One of the powerful techniques for attracting wealth is using your power of visualization and manifestation. But as we are only too aware, every intention we have, no matter how strong or deep, does not automatically become reality! Why is this? For an intention or desire to be transformed into reality, your inner space or inner screen needs to be totally clean. As of now, your inner space is corrupted by many unconscious thoughts. The moment you insert a conscious intention into your inner space, ten unconscious thoughts will rise to fight with it! So the power of your intention is diluted and naturally it cannot become reality. When your inner space is cleansed of unconscious thoughts, whatever intention goes in will be a single, conscious, integrated force. This intention will be powerful enough to express itself as reality. This technique is a simple but powerful way to clean your inner screen of unconscious thoughts by infusing awareness into it. Even if it looks too simple, try it. Only when you do it can you experience the effects. The whole restaurant can be reduced to a menu card. Only when you eat will you realize that the food can fill you! Duration: 21 minutes INSTRUCTIONS Close your eyes. Sit straight. Inhale and exhale as slowly and as deeply as possible. Visualize your inner screen as a dark blackboard, as dark as possible. Whatever appears on that inner blackboard, start visually wiping it away. Just as an eraser is used to clean a blackboard, in the same way just wipe clean the inner blackboard or inner screen. Now, visualize the number ‘3’ on your inner screen. Visualize it very clearly and then wipe it away slowly. Repeat this three times. Next, visualize the number ‘2’ on your inner screen, and then wipe it away slowly. Repeat this three times. Then, visualize the number ‘1’ and wipe it away slowly in the same way. Repeat this three times. Now visualize the number ‘0’ and wipe it away very slowly. Repeat this three times. By the time you reach the number zero, you will have no thoughts that are unconscious. You will reach awareness before you start creating thoughts unconsciously. Your visualization becomes so powerful that the inner screen really becomes empty. The moment the inner screen becomes empty, you can start looking in. You will begin seeing your being as it is. Now, just witness the empty screen. Do not create, maintain or destroy any thought. Just witness the empty screen. Continue to be with yourself for a few moments. This simple technique can sharpen your powers of visualization in ways you will never imagine! Visualization is a powerful way to attract abundance into your life. SOURCE: http://www.nithyananda.org/article/cleaning-your-inner-space-attract-wealth#gsc.tab=0
"I always wanted to do something to make a difference."-Howard Schultz
Everyone knows Starbucks, the ubiquitous retail chain that, in the 1990s, turned coffee drinking into a national pastime. But few know Howard Schultz, the self-effacing chairman, CEO and mastermind behind Starbucks' astonishing growth. By bringing Italy's "coffeehouse culture" to the United States and packaging it for mass consumption, this maverick marketer transformed a little-known four-store chain in the leading retailer of specialty coffee in North America.
Born in 1953, Schultz was raised in the rough and tumble Bay View housing project in Brooklyn, New York. His mother worked as a receptionist and his father held a variety of jobs, none of which paid much or offered such basic benefits as medical coverage for him and his family. When Schultz was 7, his father lost his job as a diaper-service delivery driver after breaking his ankle. At the time, sick pay or even legally mandated disability assistance were luxuries to those in low-paying jobs, and in the ensuing months, the family was literally too poor to put food on the table. It was a memory that Schultz would carry with him into adulthood.
Determined to build a better life for himself, Schultz channeled his energy into high school sports and earned an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in business in 1975, Schultz immediately began working in the sales and marketing division of Xerox Corp. Schultz excelled at Xerox, so much so that he attracted the attention of the Swedish housewares company Perstorp AB, which recruited him at the age of 26 to be vice president and general manager of their American subsidiary, Hammerplast USA.
While at Hammerplast, Schultz noticed that a small Seattle company named Starbucks (after the first mate in Hermann Melville's classic Moby Dick) was buying an unusually high number of Hammerplast's espresso machines. Intrigued, he flew to Seattle to investigate and found four Starbucks outlets. Originally founded in 1971 as a single store near Seattle's famed Pike Street Market, Starbucks sold freshly roasted gourmet coffee beans as well as teas, spices and various coffee-making accessories.
Impressed by Schultz's energy and marketing skills, Starbucks owners Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker-who possessed very little business knowledge-asked Schultz to become part of their operation. Enticed by their offer, which included part ownership, Schultz joined Starbucks as head of its marketing and retail operations in 1982.
A year later, during a vacation in Italy, Schultz had what he has described as an "epiphany." While sitting at one of Milan's many espresso bars, he realized that the coffee shop played an integral role in the social life of most Italians. It was a focal point for the neighborhood, where friends met, mingled and lingered at all hours of the day. "Seeing this, I thought to myself, 'Why not open a coffee bar in Seattle?' " Schultz recalls in an interview in The New York Times.
Returning to Seattle, Schultz shared his epiphany with his fellow Starbucks owners. Although coffee was brewed in the shops, it was done so only at the request of customers and dispensed as free samples, and Baldwin and Bowker were unwilling to move beyond the stores' core product offerings.
Convinced he had hit upon something big, Schultz left Starbucks in 1986 to open his own espresso bar called Il Giornale (The Daily). The venture was a hit. Schultz wanted to open more shops, but didn't have the funding he needed to expand. In a quirky twist of fate, a year later he learned that Baldwin and Bowker wished to sell their outlets, so after rounding up investors from the Seattle area, Schultz purchased the original Starbucks chain for $3.8 million and merged the stores with his own.
But the most radical change Schultz made was to improve the way his company dealt with its employees. Convinced that friendly, efficient service would boost sales, he instituted a training program designed to groom knowledgeable employees who would enjoy working behind a counter, an occupation considered by many to be menial labor. "Service is a lost art in America.it's not viewed as a professional job to work behind a counter," Schultz says. "We don't believe that. We want to provide our people with dignity and self-esteem, so we offer tangible benefits." Among the benefits Schultz offers is complete health-care coverage to both full- and part-time employees, as well as stock options, practices that are virtually unheard of in corporate America. As a result of Schultz's vision, Starbucks experienced unprecedented growth throughout the 1990s, blossoming from 425 stores in 1994 to more than 2,200 stores in 1998. And the company is on target to break the $2 billion in the year 2000.
With annual sales topping $1.7 billion in 1999, Starbucks Corp. reigned as the nation's No. 1 specialty coffee retailer. Quite an impressive achievement for a blue-collar kid from the projects. But despite Starbucks' phenomenal success, what Howard Schultz seems most proud of is not how much he has earned, but the kind of company he has created. "My dad was a blue-collar worker," Schultz explains in an Inc. magazine interview. "He didn't have health insurance or benefits, and I saw firsthand the debilitating effect that had on him and on our family. I decided if I was ever in the position to make a contribution to others in that way, I would. My greatest success has been that I got to build the kind of company my father never got to work for."
The Benefit Of Benefits Howard Schultz credits Starbucks Corp.'s benefits policy as one of the keys to his company's dramatic growth. By extending health benefits to all employees, Schultz has created a more dedicated work force and promoted an extremely high level of customer service. He has also achieved a turnover rate that is less than half the average of other fast-food businesses, saving the company countless thousands in training costs and enhancing its ability to attract and retain good employees.
Another benefit that makes Starbucks stand out from its competitors is its stock-option plan. Dubbed "bean stock," unlike most plans, which are only available to top executives, Starbucks gives stock options to everyone in the company. "My aim was to give our employees a vested interest in the company," Schultz says. "And that, I think, has made all the difference."
Cartoons And Coffee
One of the true "good guys" of the business world, Howard Schultz's philanthropic endeavors have extended beyond just helping his employees have better lives. One of his major philanthropic concerns has been helping to improve literacy in America. To this end, in 1998, Starbucks formed an unprecedented partnership with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau to create products to benefit local literacy programs across America. The collection marked the first time that a series of licensed Doonesbury products had been sold in retail stores. The series featured such Doonesbury characters as Duke, Mike, Kim and Zonker on T-shirts, tumblers, ceramic mugs, coffee gift cards and limited-edition lithographs.
"You absolutely, positively have to innovate-if only to survive."-Fred Smith
While attending Yale University in the mid-1960s, Fred Smith wrote an economics term paper on the need for reliable overnight delivery in a computerized information age. His professor was less than impressed and responded: "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." Several years later, through a combination of innovative thinking, unbridled charisma and sheer determination, Smith would use this "interesting but unfeasible" concept to found the world's first overnight delivery company and change the transportation industry forever.
Smith was born to a well-to-do family in 1944 in a small suburb outside Memphis, Tennessee. His father, who died when Smith was only 4, became a self-made millionaire after founding the Dixie Greyhound Bus Lines and a chain of restaurants called the Toddle House.
Smith was born with a congenital birth defect-a bone socket hip disorder called Calve-Perthes disease-which caused him to wear braces and walk with the aid of crutches for most of his youth. His mother worked diligently to build his self-esteem, and encouraged his participation in all sorts of physical activities. He eventually grew out of the disease, and in prep school, Smith played both basketball and football.
After earning a bachelor's degree in economics from Yale, Smith enlisted in the Marines and was sent to Vietnam where he received an education of a very different kind. "As a platoon leader in Vietnam, I was in charge of a group of youngsters who had come from very different backgrounds than I had. You know, blue-collar backgrounds: steelworkers, truck drivers, gas station folks," Smith reveals in a 1998 Fortune magazine interview. "The experience gave me a very different perspective than most people who end up in senior management positions on what people who wear blue collars think about and the way they react to things, and what you should do to try to be fair to those folks. A great deal of what FedEx has been able to accomplish was built on those lessons I learned in the Marine Corps."
After two tours of duty, Smith left Vietnam weary of destruction and eager to focus his energy on building rather than tearing down. "I wanted to do something productive after blowing so many things up," he remembers. His stepfather, retired Air Force general Fred Hook, had bought a struggling company in Little Rock that modified aircraft and overhauled their engines, and Smith went to Arkansas to help him run it. Difficulty in getting parts brought Smith back to the overnight delivery concept he'd hit upon in college.
Determined to make it work, he came up with a plan for creating an integrated air and ground delivery system in which packages from all over the country would be flown to a central point, or "hub," sorted, and then flown out again along specific routes, or "spokes" to their destinations. Under this "hub and spokes" system, the flying would be done at night, when airlanes were comparatively empty. The airports used would be in sizable cities, and trucks would carry the packages to their final destinations, whether in those cities or smaller communities.
Convinced his idea was feasible, Smith decided to take the plunge with $4 million he'd inherited from his father. At that point, Smith's life became a marathon nonstop journey into the canyons of Wall Street to raise the capital he would need to purchase the fleet of airplanes vital to his plan. "I was a kind of naive about the whole thing," he confesses in a Nation's Business magazine interview. "I thought there would be basketfuls of checks right away." There weren't. But Smith kept at it. His charisma and the knowledge he gleaned from several years of studying the air-freight industry (both in the military in Vietnam and later in the United States) impressed investors, and by the end of 1972, he had managed to raise $80 million in loans and equity investments.
Federal Express (FedEx) began operation in April 1971, with 14 Falcon jets servicing 25 cities. Initially business was slow. During its first night, FedEx shipped a mere 186 packages. But volume picked up rapidly and service was expanded. FedEx was an overnight success. Then the roof caved in. Because of rapidly inflating fuel prices, costs surpassed revenue, and by mid-1974, FedEx was losing more than $1 million a month.
Smith asked his disappointed investors for more money to keep the company afloat, but they refused. Bankruptcy was a distinct possibility. Then fate stepped in. While waiting for a flight home to Memphis from Chicago after being turned down for capital by General Dynamics, Smith impulsively hopped a flight to Las Vegas, where he won $27,000 playing blackjack. "The $27,000 wasn't decisive, but it was an omen that things would get better," Smith says. And indeed they did. Returning to his quest for funds, he raised another $11 million.
Although FedEx had lost nearly $13.4 million in its first two years, Smith never considered giving up. "I was very committed to the people that had signed on with me, and if we were going to go down, we were going to go down with a fight. It wasn't going to be because I checked out and didn't finish," he says.
But FedEx didn't go down. Thanks to an aggressive ad campaign which featured the now famous line, "FedEx-when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," the company scored a profit of $3.6 million in 1976. Two years later, FedEx went public, and by 1980, revenue had zoomed to $415.4 million and profits soared to $38.7 million. From then on, it was smooth sailing for FedEx. By 1999, the company has become the No. 1 overnight shipper in the world, delivering more than 3 million packages to nearly 210 countries each working day.
Fred Smith, now chairman, president and CEO of FDX Corp., FedEx's parent company, compiled a fortune estimated at $700 million by enabling businesses to deliver their goods quickly, anywhere in the world. He was told it couldn't be done. But in the time-honored style of the true innovative visionary, Smith listened to his own counsel, and single-handedly changed the way the world does business.
Head Start
Fred Smith displayed entrepreneurial talents early in life. He learned to fly when he was 15 and took up crop dusting as a part-time hobby. At age 16, he and two friends formed Ardent Record Co., a business that still exists today. The young entrepreneurs operated the firm profitably and even produced a number of hits, including "Rock House" and "Big Satin Mama."
People + Service = Profit
A key ingredient in Federal Express' success has been a corporate philosophy that emphasizes treating its workers fairly. Managers are carefully trained to foster respect for all employees, and their performance is monitored. Managers are evaluated annually by both bosses and workers to ensure good relations between all levels of the company. Fred Smith believes that fair treatment instills company loyalty, and company loyalty always pays off.
First, understand that you no longer want to be just a millionaire. You want to become a multimillionaire.
While you may think a million dollars will give you financial security, it will not. Given the volatility in economies, governments and financial markets around the world, it's no longer safe to assume a million dollars will provide you and your family with true security. In fact, a Fidelity Investments' study of millionaires last year found that 42 percent of them don't feel wealthy and they would need $7.5 million of investable assets to start feeling rich.
This isn't a how-to on the accumulation of wealth from a lifetime of saving and pinching pennies. This is about generating multimillion-dollar wealth and enjoying it during the creation process. To get started, consider these seven secrets of multimillionaires.
No. 1: Decide to Be a Multimillionaire -- You first have to decide you want to be a self-made millionaire. I went from nothing—no money, just ideas and a lot of hard work—to create a net worth that probably cannot be destroyed in my lifetime. The first step was making a decision and setting a target. Every day for years, I wrote down this statement: "I am worth over $100,000,000!"
No. 2: Get Rid of Poverty Thinking -- There's no shortage of money on planet Earth, only a shortage of people who think correctly about it. To become a millionaire from scratch, you must end the poverty thinking. I know because I had to. I was raised by a single mother who did everything possible to put three boys through school and make ends meets. Many of the lessons she taught me encouraged a sense of scarcity and fear: "Eat all your food; there are people starving," "Don't waste anything," "Money doesn't grow on trees." Real wealth and abundance aren't created from such thinking.
No. 3: Treat it Like a Duty -- Self-made multimillionaires are motivated not just by money, but by a need for the marketplace to validate their contributions. While I have always wanted wealth, I was driven more by my need to contribute consistent with my potential. Multimillionaires don't lower their targets when things get tough. Rather, they raise expectations for themselves because they see the difference they can make with their families, company, community and charities.
No. 4: Surround Yourself with Multimillionaires -- I have been studying wealthy people since I was 10 years old. I read their stories and see what they went through. These are my mentors and teachers who inspire me. You can't learn how to make money from someone who doesn't have much. Who says, "Money won't make you happy"? People without money. Who says, "All rich people are greedy"? People who aren't rich. Wealthy people don't talk like that. You need to know what people are doing to create wealth and follow their example: What do they read? How do they invest? What drives them? How do they stay motivated and excited?
No. 5: Work Like a Millionaire -- Rich people treat time differently. They buy it, while poor people sell it. The wealthy know time is more valuable than money itself, so they hire people for things they're not good at or aren't a productive use of their time, such as household chores. But don't kid yourself that those who hit it big don't work hard. Financially successful people are consumed by their hunt for success and work to the point that they feel they are winning and not just working.
No. 6: Shift Focus from Spending to Investing -- The rich don't spend money; they invest. They know the U.S. tax laws favor investing over spending. You buy a house and can't write it off. The rich, in contrast, buy an apartment building that produces cash flow, appreciates and offers write-offs year after year. You buy cars for comfort and style. The rich buy cars for their company that are deductible because they are used to produce revenue.
No. 7: Create Multiple Flows of Income -- The really rich never depend on one flow of income but instead create a number of revenue streams. My first business had been generating a seven-figure income for years when I started investing cash in multifamily real estate. Once my real estate and my consulting business were churning, I went into a third business developing software to help retailers improve the customer experience.
Lastly, you may be surprised to learn that wealthy people wish you were wealthy, too. It's a mystery to them why others don't get rich. They know they aren't special and that wealth is available to anyone who wants to focus and persist. Rich people want others to be rich for two reasons: first, so you can buy their products and services, and second, because they want to hang out with other rich people.
.jpg)