Three Simple Steps - Summary

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About the Book’s Author

Trevor Blake was founder and CEO of QOL Medical LLC; founder of ANU, and co-founder and CEO of Kalvi Medical LLC.

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Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

Preface

PART ONE: ESCAPING THE QUICKSAND

STEP 1: Reclaiming Your Mentality

1. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

2. MASTER OF MENTALITY

3. MY LIFE OF MENTALITY

PART TWO: STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE

STEP 2: Creating Winning Ideas

4. A MATTER OF STILLNESS

5. CREATING MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

6. MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

PART THREE: BEYOND THE QUICKSAND

STEP 3: Transforming Ideas into Achievements

7. A MATTER OF KNOWING

8. CREATING THE STATE OF KNOWING

9. MY LIFE AND INTENTIONS

CONCLUSION

Nutshell Summary- To go to the full summary click here.

This book is the real deal. I came from a poor background with as many hang-ups as anyone else. I had no family or business connections to help me get ahead in the world. Honestly, I have no identifiable skill or talent. I have, however, diligently studied the attributes, talents, and insights of self-made men and women.

I observed three common behaviors in them all that helped them break free from the quicksand of their situations. Three Simple Steps provides a map to succeed in business and life based on proven laws of physics, and is supported by recent neuroscientific evidence.

After I turned 40, I started a company with a few thousand dollars, and it sold a few years later for more than $100 million. Then I did it again in another field entirely. I am currently building my third company in less than ten years. I’m not bragging or talking myself up; I want you to know the truth, and to trust what I’m going to tell you.

STEP 1: Reclaiming Your Mentality

Over the years, I have read dozens of autobiographies of famous men and women who could be considered self-made. In every biography, I recognized how each person had to become a master of their mentality in order to get out of the quicksand of their life. Key to that control was their ability to think and react as an individual, and not as a group, society, or trend dictated.

Mentality is defined as a habitual mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and react to situations. The quality of our thoughts is important, but books on positive thinking tend to stop there. It is, however, the next step that determines a path of success or frustration: how we react to what we think.

STEP 2: Creating Winning Ideas

Every week, I meet people who tell me that they want a better life, but they just don’t have any good ideas about how to change things. Step Two is all about positioning yourself to create and respond to good ideas, so we will discuss the rewiring of neural networks into a configuration that enhances our ability to create winning ideas and moments of insight.

The truth is that you don’t have to come up with an idea. They are already there. Brilliant ideas, or moments of insight, are literally bursting to get through our closed-off minds. Step Two is all about rewiring our neural networks such that it becomes natural for us to create brilliant ideas. The main method is a simple meditative technique that I call Taking Quiet Time.

The more we struggle, the more we get stuck. We sometimes get caught up in trying to solve puzzles, when what we should do is plug into the matrix and relax. We don’t need to know how something is going to work out. We simply need to send out the desire, and let life fill in the details. Stick with Step Two, and you’ll never regret it.

STEP 3: Transforming Ideas into Achievements

Einstein’s physical law that says energy and matter are equivalents of each other and interchangeable is a clue to the secret of success; it explains how to turn intangible ideas into real things. The conversion of thought energy into things should not be a secret because it is a proven law of physics. We are made of the same stuff as a plant or the soil. The third step is about releasing that conversion process in our lives.

An Intention is a goal but with all doubt about its attainment removed. Baby steps are not needed because there is no doubt about getting what we desire. Instead of creeping toward it, we can simply sit back and let it come running to us. The main difference, therefore, between intentions and goals is direction of effort. With goals, we push energy toward the object. With intentions, we pull or attach the object to us. This may seem like a subtle shift in mentality, but it is a critical one. Small changes in how we think make huge differences in outcome.

So, as we shift our conceptual understanding from journeying toward a desired object to attracting it to us, we slip naturally into an understanding of the law of attraction. When you have a thought, it has no option but to become physical reality. There is no difference between thought and matter.

Writing out your Intentions every day is a powerful way to speed things up. As you write, you imagine and focus, which sends out powerful thoughts and helps you create more detail in your imagination. Speak out your Intentions when you exercise or when you are alone in nature. After a quiet time, daydream about one of your bigger Intentions or read out loud the list of your Intentions.

The synchronicity in my story seems remarkable to those who do not yet follow the three simple steps, but it is commonplace for those who do. I can connect the dots retrospectively and easily understand how everything played out perfectly, but it would have been impossible to predict any of it. This is why I say that all you need to do is set an Intention, then relax and let life fill in the details. There is no point in trying to conquer the goal in the warrior’s style by charging toward the treasure. For all you know, you could be running in the wrong direction.

I believe the application of these three simple steps can get you out of the quicksand and on your way to amazing adventures. Each principle is free and has no negative side effect. What do you have to lose by being selective with the media, avoiding the complainers, treating yourself to 2 percent of your day for stillness, and writing daily Intentions?

Full Summary

Preface

I know that life can often feel like you’re thrashing around in quicksand. The harder you struggle, the deeper you sink, until you can’t see how you’ll ever be free. This doesn’t have to be your experience. I’ve taught the principles of the Three Simple Steps to individuals and groups for many years, and it has been a joy to see the dramatic changes in people’s lives. So now I’ve written this book to show you how to free yourself and become everything you are meant to be.

This book is the real deal. I came from a poor background with as many hang-ups as anyone else. I had no family or business connections to help me get ahead in the world. Honestly, I have no identifiable skill or talent. I have, however, diligently studied the attributes, talents, and insights of self-made men and women.

I observed three common behaviors in them all that helped them break free from the quicksand of their situations. Three Simple Steps provides a map to succeed in business and life based on proven laws of physics, and is supported by recent neuroscientific evidence.

After I turned 40, I started a company with a few thousand dollars, and it sold a few years later for more than $100 million. Then I did it again in another field entirely. I am currently building my third company in less than ten years. I’m not bragging or talking myself up; I want you to know the truth, and to trust what I’m going to tell you.

Quality of life means different things to different people. In Western civilization, it is impossible to achieve a higher quality of life without financial resources. Becoming financially successful is at the core of this book. For me, however, the path to financial independence went hand in glove with improvements in all aspects of a balanced life. Our lives are not meant to be a struggle but a joyful trip, and I hope this book can help you realize that.

PART ONE: ESCAPING THE QUICKSAND

STEP 1: Reclaiming Your Mentality

Rare is the person who becomes rich working for someone else. Rarer still is the inventor whose ideas get through the scientific peer-review process or the revolutionary artist loved immediately by the critics. How many companies that are household names today were created by a consenting group of people sitting in a meeting room. Companies as diverse as Disney, Mattel, and Apple started in a home garage and were driven by the inspiration of just one or two people.

Being successful in anything requires a high degree of individualism. Individualism requires control of mentality. I’m not going to insist that you can change yourself with positive thinking: that can help you feel better about the life you have, but ultimately what you want is a better life. That’s what I’m going to help you with.

Reclaiming your mentality is about becoming the person you were born to be—an individual with the power to think for yourself and with an unlimited potential to achieve great things. Getting out of the quicksand of your life means you must recognize yourself as one among the flock, and win back your identity through control of mentality. It can be the difference between life and death.

1. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

In the winter of 1969, while having a stand-up wash in icy water, my mother found “a few lumps and bumps.” After a period of hospital visits, the family doctor warned her that she had advanced breast cancer and had less than six months to live.

But she refused to accept that she only had a few months to live. She told anyone who cared to listen that nothing was going to stop her from living long enough to see all three of her children grow up and safely leave the nest.

Seeing the frightened faces of her children, she called a family meeting. She told them, “No one tells me when to die. I decide that, and I alone. I am not leaving until I am good and ready. If any of you try using this as an excuse to skip homework or feel sorry for yourselves, you’ll have me to answer to.” Seeing such steely determination, no one dared argue.

Although my mother was never rich monetarily, she achieved something far more important in her life. In my personal and business life, I have met few people who so perfectly understood the power of controlling their mentality. If this kind of control can put off death for fourteen years, imagine what else it can do.

2. MASTER OF MENTALITY

Over the years, I have read dozens of autobiographies of famous men and women who could be considered self-made. At first, I approached their life stories with cynicism. I expected to find a key advantage that they had and that I did not, such as a family connection or a financial helping hand. What I found, however, were mostly disadvantaged people who developed an unshakeable belief in their ability to control their lives. They stood out from the crowd, and when presented with the same challenges as others, chose a different and individual reaction.

In every biography, I recognized how each person had to become a master of their mentality in order to get out of the quicksand of their life. Key to that control was their ability to think and react as an individual, and not as a group, society, or trend dictated.

Using the same self-control, I have changed my mentality from one of poverty to that of a multimillionaire, and my lifestyle with it. I changed thoughts of expecting to fail to ones of anticipating success. To escape the feeling of being in quicksand, controlling one’s mentality is the first essential step.

Mentality is defined as a habitual mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and react to situations. The mentality equation has three elements:

The situation (what we see, hear, smell, taste, sense, and what the media or people in our lives can make us feel about any of that).

The thought (triggered by how we are made to feel).

The reaction (how we choose to discharge the emotional thought).

The quality of our thoughts is important, but books on positive thinking tend to stop there. It is, however, the next step that determines a path of success or frustration: how we react to what we think.

If you have not managed to control any of the sensory input or thoughts that they trigger, then you let your reaction be influenced by the situation. You have placed your life in the minds, opinions, and influence of the outside stimuli.

This is why control of your mentality is critical to your success. Whatever you are against becomes your experience, and you get extra helpings of what you did not want: more dead-end jobs, more stupid bosses, and more boredom. Whatever you are for, more of that comes your way. The only solution is to have more for thoughts than against thoughts, and to make those thoughts bigger. That is the simple lifestyle change required to control mentality.

To get out of the quicksand, you have to filter what you allow into your mind so that your decisions belong to you as an individual, and not to the fashion or trend of any group. You must choose your own thoughts and the reactions you have to them. You must become an individual again, something most people have not experienced since birth.

3. MY LIFE OF MENTALITY

In 1967, when Savvy Ballesteros came in second in the British Open and captured the world’s attention, I admired how calm he was under pressure. In an interview he had described how he would imagine a thick glass jar descending from the sky and covering him completely. Inside the glass jar, he said, he was able to shut out the outside world, stay centered, and achieve anything.

I have used this technique ever since, a trick I call my mentality shield. Whether in investor meetings, public speaking, or just in a crowd at a concert, it protects me from external stimuli that I don’t want in my mind.

Step One needs to be the first to be mastered because, to escape the quicksand, you need to start thinking and reacting according to your own instincts. It is the way to rediscover the pioneering spirit with which you were born. Intentionally or otherwise, the media and people in your environment wire your neurons in a like-minded manner, unless you consciously start to change the process. The changes are simple, but not easy, because you must consistently control your mentality.

Parts of my life story are the best testimony to the power of these principles. If you start to make small changes in your thoughts and reactions, you will get out of your version of quicksand. I did, and I am no different than anyone else.

PART TWO: STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE

STEP 2: Creating Winning Ideas

Every week, I meet people who tell me that they want a better life, but they just don’t have any good ideas about how to change things. As hard as they try, they can’t find a solution. Step Two of the three simple steps has many benefits for your life. Most, however, are beyond the scope of this book and are well documented elsewhere. We are interested in one aspect of this step, which is all about positioning yourself to create and respond to good ideas.

In my experience of teaching the three simple steps, most people readily accept the common sense of controlling mentality in Step One. Those who take it to heart experience dramatic improvements in their lives. Those who take it lightly still enjoy many benefits. Step Three, which is how to execute great ideas to create anything you want, gets people excited. Most people, however, skip Step Two, or if they attempt Step Two, they do so for a while and then forget about it. That’s because we are brought up in a society where focusing outward is acceptable but looking inward is associated with being esoteric.

In Step One, we discussed how positive vs. negative thoughts impact the neural networks, and then how exposure to prolonged stress could destroy neurons. In Step Two, we will discuss the rewiring of neural networks into a configuration that enhances our ability to create winning ideas and moments of insight.

To overcome the natural tendency for people to ignore the inner journey as something for weirdos or new-agers, I will provide solid evidence from cutting-edge neuroscience. Today, people seem to need proof to get over the fence and give it a go. For me, I always felt if it worked for Carnegie, Emerson, and Einstein, who am I to say it is not for me? At one time, I was desperate for good ideas to get me out of the quicksand. I found Step Two had a profound impact in all aspects of my life, and it is no coincidence that my wonderful adventure started the same time that I was introduced to it.

As a businessman, the thing I hear most often is comments such as “I wish I could start my own thing, but I don’t have any good ideas.” Just last night, a friend who strikes me as having the common sense, drive, and customer focus to be successful with his own “thing” was lamenting how much he detested his job. I asked him why he doesn’t start his own company. He said he would love to, but he doesn’t have any brilliant ideas about what sort of company to start.

The truth is that you don’t have to come up with an idea. They are already there. Brilliant ideas, or moments of insight, are literally bursting to get through our closed-off minds. Unfortunately, the way we have learned to behave has wired our neurons in such a way that we often are oblivious to them. In the stories of successful men and women, and later through trial and error in my own life, I discovered a simple step that is designed purely to rewire neurons such that they can be receptive to those ideas again. The step is effortless. Whether you are five years old or eighty-five, you can introduce Step Two into your life right now and enjoy success, because a single moment of insight is worth a lifetime of experience.

4. A MATTER OF STILLNESS

In 1984 I came across Napoleon Hill’s famous book, Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold millions of copies since its publication in 1937. I had, however, already read the detailed biographies of many of the tycoons he interviewed and drawn my own, and quite different, conclusions about what it took to succeed.

Many people claim that Hill’s book has been of great help to them in their endeavors to succeed. I preferred, however, to take the advice of men and women who had actually succeeded at something. His simple formula was the cultivation of faith, belief, persistence, patience, purpose, and desire—but it failed to work for Hill.

I dove back into the biographies of self-made men and women—people like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt. As inspired as I was by their stories, I was equally intrigued that their systems for creating ideas were so similar. This system is Step Two of Three Simple steps. All it takes is one thought, one nanosecond of inspiration, to change your life forever, but you have to behave a little crazily to get it.

5. CREATING MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

Step Two is all about rewiring our neural networks such that it becomes natural for us to create brilliant ideas. There are three aspects to the second step. The first is recognizing patterns of unwanted behavior. The second is to consider the implications of changing those patterns, because change is not for everyone, and then committing to keep or change those patterns. The third is a technique to change the way our brains work so that moments of insight become more common.

Because your environment produces your mentality, you tend to adopt the same patterns of behavior as those you look up to. It is recognized that those who have been abused can more easily become abusers. Professions such as physicians or lawyers often repeat through family lines. Take some time to review the lives of your ancestors. If you consider that they were stuck in quicksand, chances are you exhibit similar patterns in some aspects of your life.

Take a pleasant hour in a quiet place to consider what repeated emotions, thoughts, and reactions appear in your jobs, social networks, and relationships. You are not to blame, and neither are your parents or partners. The patterns exist because your mentality has been unguarded and your neurons are wired a certain way. Now that you have control of your mentality, changes to behavior in those aspects of your life will result in changes to your neurons and catapult you forward. You do, however, have to want to change, and before you decide, you need to consider three major implications of change.

Change can be imperceptible. You have to trust in the way of the winding staircase because, when it comes to success, seeing is not believing, but believing leads to seeing. When you commit to change, it means staying on the staircase, no matter what.

Change can be scary. The techniques described in this book work completely. This is an exact science. The thoughts you send out become your reality, not a diluted version of them. Once you tip the balance in your favor by exercising more mentality control, things change dramatically. If you are sure you are ready for change, then the next important step is to make a formal commitment to change.

Change is permanent. The adventures you set in motion when you commit to change your life cannot be undone. There is no going back. The change is for real and it is permanent. Are you absolutely sure you want to change your life?

If so, then to get in the right mindset to make a commitment to change, I suggest you set this up as a formal appointment. Make it official so it achieves the right degree of importance in your life. By treating this formally, you ensure you do not fall into the trap of letting something in your life interrupt or overtake it. Nothing is more important than your personal growth.

Go alone to a quiet place, and if possible, outdoors or connected in some way to nature, relax, breath deeply, and make your covenant. Take pen and pad, and write down your decision.

I, (your full name), from this day forward, take full control of my mentality. I accept responsibility and accountability for my experiences. I intend abundance to flow in my life. I commit to change all patterns of destructive behavior, and to consistently introduce whatever it takes to succeed.

Positive thinking is like a helium balloon, and negative thoughts are the ceiling they press against. Remove the ceiling by shutting out all that negative noise, and the balloon soars.

With some degree of control established, we can now work on rewiring your brain so that it can generate the brilliant ideas you need. The main method is a simple meditative technique that I call Taking Quiet Time.

In the stories of self-made men and women, I was fascinated that most had some method of escaping the craziness of their schedules to sit quietly somewhere just to contemplate. They claimed their best ideas came to them when they stopped pondering the problem. The common elements for their system of idea creation were contemplation time taken alone and, where possible, far from the madding crowd, daily practice, early in the day, and informal.

When we consciously change a neural network through an intervention such as meditation (or hypnosis), we break down the existing neuron patterns and rewire the network to new ways of thinking. The benefit of the production of new neurons and neural pathways is that, once they are protected from negativity and fear via mental control, are the source of those wonderful, life-changing moments of insight.

The question now is what to do with our newly rewired neural networks. Like any wires, they are simply potential until we plug them into an energy source. To get those great ideas we are looking for, however, we need to plug the network to a powerful and beneficial source.

Among the character traits that jumped out at me from the pages of the biographies of self-made men was their affiliation with nature. All of them turned to nature in times of stress or when big decisions needed to be made. Henry Ford, for example, was passionate about walking in the country and reconnecting to nature.

When we connect to nature’s matrix, it speeds up our rewiring, because we draw more energy through each new connection. Nature is electrified. Your physical and subtle bodies are an invigorated pattern of electromagnetic waves. When you reach out and touch something, whether a lover, a tree, or a blade of grass, a connection takes place, and vitality is exchanged. Just as the quickest way to learn a new language is to move to a country where the populace speaks it, the best way to connect with the matrix is through immersion in nature.

When you touch a tree, you fire off connections like an army of archers storming a castle. Because the tree is connected to the Earth through its roots, all of nature fires back. Your rewired neurons use nature’s network in the same way the tree uses its roots.

6. MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

When I returned to the United States, I finally felt ready to start my own company. I recall the morning of my fortieth birthday. I was thinking too hard, whereas stillness is the opposite of that effort and exactly what is needed to solve problems. I was with my wife who told me to stop trying to work it out. “Keeping taking quiet time,” she reminded me, “and the answer will find you.”

The more we struggle, the more we get stuck. This is true in any aspect of the application of these steps. We sometimes get caught up in trying to solve puzzles, when what we should do is plug into the matrix and relax. We don’t need to know how something is going to work out. We simply need to send out the desire, and let life fill in the details.

When I have taught these principles to individuals and groups, I usually find that they readily adopt Step One and Three. In those steps, it is very easy to connect the dots between something good showing up in their lives, and a change they made in their mentality or goal setting. It is harder to trace the link between taking quiet time and reconnecting with nature, and the great idea that just popped into your head while you were changing the oil in the car.

It takes time to rewire those neurons, and it takes time for your mentality to be sufficiently under control for the ideas to surface with the energy required to get a reaction from you. Stick with Step Two, and you’ll never regret it. I can only encourage you to make this Step Two a consistent part of a new routine. Other people who have done this consistently tell me it has changed their lives just as dramatically and permanently for the better.

PART THREE: BEYOND THE QUICKSAND

STEP 3: Transforming Ideas into Achievements

Einstein’s physical law that says energy and matter are equivalents of each other and interchangeable is a clue to the secret of success; it explains how to turn intangible ideas into real things. The conversion of thought energy into things should not be a secret because it is a proven law of physics. We are made of the same stuff as a plant or the soil.

After centuries of suppressing intuition in favor of intellectual analysis, most people have unknowingly damned the natural flow of this equation. The third step is about releasing that conversion process in our lives. With all doubt removed from the process, our minds would be in what I call a state of knowing. This is the state of mind we need in order to turn our new, great ideas into reality, and it is what we will work with on achieving in Step Three.

If you were a seed, you would not be given to complicating things by analyzing why you are a seed and worrying daily about how you are going to get sufficient nutrients from the soil and the air to be converted into the tree you secretly desire to be. You would simply be in a state of knowing that you will grow, strengthen, and eventually become a tree.

You need to be neither a scientific genius nor a mystic to create something from nothing. Einstein was obsessed with the why and how of the process of creation. He was an intellectual analyst. If we presented him with a television set, he surely would study the science of fluorescence. You simply need to know how to use it.

But because so few people today remember that they can create something from nothing, those who do are revered, worshipped, or feared. The truth is that everyone can do it, and it takes you no more effort than it takes a sage, but don’t expect the sage to admit that.

7. A MATTER OF KNOWING

The year was 1990, and my wife and I agreed that a fresh start was just what we needed. We were thirty years old, with excellent jobs, and a good lifestyle. Making the decision to move to America was like slamming on the brakes of a car halfway through a journey between two towns at either end of a straight road, then turning off the road to drive into the unpaved landscape.

Most of our friends and family said we were crazy. The criticism was intense, but we were both comfortable using our mentality shields by then and didn’t let the negative comments affect our plans. “Let life fill in the details,” I said, using one of my catchphrases that annoyed everyone but us.

In January 1994, we relocated to our new life in America and our first experience of a -40 degree Fahrenheit wind chill outside the Minneapolis airport.

8. CREATING THE STATE OF KNOWING

There are three levels of emotion that attract success. The first level is desire. Desiring something creates a powerful energy that can magnetically attract better things into our life. Desire, however, is often vague.

Then there is belief. The more we understand something, the more we start to believe in it. Many goal-setting techniques recommend baby-step goals, with the thought that as we achieve each one, we build confidence in ourselves and our goals, which leads to greater belief. Belief brings wonderful new experiences into our lives, and when they arrive we feel like celebrating.

Finally, there is a sense of knowing. This is an exponentially higher emotional energy level that comes when we are familiar with all the specifications, feelings, and senses of the object of desire. There is no excitement because there is no doubt about its attainment. The removal of doubt comes about because we have clarity in the detail of what it is we want.

Step Three is about taking something we have never had or done, something we have little familiarity with but would create in our lives if there were not impediments to its attainment whatsoever; and creating a sense of knowing about its attainment. That is magic. That is the three simple steps in action.

Traditionally taught goal-setting techniques can be effective at raising our levels of emotion from desire to belief. That will definitely help you pull yourself out of the quicksand and improve the quality of your life. I do not believe that it is sufficient for achieving the American dream. You need to get nearer to the state of knowing, and the process of setting intentions rather than goals achieves that.

An Intention is a goal but with all doubt about its attainment removed. Baby steps are not needed because there is no doubt about getting what we desire. Instead of creeping toward it, we can simply sit back and let it come running to us. The main difference, therefore, between intentions and goals is direction of effort. With goals, we push energy toward the object. With intentions, we pull or attach the object to us. This may seem like a subtle shift in mentality, but it is a critical one. Small changes in how we think make huge differences in outcome.

So, as we shift our conceptual understanding from journeying toward a desired object to attracting it to us, we slip naturally into an understanding of the law of attraction.

Depending on your starting place, the three simple steps can change your life for the better quickly or slowly. It depends how big your goal is and how much work life has to do to put the details together.

Based on my new intention to put the brakes on my career and make a fresh start in another country and in a different job that had not yet been created, I knew life would have to start afresh to put all the synchronicity needed to work it out in place. I did not know how long it would take to make it happen, but I set out my new intentions and let life fill in the details. In three years, the intention was completed.

Believing is not necessary. The laws of nature exist whether you believe in them or not. Trust in the physical laws of the universe that have no choice but to turn your thoughts into real experiences and let life take care of the details. Positive thinking returns good things to your life whether you believe it or not. It just happens.

When you trust the process, you become an enthusiastic creator. Eventually belief is replaced by a sense of knowing that whatever you desire you can create, and that you have the ability to have anything you want, with a little focused imagination.

An Intention is a goal with all doubt about its attainment removed. Intentions have three key properties.

Intentions are Past Tense. Because the power of getting to a state of knowing is in the detailed understanding of the Intention, one of the tricks is to imagine yourself transported into the future, immediately after experiencing what you desire. You experience with your imagination what it felt like to have that desire. Your mind automatically starts to fill in the detail of what it took to get there.

Intentions are Positive. Words have immense power, so keep them positive and with hyperbole. The need is for the Intention to be for something you want, and not against something you don’t want. (“I am fit, slim, and healthy,” not “I lose weight.”)

Intentions are Personal. Intentions cannot be used to interfere with other lives. They can only be for you. You can have responsibility and accountability only for your life experiences.

The process for setting Intentions is simple. It is the opposite of goal setting. In that technique you decide what you want, and then think about how to get it. With Intentions, doubt is removed. You already have the result, the process is about getting ready to receive the benefit, so the trick is to imagine you already received what it is you want. Imagination becomes the key element.

Take a few breaths, and then ask yourself this question: If money were no object, if absolutely nothing in the universe could prevent my success, and all I have to do is point my right index finger in the sky one time to receive my intention instantly, what is it I really want?

Writing out your Intentions every day is a powerful way to speed things up. As you write, you imagine and focus, which sends out powerful thoughts and helps you create more detail in your imagination. Speak out your Intentions when you exercise or when you are alone in nature. After a quiet time, daydream about one of your bigger Intentions or read out loud the list of your Intentions.

Finally, never share your Intentions with anyone else. Nothing will drain your energy or weaken your creator spirit more quickly than hearing someone you care about laugh at them.

Now you understand that when you have a thought, it has no option but to become physical reality. There is no difference between thought and matter. In essence, that means you can lie, and eventually the lie becomes your experience.

9. MY LIFE AND INTENTIONS

There is a certain level of madness in corporate America that everyone just accepts … because that is the way things are done. The beauty of reinventing oneself and starting a new company is that one can put aside all that nonsense.

As unconventional as it sounds, having a playful imagination is a critical part of the third step, and I imagined every part of the business model working together.

When I was sure about the model, I went into my office to write a new Intention for it. At the same time, I had a list of ten Intentions that covered a variety of desires. Although exotic travel was still something that I enjoyed and wanted, I had added specific financial Intentions, as well as ones for personal growth, health, and lifestyle. Finally, at the bottom of my whiteboard was an Intention that had been here for several years that had to do with developing low-toxicity cancer treatments. I added the new Intention: I own a virtual pharmaceutical company that makes a positive difference in the lives of people suffering from rare diseases, and it is a huge success for everyone involved.

In the biographies of self-made men and women, they were not shy about describing how they imagined success before it arrived. Walt Disney described the imagination as the key factor to success.

The synchronicity in my story seems remarkable to those who do not yet follow the three simple steps, but it is commonplace for those who do. I can connect the dots retrospectively and easily understand how everything played out perfectly, but it would have been impossible to predict any of it. This is why I say that all you need to do is set an Intention, then relax and let life fill in the details. There is no point in trying to conquer the goal in the warrior’s style by charging toward the treasure. For all you know, you could be running in the wrong direction. Be like a wizard. The Intention is your magic spell.

The real story, however, is about how great ideas become reality through the use of the three simple steps. The story is about the process, not the people. One of the most fantastic aspects of doing the three simple steps is experiencing the amazing people that show up to help you achieve an Intention. I enjoy that experience as much as any other.

CONCLUSION

I believe the application of these three simple steps can get you out of the quicksand and on your way to amazing adventures. Each principle is free and has no negative side effect. What do you have to lose by being selective with the media, avoiding the complainers, treating yourself to 2 percent of your day for stillness, and writing daily Intentions?

Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

Preface

PART ONE: ESCAPING THE QUICKSAND

STEP 1: Reclaiming Your Mentality

1. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

2. MASTER OF MENTALITY

3. MY LIFE OF MENTALITY

PART TWO: STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE

STEP 2: Creating Winning Ideas

4. A MATTER OF STILLNESS

5. CREATING MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

6. MOMENTS OF INSIGHT

PART THREE: BEYOND THE QUICKSAND

STEP 3: Transforming Ideas into Achievements

7. A MATTER OF KNOWING

8. CREATING THE STATE OF KNOWING

9. MY LIFE AND INTENTIONS

CONCLUSION