When I got involved with network marketing back in late 2012 I was introduced to the Secret by Bob Proctor and the idea of the law of attraction.
Eventually I came across Abraham Hicks’ videos which has to do with Esther Hicks who channels a nonphysical being with her husband, Jerry Hicks, by her side. Jerry had passed away in 2011.
Esther has been around the world doing seminars, workshops and cruises but has her teaching really helped?
I must admit, 7 years later in 2019 my life is amazing. I found the lead gen business model and it has taken my income level to places I never thought possible before 2012.
I’m my own boss, take as many vacations as I want and my friends and family are constantly amazed by my increasing income.
But before 2012 (around the same time I came across Hicks), my life wasn’t like this. I’m from a middle class family that always looked at money in a negative light.
And I never thought I could make even six figures a year because nobody in my life was.
So did Hicks truly have an effect in my life and play a part in where I’m at today?
These are my thoughts.
In 2012 I was a college freshman and shortly after the start of the school year I was introduced to a network marketing opportunity. I soon got into personal development and the first two things I learned about were the Secret and the law of attraction.
There I was, a guy who never thought I could accomplish financial dreams, being introduced to the idea that I could manifest whatever I wanted in life.
Needless to say, I truly felt like I’d found the “secret” that nobody knew about.
Honestly, I turned into somewhat of a junkie. I was going to college and all I could think about was how I was manifesting my future by watching a ton of videos.
I began skipping classes because I suddenly knew my future. If I thought about it enough, my goals would be accomplished with network marketing as my vehicle.
They were essentially feel good videos that got my all hyped up. Which wasn’t hard when I was an 18.
I was watching countless videos, listening to just as many audios and putting my goals on paper (to visualize which I still do today).
Abraham’s teachings revolve around your vortex and aligning with source. Once you’ve done it, all your dreams will manifest themselves.
Sounds crazy?
I would constantly put effort into making sure my thoughts remained positive. But did it work?
Let’s take a deeper look at my story over the last 7 years.
Did Abraham’s Teachings Work for Me?
As a young college kid I had two things in mind that many other guys in college want to get better with.
Money and women.
Full disclosure, looking back over the last 7 years of my life I would say the law of attraction only played a small part in my success.
I actually noticed some negative things that entered my life when I was consumed by law of attraction thinking.
I said before I stopped going to class in college because I felt that my dreams would manifest no matter what even if I didn’t show up to class.
This post is not to push a college degree, in fact I never finished.
Time went on in my network marketing career and my results weren’t where I wanted them to be despite my effort to visualize.
I was so early on in my entrepreneurial career that I didn’t realize that positive thinking was only a small portion of what’s required for success.
I didn’t have the skills to pair with it, which I later figured out. I wasn’t bringing any value to the marketplace.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely see the value in becoming aware of your thoughts and it is necessary.
But IMO you don’t have to consistently visualize the things you want to be able to achieve them. You need skills and you need to work.
My life today is fantastic and I haven’t been doing more than minimal visualization for a long time.
There aren’t many successful people I know that talk like Hicks. How many do you know?
I’m assuming not many.
It’s called the New Age movement.
Was anyone that achieved success before this movement thinking about it? No.
Successful people have other things in common. They have skills and a work ethic that allow them to bring immense value to the world.
That’s a common theme.
You do need to be motivated to work hard and have belief that you can actually hit your goals and dreams. That is absolutely needed.
Life isn’t easy. Let’s not kid ourselves. But accomplishing goals and dreams becomes a lot easier when you begin to and continue to develop skills. It takes time.
But I’ve never felt a better feeling than knowing I bring enough value to people to be able to scale my income.
The important thing to remember is that nothing is easy and just be careful with Hicks’ teachings because in some ways it breeds the mentality that it’s easy.
Good & Bad of Hicks’ Material
Listen, I didn’t have a lot of life experience back when I was introduced to this thinking at age 18.
Now when I consume content like this I’m able to look at it differently and rationalize the information that I’m consuming.
I absolutely had confirmation bias back in 2012.
I wanted to believe everything was true because I wanted it to be that easy. I wanted to accomplish all of my goals immediately but I didn’t realize all of the skills I needed to acquire before I could bring the necessary value.
I only wanted to hear that it was true. I only consumed the content that was recognizing these thoughts in a positive way.
I’m not trying to throw shade on the law of attraction because it has had some positive effects on my life. Like I said I believe it played a small part on where I’m at today.
All of my personal development work has in fact.
But it took me years and experience in life to recognize this.
When I hear Abraham’s message today, there are still things that I like and relate to. But other things I just chuckle at and don’t want anything to do with.
Mind you, this is coming from a guy who has accomplished many of the things I wanted to back in 2012. But it’s taken me 7 years and I still have so much more that I want to do.
This isn’t a bitter review about the law of attraction. I went through that phase, accomplished many things years later and now I can come back to it with a better perspective.
I’d like to give you some of the good and the bad of what Abraham teaches:
Good
- motivation and inspiration (greatly needed)
- guide you to other personal development teaches/mentors (this is my favorite)
- self-awareness
- benefiting from a mindset of gratitude
Bad
- level of arrogance (it turns you into someone that thinks they’ve figured things out when often times you still have nothing to show for it, not a good look)
- can create a distant relationship with people close to you
- our thinking is the reason that bad things will happen to us (this is just asinine)
I think the best thing that came from this phase for me was it leading to me learning about the subconscious mind. This was a huge positive in my personal development.
It’s important to note that the mind is not the casual point of our experience. At least this is what I believe today.
I believe it’s our emotional body that has the biggest impact on human life.
This refers to how our minds have been programmed from our landscape at an early age. Our parents, their relationship and our early childhood.
These all have great impacts on us.
For example, people that have a traumatic childhood and carry these negative experiences through the rest of their lives. Often times these people don’t even realize it.
If you’re like me you can wrap your head around this a lot easier. It gave me something to work with. I could then realize how my childhood has impacted my life either in a negative or positive way.
It allows me to think about what I need to change in order to change how my life plays out.
It’s not the positive thinking that truly needs to change, it’s looking deeper into things that impact your life in a negative fashion.
When you begin changing those, then you will start to see positive changes in your life.
The person you are now, and the person that achieves all of your goals and dreams are truly two different people.
I began to look at these negatives frequently as they showed themselves. In the past I would simply ignore them and look the other way.
They refer to it was “holding it with loving awareness like a newborn child.”
It’s called inner child work.
So how do you approach healing trauma? I still do it from time to time so I’ll share with you what I’ve found useful.
This is a short list of my favorites:
- Presence Process – Michael Brown
- Scott Kiloby
- Eliza Mada Dalian
- Ho’oponopono
IMO you should check out Scott Kiloby. His story is very engaging.
He was addicted to all of the stereotypical negatives in our lives.
Drugs. Gambling. Everything else.
A brief summary of his story would be that he used the power of conscious thinking through “non-attached awareness.” Many people refer to it as nonduality to free himself of his addictions.
Years later he now operates a drug recovery center. He helps people break themselves free of the same negativity he experienced in his own life. He uses the same principles that worked for him among others.
These results are tangible. We can see that methods just like this actually prove how powerful our mind is.
My Life After the Personal Development Phase
So clearly there was a time in my life where I was heavily into these introspection’s and teachings.
They became a part of me. Now I do things that I didn’t do before and it’s automatic. I don’t consciously think about it anymore.
We all need to improve our mentality and get head’s right. I am a huge promoter of that.
One by one I worked on parts of my life that I wasn’t happy with instead of running away from them.
My financial freedom has always been high on my mind and I was never happy with where I was at but I never did anything about it, I just dwelled on it.
I continued to work that 9 to 5 job and I was lucky if I made $30k in a year.
I had much larger aspirations than that. Some of them I still haven’t reached.
Since I had an entrepreneurial background I began looking on the internet for different business models that I could start as a side hustle and eventually scale to accomplish my goal of financial freedom.
I happened to stumble upon a mentor with a coaching program teaching his students how to generate leads for local small businesses all across the country.
It just really made sense to me. I talked to him on the phone and he gave me some case studies to look at too. It made too much sense.
At the time he was making around $35k/mo which was obviously very desirable for me as I was lucky to make that in a year.
I got back on the phone with him and told him I was in.
In his program he taught me skills that made me extremely valuable to business owners. When I first got in I didn’t really see that because I had so much information at my disposal.
As I started to work at it and put it all together I started to really understand the power of the model. 3 short months later I quit my job and went full time.
After three months and a valuable skill learned I was able to accomplish a big goal of mine. Getting out of the 9 to 5 grind and working for myself and my own dreams.
I had my mindset in place already so when I got into the program I put my head down and worked hard. I soaked in every bit of information he gave me.
When you make your first dollar online it gives you an extreme level of confidence in your abilities. I understood that if I kept replicating this simple process then my income potential would be sky high.
Oh and those beautiful 90%+ profit margins. I get to keep most of the money that goes in my pocket. Except for what Uncle Sam takes.
My life changed rapidly. Fast forward to now and I’m increasing my income on a monthly basis. I’ve mastered the process that my mentor taught me and I bring value at a high level.
I’ve been on a magical journey ever since. Not to sound cheesey. Some days I have to pinch myself because this is what I wanted back in 2012 and today it’s my reality thanks to this lead generation coaching program.
I’m now making over $50k/mo with my lead gen biz.
My friends and family can’t even believe the progress I’ve made with my financial goals. The important thing to remember is that I’ve changed the person I am over the last 7 years.
That person couldn’t make what I’m making today. No chance.
I’ve achieved goals of mine like being my own boss, taking vacations whenever and wherever I want and a steady cash flow that’s has transformed my lifestyle.
In my mind, changing your mindset means increasing your self-awareness and continuing to improve the value you bring to the marketplace through your skill set.
Life is all about going through positives and negatives. We all know that. But remember that you can find massive growth in the negatives. You just have to be aware of them and figure out how to change those negatives into positives. We have to embrace the uncomfortable negatives that we all come across in our lives.
Here’s something to think about.
What if everyone out there could use the “secret” and the law of attraction to manifest whatever they wanted, when they wanted? Everyone and their mother would be millionaires and that’s simply not the case.
Instead, let’s look at some common themes mentioned by millionaires:
- dedication
- work ethic
- determination
- working on a skill for extended time
There will be negatives that impact all of our journey’s but will we do with them? Run from them or attack them with intensity?
I learned to do the latter.
I changed the person I am and I have that to thank for successes I’ve achieved.
The law of attraction is fine, I agree with some parts of it but it’s a mistake to think that things will be given to you. It doesn’t work like that.
Fast forward 7 years later and I’m happy that it doesn’t work like that because I wouldn’t have an immense feeling of accomplishment like I do today.
Take me as living, breathing proof.
You need skills that bring value to the market.
You need to couple it with an attack plan or strategy.
And go find someone whose done it, a mentor, if you want to do it as quickly as possible.
If you want to learn more about the coaching program that’s changed my life, then click here. You can find out how to do the same.