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The Palace of Possibilities

Using EFT to achieve one's potential

In this Section 7...

• The Palace of Possibilities 16--From $18,000 to $400,00 per year
• The Palace of Possibilities 17--Martha's money blocks

The Palace of Possibilities 16--From $18,000 to $400,00 per year

Hi Everyone,

Our consistent thoughts become our reality. That is our main message in this series.

The evidence of this is all around us, particularly in the financial arena. The type of occupation(s) we have, the manner in which we get paid (salary, commissions, fees, incentives, etc.) and the amount of money we earn are direct reflections of the net quality of our consistent financial thoughts. More accurately, they are direct reflections of the blend we make between our empowering financial thoughts and our limiting ones. It is the balance between them that we settle for.

Here is an excerpt from my "How to Drive Your Own Bus" transcript that explains this.

FROM THE HOW TO DRIVE YOUR OWN BUS TRANSCRIPT

GARY: I have some business passengers on my bus that are worth exploring. At age 30 I was earning $18,000 per year in the life insurance business and felt that I was performing far below my potential. One day a man came by our office to talk about the same kind of things we're talking about here. And I knew what he was saying was right. I was enthralled by him and hung on his every word.

Later he took me aside and said, "Gary, you are earning $18,000 per year now. How much would you like to earn?" And I said, "$40,000 per year." That's more than twice, isn't it? Then he said, "Well, you're driving with your brakes on."

No truer words were ever spoken. I knew, intuitively, that he had hit my bulls eye. To make his point he asked me to describe to him what a wealthy person was like.

GARY: A wealthy man? [Gary goes out into the audience] That was an unusual question, of course, but I gave it a shot. I said, "Well, okay. It's a man. And he's kind of portly and he's middle aged and he has this big long cigar". Do we have a cigar? [Adrienne brings cigar] [To Don] Don, would you like to be my wealthy man. I want you to look like a wealthy man.

DON: Lots of luck.

GARY: [To audience] Okay, Don is going to be my wealthy man. [To Don] Now hold this cigar, Don. I think wealthy people hold it Groucho style, like this. [To audience] So this is my wealthy person. Not only does he smoke this stinky cigar, but he also drives a long black limousine that pollutes everything. And he lives in an opulent house. And he is dishonest. And he steps on people on the way to becoming wealthy.

If I were to ask each of you here to describe a wealthy person, how many of you would have picked at least a piece of that for the description? How many? [Many hands raised] That's interesting, isn't it? But that's the image I had.

If I have that kind of an image in my mind--a subconscious consistent thought of what it is to be wealthy--is that a brake on my getting there? Am I driving my bus with my brakes on? You bet. See, when I started to do well in business, an image of this "wealthy man' came up and a passenger said, "You don't want to be judged that way by others, do you?"

DON: No.

GARY: [To audience] Of course not...and as long as that passenger sits in the front seat of my financial bus, I'm not going anywhere. [To Don] Why don't you stay there as my wealthy man while I explore another passenger on my bus. This next one says "Salespeople are pests." [To lady] Could you stand up please?

As long as I have the belief somewhere on my bus that salespeople are pests, am I going to be as effective in sales as I could be? No way! That kind of belief only serves to put on the brakes. So when I went to a building to make a cold call and the sign on the door said "No solicitors", what came up in my mind? I'm a pest, right.

AUDIENCE: Yes?

GARY: This is my father. [To Samantha] Would you stand up, Samantha. [To audience] Could we have a hand for my father? [Applause]

My father was never a business person. He always worked for the government and never ran his own business. He would sit at the dinner table when I was maybe 12 years old and get angry about the people at work. And he would complain about rising prices. His temples moved while he was talking because he was so aggravated. And as he talked about rising prices, this is what he would say, "The only reason they raise prices is because"--now watch this--"the only thing they care about are their profits." [Gary's lip curls into a sneer] Did you see that? "Profits." [Laughter] "Profits".

Now when he said that in the presence of this impressionable 12 year old boy, what kind of message did that give me about making profits?

AUDIENCE: Making profits is bad.

GARY: Does it become a consistent thought on my bus? Is it in my way?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

GARY: Sure, and it's in the background. I call it a hidden belief.

Here's, Marilyn. [To Marilyn] Would you stand up for a minute, please. [To audience] This is another passenger on my bus. I'm going to call her "America the Beautiful" because this passenger says, "You live in America, the land of the free. Where the profit system provides the greatest standard of living in the history of mankind. Participate." How many here have a passenger like that? [Many raised hands] A good, positive passenger, right? Yes, this is the land of opportunity and you are part of it.

[To Nancy] Would you please stand up for me, Nancy. [To audience] Nancy is another passenger on my bus and she says, "If you make a lot of money, you're a good provider." How many have a passenger like that? [Raised hands]

[To Sherwood] Could you stand up for me, Sherwood...thanks. Sherwood is yet another passenger and he says, "If you make a lot of money, it's a badge in society and people look up to you." How many have a passenger like that? [Raised hands]

See, I have many money passengers. I have some good passengers that support my business efforts and I have others that have their feet on my brakes. I want to ask you a question. When I come to a financial event in my life--a decision to make--a sales call to make--or whatever--and I have both sets of those passengers echoing at me, what do I do?

AUDIENCE: Have anxiety.

GARY: Anxiety...sure. But here's what else I do. I react in a manner to satisfy, as best I can, both sets of passengers. I make enough money to satisfy the fact that I need to be a good provider, I live in America, etc. But I don't make so much money that I'm going to feel guilty for being a wealthy dishonest business man, a pest and so on. And do you know where that level was for me? $18,000 a year. [Laughter] You are laughing but that's very serious. Look at the income you make. That is where you draw the blend between your good and bad financial passengers.

Let's give all our passengers a hand. [Applause]

So, that "blend between our good and bad financial passengers" is the same as the blend between our empowering and limiting thoughts about money. We all have empowering and limiting financial thoughts and the amount of money we make tends to land at the balance point between the push and pull of these two opposing forces. Our job is to move that balance point. We can reduce or eliminate the limiting thoughts through EFT and can bolster the empowering thoughts through Daydreams and Affirmations. This moves the balance point more toward the financial abundance end of the scale. As the limiting thoughts fade and the empowering thoughts gather momentum, our financial awareness, decisions, attitudes, etc. bring new opportunities into focus (through our Antenna) and our financial life begins to unfold in line with our new balance point. This isn't just theory. This is how it works. Our consistent thoughts become our reality.

Now come back with me in time to 1970 (my age 30) when I was earning $18,000 per year as a life insurance salesman. We are going to investigate the inner workings of my Affirmations and Daydreams to see how they served to escalate my earnings to $400,000 without will power, extra effort or anything like that. This was 25 years before EFT was born so EFT wasn't available to take care of the "yes, but..." endings to my affirmations (the tail enders). Fortunately for me, the severity of those tail enders was light enough for me to simply overwrite them with mega-doses of positive writings for my walls. Accordingly, the story I am about to tell, while missing the EFT piece, has the advantage of displaying the pure power of Affirmations and Daydreams.

By 1970, I had graduated from Stanford, finished my tour of duty in the Army and had worked in the life insurance for about 5 years. My $18,000 income was just barely enough to support my wife and 3 children. I knew I was capable of much more but, somehow, I just wasn't doing it. Earning more was a true WANT, and not a should, because I was driven by a need to avoid the plight my father faced. There was never any excess money in my family and my father's angst and his working, working, working at a job he didn't particularly like caused him stress, ulcers and so forth. He was forever gritting his teeth because of the pressures he took on. To me, more money meant freedom from that. Nonetheless, I was not getting ahead financially. I was simply traveling in the financial footsteps of my father.

Then I met Dick Oakley of the PACE seminars. He is the one who told me I was driving with my brakes on. He helped me formulate the affirmation that eventually took me up the financial ladder. It went like this...

"I earn, easily and consistently, $40,000 per year."

Let's take that apart. First of all, this goal was a true WANT as I explained earlier. That's important. Second, the $40,000 per year, even though it was more than twice my current income, was still within my belief system. It was big enough to be exciting yet small enough to be do-able within my beliefs. It was also stated in the first person, present tense as though I had already accomplished it. This is important because I was conditioning new consistent thoughts. I needed my system to get the idea that this was my true self image NOW--not that it would be that way someday in the future. I did not view this as lying to myself. Rather, I saw it as the purposeful conditioning of my financial thoughts. That is a big distinction and one that must be acknowledged if progress is to be made.

To me, the truly elegant part of that affirmation was the "easily and consistently" wording. Please note that I didn't say, "I do whatever it takes" or any other "will power" type of phraseology. In my opinion, if we resort to will power for anything, our odds of permanent achievement are quite small. We may temporarily achieve our goal through "gritting our teeth, clenching our fists and doing what must be done" but, in most cases, we will simply revert back to our previous status. Why? Because we haven't changed our consistent thoughts. As a result, our resident consistent thoughts will pull us back into our previous "reality." Will power, if successful, tends to provide temporary results and that's all.

So I began saying that affirmation 20 to 30 times per day. I wrote it down in the morning on a piece of scratch paper. I said it 2 or 3 times over breakfast. I said it many times in my car as I was driving throughout the day. I said it at night between my mashed potatoes and string beans and I said it just before I went to bed. To me, it was a beautiful phrase. It depicted a state which I truly wanted and believed was possible.

As I was saying this, incidentally, I was not operating under a time deadline by which it had to be accomplished. I didn’t know how long it would take to condition my mind and to overwrite some "old stuff." So I was willing to wait it out. I did NOT make more cold calls nor did I go to work earlier or get home later. I just kept doing what I had always done to earn $18,000 per year and let the mental conditioning move me naturally in the proper direction.

I also had some models that I admired. There were two men in my insurance agency, Merv Dowd and Jim Placak, that were seasoned in the business and were earning $80,000 to $100,000 per year. They seemed relaxed, composed. They were doing it "easily and consistently." If they could do it, so could I.

Along the way I found myself writing in a journal about the "new me." Nobody told me to do this. I just did it. I would write down all the details of what it would be like. I would write about how it would feel to get those larger paychecks and pay the mortgage as though it was nothing. I fantasized being in my new car with the leather upholstery. I wrote about talking to the rest of the agency about "how to do it" just as though I was Merv Dowd or Jim Placak.

Then I started Daydreaming about it. Nobody told me to do that either. I just did it. This was really fun. I did it mostly while driving on the freeway between sales call. I would spend a half an hour on the freeway in that "in-between" state wherein our minds tend to drift off into daydreams. I call it "Highway Hypnosis." The only difference was that I purposely shifted those daydreams to my "easily and consistently" financial goal. Our imaginations are really fun if we allow ourselves to use them. In no time I had myself way beyond $40,000 per year. I was, in my mind, the nation's most renowned expert on life insurance and was perpetually asked to give speeches around the country. I had 20 employees keeping track of all the business I was generating. What fun! Was I just fantasizing? No! I was doing more than that. I was setting my sights higher. I was moving that balance point between my limiting thoughts and my empowering thoughts into new territory. That is how change is made. It starts with a thought and builds into a dream. The dream then takes us in a new direction. How true. How basic. How simple.

After about two months of this, there was still no noticeable change in my income. However, I did notice that my previous negative financial thoughts about (1) rich people being greedy, (2) my father’s view of "profits" and (3) the notion of salespeople being pests seemed to have faded. Interesting. This is the kind of thing that EFT does so well but, in my case, the simple overwriting of this negative writing by big doses of the positive seemed to do the job. I still had a little of that "pest" thing but it was nowhere near what it was.

Actually, I STILL have some of that "pest" thing about salespeople, but now it has a different flavor to it. My perception is that some salespeople are pests but professional salespeople (like me) are not. I used to think, "all salespeople are pests." Now I think, "salespeople without integrity are pests. The rest perform a valuable service." How’s that for a healthy (and true) distinction? It came from my Affirmations and Daydreams and has become a permanent foundation under my business success. It was a major reframe that happened as a natural consequence of purposefully thinking outside of my "limits."

Please notice that at no time did I try to formulate the "how" of what I was Affirming and Daydreaming. To do so is a major mistake. Most people try to figure out how to achieve their goals before they begin conditioning their thoughts in that direction. Then, if they don’t find an acceptable "how," they won’t bother doing the affirmations, etc. Who wants to affirm something that will only lead them into an unacceptable "how?"

In my case, my "how" would have included making more cold calls (ugh!), getting up earlier in the morning, working on weekends, sacrificing time with my family AND (the big one—ta da!!) calling on wealthier people that were "bigger than me (Gulp!)" Oh my! How could I possibly call on business owners that had employees and were making more money in a month than I made in a year? Why would they listen to me? I was too young. I didn’t have enough experience. I wasn’t on their level. I didn’t belong among these successful people because they were all "bigger than me."

Do you hear a big time "inside job" here? I hope so. It seemed so real to me at the time because it was clearly written on my walls. It was the "truth" as I understood it. I may have felt "good enough" (thanks to my Mom’s writing on my walls) but I wasn’t "big enough" (thanks to other writing on my walls).

So, if I had tried to figure out the "how" ahead of time, I would have become discouraged and may never have started. Instead, I recognized that just conditioning my thoughts (without confining the process within my "hows") would allow my Antenna to do its job. My job was simply to start the ball rolling by aiming Affirmations and Daydreaming at a clear WANT (goal). The rest of the process, including the "how," would unfold quite naturally.

After about three months into the process, the notion of calling on bigger prospects began to occur to me without the same intensity as usual. Somehow, it seemed more do-able. My mental conditioning appeared to be taking me in the desired direction although I still wasn’t ready to start calling on all these "big people." My antenna then gave me the answer. Why not imagine calling on these "big people" with the same comfort as if they were on my level? If I could do this with other parts of my life, why not this one? So I began Daydreaming about speaking with business owners as though they were my fraternity brothers sitting down with me at the local tavern for a beer (just like I used to do in my younger days). I Daydreamed this with frequency and found great friendship and comfort within the process.

Over and over again I would imagine this. I would cut photos of business owners out of newspapers and talk with them as though they were my fraternity brothers. I’m convinced that EFT would have gotten me past this much more quickly but, alas, EFT was not around at the time. Eventually I conditioned myself to have this comfort level and began calling on business owners. My age, relative inexperience, etc. were factors in how I came across, of course, but so were my enthusiasm, vigor, forthrightness, etc.

Calling on business owners became a fun thing to do and many became my clients and friends. They were actually more fun to work with than those who, like me, made $18,000 per year. They were better decision makers and their decisions always involved larger policies. In short order I began wondering why I ever delayed doing this. Calling on "bigger people" was actually easy. Soon, I considered myself to be on their level, a respected advisor. And I’ve never looked back. To this day, there is no one on the planet whom I consider "bigger than me." Some may be wealthier, better known or whatever. But that doesn’t make them bigger than me.

As you might imagine, within a year I was earning at the rate of $40,000 per year. So I raised my affirmation to earning "easily and consistently" $60,000 per year. Then I went to $80,000, $100,000 and on up to $400,000 where I finally got bored with it and realized I had other goals (of a spiritual nature) I would rather achieve.

Each level of income increase brought with it an elevated level of my "abundance awareness" until, eventually, I concluded that money was nothing but energy that reflected one’s thoughts on the subject. Then I realized that this is true of everything. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it. This is true of money, friendships, marriage, parenting and Sunday football games. These things are good or bad, fun or burdensome, light or heavy, etc. depending on what is written on our walls.

The meaning of everything is written on our walls. They are our consistent thoughts and, like it or not, our consistent thoughts become our reality.

Hugs, Gary

The Palace of Possibilities 17--Martha's money blocks

Hi Everyone,

Over the past week I received several questions and challenges regarding "Palace Principles" and how to apply them. Thank you. I'm going to spend the next few installments covering some of these inquiries because they provide us with "real life" examples.

The first one comes from "Martha" who has money blocks. She says….

"One of my "yes, buts" about making lots of money is finding myself in a higher income tax bracket. Thus……

1. If I earned more $, I'd have to pay more taxes.

2. If I earned more $, I might be in a higher tax bracket and have to pay more of what I earn now in taxes.

3. Tax money is used for good things like roads and feeding the poor, but most of each tax dollar I pay goes for destruction. According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation, in Fiscal Year 1996, 24.4% of actual outlays (excluding trust funds) or $279.4 billion was for current military expenses. 18.5% ($221.8 billion) was for past military expenses. Thus, 42.9% of the FY1996 Federal Fund budget was related to military spending."

So if Martha were to use an affirmation like, "I earn, easily and consistently, $____________ per year," she would be stopped by the above tail enders. They would cause conflict within her and thwart the affirmation.

This is a rather common money tail ender and that's why I chose to address it first. I spy another tail ender within her words and we will address that later. But the first level is that, to Martha, earning more money means more taxes that finance destruction. This needs to be dealt with if her affirmation is going to pull her into more financially abundant tomorrows.

Are her beliefs true? Sure. I don't know anyone who disagrees with them and, in my opinion, she should be heralded for her concerns. However, her way of dealing with this wider social problem is simply to curtail her earnings. In the scheme of things, this is not a very loud voice for fiscal/military reform. In fact, the only one who gets the true impact of her "sacrifice for social good" is Martha. The writing on Martha's walls has set her up to feel resentful and/or guilty about earning more money. Think about this bind. If she earns more money she will feel resentful and/or guilty. If she earns less money, she will approach poverty. That's a no win deal. Not one person on the planet is better off because of it. Not even Martha.

My approach to this would be to reframe her link with these negative consequences for earning more money. However, I would want to pave the way first by using EFT on any resentment and/or guilt that may be lingering within her system. It is one thing to be aware of the tax/military situation and to have concerns about it. It is quite another to have unrealistic resentment and guilt. I might start with…

"Even though I resent paying more taxes and having part of it spent for destruction…."

"Even though I feel guilty about the destruction that my tax dollars are funding…"

Remember, we are not taking away the reality of the situation, only her unnecessary limiting emotions. My guess is that this tapping will take us down other paths, all of which will lead to tappable money blocks.

With diminished resentment and guilt (and whatever other tapping issues arise) we are ready to conversationally explore some reframes. I find reframing, by the way, a remarkably easy process when competing emotions have been minimized. This assumes, of course, that the reframes are ecological within the client's perspective.

For example, I might explore the tax laws with Martha and bring to her attention her legal right to give about half of her income to a tax exempt charity. That means she could double her income and give half of it away to a charity that promotes peace. This would leave her with the same net income (and taxes) that she is used to and, at the same time, materially help fund an organization whose aim is to alleviate the destructive ways of our civilization.

Further, if she was really adamant about ending the world's destructive tendencies, she could form her own charitable organization and raise $millions for peaceful purposes. As an employee of her own charitable organization she has available to her additional tax breaks that would allow her to increase her standard of living without paying any more taxes. Further her charitable organization could pay for all of the travel expenses, meals, car, etc. that are necessary in her missionary pursuit. Further still, the $millions she might raise from others would be exempt from taxes. Thus she could, by her efforts, siphon away sizeable resources from the military machine. Perhaps she could even justify drawing a larger salary knowing that her extra income taxes would be a mere fraction of what she would be diverting away from the tax collector.

The nice thing about these reframes is that, like all effective reframes, they are absolutely true. They are, indeed, irrefutable. If, in fact, Martha's "higher tax tail ender" is the only thing in her way then she could begin using affirmations and daydreams designed to pull her into an exciting future--perhaps even a mission. She could affirm…

"As President of the Peaceful Pursuits Foundation, I joyfully use our $5 million to influence the quality of life for everyone."

She could daydream as though she is currently in this position, imagining (1) the decisions she is now making, (2) the look on other's faces as peace comes to their country, (3) her own feelings of accomplishment, (4) her television appearances, etc. Remember, dreams don't necessarily come true but they DO take you in directions.

Once EFT has freed her from the original limiting emotions, she is free to affirm and daydream. This is, of course, "erasing and replacing" the financial writing on Martha's walls so that new consistent thoughts can become her new reality. In my experience, she is likely to let go of the original link altogether and allow herself to earn $500,000 or more. With her Antenna set in motion, the "hows" will start appearing, more options will open up and she will soon move into her new residence on Abundance Avenue.

If there are no more competing tail enders, then Martha is on her way. EFT will have erased the negative financial writing on her walls thereby giving her much needed Belief Relief. This allows the affirmations and daydreams to do their "replacement thing" by installing wording that will pull her into the tomorrows of her choice.

However, I said earlier that I spied another tail ender within her words. I could be wrong, of course, but if the aforementioned affirmations and daydreams "aren't working" it will be because one or more other tail enders are surfacing. Here is the one I suspect is lurking in the background for Martha.

"I have to work hard for my money and I'll be darned if I'll give a bigger a piece of my sweat to the government."

That "have to work hard for my money" mantra is rather standard writing on our walls. Most of us have been conditioned from childhood that we must work hard for our money. Many of us have writing on our walls that says, "A hard day's work for an honest day's pay." That's nice sounding, of course, but boy what a fiction! It's a financial prison of our own making. It says that if we earn a lot of money without getting worn into the ground, we must be dishonest, lazy, lucky, non-spiritual or something negative like that. Absurd.

Let me draw a distinction on this "work hard" thing. To me, working hard means efforting at an unrewarding job in order to eke out a paycheck. Oh Gawd, how miserable! By contrast, one who is enthusiastically pursuing their goal or mission may be putting in far more hours than someone confined in the "work hard" prison. But, to me, they aren't working. They are playing.

If I had been chained by the "work hard" limit, my original affirmation that said, "I earn, easily and consistently, $____________ per year" would have sputtered in a hurry. The "easily and consistently" part just doesn't jive with the "work hard" belief.

Incidentally, many psychotherapists have a form of this limit written on their walls. Many are conditioned to think that the way to do business is to charge so much per hour and see so many clients in a day. That leads to a real limit because there are only so many hours in the day. Further, it completely ignores other avenues such as being a consultant to corporations, a trainer, an author, a speaker, a workshop leader, one who handles 50 clients at a time (certainly feasible with EFT), a sports performance coach or, Heaven forbid, charging by the RESULT instead of the hour. There are more options, of course. Let your Antenna find the "hows" for you. It's a fun thing to do. Chances are, you have chosen only one option out of the many available? If so, why? It wouldn't have anything to do with the writing on your walls, would it?

We all have "limits" written on our walls which our affirmations and daydreams, properly pursued, will bring to the surface. That's what's so elegant about the Palace of Possibilities procedures. Our "limits," by the way, are only to be observed, not criticized. After all, the vast majority of them were written on our walls by well meaning parents, teachers, peers, etc. We were young at the time and simply bought them without realizing they represent the fictional "limits" of other people. However, we don't have to keep them. We are discovering that we have an exchange privilege. How nice.

Cheers, Gary

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