see you sweat. You shouldn’t try to get things that you don’t deserve. Be a good little boy or girl, and good things will happen to you.

Unfortunately, or fortunately if your are beginning to smell a rat, that’s not how it works. Ignoring your feelings is the opposite of what you want to do. You want to embrace, accept, and appreciate your feelings. When you do this, you will really understand how easy it is to apply and benefit from the law of attraction.

Some have called Grabhorn’s’ work similar to Abraham Hicks. They are similar in some ways.  Lynn Grabhorn takes ancient ideas and expresses them in a way that you will not only logically understand how and why they work, but will easily be able to apply them in your life right away.

What is it that you want in life? Imagine one thing right now. What will it be like when you have it? What will you see? What will you hear? What will it look like? Most importantly, what will you feel like? This simple procedure may seem strange at first, because so many of us are uncomfortable tapping into our feelings like that. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. And Grabhorn’s book will show you the way to do it naturally and easily.

Can you imagine now, what it will be like when you apply the easy to understand and simple to apply principles in this book? Can you imagine yourself being able to join the thousands and thousands of others around the world who’ve made the decision to buy this book and begin to benefit now? It’s as easy as a feeling.

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