Mind Into Money

 

This guest post is by Jon Morrow of Copyblogger.

After all, that’s the dream, right?

Forget the mansions and limousines and other trappings of Hollywood-style wealth. Sure, it would be nice, but for the most part, we bloggers are simpler souls with much kinder dreams.

We want to quit our jobs, spend more time with our families, and finally have time to write. We want the freedom to work when we want, where we want. We want our writing to help people, to inspire them, to change them from the inside out.

It’s a modest dream, a dream that deserves to come true, and yet a part of you might be wondering…

Will it?

Do you really have what it takes to be a professional blogger, or are you just being dumb? Is it realistic to make enough money from this to quit your job, or is that just silly? Can you really expect people to fall in love with what you write, or is that just wishful thinking?

Sure, it’s fun to dream about your blog taking off and changing your life, but sometimes you wonder if it’s just that: a dream. This is the real world, and in the real world, dreams don’t really come true.

Right?

Well, let me tell you a little story…

How I quit my job

In April of 2006, I was hit by a car going 85 miles an hour.

I didn’t see him coming, and I don’t remember much about the accident, but I do remember being pulled out of my minivan with my shirt on fire. The front end of the van was torn off, gasoline was everywhere, and my legs were broken in 14 places.

For the next three months, I had nothing to do but endure the pain and think about my life. I thought about my childhood. I thought about my dreams. I thought about my career.

And overall, I decided I didn’t like the way things were going.

So I quit.

I sold everything I owned. I stopped paying most of my bills. I turned in my letter of resignation, worked my two weeks, and then disappeared without saying goodbye.

Hearing about my insanity, a friend called and asked me, “Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe start a blog.”

And so that’s what I did.

For the next three months, I didn’t just tinker around with blogging. I dedicated myself to it. I started work at 8 AM in the morning, and I kept going until 11 PM at night. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t see my friends. From morning till night, I was writing, reading, and connecting with other bloggers. Nothing else.

Within a month, I had On Moneymaking off the ground, and within two months, it was getting 2,000 visitors a day and Performancing nominated it for the best business/money blog of the year. A couple of months after that, Brian Clark asked me to become the Associate Editor of Copyblogger, and so I sold On Moneymaking for five figures and went to work at one of the most popular blogs at the world.

And amazingly, that’s just the beginning of the story.

How I moved to paradise

Have you ever woken up one day and realized you secretly despise everything about where you live?

The weather is horrible. Your neighbors are jerks. You don’t like inviting anyone to your home, because it’s always a wreck, and you’re ashamed of how it looks.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to me in January of 2009. I was sitting in my pathetic apartment, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm, trying to get some work done on the computer, when it struck me how monumentally stupid it was.

I was a full-time blogger, for God’s sakes. I could do my work from anywhere in the world. Why on Earth was I living in this hellhole?

The only problem was I had no idea where I wanted to go, but a couple of weeks later, the telephone rang, and it was an old friend who had retired to Mazatlan, Mexico. As usual, he was calling to gloat about the weather and the food and the general superiority of the Mexican lifestyle, but instead of just suffering through it this time, I stopped him and said, “No, don’t tell me any more. I’m moving there.”

“What? When?” he stammered.

“I don’t know exactly when,” I told him, “but I’m starting right now.”

Two months later, I took a one-week trip to scout it out and look for places to live. When I got back, I started selling all of my stuff, packing the rest of it into storage, and saying goodbye to friends. Almost one year to the day after our phone call, I hopped in the car and drove just shy of 3,000 miles to my new beachfront condo in the finest resort in Mazatlan.                  my office

As I write this, I’m sitting on my balcony with my laptop, watching (no kidding) dolphins jumping out in the Pacific. It’s a sunny day, there’s a nice breeze, and I’m thinking about ordering a piña colada from the restaurant downstairs.

Lucky me, right?

Well, what might surprise you is I left out a piece of the story. It’s the part where I have a fatal disease, I can’t move from the neck down, and yet I essentially get paid to help people. Let’s talk about that part next.

How I get paid to change the world

You know what’s funny?

yours truly

The worst part about having a disease like SMA isn’t how everyone treats you like a charity case. It’s not the frustration, anger, or depression. It’s not even the inability to reach over and pinch a cute girl’s butt when you want to (although that’s pretty bad).

No, the worst part is the freakin’ bills.  The doctors. The medication. The nurses.

I added it all up, and the total cost of keeping me alive in the US was $127,000 a year. That’s not rent. That’s not food. That’s just medical expenses.

Granted, I didn’t actually have to pay all that. I had private insurance, Medicaid, other government aid programs, but all that support comes at a price: they control you. The government allotted me only $700 a month to live on, and I had to spend every single cent above that on medical expenses, or they would cut me off.

So for years, that’s what I did. If I made $5,000 one month, I set aside $700 for living expenses, and I spent the other $4,300 on medical bills. Nothing was left. Ever.

And eventually, I got sick of it.

I wanted to make money without having to worry about losing my healthcare. I wanted to take care of my family, instead of them always having to take care of me. I wanted to actually live somewhere nice, not some ratty little apartment built for folks below the poverty line.

The only problem was, it just wasn’t possible for me in US. No matter how I played with the numbers, I couldn’t make it work. So, I did something crazy:

I quit Medicaid. I moved to Mexico. I stopped worrying about myself at all and started a business based on one simple idea:

Helping people.

I found up-and-coming writers who wanted a mentor, and I trained them. I found businesses who wanted to cash in on social media, and I developed their strategy. I found bloggers who wanted more traffic, and I created a course on how to get it.

In exchange, they paid me what they could. Some folks gave me $50 an hour and others $300 an hour, but I treated them all the same, and I dedicated myself to making their dreams a reality.

The results?

Within two months, I was making so much money so fast PayPal shut down my account under suspicions of fraudulent activity. Today, not only am I making more than enough to take care of myself, but a couple of months ago, I got uppity and bought my father a car.

Do you understand how precious that is? For a guy who can’t move from the neck down to buy his father a car?

And the best part is, I’m not making money doing mindless drudgery. I’m changing people’s lives.

Every day, I get emails from readers who say my posts have changed their thinking. Every day, I get emails from students who say my advice has changed their writing. Every day, I get emails from clients who say my strategies have changed the way they do business.

I can’t really believe it. Normally, a guy like me would be wasting away in a nursing home somewhere, watching television and waiting to die, but here I am speaking into a microphone and essentially getting paid to change the world. If my fingers worked, I’d pinch myself.

And here’s the thing:

I don’t want it for just me. I want it for you too.

The reason I told you this whole story wasn’t just to brag but also to convince you of one incontrovertible point:

YOU CAN DO THIS!

You want to quit your job and become a professional blogger?

You can.

You want to travel around the world, living life to its fullest?

You can.

You want to dedicate your every hour to helping people and making the world a better place?

You can.

Because listen … I know it’s horribly cliché, but if I can quit my job, risk the government carting me off to a nursing home because I can’t afford my own healthcare, convince my poor mother to abandon her career and drive my crippled butt 3,000 miles to a foreign country, and then make enough money to support myself, my mother, my father, and an entire nursing staff using nothing but my voice, then what can you accomplish if you really set your mind to it?

My guess: pretty much anything.

No, it won’t be easy. At some point, I guarantee you’ll want to quit. I guarantee people will treat you like you’re insane. I guarantee you’ll cry yourself to sleep, wondering if you made a horrible mistake.

But never stop believing in yourself. The world is full of naysayers, all of them eager to shout you down at the slightest indication you might transcend mediocrity, but the greatest sin you can commit is to yourself become one of them. Our job isn’t to join that group, but to silence it, to accomplish things so great and unimaginable that its members are too awed to speak.

You can do it.

I believe in you.

So get started.

Right freaking now.

 

isnt this just amazing!!

-Rob

 

Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University, became famous – well, at least well known – with the publication of her book, The Gnostic Gospels, in 1979. She has written several other books as well on the history of Christianity, establishing her as the foremost popular scholar in the field.

 

Beyond Belief, published in 2003 by Random House, is a sort of sequel to The Secret Gospels, in that it incorporates the new scholarship that has come to light since that book was published. Since Ms. Pagels’ infant son was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary hypertension, her pursuit of knowledge about who Jesus really was has become a question of personal urgency for her. This need is reflected in the text and transforms the book into much more than a scholarly treatise for the curious. She wants to know what Christ meant to his followers before doctrine and dogmas, in other words, before Christianity was invented by the Church.

 

The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, along with other early Christian texts, offers revealing clues. Pagels compares Thomas’s gospel (which claims to give Jesus’ secret teaching, and indicates an affinity with the Kabbalah) with the canonic texts to show how the early Church chose to include some gospels and exclude others from the collection we know as the New Testament – and why. During the time of persecution of Christians, the church fathers constructed the canon, creed and hierarchy, suppressing many of its spiritual resources in the process, in order to avoid conflict with Roman law and religion.

 

A prime example is the label of heresy attached to the Gospel of Thomas, and its subsequent suppression. If a copy hadn’t been found by accident (or destiny?) in the caves of Nag Hammadi, along with many other documents during the middle of the twentieth century, we’d have never even known of its existence. Such secret writings had been denounced by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon (c.180) as “an abyss of madness, and blasphemy against Christ.” Pagels had therefore expected to find madness and blasphemy in these texts, but when she first studied them in Harvard graduate school she found the contrary in sayings such as this from Thomas. “Jesus said: If you bring forth what is within you, what you will bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. Pagels found that “..the strength of this saying is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves; and, with a shock of recognition, I realized that this perspective seemed to me to be self-evidently true.”

 

However, certain church leaders from the second through the fourth centuries rejected many of these sources of revelation and constructed instead the New Testament gospel canon of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which has defined Christianity to this day. The Gospel of John is of special importance in church dogma, and its basic tenets seem to be in direct opposition to Thomas. John says that he writes “so that you may believe, and believing may have life in [Jesus’] name.” Thomas’s gospel, however, encourages us not so much tobelieve in Jesus, as John demands, as to seek to know God through one’s own, divinely given capacity, since all are created in the image of God. “For Christians of later generations, the Gospel of John helped provide a foundation for a unified church, which Thomas, with its emphasis on each person’s search for God, did not.”

 

According to Pagels, John is the only evangelist who actually states that Jesus is God incarnated. But not only Pagels says so. In one of his commentaries on John, Origen – a church father, (c.240)  - writes that while the other gospels describe Jesus as human, “none of them clearly spoke of his divinity, as John does.” One may object that the other three, synoptic (“seeing together”) gospels call Jesus “son of God”, and this is virtually the same thing. But such titles (son of God, messiah) in Jesus’ time designated human, not divine roles. When translated into English fifteen centuries later, these were capitalized – a linguistic convention that does not occur in the original Greek. When all four gospels, together with Paul’s letters, were united in the New Testament (c. 160 to 360) most Christians had come to read all four through John’s lens, that Jesus is “Lord and God”.

 

Pagels feels that if the Gospel of Thomas were included in the New Testament instead of that of John, or even if it were included along with John, the development of Christianity would have been quite different. Whereas Mark, Matthew and Luke identify Jesus as God’s human agent, John and Thomas characterize him as God’s own light in human form. Both claim to reveal, at least to a certain extent, Jesus’ “secret teachings”, and assume that their readers are already familiar with the synoptic gospels.

 

Despite their similarities, John and Thomas point the secret teachings in sharply different directions. John claims that we can experience God only through the divine light embodied in Jesus, while Thomas says that the divine light embodied in Jesus is already shared by humanity since we are all made “in the image of God”. Thomas thus expresses what would become a central theme of Jewish, and later Christian, mysticism a thousand years later: that the “image of God” is hidden within everyone, and it is a question of recognizing this and finding it through one’s own efforts.      

 

(On the question of Jesus’ divinity, Rudolf Steiner – not consulted by Pagels –  offered an interesting solution: that Jesus was indeed a human being, but that “a god”, Christ, incarnated in him at the moment of baptism in the Jordan.) 

 

At one point in her description of the dispute among the early Christians about who Jesus really was, Pagels quotes Mark: …he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.“ And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the messiah.” In view of this passage, it has always seemed contradictory to me the contention that Christianity – and Judaism – do not embrace the idea of reincarnation, even reject it, when these first Jewish Christians seem to act as though it were common knowledge.

 

The synoptic gospels claim that Jesus’ teaching predicted the coming of the kingdom of God some time in the future, an interpretation still adhered to by many Christians. However, both John and Thomas say something different, the latter very specifically: Jesus said, If those who lead you say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky’, then the birds of the sky will get there before you….If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will get there before you. And: His disciples said to him, ‘When will the resurrection of the dead come, and when will the new world come?’ He said to them, ‘What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.’

 

Though the Gospel of Luke includes an alternative version of the same idea (“…the kingdom of God is within you”), Luke later retreats from this position and concludes with the apocalyptic warning that the Son of Man is not a divine presence in us all but a terrifying judge.

 

A century ago Leo Tolstoy, in his monumental The Kingdom of God is Within you, urged Christians to give up coercion and violence in order to realize God’s kingdom here and now. Thomas Merton, the twentieth century writer and Trappist monk, agreed with Tolstoy but interpreted his kingdom mystically rather then practically. We are confronted here with the Catholic church’s insistence that humanity is sinful, base and unworthy by nature and that salvation from the pangs of hell is only possible through faith in Jesus and, by obvious extension, his church, and his representative on earth, the pope. But the Gospel of Thomas leaves spiritual destiny up to each individual. There Jesus treats us as equals, or at least as struggling siblings:

 

“According to Thomas, Jesus rebukes those who seek access to God elsewhere, even—perhaps especially—those who seek it by trying to “follow Jesus” himself. When certain disciples plead with Jesus to “show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it,” he does not bother to answer so misguided a question and redirects the disciples away from themselves toward the light hidden within each person: ‘There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole universe; If it does not shine, there is darkness.’ In other words, one either discovers the light within that illuminates ‘the whole universe’ or lives in darkness, within and without.”  

 

Finally, after so many centuries, the heretics are having their say. Another most interesting document found at Nag Hammadi is the Gospel of Philip, who explains baptism. Sometimes the person who receives baptism “receives the holy spirit…this is what happens when one experiences a mystery.” Divine grace, this implies, isn’t sufficient; the initiate’s capacity for spiritual understanding is also a factor. “Faith is our earth, in which we take root; hope is the water through which we are nourished; love is the air through which we grow; gnosis is the light through which we become fully grown.

Our beliefs create our reality. Our beliefs set the parameters for how life can operate in our world. They determine what we are able to perceive therefore how the world occurs for us. With our beliefs we limit the infinite possibilities of creation, denying and rejecting the aspects of life that are outside our beliefs. This is not to say that beliefs create reality. Our beliefs don’t create other people’s reality only our own. They have their own beliefs creating there own reality.

We connect to reality through our senses and our working memory. The working memory refers to how information is stored in an accessible way. It is similar to the cache on your computer. Our senses receive so much information about our surroundings in every second that we would go crazy if it was all registered into our system. To manage all of this data, chemicals are attached to specific nervous input to signify its importance. Chemicals like adrenaline might be attached to the perception of headlights after being in a car accident. This way your system knows and remembers headlights are dangerous. Other aspects of our surroundings go untagged by hormones, and go unnoticed. It is as if these aspects unmarked aspects don’t even exist.

Beliefs are generated from the past. As in the case of the car accident, when the sensory input and the hormone communicate to your body, together they form a belief. Maybe, something like driving at night is dangerous. To your body, every time you see headlights the accident is happening. You are feeling panic from the adrenaline so our brain knows you’re in danger. This is constantly happening. What is being perceived now is actually hormones tagged on from past experiences and the hormones being attached to current sensory input are creating the future quality of your perception.

 

Ok this isn’t difficult…create your reality

You create your reality. You create your own happiness (or lack thereof). You determine what your day will be like each day. You can learn from it, or get upset by it. You can let it out and let it go, or stew in it.

The”oh poor pitiful me” stuff that comes from people is so tiresome. There are people with REAL issues. People I know have seriously ill children, handicapped children, their homes destroyed, and more. Yet others who claim to be good people do nothing but voice words, and then tell you about their issues. Their issues are dust in the wind compared to the real issues people have. Do they lift a finger to help the ones who have serious issues????….not a pinky rises from the computer or lounge chair.

I have friends that have helped MY friends that they don’t even know! Send money, give items….to people they DON’T KNOW…yet others who are”good friends” of people in real distress, do nothing but flap their gums.

People ask”why” a lot. The”whys” are very easy to see from the outside looking in. My favorite lately was”no one ever bothers to call me and tell me….”. (That has been like a repetitive message from all over lately, 4 times in the past week.) Really? Does your phone not dial out???? Mine does, I am sure yours does too.  People sometimes don’t”call” because they already heard your”oh woe is me”,tale 400 times. People don’t call because you just bad mouth others the whole time you are on the phone. People don’t call because they know that you talk behind other people’s backs and don’t want to be a part of the knife sticking out between someone’s shoulder blades, or the next victim.  People don’t call because they really don’t want to talk to you…..the old joke”He never liked you”, comes to mind. People don’t call becasue you don’t know when to stop talking. When no one calls you, you are the common denominator. Why don’t people want to talk to you???

People were not put on this planet to serve other people. Even if you do have a hangnail and the dog peed on the carpet that morning. Who cares? Stuff happens, it happens to everyone. It is the people who handle it well that have friends around them. People who call them, text them and email them, visit them and help them.

I have chronically ill friends and I don’t hear about their ills every day (thank goodness), and they don’t hear about my problems. When there is an issue, I ask certain people what their take is on things, and go from there. The next day, it is over, I don’t ask them 200 more times or expect them to call me every day and see what is up. Too many people need constant attention and even DRAMA in their lives. When you thrive on drama, the Universe sends you drama, obviously you like it, right? Some people have drama becasue they chose a hard path, they handle it well.You can see the difference.

I do check on friends, and they check on me. When you are a person that shouts from the rooftop everyday how bad your life is, do they really expect people to ask how things are going? They already know, and they really don’t want a 3 hour conversation on who did what to who, and who didn’t call, and who didn’t talk to you at a party…..who cares???? Seriously.

Here is my complaint, I have done all I can for some people with out even a”thank you”, or an”I got your package”. I have had people who claim to be friends and even say they consider me family, who can’t be bothered to say”Happy anniversary” or”Happy Birthday”. Then they wonder where I am in their lives. I already put them in the basement. Relationships of any kind are a 2 way street. When people repeatedly take and never give, they aren’t friends, they are ticks.

The flip side is people I have helped who manage to give me all I need… a”thank you”. That’s it. They are in touch, they participate in our lives. We have real friends that are there all the time. When we need help, which isn’t often, we have it. When you cry and ask for help everyday and your life is not a disaster, people won’t listen after a while. Remember the boy who cried wolf?

We have friends that call, not just when it serves their needs, or when they need to tell us how terrible their life is…but to talk, laugh, invite us places. We do the same in return. I have a standing date every month where I have lunch with friends.Just because we want to have lunch. We also have bonfires every month in the warmer weather, and invite our friends. We go places with groups to do things of common interest. These are things that friends do.We informally teach and learn. We share stories and laughter.

I know people have difficulties, but when you complain that no one is throwing you a pity party, you need to know that is the EXACT reason why there is no party. People aren’t on this earth to make you feel better. There are times in extreme circumstances that immediate attention is needed. But when you want attention everyday because you broke your leg in 1990, you need to wake up and get over it.

If you want friends, you need to BE a friend. When people get tiresome, you move on. When you have to hold on to people who annoy, upset, and irritate you, then you really need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Why don’t you have real friends? Why do you have to keep people around you that you really don’t even like? Those aren’t friends. Even if you have one person that you can depend on, and that person is not there to make you feel better every day, you are doing good. When you have a bunch of them, then you are rich.

I am that kind of rich, and that keeps me from beating on my chest for attention.

You create your reality. Create a good one. Creating drama, despair, upset, pity and anger, bring those things to you.

I help others, not complain about my life to them. I joke, laugh, and give advice. I show up for their events as much as possible, and invite them to mine. It works much better than bitching about my life everyday to them….trust me. When your life stinks…TURN IT AROUND. Only you can do that. No one said it would be easy, but even when it’s hard it can still be fun!

It isn’t difficult. When people ask why they have issues or no fiends, I tell them…they usually don’t like the answer…yet if it makes one person grow a little, it is worth it.

Ask yourself…….Would you have you for a friend?????

 

“There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.  A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.  Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.”  

 ”The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Wattles

The Science of Getting Rich was the inspiration behind Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret”. The excerpt from above is the core principle of the book.  All matter and experience begins with thought.