Scott Free Thinking

It is now past the 2 month mark for what I would consider the period of time in which I have been pursuing my goal of obtaining a new income of $100,000 each year. Throughout all of the time that has passed, there has not been a lot that has changed. Few differences have occurred during the course of my projects and how they have altered my total income. I have done the best I can to focus on creating better content, to help others, to produce something that might be considered extraordinary in the eyes of the common reader. But you know - a lot of people close to me are feeling that perhaps the things I am doing just are not cutting it. Instead of 20 cents a day, it’s come to about $1.20 a day. This amount is considered minuscule to me, but thinking about it in a proportional perspective, the average amount of income I’ve been getting everyday seems to have increased by an average that is 6 times beyond the original amount that it was about 4 months ago when the site first started. By that same projection, my income will increase to $7.20 per day in another four months, or at about mid-July, if the rate of increase continues to happen. If it holds constant another four months after that, then I’ll be earning the equivalent of a minimum wage job(approximately $5.15 an hour). Yet another four months after that, I’ll have my 100k a year income, should the rate of increase remain constant even still. But can I guarantee this to occur? That would be the big question on everyone’s minds.

With all of this focus that has been going on everywhere within the overall population in terms of mindset, the Law of Attraction, and even proactive goal setting, goal achieving, productive action, and so on - there just seems to be something missing in terms of my own personal thoughts and actions. As an 18 year old that has started his own company, will start another fairly soon, who has written a book, and done these unorthodox things for a person of his age - it ain’t squat in the scope of what is to come at the present moment! We can focus on mindset all we want, but if we are not taking the right actions, what will ever come of anything? Given that I have given at least hundreds of other people advice and thousands of readers have been patting me on the back, I sometimes can’t help but feel like I’m just not practicing enough of what I preach at times. It is time we really take a look at logical and mechanical practicality.

To start, let me talk a bit about the practical side of how I am going about the “action side” of getting my intentions to manifest. First of all, I have chosen a path that is unorthodox in terms of business or even making money. I’ve got a blog, a retail store and merchandising line, affiliate sales, a multi-level marketing business, and a small scale production company that could feed me income if set up properly. I admit, it is a personal business model that has me firing on all cylinders in an attempt to find something that works quickly, drastically, and powerfully. But what are the potential flaws of this business model? It’s low risk in terms of cost, but high risk in terms of success rate, and this is a statistically proven fact.

Bloggers like Darren Rowse and Steve Pavlina are earning powerful incomes, each of them likely earning more than $250,000 per year after taxes. They also have websites that have existed for years on end and are only continuing to increase in their widespread acceptance and popularity. Other bloggers like them have experienced similar rates of success, and I think, some have even surpassed those of Pavlina and Rowse.

What is interesting to note, however, is the system that has been created by both of these bloggers. Darren Rowse has created an entire business off of teaching others how to start his business. Or, in other words, Darren Rowse is teaching others how to make money from blogging just as he himself is making money from blogging. This is kind of an odd picture, isn’t it? He also does not watch over just his best known and connoted website Problogger.net, but also manages a handful of other blogs, each bringing in substantial income. Steve Pavlina is making similar figures, as well, and with Pavlina I have noticed that many people have watched his story as he has risen to the tops of many charts. Pavlina and Rowse both have the same element in common in that they are writing about teaching others how to do the same things that they have already done. With all of this in mind, throw in the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of new blogs are created every single day along with at least thousands of them dying every single day, and you’ve got an interesting market dynamic.

Is there a future for the independent blogger? Will the internet become nothing more than a dense, saturated landfill of nothing but copycat blogs of the big guys? I think that the entire situation is at least, in part, possible that the outcome will in fact become this very dilemma. Or perhaps a greater problem would be that others will be struggling to find some degree of originality in the vast expanses of the cold, barren blogosphere? I have tried to put an original spin on my topics of sublimation through music, general personal development, lucid dreaming, and even seduction. Yet, by even mentioning the term: Law of Attraction I’ve already lumped myself into a wealth of other blogs that focus on nothing but the subject, and perhaps more than anything would be Steve Pavlina, who I am getting compared to on nothing less than at least a monthly basis.

The Law of Attraction is interesting. It is something that I’ve been hearing about for the past few years, and first heard about it in the book, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings, by Lynn Grabhorn. Since that time, the entire idea has exploded and has entered a field of the mainstream media that I never imagined it would reach! For years people were telling me I was following obscure ideas and techniques that no one else understood. At the time that I had read the Grabhorn book, the Law of Attraction was tiny and insignificant on my list of interests. Yet, it has since become a pinnacle for the personal development market and has entered every nook and cranny of the American and part of the global populace. The Secret has now been watched by a chunk of the city of Houston, Texas. You can find The Secret book in the “Inspirational Center” of your local Wal-Mart. Countless different marketers are eating the stuff up using it as nothing more than a financial machine to fuel themselves until latching onto another odd trend.

But when we think about the Law of Attraction, can we honestly say that there is an awakening happening within the global population? James Ray recently stated in his interview on StevePavlina.com that: “This is a time that all great spiritual traditions have predicted to bring a massive shift in the consciousness of mankind.” Guys, I’m sorry, but from the amount of misunderstanding that I have witnessed in regards to the Law of Attraction, I simply cannot agree that there is anything giant, or massive, and positive, that is about to take place in the overall consciousness of humanity, or mankind. There is nothing about to happen yet. People need a better understanding. We are getting a message out there, but this message is only the beginning.

People everywhere are latching onto this concept of the Law of Attraction for just a few reasons. It fulfills a different sort of thinking that we often toss away as children. Yet the thought of it all brings up a good, pleasant feeling solution - if only we could think our way to happiness and success. Interestingly enough, I think it might be very simple for many people out there. Many people might just be bored, and the Law of Attraction is going to be the concept that allows them to twiddle their thumbs and ponder their navel for the rest of their lives. For some in the past decade, it was existentialism. For others in the past century, perhaps it was a renaissance or Surrealism. Other people will make the discovery that the Law of Attraction is a way to think their way to happiness, and regardless of success, they are happy enough thinking positive. This is great and all, but guys, I’m sorry, but with or without the knowledge of the Law of Attraction, thinking your way to happiness was always possible, and even likely given the right amount of time and effort.

While some have claimed it to be nothing more than an odd tool created for the use of content in personal development gurus to make loads of money, I can say that LoA certainly isn’t made in a way that at all easily prevents one from making money off of it. I admit that even I have gotten a few bucks off the whole idea, but with that in mind, I’d also like to say that the real value of this principle goes far beyond that of what the general population realizes.

Carried in nothing more than a compounded substance we like to call deoxyribonucliec acid, or DNA, is our genetic code that, like computer programming, will explain our biological make up and tendencies for the rest of our lives. Similarly, it could be said that outside of the physical boundaries of genes, there are what many scientists and psychologists like to call memes, or more simply - easily accessible and transferable ideas. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, was the first to introduce this extraordinary idea. But he latched onto an idea that was likely present in the back of tons of people’s minds. Ideas travel almost as packages in the UPS mail: they can have one component or several, but they all travel in packages that can easily be sorted out and distributed any way we wish.

The Law of Attraction is a powerful meme, and if we could assemble other concepts of personal development into more accessible and communicable memes then we would see more of the radical shift in thinking that many of us in the self improvement community are looking for in the majority of the population. Much of this happened with lucid dreaming without anyone really having to do much of any compacting, compressing, streamlining, or any other nonsense - it has a term and a vast school of thought paired with it. Lucid dreaming, a two word phrase describing a process that could have books worth of information on it, and again could also be taught to one for a lifetime without ever obtaining total mastery.

The Law of Attraction is made so powerful by its elegance. It’s smooth connection and assembly within its words, the way it rolls across your tongue, and the beautiful fact that a four word phrase represents a school of thought that could potentially be taught to other people for years on end without ever achieving mastery of the principle itself. What will be the next mainstream personal development meme? For some, these things have already come. The entire principle of letting go was encapsulated in The Sedona Method, by Hale Dwoskin, a book that reached the New York Times best seller list and is frequently and easily seen on the shelves of any Barnes & Noble bookstore. The nature of the subconscious and its operational structure is being taught to people who would not otherwise give a damn in Malcolm Gladwell’s different experimental titles: The Tipping Point, and Blink.

Are we seeing a trend here yet?