The older I get, the more I resemble my grandmother. She always had tapes in her car from some motivational thinker or another, and she loved transcendentalists and religious philosophers, from Thoreau and Emerson to Lewis Carroll and Eckhart Tolle. She bought us a subscription to Town and Country magazine so we could see how rich people lived, and, I assume, emulate them (that didn’t really work, as we were brought up in the countercultural era of ‘slumming’ to be authentic). Of course, being a child of the Depression, and later a career journalist and single mom, she was the most frugal person ever. She never lost the joy of finding something totally pristine at the thrift shop where she worked and taking it home to her tiny apartment, or giving it to me or my kids.

This video of a talk by self-help guru Stuart Wilde from the 1980s is motivational and often funny. As I watch it I picture myself in my grandma’s gold Caddy (which she had inherited very late in life), with a big plastic book of cassettes sitting on the enormous seat between me and her, swooshing down the highway as if we were riding a giant couch on cruise control. It’s reassuring to see that Law of Attraction thought has been consistent for so long. When you are self-employed or a free agent or an entrepreneur (as most of us will eventually be in the world economy), you need to pump yourself up! This does the trick. Also, his observations about the value of information pre-date the internet — but are truer than ever.

Are these ideas novel? Not really, but hearing them keeps you pushing toward your goal, and goes against 90% of the negativity you hear on the news. I’m striving to put aside my cultural beliefs around money (in my case, I tend to just not think about it until the interest is at 33% or the water is about to be shut off — gee, like it is today!) and motivate myself to consistently earn money as a free agent rather than cycle through feast or famine. I still do that, but my goal is to have a smooth flow of inspiring writing, music and creative gigs always in the works.

Love is critical, and the antidote to mediocrity. As he said, if you run a pizza joint, “if you’re coming out of ‘transcendent,’ if you’re coming out of ‘heroic,’ you’re going to put everything you can into that damn pizza, and you’re going to make that thing wonderful.”

Here’s his summary. All it takes is:
–a shift in consciousness
–a shift in dedication (coming from service and love, subjugating ego, understanding that when you pay for something from someone whose life force is powerful, it feels like paying another part of yourself)
–understand it’s fine for you to be wealthy
–understand it’s infinite and there’s no limit (after all, we all agree to ‘believe’ in banks in order to keep them running)
–get clear about what you want
–resonate that intention and play ‘fake it till you make it’
–whether you’ve got it or not, move towards it no matter what
–you’re not going to let yourself get out of control and start spending a whole lot of money you haven’t got
–allow yourself that power and energy at all times
–be original
–love yourself by charging enough
–give yourself time, have patience
–love the people who are pulled to you by serving them, putting your ego aside for their needs
–be organized so that you have a way of billing people
–move out of struggle into a natural flow
–life was only ever meant to be this gentle walk through a valley on a sunny day

So put on the video and let it run while you clean the house — I mean, make some money!