TIP 94
KEEP AN ACE UP YOUR SLEEVE
Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.
The secret to attracting everything you want in life is to not want anything—another big catch-22. Why is it that when we don’t want something, it is easy to get it? Have you ever noticed that the guy or gal whom you aren’t the least bit interested in keeps calling? I’ve read plenty of books that tell you to detach yourself from the outcome, but how in the world can you when you want something so badly you can taste it? And there are just as many books that say the opposite, that you should pursue the object of your desire with single-minded passion. The problem is that you have to do both. To attract what you want you need to want it with all your heart, and at the same time not need it or have to have it.
This is no small task. The easiest way to detach yourself from the outcome is to have something in reserve, an ace up your sleeve so to speak. It also helps to focus on getting your needs met first. This reduces your neediness and automatically increases your ability to attract what you want (Tip 43).
The next step is to keep your options open and to have a lot of options (Tip 95). If you really want one particular job, it helps to have offers from a number of other places too so that you increase your bargaining power. If you rely on one person or organization to meet your needs, you’ll soon be in trouble because you will become too dependent and end up repelling them (Tip 44). If you are totally wild about a particular man or woman, you can balance this by going out with friends and other dates. Notice that you can still be passionate about the person or job, but you don’t need either of them so much anymore. The less you need them, the more likely they will want you around.
Take writing this book for instance. I am passionate about coaching and about helping people achieve happy and successful lives. I very much want the book to be wildly successful, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to help that process along, but I am not relying on this book to pay the mortgage. I have a successful coaching company, and that is paying the bills. The book is a bonus. If I depended on this book for income, I would have been desperate to find an agent and a publisher and probably would have scared them off. People can sniff out desperation a mile away. As it was, I was able to relax and enjoy the publishing process. I had an intention to attract a terrific agent, and I found one of the best in the business with very little effort. And she did the hard work of finding the right publisher. I also kept the option of self-publishing in the event that no publisher was interested. On the other hand, if I were totally blasé about writing the book, I never would have been able to go through with the process because it is an incredible amount of work. My passion is what kept me writing on a sunny weekend when everyone else was off to the Hamptons to laze around on the beach. I didn’t see this as a sacrifice because I thoroughly enjoyed the process with all of its ups and downs and challenges.
A client, Maxine, was in sales, and she was struggling. She found it almost impossible to make cold calls and dreaded people hanging up on her with the comment, “I hear from about 20 people like you a day—leave off, will you!” which unfortunately was par for the course in her line of work. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Maxine wasn’t happy. She was attached to the result of getting an appointment with every single call and felt like a failure if she didn’t get one. We changed her focus. Maxine’s new goal was to make the 25 calls a day and just develop relationships with people. She didn’t have to sell them anything. She didn’t have to convince them or persuade them to set up an appointment. Her new focus was on getting to know people, and her attitude was one of, “How can I help?” Maxine is a very sociable and likable person with tons of friends, so this new goal sounded like a lot more fun. Once she took the pressure off, she could relax and be herself. Immediately her results improved. She started getting to know the clients and finding out what their needs were instead of trying to pitch her service. Once she detached herself from the result and stopped trying to force the outcome, the numbers she wanted came effortlessly.
Another key to detaching yourself from the outcome is to enjoy the process so much that the result doesn’t matter. Only a handful of people, when asked what they would change about their lives if they were to win a million dollars, would say, “Not a thing. I would keep on doing the same thing I do today because I love doing it.” Now that is a life worth living. I read a story in Forbes about the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet, and one multibillionaire lived in a modest, perfectly ordinary home and wore perfectly ordinary clothes. His passion in life was his work, and he didn’t care a whit about stuff.
Ask yourself the hard questions: Would you still love if you didn’t receive love in return? If you loved to write but never sold your story or book, would you still write? Would you stop working if you didn’t get recognition or achieve a certain status? Think for a moment about why you do the things you do. Is it for the end result, or is it for the pure pleasure of doing it? Start structuring your entire life so that you do only the things you enjoy—that is the ultimate success. You can begin in one small area and let the momentum carry to all areas of your life.
Where in your life are you trying to force a certain outcome? What do you have to have in your life to be happy? Look to see what other options you can create and find other ways to get your needs met, and you will be twice as likely to attract the thing you want because you don’t have to have it anymore. Keep an ace up your sleeve, and it will give you the added confidence that draws success to you.