Are you ready to live the magical life of your wildest dreams? Who or what is stopping you? What needs to change? Where exactly is the problem? We are told that the universe is over fourteen billion years old. Causes and effects across those fourteen billion years led you, a tiny part of this vast universe, to be exactly where you are and what you are. But, that is the past. You can’t change that. And that universe is vast in size, it has been expanding for fourteen billion years and the rate of expansion is increasing. Can we agree that you can’t change all of that? Not even 1%. Not even 0.0000000000001%?
Can we skip to the obvious conclusion of the question posed by the serenity prayer? It goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. The wisdom is simply this: You cannot change any of those fourteen plus billion years or any of the vast universe that resulted. You can only change a very small part of yourself and you can only do it in the present – not the past nor the future, right now. That is actually great news. Your task is no longer overwhelming. What needs to change is very small and weighs only a few pounds. It fits neatly between your ears with a cord of nerves called the vagus connecting to a mass of bacteria that you probably don’t even associate as being part of yourself – yet.
The change will not come from a surgeon’s scalpel in 99.9% of cases like yours. Let’s call your brain disease “Lack of prosperity” for a moment. Lack of prosperity is also rarely cured by medication. Group therapy or one-on-one mentorship does often play a role in the cure and that role is often crucial, but even it comprises a very small percentage of the instants of time that are expended when curing brain disease of “lack of prosperity.”
Your brain (and that critical vagus nerve) is made of strangely shaped cells called neurons. Their shape and their proximity to each other are you. The disease we need to cure is their shape and proximity to each other. You are the disease. You have to have the courage to change. You are the problem that needs to be resolved to achieve your life goals. The process is mildly painful at times. The pain is necessary in much the same way pain is necessary to build muscle. In muscle building, the pain is from tearing down muscle so that the healing process can make it stronger.
It is a little different in changing neurons, but the pain is still required because the required changes in shape, size, and proximity to each other sometimes involves trimming. The changes can’t all be made with growth. When a famous sculptor was asked how he created his masterpieces, he said he just looked at the piece of stone and imagined what would have to be removed to transform the featureless piece of stone into the statue he wanted. Then he removed these pieces. That is what you need to do to yourself. It will be painful. When you feel the pain, tell yourself that it is the result of the removal of that disease.
You will also feel incredible joy, happiness, and well-being. This is because, unlike the stone, some of the changes will be growth of these same neurons and others. The pain is just a hormone called cortisol (mostly) that tries to stop growth. The joy is also just a hormone called dopamine (mostly) which causes growth. The transformation requires both and you should learn to recognize both as signs that you are moving toward the magical realization of your wildest dreams.
You will also be measuring progress in very concrete ways such as bathroom scales and monthly bank statements, so I’m not asking you to engage in some kind of internal delusion that joy and pain are all that matter. I’m just telling you to expect both and recognize that they are part of the process. I already told you that the process does not involve a scalpel, medication, or even very much therapy or mentorship (in terms of time invested). What does it involve? The time you spend will mostly involve writing, imagining, taking tests, eating, walking, and running. Weird, huh? But, that is what those of us who have achieved the life of our dreams did to cure that brain disease. How do I know? I asked over three hundred of us.
I was living the life of my wildest dreams. I had no way of even knowing how much money I had, but it was millions of dollars – tens of millions – possibly over a hundred million dollars. The reason I couldn’t tell is because it changed so much (both up and down) that it would take longer than a day for the attorneys to calculate and by the time they reported it, it would be inaccurate. Besides… it was more than I could ever spend in a lifetime. Why should I care if it was twenty million or eighty million?
I was married to a trophy wife who was seventeen years younger than me. She was not only incredibly beautiful, she was my best friend, soul-mate, business partner, my other half, and my reason for everything. She was also the mother of my two incredible young sons. They too were everything I ever wanted. I had a perfect family.
We lived in paradise. San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua – a beach town in Central America where cruise ships often docked and released their gaggle of pasty white obese vacationers wanting to experience paradise for an afternoon. We lived here. I had achieved everything on my bucket list. My patented invention saved lives daily. I had four published books – two of them bestsellers. I hosted an event called the Freedom Event where I earned a million dollars in a single day. Software I wrote was used by millions of people every day. Every evening, I went to the beach in front of my favorite restaurant and ordered an umbrella drink to sip while I laid on a chaise lounge and watched the sun set over the Pacific. Al Jolson played “It’s a wonderful world” from speakers aimed at the beach from the restaurant behind me. It was… it is… a wonderful world.
Of course, it was also getting boring. As I mentioned, there is joy in the process of transforming those neurons and gut bacteria to get here. Sure, I felt joy in enjoying the sunset and sipping my umbrella drink, but it is not exactly the same joy as I felt imagining this day and writing my way to it. I missed that joy. I even missed the pain. As I went through it, I learned to love it because I knew that this pain was leading to… this… paradise. I now associated that kind of pain with my dream life. I missed feeling it too. I considered giving it all away and starting over. I knew that giving and serving others leads to happiness. I also knew that my wealth really wasn’t in the Cayman Island bank accounts. My wealth was encoded in the neurons in my head (and the bacteria in my gut) and how close or far away from each other they were positioned. It didn’t matter if I gave it all away! My brain was now wired for prosperity whereas it had been wired for poverty. So, if I gave it away, it would just come back.
Let me pause to tell you the story of another person who can illustrate this truth from the opposite perspective. A young black man grew up in south-central Los Angeles and was senselessly beaten almost to death by the police. Unfortunately, so far, this story is way too common. This young man was lucky enough to live in a time when cell phones had cameras and the beating was captured on video. He may be the first. He is the first that I remember. He was awarded 1.2 million dollars by the jury in the civil lawsuit that resulted. One year later, he was arrested in a crack-house. He didn’t have enough money to post bail he put.
The story repeats itself. One year after that, he won the state lottery. 1.2 million dollars in his pocket a second time. One year after that, he was arrested again. He couldn’t post bail. Do you see that this man’s brain was not yet wired for prosperity? The wealth is not in the money. It is in your head (and your gut). I can’t hand you a million dollars and make you a millionaire. Being a millionaire is encoded in your neurons and gut bacteria. The money (or lack thereof) is not the cause. It is the symptom of the disease of lack of prosperity.
Spoiler alert: I did not give everything away and start all over. It really would have worked. I did simulate it a few years later and the money did force its way back to me just as I predicted. It really is equally impossible to keep a million dollars away from a millionaire as it is to make someone a millionaire by giving them a million dollars. What you learned in the first section is absolutely true. What makes you a millionaire is not the million dollars; it is the shape of your neurons and their proximity to each other plus the composition of bacteria in your intestines. Weird… but true.
Before we continue, let me give you a homework assignment. We’ll cover the science in a future lesson. For now, just do it. It may appear that there is no way I’ll be able to tell if you did it or not, but don’t be deceived. I will be able to tell. You’ll see how I can tell also in a future lesson. Your homework assignment is to eat 500 calories of oatmeal every morning before you eat anything else, but after you take measurements, exercise, or drink coffee or tea if any of those activities are also a part of your morning routine.
Instead of giving everything away, I started a project to alleviate my boredom and to help you. By you, I mean both specifically you, the reader of this lesson, and plural “you” or all of the people reading lessons like this lesson at that time as well as now. At the time, I was mentoring several people via email in a program called “Magic Email Address.” Most were graduates of either the Freedom Event or a program I called “Quit That Job” and so they were already millionaires. They were all having the same kind of existential crisis I was having. What now? Or possibly some were asking “How did this happen?” “How much is enough?” and “How can I help others?” So, my new project was a research project.
I had given many interviews and heard the interviews of many other successful people. I knew many of the things in common subjectively, but you’ll later learn that one of the success factors is testing or using the scientific method. I knew that my opinion about what we all held in common was biased by selection bias, confirmation bias, and the availability heuristic. It would be unethical to use the experimental model to study success factors. But I was in a perfect situation to at least eliminate the biases from the research. I lived in paradise. And, I had the habit of watching the sunset every evening on the beach. Sitting right next to me every sunset was one brand new randomly selected test subject. For almost one year, I introduced myself using the exact same words and then asked them what they did to get to this moment in their life enjoying a sunset on the beach in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.
For a long time, versions of this program that you are reading contained all of the results of that year-long research study. After some testing, I discovered that was too much distracting information for someone like you so early in the process. But, there is one answer common to all 320+ interviewed people who had attained at least one goal on their bucket list (i.e.: watching a sunset on the beach of Central America). That was the common answer. They all had a goal list which might also be called a bucket list or a dream list. ALL OF THEM! And it was written down, not carried in their head. And they reviewed it daily while imagining that each goal had already been attained and how that made them feel.
You will learn later about how your gut bacteria affect your emotions… how emotions are critical to learning. But, that is your final homework assignment for this lesson. Make a goal list. Be sure to use the “have,” “do,” and “be” categories. What do you want to have? What does your dream house look like and where is it located? Describe it in minute detail. Same with car, watch, boat, RVs, jewelry, watches, exercise equipment, pool, yard, jet, money in the bank, stocks, land, etc. Write it all down in minute detail.
Same with the “do” list. Do you want to travel to every country, skydive, write a book, live for a year in a monastery, learn Spanish or Mandarin, earn a doctorate degree, build a motorcycle, sail around the world, live in ten different countries for a year each, or climb Mount Everest? Write it down. And the “be” list might be the most important although some items might seem to cross-over to the “do” list. Do you want to be a doctor, lawyer, Spanish speaker, author, inventor, artist, or vegan? Write it down.
Now rewrite it all as complete sentences telling how that item will make you feel, but put it in the past tense or present tense, not the future tense. Here are some examples: I feel so fulfilled and peaceful that I can now watch the sunset while sipping an umbrella drink on the beach in Nicaragua every evening. I feel so excited when I floor the gas pedal on my brand new, gold, Jaguar XKJ and feel that surge of power forcing me back into the plush tan leather seat. I feel so loved and completed by my young supermodel wife who holds me longingly whenever I return to our mansion on the beach.
When you are done, review it every morning and every night before bed and close your eyes and vividly imagine that item. Try to add at least one item of detail every day until they stop coming and you know your list is complete. It might be a hundred pages by then. Painstakingly select no more than twenty items as your highest priorities. Laminate that list and carry it in your pocket. Painstakingly choose three of these items as your top three. Move them to the top of the list and print them in bold and re-laminate and carry it in your pocket to pull out during lunch times or while you sit on the toilet or ride the train.
Among the three, choose the top priority item. Ask yourself each day what tiny thing you can do that day to move toward any of the items on your life goal list. Start with the tasks that contribute to your top three or top twenty priorities. When your goal is realized, take notice of the feeling of déjà vu you have. You will have already been there many, many times in your imagination. Taking notice of that feeling is a way of saying “Thank you” to whatever you call the magic that brought that goal into your real life. Saying and feeling the gratitude is an important part of the process.
When you have finished “step 1 – Dream,” make a copy to submit to me. Your step 1 must include a check for thirty-five dollars ($35.00) made out payable to “James D. Brausch, Sr.” Send your homework and the check to:
James D. Brausch
Step 1 – Dreams
P.O. Box 1502
Carmichael, CA 95608
Don’t turn the page until you have dropped it in the mail. If you can’t afford the thirty-five dollars, then stay with step 1 until you can.
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