What’s going on in space and why should we care? Let me begin with two images:

I think the first image is self-explanatory; there is enough energy in space as well as down here on earth. The second one depicts asteroids in the inner solar system. Those asteroids have enough material to hypothetically construct big, comfortable space stations that combined would provide 3,000 times the surface area of earth – all as living space for future generations. So are we all doomed because current technology and policy don’t allow sustainable living on earth? Of course not. But it will take bold pioneers to take on the next “giant leap for humankind.”

Cube-Sats

In last year’s space blog post, we heard about top billionaire pioneers who are investing in space. But billions are not always necessary to create something of value. The rising makers movement doesn’t stop at hard space tech. For instance, the development of nano-satellites is driven by the same mechanics that brought computers into every home – smaller, cheaper, built by entrepreneurial teams headquartered in a garage or dorm room:

Startups like GomSpace, Solar System Express, and Infinity Aerospace are catering to that audience with parts and kits to build satellites. The startup NanoSatisfi and the OPS-SAT mission of the European Space Agency are democratizing access to satellites by providing timeshare plans for experiments. On the software side, there are space related hackathons and competitions like Space Apps Challenge, ESA App Camp, ESA App Challenge, or the Austrian FFG Space Apps Competition blooming all over the world.

Makers

The 3D printing boom is also highly relevant to space. Getting parts delivered to the international space station is very costly. Supplying future Mars missions in the nick of time will be straight out impossible. Think about processing the resources from future space mining directly in space instead of transporting them back to earth. We will need completely new fabrication methods that work in zero gravity. 3D printing seems to be the best solution for all of these challenges. There is even a competition to 3D print rocket engines withDIYROCKETS.

But the ultimate DIY rocket maker project has to be Copenhagen Suborbitals. Those guys are building a complete suborbital rocket with solely their hands and outside donations. It will take them some time to really fly a human, but so far they have come further than anyone thought possible. Watch some DIY space capsule building here.

Rocket test flights

What’s new with the big guys? SpaceX has made great progress, delivering cargo to the International Space Station and earning well-paid contracts from NASA, military and private satellite companies. But the most exciting development is their attempt to create a fully reusable rocket to make space travel as efficient as air travel is today. Currently SpaceX is testing the vertical landing of their Falcon 9’s first stage called Grasshopper. Check out the video:

Another contender for the orbital transportation market is Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezo’s rocket company Blue Origin. It’s the most secretive of the lot, but at least we also have a vertical takeoff and landing video from them:

There is also fire behind Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo:

The engines are always the most difficult part of a rocket and The Space Ship Company (TSC, the company building Virgin Galactic’s air- and spacecraft) had to completely redevelop its engine with help of a more experienced contractor. Now it’s looking good for the first suborbital flight by the end of the year and passenger flights at least one year after that.

More space crafts

A new entry in the race to space is Swiss Space Systems. Their technical concept is similar to Virgin Galactic. The difference is that their spaceship will be mounted on top of an Airbus 300 instead of under the wing of a carrier plane:

Further down the development road is Sierra Nevada Corporation with their mini Space Shuttle-like Dream Chaser that will be boosted on top of a conventional rocket:

NASA and Bigelow

Even NASA is working on a new rocket, the SLS (Space Launch System). It will be built with components from the shuttle program and the strongest version will be able to haul 130 tons to low earth orbit. That’s 12 tons more than the Saturn rocket from the Apollo program. Such heavy lifting capabilities will enable new human exploration programs, like to asteroids, for example. Or it will be able to bring the biggest inflatable space station modules from Bigelow Aerospace into orbit. Here is an image of Bigelow’s medium-sized modules:

Bigelow just announced an agreement to place a smaller test module, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) onto the International Space Station. There are also plans to use the modules as shelter for a moon station.

Interplanetary

Let’s move on from space stations to inter-world space travel. Mars One and Golden Spike are aiming to bring humans to Mars and Moon, respectively. Their business models couldn’t be more different at the moment. While Mars One wants to select their astronauts out of average citizens and finance the mission with a reality show, Golden Spike is looking for wealthy individuals to pay US$1.5 billion for a two-person Moon landing. Mars One has no immediate plans to bring their crew back, in contrast to a tourist round-trip package offered by Golden Spike.

Not a landing, but just a flyby around Mars is the goal of Denis Tito’s Inspiration Mars project. Denis Tito, the first space tourist, won’t be flying himself. He is looking for a married couple to make the trip. If it’s true that most relationships end during vacation, then this couple better have a very strong marriage to survive!

Space Mining

So there are quite a few fascinating space projects in the works, but maybe none will be as important for humankind than space-mining. We only have limited resources here on earth, and if we desire to settle in space and resupply earth, we will need to make use of the limitless wealth that space has to offer.

Planetary Resources is on its way to becoming the first space mining company, that is, if they are not beaten by their new contender Deep Space Industries. As with any other serious mining project, Planetary Resources begins with prospecting. Thus, their first generation of spacecraft will consist of telescopes designed to find, map, and categorize those hundreds of thousands of asteroids. One of those telescope satellites will display images from Kickstarter campaign funders, which will be photographed with a backdrop of earth, the moon or whatever they choose. Oh, and Richard Branson funded the Kickstarter campaign with 100k and also joined Planetary Resources’ core group of investors.

Let’s wrap up this long post with Deep Space Industries gorgeous introduction video. If you only want to watch one video from this post, this is the one:

Image courtesy of Flickr; Video courtesy of Youtube

What do Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Robert Bigelow, Ross Perot Jr, Paul Alan and Peter Thiel have in common? Well, first of course, they are billionaires. But secondly, they invest in space companies. When top billionaire entrepreneurs start to invest in something new, we may see the formation of a new trend. But why space, such a hard and long term endeavor, why not just simply betting on the next billion dollar app? It’s because of the question these people are asking: what are the biggest challenges humankind is facing? One of those challenges is increasing population vs. scarcity of resources.

When thinking about resources, most people have a very depressing view of the future. We are extracting everything that mother earth has to offer at exponential increasing speed. The 6 billion poor people want to live like the richest billion, and who could blame them for that desire? It just won’t be possible if we divide up all resources that are still available. And we haven’t even started talking about the permanent damage that is done to the ecosphere of our planet by extracting and processing those ever harder to obtain resources.

There are even otherwise smart people who belief life on earth will end in high entropy chaos and decay because we are converting all available high quality energy forms into lower forms to power our civilization on the difference. In this view, all we can do to prolong this process of decay and chaos is to reduce the human energy footprint to the lowest possible level.

Of course this is complete nonsense because earth will be bathing in 173 petawatts (that’s a number with 15 zeros) of fresh solar energy for the next 5 billion years or so. But it demonstrates the depressed mindset that a good part of humankind – faced with ever scarcer resources and dying nature – has adopted. Robert Zubrin, author and president of the Mars Society, describes in one of my favorite speeches the fundamental problem and threat to humanity of this of closed future mindset: it effectively means that  in the ever fiercer competition for depleting resources every person becomes the enemy of every other person on the planet and every country the enemy of any other country.

So are we doomed? Well yes, if we see earth as the only resource in the universe. Of course that’s not the case, but isn’t it interesting how many people still can’t grasp the simple fact, that earth is not the center of the universe and that there is so indefinitely much more out there? Since the early days of humankind only few pioneers dared to dream what could be on the other side of a great mountain, vast desert or sea. But when those pioneers did the voyage to the other side, to the new land, usually great prosperity followed for those associated with them (note: Mars doesn’t have an indigenous population – space is just waiting for the gift of life).

After exploring and conquering all valuable land on earth, our solar system is the next logical step for human expansion and prosperity. But again, only few pioneers are seeing and believing the obvious. Maybe we all have been burned by the Apollo program; the biggest and boldest steps of humankind only to have it all shut down by Nixon when the political goal of beating the Russians was accomplished. No further human exploration of space, no Space Odyssey in 2001 and no Contact in 2010.

So this first wave of space exploration has gone by, only with the ISS to show for today, when we could have thousands of humans in space with 1980s technology if we just wanted it hard enough (for the same price: bank bailouts or the solar system, anybody?). But a new wave is gathering. This time it’s not governments but private entrepreneurs, and that’s the reason why it will work: there are no changing political agendas, just prosperity waiting for everyone who can think and act big enough. Maybe China’s ambitions will ignite a government space race again, but at the time that happens, private companies will be in the lead.

Technology Waves:

Now where are we in this new wave? It may have started around the year 2000. A couple of smaller companies have come and gone with the winning of the Ansari X Price as the first real breakthrough (this is a great read about that first period). But we are still in the rather flat infrastructure phase. Maybe Planetary Resources will open up the next phase by providing a network of space gas stations, that will enable cheap commercial space exploration.

It won’t happen tomorrow, but I am certain that within our lifetime we will have affordable, private access to outer space. And then the second chapter of human history will begin.

Following is a list of so called NewSpace companies, the pioneers that are making it happen:

Planetary Resources

• http://www.planetaryresources.com/
• Founders: Peter Diamandis, Erik Anderson
• Investors: Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Charles Simonyi, Ross Perot Jr., Ram Shriram
• Advisors: James Cameron, David Vaskevitch, John S. Lewis
• Spacecrafts:

SpaceX

• http://www.spacex.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Elon Musk
• Investments: $100M Elon Musk, $20M Founders Fund, $30M Draper Fisher Jurvetson + Founders Fund
• Development costs for Falcon 9 Rocket: $300 million
• Total development costs until 2011: $800 million
• 40 flights booked for a total of $3 billion in revenues
• Profitable since 2007
• Spacecrafts: Falcon 1 & 9 rockets, Dragon capsule

Space Exploration Technologies – short SpaceX – is building the Falcon series of rockets and the Dragon spacecraft and has been awarded a contract with NASA to supply the International Space Station.

The big vision behind the company is to make humankind a multi-planetary species. The Dragon capsule is already designed for a atmospheric re-entry from moon and mars return trajectories.

SpaceX has already accomplished something that previously only three nations had done before: launched and returned a spacecraft safely from orbit.

Stratolaunch Systems

• http://www.stratolaunch.com/
• Founder: Paul Allen
• Spacecraft: SpaceX rocket + Dragon capsule
• Cooperation with: Scaled Composites, SpaceX

Scaled Composites will construct the largest plane in the world to launch a SpaceX rocket  and Dragon spacecraft from the stratosphere to low earth orbit.

Bigelow Aerospace

• http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Robert Bigelow
• Spacecraft: Genesis I+II (in orbit), BA 330 station
• Investment until 2010: $180 million
• Total investment until 2015: $500 million

Bigelow Aerospace is working on an inflatable space station technology taken over from NASA to build private space stations.

Virgin Galactic

• http://www.virgingalactic.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Richard Branson
• Spacecraft: SpaceShipTwo
• Air- & spacecraft developed by The Spaceship Company (TSC) – a joint venture between Scaled Composites and the Virgin Group

Blue Origin

• http://www.blueorigin.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Jeff Bezos
• Spacecraft: New Shepard (suborbital)

This very secretive company from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is working on a suborbital vertical takeoff and landing spacecraft, the New Shepard, and a larger version to reach low earth orbit. SpaceX is working on a similar vertical landing technology for their orbital rockets.

Xcor Aerospace

• http://www.xcor.com/
• Founder: Jeff Greason
• Spacecraft: Lynx

Armadillo Aerospace

• http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/
• Founder: John Carmack

Founded by computer game programming legend and genius John Carmack, Armadillo has incrementally developed their rocket technology to a point where they now can aim for suborbital flights, eventually with paying space tourists.

Masten Space Systems

• http://masten-space.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: David Masten
• Spacecraft: Reusable suborbital

Interorbital Systems Corporation (IOS)

• http://interorbital.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Roderick and Randa Milliron
• Spacecraft: Neptune series rockets

This small Californian rocket startup’s first orbital goal is to launch very small and cheap CubeSats and TubeSats to a 300km decaying orbit. First TubeSat kits including launch were available for only $8,125.

MoonEx – Moon Express Inc.

• http://moonexpress.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founders: Naveen Jain, Barney Pell, Robert D. Richards
• Spacecraft: CSB Lander

Goals: winning the Google Lunar X Prize, and ultimately mining the Moon.

Space Energy

• http://www.spaceenergy.com/

Developing space based solar power technologies.

Shackleton Energy Company (SEC)

• http://www.shackletonenergy.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Bill Stone

Developing fuel stations in space for cheaper exploration of space.

Copenhagen Suborbitals

• http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Founders: Kristian von Bengtson, Peter Madsen

Copenhagen Suborbityals is a non-profit suborbital space endeavor based entirely on sponsors, private donators and part time specialists.

Hermes – STAR Systems

• Spacecraft: Hermes (not to confuse with Hermes from the European Space Agency)

Kickstarter Project

Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems

• http://www.sncspace.com/, http://www.sncorp.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Spacecraft: Dream Chaser
• People: Mark Sirangelo (Corporate Vice President of Space Systems)

Not a NewSpace startup, but their privately developed Star Chaser crew transportation spacecraft is really interesting for the private space scene.

Interview with Mark Sirangelo: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Skylon – Reaction Engines Ltd.

• http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/ (Wikipedia)
• Spacecraft: Skylon

REL is working on the holy grail of space launch technologies: “single stage to orbit”. That means that there are no stages that are dropped off and lost, the spaceplane takes off like a normal airplane flies into space and lands again like an airplane. This could dramatically reduce the cost of accessing space if the vehicle can operate like a normal airliner. Key to this capability is the engine technology that REL is working on. It’s an hybrid of a jet engine for atmospheric flight and a rocket engine for space.

Google Lunar X Prize

• http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/ (Wikipedia)
• Founder: Peter Diamandis
• Organized by: X Price Foundation
• Main sponsor: Google
• Prices: $30 million in total

The GLXP challenge calls for privately-funded spaceflight teams to compete in successfully launching, landing, and then traveling across the surface of the Moon with a robot, while also sending back to Earth specified images and other data.

Liftport Group

• http://liftport.com/ (Wikipedia)
• Kickstarter Project
• Lunar Space Elevator on Wikipedia
• Interview with Michael Laine, part 1

More NewSpace Information

Video Podcasts:

• Spacevidcast
• Epic Future Space

News:

• Space.com
• moonandback.com
• reddit space

Books:

• The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O’Neill
• Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John S. Lewis
• Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space by Michael Belfiore

The Essence of Life

• When you follow your inspirations and intuition, you grow in self-worth and potential, as well as toward you true capabilities
• Gratitude is the key to growth and fulfillment.
• If you are not grateful for what you’ve been given, then why would the universe want to give you more?
• What exactly is gratitude? It’s what you feel when you’ve attained perfectly balanced perception.
• Many people confuse gratitude with elation. They think that when they’re elated about something and say, “Oh, I’m so thankful for that!” they’re being grateful.
• True gratitude is a quiet state of poise and inner calm where you’re truly thankful, where you sense the divine order and wouldn’t want anything to change.
• Nothing has ever happened or can happen to you that is not a gift and a blessing, but it’s difficult to be thankful until you find the hidden benefit in what may seem at first to be a negative event.
• There’s only two things that the world can’t take away from you: your love and your wisdom.
• Love and wisdom are the essence of life.

Divine Order

• Everything that happens is a vital part of the divine order.
• Even the most terrible events always contain hidden blessings.
  • The masters know this great truth and remain undisturbed by events, while those of lesser wisdom swing from elation to depression as they move through positive and negative experiences on their way to understanding.
• Childhood deprivation is often the source of adult dreams ans aspirations.
• Perceived voids create values; we are programmed to seek whatever we think is missing the most.

When you buy into the fantasy of better and worse, seeking the illusion of greener pastures, you’re never present, or satisfied with your life the way it is. You think, Someday I’ll find a way to let my wife and children know how much I really love them. Someday when things are better, Ill start that business, take that trip, or write that book. You live on Someday Isle, which doesn’t exist.

Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, once said, “Don’t look for opportunities in the far distances of space and time, but embrace them right where you are, because where you are already has the perfection and the balance.” Right this minute you have everything you need to fulfill your life.

At any moment of your life, you will never be put down without being lifted up, nor lifted up without being put down. Positive and negative, good and bad, support and challenge, peace and war – all come together in pairs. They are simultaneous and perfectly balanced, and that is what makes up the divine order.

• If you ever see one side without the other, you’re living in an illusion.
• Nobody will ever put us up or down as much as we do, because no one will ever think as much or as intensely about us as we think about ourselves.
• People treat you exactly the way you unconsciously treat yourself. Their outer mannerisms toward you reflect your inner mannerisms, so one of the most powerful ways to transform your life is to become consciously aware of you beliefs and feelings about yourself.

True Love

• True love emerges from a state of emotional balance. One of the purposes of having a partner is to maintain a loving equilibrium.
• If you would love to be the director of your own life, you must equilibrate your perceptions and emotions.
• The heart opens only when the mind becomes consciously equilibrated, while imbalanced emotions close it down.
• Love is made up of two sides: support and challenge.
  • Were you aware that supporting someone can make them weak and dependent, and that challenging them can make them strong and independent?
  • A child requires both support and challenge in perfect equilibrium. If one parent plays one side, the other parent will play the other. If not, the brother or sister will play it, or the kid down the street will beat them up. They won’t escape whatever it takes to equilibrate them.
• Nature won’t allow anything but equilibrium.
• Strange as it may seem, critics and the tabloids actually help keep celebrities alive by balancing all the praise and adulation their receive.
• One of the greatest illusions people fall into is the search for pleasure without pain, praise without reprimand, or nice without mean. Looking for elusive, one-sided events in a two-sided universe is the root of people’s so-called suffering.
• When you embrace the balance and the truth, love surrounds you. You can’t escape true love. You can’t run from it. There’s nowhere to go. When you understand this truth, your fears and guilt can evaporate, and you can begin to dance with your life.
  • To a master, there is no such thing as attacks, only invitations to dance.
  • When somebody lifts you up or puts you down, if you buy into their one-sided illusion, they can run your life.
  • If every time a a crisis struck, you trained yourself to immediately look for the blessing and opportunity that certainly exists, you could dance with your life.

Exercise

Before you go to sleep tonight, lie comfortably in you bed and begin giving thanks inwardly. Remember everyone who helped you today. Call up their image in your mind’s eye and thank them for their support or challenge, niceness o r meanness, or simply their presence in your life. Identify what they were teaching you and how what they were balancing.

Continue until you feel great gratitude for your day – until you see that both sided are perfectly balanced and both are love. Going to sleep with a grateful, open heart is a powerful healing practice. Your dreams will become more inspiring, and you will awaken in the morning with lighter state of mind.

Lighten Up

• Whatever you don’t want to see or appreciate in yourself, you keep attracting into you life until you learn to love it.
• You are not here to run from sadness to happiness, because fulfillment is not possible when you deny half of you existence.

Pain and Pleasure

Let’s say you were doing some job around the house and you smashed your thumb with a hammer. Just as you began cursing and leaping around the room, the doorbell rang. If the person at thee door had come to congratulate you on just winning $50 million in th lottery, you probably would notice little or no sensation of pain in your thumb. When pain and pleasure are perfectly balanced, both disappear.

The funny thing is that pain and pleasure remain perfectly balanced at every moment, but you selectively attend to on side or the other and feel pleasure or pain accordingly. There is both pain and pleasure in youth and age, poverty and wealth, solitude and multitude, illness and wellness.

Love is simply a state of non-separation, where you perceive no division between yourself an d some aspect of the world. In that wholeness and oneness, you experience what the ancient Hindu philosophers described as the highest state of consciousness, where whatever you see is you. To the degree you tap in to that state, your dreams are in your hands. You have access to an infinitude of possibility because you’re now tuning in to you infinite potential through the balance of love.

That is the unified field theory, the unified force that immortalizes people. When you can tap in to that source, whatever you dream is yours. In that state, you know why you’re here, you’re filled with certainty, and you r mind becomes clear and focused. When you feel worth of having your dreams, they appear. Your innermost dominant thought becomes your outermost tangible reality. Whatever you think about – and thank about – you bring about.

• When you know that you are loved no matter what, you have great power.

The Perfection of Two Sides

All emotions are lies. The truth is love, but emotions are half-truths, distortions and lies. There is nothing but love, and all else is illusion. We go through life merely living instead of embracing it all. We oscillate between our positive and negative emotions because we don’t love.

You don’t have command over anything that you have emotions about; you only have command over the things you love. Love is a perfectly equilibrated, divinely ordained state of consciousness that’s available to you 24 hours a day if you just balance your mind and don’t let it go off on emotional illusions.

• Every expression and repression of emotion will run your life.
• Love is not an emotions; it transcends emotion. It is the synthesis of all polar-opposite emotions.
• Emotions are blind because they see only one side.

Have you ever noticed that when somebody tries to praise you beyond your true worth, you’ll put yourself down in front of them? And if someone tries to cut you down below your true worth, you’ll lift yourself up to balance it?

Exercise 1

• Affirmation: “No matter what I have done or have not done, I am worthy of love!“

Exercise 2

1. Look back over your life and identify every single thing that you think was somehow negative – that is not meaningful and purposeful and aligned with your destiny. For each item, ask your, “How was that an active of love? How did that serve me and others? How did that help me?” Don’t stop until you can give thanks for each one.
2. Then ask, “How did that help me become what I am today? How did that person or event bless me and contribute to my mission?” You’ll see that there was not one person or event that didn’t equilibrate you and wake you up.
3. Imagine what it would be like if you could not see anything else around you but perfect equilibrium, and the more clearly you saw it, the more you saw the divine assistance. No matter what happened, you could turn it into guidance and fuel for you journey home or your destiny. When you know everything serves you, what can stop you?

Living Dreams

• To be a genius, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams, but there’s always a price.

• Donald Trump’s strategy to get to his priorities: He bought a 15-minute hourglass, and when someone walked into his office, he’d turn it over and say, “You’ve got 15 minutes to make your pitch. Go!” He made them get real, get clear, and get present. If they weren’t focused enough to sell him in that time, he gave them a decision right away. His business and energy went way up as a result.

• The key to success: Try really working eight hours a day, be present with your mind eight hours a day.

• The masses wait to see it to believe it, but the master believes it and then sees it. The master affirms and believes it ahead of time. We create our lives with our thoughts, every minute of the day.

The Dream Is in the Detail

• If you get absolutely crystal clear on exactly what you would love, and you can’t see anything but that, it’s almost impossible for you not to get it.
• If you know that no matter what happens, your life is serving your dreams, then nothing can stop you. The minute you truly commit to your dream, watch the universe immediately bring you the sustenance and the challenges necessary to fulfill it.

Secrets of an Inspired Life

• The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.

• Even when you’re not inspired and consciously following your mission, you still play a part in the divine order. There’s nothing wrong if you feel like you’re off purpose. Just know that your resources, energy and life will be give to somebody else who is inspired and feeling purposeful.

Exercise

Create the life you love:

1. Every day, sit for a moment in silent meditation and concentrate on exactly what you would love to create in your life. Imagine every detail you can, and then even more. See your life exactly the way you would love it to be. Let your imagination be real enough to come true, yet ideal enough to inspire and stretch you.
2. Write down all that you can imagine, and begin formulating your goals. Writing down you dreams helps them come true, so include all the details.
3. Every day, take at least one action step toward making your goals come true. What you move toward moves toward you.
4. Keep record of every synchronous, goal-aligned event that occurs; they fill your life when you stop to acknowledge them. Write down all the events that come true each day that demonstrate that you’re moving in the direction of you dreams.
5. Keep refining your goals, becoming clearer with each passing day about what you would love to create.
6. As you begin to fulfill these goals, be sure to add new ones all revolving around your chief aim or purpose in life.
7. Maintain an achievement and blessing journal. Be thankful for every supportive and challenging event that occurs to give you feedback and fulfillment on the road to your dreams.

Both Sides Now

Everybody has two sides. If you’re honest, you’ll see that you are both saint and sinner, virtuous and vicious. So when someone accuses you of something, don’t waste time defending yourself. Instead, admit that you are in fact possessor of whatever it is the’re attaching you for. Not only are you possessor, but they are, too, and they’re judging themselves; that’s why they’re accusing you. If it hurts to hear it, that means you haven’t seen how that quality servers you or others and you’re judging yourself. Their gift to you is to wake you up to another part of yourself that you haven’t yet loved.

• Whatever you do, you do to yourself. To judge others only compounds you own faults. -The Buddha

“The longer I stayed positive, the more something would blow, and I’d get really negative, either to myself or someone else. I noticed that the more I tried to put on the facade of being positive, the more i’d beat myself up inside. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of my negative side.”

• People who try to be positive to everybody, at home and in the world, end up negating themselves.
• If you try to put on a facade for the world about how positive and upbeat your are, there will be chaos in you private life or your personal health.
• Tragedy heals self-righteous people; it humbles them back down into their hearts. Comedy heals self-wrongeous people by lifting them back up into their heart.

If everything you did, said, and thought was broadcast 24 hours a day on eternity television, and everyone knew everything about you, could you love yourself?

Mastery is the ability to take your privates public. By that, I mean that if you can take the private things you don’t like about yourself and embrace them to the point where it doesn’t matter if people find out about them or not, then you love yourself. When you love yourself, people can’t push your buttons, but they will automatically attack you in whatever areas you attack yourself.

• When you give yourself permission to be fully human, you approach the divine.

Exercise

We normally look for differences between ourselves and others. This exercise is designed to reverse that. Sit in a public place where you have3 a great view of passerby, and start identifying yourself in them. Look quickly from person to person, and whatever trait stands out, ask yourself where and when you have the same quality. Find out where and when you’re exactly like them.

As you improve, you’ll be able to find yourself in anyone and anything.

• Whatever I see is me.

Who’s Minding the Store?

• Death is a naturally recurring part of the cycle of life; there is no life without death, and the greater the death, the greater the life.
• The greater you vision and patience, the greater your power and scale of creation.
• Death is an illusion; life just changes form.
• There is nothing to fix, but much to love.

Exercise

Transcend the myth of loss or death:

1. Think of someone you believe you “lost” at some time in your life, through change, divorce, or death. Write down the specific traits or aspects you think you lost.
2. Go back to that exact time and place, and ask yourself, “What were the new forms of these specific traits or aspects? How did those qualities immediately show up in my life in some other form?” As you discover them, write down the new form that each quality appeared in. You may have to be creative and insightful to recognize the new form. The qualities you miss in someone may appear in other people, yourself, a beloved animal, or new relationships and opportunities. They can also manifest in the virtual reality of your memory, imagination, and dreams.
3. It’s not a matter of if the new forms exist; it’s simply a matter of where they exist, so don’t stop looking until you find them. You’ll know you’re done when you realize that you wouldn’t exchange the new form for what seemed lost. When you see the blessings, you’ll experience a moment of silence and stillness, and a tear of inspiration.

Relationship

• The purpose of relationship isn’t happiness; it’s a combination of happiness and sadness, which makes up fulfillment.
• As you grow in wisdom, you’ll learn to embrace and love others for who they are, looking for the benefits they offer you and knowing that they represent parts of you that you’ve buried or disowned. Wisdom means thanking others for bringing to your awareness those areas where you’ve lied and not loved, and for being grateful that they’ve given you this opportunity to love.
• When you can’t wait to share a message from your heart, your students can’t wait to hear it.
• The purpose of marriage is to teach people how to fully love themselves, their owned and disowned parts. Love is the perfect equilibrium of pain and pleasure, support and challenge, nice and mean, pleasant and unpleasant, like and dislike.
• People who say, “I don’t want to play games in relationship,” are constantly at the mercy of the game.
• Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. -Lao Tzu
• Your values dictate your destiny. Anything that supports your highest values you call “good” and are attracted to; anything that challenges them you call “bad” and are repelled by.
• Your values are based on the perception that something is missing, that a void exists. But the Law of Conservation says that nothing is missing, it’s just in a form you haven’t recognized. You think you’re missing it; therefor, you seek it, and anything you think supports that search you call good and anything that challenges it you call bad.
• A careless relationship is one in which you project and focus on you own values without considering your partner’s at all. A careful relationship is when you think in terms of their values without considering your own – this one is called “walking on eggshells”. Both are one-sided approaches that ignore the other person and create tension in the relationship. But a caring relationship is one where you communicate your values in terms of theirs. You think of both sides simultaneously, expressing your love for yourself and each other. The definition of caring is knowing someone well enough to know their values, and caring enough to express your values in terms of theirs.
• “I have my individuality, too, and I can’t sacrifice my life totally for her. The more I sacrifice myself for her, the more she’ll minimize me because I’m minimizing myself. She’ll take me for granted and treat me accordingly.”
• Whenever something supports your values; you take away the rules, and when something challenges your values, you set rules. Nations do it, companies do it, and you do it in relationships. You set up rules when your values feel threatened.
• Often when we’re in a relationship, we unwisely think the other person is supposed to be like us, and we project our hierarchy of values onto them. When they support our values, we call them “good” and let them do almost anything they want. But when they challenge our values, we suddenly call them “bad” and clamp down with our laws, rules and ultimatums.
• We want our partner to be like us, but if any two people are exactly the same, one of them is unnecessary.
• Every human being has a domain, a territory that fluctuates according to their emotions. Arguments happen when two people in a relationship need to either add or subtract space, time, energy or matter. Any perceptions of too much or too little of any of those elements will cause arguments to equalize them. Are arguments bad? No the’re telling you that somebody loves you and wants to regulate space time energy and matter with you.
• Did you know that everyone has a running checklist on their relationship with you? They have a complete log of every exchange from the time they met you until now, and you have the same with them. They know exactly where your exchange with them is, and when there’s a conflict, out it comes. Remember that what they think is just what they think; it may or may not be accurate, and the argument is the process of sort it out.
• Give space and you get love; give love and you get space.
• When you love someone, you’re the nicest and the meanest too them. You support and challenge, you’re pleasant and unpleasant, you lift them up and you put them down, you do things for them and ignore them. Those are the two sides of love. The myth says that you’re supposed to show only one side, but that creates tension in a relationship and in your life because it represses half of the truth.
• Love cannot be rejected, but expectation will certainly be. Most people confuse love with expectation. You can’t avoid having expectations and opinions, but to get stuck in them is to stop your growth.
• Whatever you love turns into what you would most love it to be. If you try to fix or change somebody, they’ll resist; but if you honor and thank them for who they are, as they are, and love them for who they are, they’ll assist. When you love people for who they are, the turn into whom you love.
• People want to blame someone else when they don’t understand their accountability for their own reality. Have you ever noticed that blame doesn’t empower you? It can, in fact, be very dis-empowering, and it won’ t get you what you would truly love in life.
• Life is funny. The moment you realize you already have everything you’re looking for, the universe gives it to you. The instant you think you don’t have something, it evades you further.
• The greatest discovery in life is that no matter what you do, you’re being supported and challenged simultaneously. The second greatest discovery is that nothing is missing; it’s just in a form you haven’t recognized.
• Happiness and sadness are the two sides of fulfillment.
• There is nothing but love, and all else is illusion.

Divinity

• I haven’t seen anyone liberate themselves, nor seen anyone open their heart or become empowered, by blaming playing the victim. No liberation is complete until you realize that your perceptions are your own cause, and it’s up to you to empower yourself. The second you understand that you’re playing a role that attracted those forces, you have the power to transform that reality. You are the author of your own life.
• Disease and illness are the signs and symptoms that the body uses to reveal to us where we’re not loving.
• Illness is your body’s way of telling you that you’re lying about life.
• There is a meaning behind all events, and wisdom is finding and saying “thank you” for your meaningful life.
• I have yet to find anything on this planet that wasn’t serving someone in some way.
• Anything you don’t love about a past relatinship of any kind you bring right into your next one; you keep dealing with it because it’s not about them, it’s about you. Love yourself enough to love them, and set both of you free.
• Don’t complain about your lot. Instead, ask yourself, “How does my illness serve? What is the hidden benefit to my fear or confusion or lack of money?” and don’t stop until you’re thankful for it.
  • Does it make you slow down, seek healing, remind you of your mortality and stop taking life for granted, return to basics and take responsibility for your life? Does it help you dig inside and find courage, be grateful for small things, humble you, attract help and support, motivate you to get creative and get real? I promise you that th blessing is there, but you must be willing to look for it.
• Anything you perceive as life-threatening or destroying is also life-giving and creating, if you only have the wisdom to look for it.
• The only real meaning of forgiveness to me is, “Thank you for giving me this experience,” whatever it may be. If you can say that, you’re no longer fearful or a victim.

Genius

• Great geniuses are willing to pay the price. They’re willing to make sacrifices for their dreams. They do whatever it takes. There’s nothing wrong with that, because pain and pleasure always come together in a pair.
• The story you tell yourself about your life is what your life becomes.
• The Law of Lesser Pissers: If you’re given the choice between pissing someone else of or pissing yourself off, chose them.
• The greatest cause of illness, disease, and death is not living your dreams. That will kill you quicker than anything else.
• Don’t think you’ll ever be without fears in your life; fear means you’re growing and challenging yourself beyond you comfort zones.
• Many who can’t see your dream will immediately try to ridicule you, or ask you to clarify how you’ll fulfill it. It’s part of the equilibrating game. Anybody who ridicules you also honors you by acknowledging that you have exceeded their capacity to understand what you’re about.
• Every moment we spend not focused on your dreams becomes a moment we spend focused on our doubts and obstacles.
• Everybody has a dream, but a genius is willing to define and redefine that dream and keep acting on high-priority actions to fulfill it.
• Fantasies are lopsided illusions to which we compare our reality; they eventually depress us. Dreams are realistic objectives that we refine our lives toward and can live.
• Your vitality is directly proportionate to the vividness of your vision and the clarity of your calling, which are directly proportionate to how well you see and acknowledge the divine order.
• I link everything I do to my mission, and I am inspired by my life.
• I walk through the darkened doorway where fear lurks, and I turn on the light.

Exercise

• Read about the lives of those who have left an immortal legacy to humankind. By immersing yourself in the lives of these geniuses, you’ll carry some of that inspiration away with you.

The Quantum Collapse Process

(The process itself is not explained here, only quotes from the chapter)

• There’s no such thing as somebody being too hard; there’s just somebody who reminds you of what you don’t want to own inside yourself.

Believing Is Seeing

• Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
• God is in the details. An inspired vision isn’t just some vague perception; it must be extremely clear and detailed.
• In this creation process, you have a balance between making things happen and letting things happen. it’s wise to lay out a plan, but not to be so rigid with it that you can’t allow refinement and adaption.
• The purpose of this plan isn’t necessarily to make it go only that way, but to allow you mind to see it clearly enough to erase all fear and doubt. Then you attract what you envisioned, or even more efficient alternatives.
• If you set a goal with your self-righteous persona, you’re going to get burned out attempting to accomplish it. If you set with your self-wrongeous persona, you won’t be motivated and you’ll bebored in. Inspiring visions that are crystal clear can be manifested. You don’t get elated or depressed about them; you just keep working away until they materialize.
• Students who study only practical matters don’t develop a broad enough vision to extend beyond themselves. They must be stretched and made uncomfortable to get out beyond their normal ream of thinking.
• The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
• I plan to live my life fully until the moment I stop breathing, being productive and doing something that fulfills me and servers others.
• The most magnificent thing in life is to be able to get up every morning and do what you love and love what you do, to be well paid and inspired to do it, to make your vacation you vocation.
• Most people are too busy to take the time to plan, and they’re distracted by low-priority actions instead of committing themselves to high-priority dreams.
• The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.
• I am the author of my life.
• Whoever has the most certainty, rules.
• God is the power, I’m the vision; we’re the team.

Materialization: The Blueprint of Creation

• If you believe in God, work with him. If you do not, become one. -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are many levels of excuse in answer to the question, “Why aren’t you self-actualizing your life and living exactly the way you would love it to be?” and they’re all based on fears and forms of guilt.

I havn’t self -actualized my life because…

• I desire to lose the fat on my body first.
• I want to pay off my debts first.
• I need to complete my education first.
• I ought to spend time doing charity work at my church first.
• I have to raise my family first.

None of those are necessarily true. The’re all excuses for not doing what you love, but excuses won’t bring you your dreams. If a person was absolutely certain and had an unshakable belief in themselves an what they do, you could take away their money and everything they have they’d just create it again.

To materialize your dreams, you must consistently take two wise action steps:

1. Define your dreams. If you don’t define them, don’t expect to have them.
2. Ask yourself what’s in the way of those dreams. It makes a difference. If you find yourself making excuses, know that any excuse can be dissolved by a Collapse. Procrastination, which define as putting off living your dreams, is based primarily on three things: an un-chunked and un-detailed goal, a lopsided perception, and a dream that isn’t linked of aligned with your highest values or purpose. Break any goal into doable steps, balance your perceptions, and link you dreams to you highest values, and you’ll break through procrastination and act. Self-actualization requires no excuses, but people use excuses to justify why they’re not doing what they would love to do.

Do you know people who think they’re purely giving, charity-oriented altruists? If somebody says, “I would love to give this to you from my heart; I love to give, it’s my nature,” you can test for their hidden agenda by saying, “Oh, thank you so much for this lovely gift,” and then give it to someone else right then and there, or possibly ignite it in front of them. Suddenly their hidden agenda surfaces, and the expectation behind their giving is revealed. If they had truly given for the sake of giving, they would be able to appreciate your action. But if the hidden agenda is, “you’re supposed to appreciate my exquisite taste, thank me, and be grateful,” it will suddenly leap up an they’ll react. Know that giving and taking maintain equilibrium. Become awakened to others and your own hidden agendas.

• So self-mastered people maintain fair exchange in their lives. that’s why one of the most ancient Greek provers said, “Payment is due when services are rendered.”
• If you receive a large inheritance and you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it, some equilibrating force is likely to reduce that amount to exactly what you feel you’ve earned.
• To equilibrate your perception and feel that there has been fair exchange, you’d be wise to find out what you did to earn what you have received.
• The universe is asking you, “What is your value?” and waiting patiently until you finally wake up to it.

The Manifestation Formula:

1. Clarify you purpose.
2. Link all seven areas of life to your purpose.
3. Think about what you would love.
4. Visualize what you would love.
5. Affirm what you would love.
6. Feel what you would love.
7. Write what you would love.
8. Act on what you would love.
9. Materialize what you would love. Affirm that you’re at the perfect place, at the perfect time, to meet the perfect people to fulfill the perfect dreams. If yo begin to experience any doubt, fill your mind with height-priority thoughts, and take high-priority action steps. fill your day with the things you love, and watch what happens.
10. Be thankful for what you would love.

• Purpose + thought + vision + affirmation + feeling + writing things down in space and time + taking action with energy on matter + being thankful, manifests things.
• I’ve heard people say things such as, “It’s going to take me two of three years to fulfill one of my dreams,,” but I say, so what? What else would you do with those years anyway?
• If you’re really determined, you can make it “meant to be.” Be willing to do whatever it takes. Allow nothing to stop you.
• At the end of you life, you';re going to be asking yourself, “Did I do everything I could with everything I was given? Did I use all of my talents to the fullest?” What do yo want the answers to be?
• How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

Completion: Full Circle

• Your mind dictates your destiny, and you dominant thought determines your world. Don’t just repeat the words I’ve give you; become them. Say them as if you life depended on them! -Paul Bragg
• Ancient wisdom dictates that if you don’t pass or light another torch, you won’t receive greater light. Whatever you would love to master, pass it on like a torch. If you help others achieve what they would love to achieve in life, you’ll be more enabled to achieve what you would love.
• To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who don’t no proof is possible. Waste no words on those who seek not. Sometimes silence is more powerful than speech. Be wise in your selection of torch carriers.
• The quicker you gather information and the faster you give to others what you’ve learned, the more you remember. The more time that elapses between receiving and broadcasting, the less you retain and the less certain you become. If you’d love to have a photographic mind, immediately give out what you’ve taken in.
• Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise men of old. Seek what they sought. -Matsuo Menefusa
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize who close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison
• It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid,. Everybody who ever did anything extraordinary was frightened at times. All things are in balance. If you have great fear, you also have great courage, for they remain in equal proportions; and both are necessary for us to evolve and grow.

Believe You Can Succeed And You Will

• When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it develops.
• Belief in success is the one basic, absolutely essential ingredient of successful people.
• It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him.

How to develop the power of belief:

1. Think success, don’t think failure.
2. Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are.
3. Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by th size of your belief.

Cure Yourself of Excusitis, The Failure Disease

“But My Health Isn’t Goodd”

• There is something physically wrong with everybody. Many surrender in whole or in part to health excusitis, but success-thinking people do not.
• Book recommendation: How to Live 365 Days a Year by John A. Schindler
• The right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.

Four things you can do to lick health excusitis:

1. Refuse to talk about your health. One may (sometimes) get a little sympathy, but one doesn’t get respect and loyalty by being a chronic complainer.
2. Refuse to worry about your health.
3. Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is.
4. It’s better to wear out than rust out.

“But You’ve Got to Have Brains to Succeed”

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

• What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have.
• The thinking that guides you intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
• The ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts. -Henry Ford

Three ways to cure intelligence excusitis:

1. Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.
2. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”
3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.

Build Confidence and Destroy Fear

• Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear.
• In a way, most job applicants are a little like beggars – they’ll accept anything, and they aren’t particular.

How to Think Big

Four ways to develop the big thinker’s vocabulary:

1. Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel.
2. Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people.
3. Use positive language to encourage others.
4. Use positive words to outline plans to others.

• See what can be, not just what is!
• Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.

1. Practice adding value to things.
2. Practice adding value to people.
3. Practice adding value to yourself.

How to Think and Dream Creatively

• Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking.
• Top level leaders in all walks of life spend much more time requesting advice than they do in giving it.

You Are What You Think You Are

• Each person working with us is important, else he wouldn’t be on the payroll.
• The way we think toward our jobs determines how our subordinates think toward their jobs.
  1. Always show positive attitudes toward your job so that your subordinates will ‘pick up” right thinking.
  2. As you approach your job each day, ask yourself, “Am I worthy in every respect of being imitated? Are all my habits such that I would be glad to see them in my subordinates?”

• Build your “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial and practice it out loud in private at least once ad day.

The “How am I thinking?” Checklist:

1. When I worry:
   • Would an important person worry about this? Would the most successful person I know be disturbed about this?
2. An idea:
   • What would an important person do if he had this idea?
3. My appearance:
   • Do I look like someone who has maximum self-respect?
4. My language:
   • Am I using the language of successful people?
5. What I read:
   • Would an important person read this?
6. Conversation:
   • Is this something successful people would discuss?
7. When I lose my temper:
   • Would an important person get mad at what I’m mad at?
8. My jokes:
   • Is this the kind of joke an important person would tell?
9. My job:
   • How does an important person describe his job to others?

Cement in your mind the question “Is this the way an important person does it?”

1. Look important.
2. Think your work is important.
3. Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial.
4. In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?”

Manage Your Environments: Go First Class

The number one obstacle on the road to high-level success is the feeling that major accomplishment is beyond reach. This attitude stems from many, many suppressive forces that direct or thinking toward mediocre levels.

1. Those who surrendered completely: You can easily spot these people because they go to great lengths to rationalize their status and explain how “happy” the really are.
2. Those who surrendered partially: This group includes many talented, intelligent people who elect to crawl through life because they are afraid to stand up and run.
3. Those who never surrender.

• Go first class when you have questions. Seeking advice from a failure is like consulting a quack on how to cure cancer.
• What happens on weekends and between 6pm and 9am directly affects a person’s performance from 9am to 6pm.
• Go first class: that is an excellent rule to follow in everything you do, including the goods and services you buy.
• Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to go any other way.

Make Your Attitudes Your Allies

Grow the attitudes of:

1. I am activated.
2. I am important.
3. Service first.

• To activate others, to get them to be enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself.
• Use the dig-into-it-deeper technique to develop enthusiasm toward other people.
• Keep digging, and you’ll eventually discover a fascinating person.
• To get enthusiasm about anything – people, places, things – dig into it deeper.
• Ask yourself every day, “What can I do today to make my wife and family happy?”
• “Put service first” is an attitude that creates wealth. Put service first, and money takes care of itself.

Think Right Toward People

Success depends on the support of other people. The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.

• A person is not pulled up to a higher-level job. Rather he is lifted up.
• Successful people follow a plan for liking people. Do you?
• It’s a mark of real leadership to take the lead in getting to know people.
• The most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.
• The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person.
• The more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems.
• Don’t be a conversation hog. Listen, wind friends, and learn.

Get The Action Habit

• Leaders in every field agree on: There is a shortage to of top-flight, expertly qualified persons to fill key positions. There really is plenty of room at the top.
• Destroy fear through action.
• The only way to start is to start. Don’t deliberate. Don’t postpone getting started.
• People who get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them; they move the spirit.
• When you see something that you believe ought to be done, pick up the ball and run.

How to Turn Defeat Into Victory

• Inside, Mr. Mediocre feels defeated. He feels beaten but tries hard to endure the sentence of mediocrity that “fate” ha handed him. He, too, has surrendered to defeat, but in a reasonably clean, socially “accepted” way.

Use Goals to Help You Grow

• Use goals to live longer. No medicine in the worlds is as powerful in bringing about long life as is the desire to do something.
• Invest in yourself. Purchase those things that build mental power and efficiency. Invest in education. Invest in idea starters.

How to Think Like A Leader

• Achieving high-level success requires the support and the cooperation of others.
• Success and the ability to lead others – that is getting them to do things they wouldn’t do if the were not led – go hand in hand.
• Ask yourself:
  • “What kind of world would this world be, If everyone in it were just like me?”
  • “What kind of company would this company be, If everyone in it were just like me?”

The four leadership principles:

1. Trade minds with the people you want to influence. It’s easy to get others to do what you want them to do if you’ll see things through their eyes. Ask yourself this question before you act “What would I think of this if I exchanged places with the other person?”
2. Apply the “Be-Human” rule in your dealings with others. Ask, “What is the human way to handle this?” in everything you do, show that you put other people first. Just give other people the kind of treatment you’ll like to receive. You’ll be rewarded.
3. Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress. Think improvement in everything you do. Think high standards in everything you do. Over a period of time subordinates tend to become carbon copies of their chief. Be sure that master copy is worthy duplicating. Make this a personal resolution: “At home, at work, in community life, if it’s progress I’m for it.”
4. Take time out to confer with yourself and tap your supreme thinking power. Managed solitude pays off. Use it to release your creative power. Us it to find solutions to personal and business problems. So spend some time alone every day just for thinking. Use the thinking technique all great leaders use: confer with yourself.

It’s not about surviving the next big asteroid that will hit earth or other events far in the future. It’s about the psychology and development of humankind in the immediate future!

Highly recommended!

The poster is great to collaborate on one physical sheet of paper, but I needed a digital friendly version to save the results and work on it later. So here is my bullet point structured version of the business model canvas crated with WorkFlowy. It can be copied and pasted from the website into most word processing applications.

The Business Model Canvas

• Key Partners:
  • Who are your key partners?
  • Who are your key suppliers?
  • What key resources are we acquiring from partners?
  • Which key activities do partners perform?
  • Motivations for Partnerships:
    • Optimization and economy
    • Reduction of risk and uncertainty
    • Acquisition of particular resources and activities
• Key Activities:
  • What key activities do our value proposition require?
  • Our distribution channels?
  • Customer relationships?
  • Revenue streams?
  • Categories:
    • Production
    • Problem solving
    • Platform/Network
• Key Resources:
  • What key resources do our value propositions require?
  • Our distribution channel? Customer relationships?
  • Revenue streams?
  • Types of resources
    • Physical
    • Intelectual (brand patens, copyrights, data)
    • Human
    • Financial
• Value Propositions:
  • What value do we deliver to the customer?
  • Wich one of our customer’s problems are we helping to solve?
  • What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?
  • Wich customer needs are we satisfying?
  • Characteristics:
    • Newness
    • Performance
    • Customization
    • “Getting the job done”
    • Design
    • Brand/Status
    • Price
    • Cost Reduction
    • Risk Reduction
    • Accesibility
    • Usability
• Customer Relationships:
  • What type of relationship does each of our customer segment expect us to establish and maintain with them?
  • How are they integrated with the rest of our business model?
  • How costly are they?
  • Example:
    • Personal assistance
    • Dedicated personal assistance
    • Self-services
    • Automated services
    • Communities
    • Co-creation
• Channels:
  • Through which channels do our customer segments want to be reached?
  • How are we reaching them now?
  • How are our channels integrated?
  • Which ones work best?
  • Which ones are most cost-efficient?
  • How are we integrating them with customer routines?
• Customer Segments:
  • For whom are we creating value?
  • Who are our most important customers?
  • Classes:
    • Mass Market
    • Niche Market
    • Segmented
    • Diversified
    • Multi-sided platform
• Cost Structure:
  • What are the most important cost inherent in our business model?
  • Which key resources are ost expensive?
  • Which key activities are most expensive?
  • Sample characteristics:
    • Fixed costs
    • Variable costs
    • Economies of seal
    • Economies of scope
• Revenue Streams:
  • For what value are our customers willing to pay?
  • What do they currently pay?
  • How are they currently paying?
  • How would they prefer to pay?
  • How much does every revenue stream contribute to overall revenues?
  • Types:
    • Asset sale
    • Usage fee
    • Subscription fees
    • Lending/Renting/Leasing
    • Licensing
    • Brokerage fees
    • Advertising
    • (Barthering)

Non the less, it gives me goose bumps every time I hear or read it. This has to be one of the deepest truths about us humans:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

No notes so far, but Wikipedia has an overview of Wealth Dynamics

The profiles are described in more detail in the following Youtube Videos:

• Creator
• Star
• Supporter
• Dealmaker
• Trader
• Accumulator
• Lord
• Mechanic

The Seven Truths of Wealth Dynamics:

• You evolve from one level to the next. If the next level doesn’t feel right, you can go back to where you feel comfortable and play that game!
• Within our selfs we have the entire spectrum
• Level 1: There are different games
  • Make sure to know what the games are
  • Focus on one game to get results
• Level 2: You create your game
  • You have to know what your game is
  • This gives clarity and lets you to persevere
• Level 3: Your game needs to flow
  • The more you play your game, the more you get into flow
  • This comes not from learning but from actually playing the game
  • You start to love your live and everything you are doing
• Level 4: Flow attracts resources
  • Because you are in flow, you attract more of what you love
  • You belief, that when you get in flow, that you attract the resources (the law of attraction only works with belief)
  • People at level 1 say that they need the money first to get into business. People alt level 4 say I need to get into flow in my game and start to work with other people who are in flow in their game and eventually the money will come my way.
• Level 5: Flow accelerates critical moments
  • I can choose my luck
  • I can’t even imagine what those critical moments will be, but I know that I will attract them
  • All of our best opportunities come by positioning not by our chasing.
• Level 6: Flow creates synchronicity
  • Anyone who is at a high level of focus and frequency within their flow is going to take it for granted, that just amazing things are happening every day. They wake up into the magic.
• Level 7: Flow leads to fortune
  • When you get into the level of flow where every thing tunes into you, that’s where out pops your fortune, out pops the purpose why you are even here on this planet.

Money:

• Appreciate all the riches around you, including the riches of others. Look for wealth wherever you go, and appreciate it.
• Be clear about the amount of money you want to receive. State it and intend it! Don’t think about how much you can earn, but how much you want to receive.
• Love yourself and know that you are deserving and worthy of an abundance of money.
• Do not speak or think of the lack of money for a single second.
• Be grateful for the money you have. Appreciate it as you touch it.
• Affirm to yourself every day that you have an abundance of money, and that it comes to you effortlessly.
• Be certain that money is coming to you.

Relationships:

• You can completely transform any relationship, no matter what it’s like right now. (Erik: Don’t confuse that with transforming the people in relationships)
• Every single relationship you have is a reflection of how you feel inside about you. You are a magnet attracting to you all things, via the signal you are emitting through your thoughts and feelings. Every relationship you have and every interaction with every person, is a reflection of your own thoughts and feelings in that very moment.
• Make lists of hundreds and hundreds of wonderful things about you. Keep adding to it every day.
• Focus on the wonderful things in every person. Look for only those things. (Erik: Conflicts with Demartini’s advice to appreciate every aspect of a person by finding out how negatively perceived traits are helping you)
• Do not blame or criticize anybody, ever.
• Set an intention that you are going to see the best in everything and everyone.
• Make your happiness the number one thing in your life. Happiness is an inside job. (Erik: Conflicts with Demartini’s advice to search balance. Happiness is a one sided feeling and can’t persist for ever. Love and and fulfillment through balance of happiness and sadness)
• Free yourself of the responsibility of trying to make other people happy. Respect and love them enough to allow them to take care of their own happiness.
• Appreciate and love yourself in every moment you can.
• Do not expect others to behave in a way you want, so you will be happy. Release yourself forevermore and know that you alone control your happiness and it is a choice, no matter what anyone else is doing.
• Know that you are perfect right now.

Health:

• Free yourself of any past resentments or disappointments you may be holding about you.
• See yourself as completely well in your mind and visualize yourself doing things in a complete state of perfect health.
• Do not speak of your illness, or disease with others.
• Love and appreciate everything and everyone, and especially yourself.
• Know you have the power within you to heal yourself.
• Never criticize or blame yourself or anyone else for anything.
• Be grateful for the wellbeing that is coming to you.
• Be happy, knowing that in your state of happiness your body is healing itself.
• As you appreciate, as you love, as you are happy, as you are grateful, you are summoning wellbeing and it is pouring through your body and disease is vanishing in the moment.
• Laugh! Hire funny movies or recall any memories that make you laugh. Laugh your way back to health.
• Make lists every day of all the things you are grateful for, including being grateful for your healing and complete wellbeing.
• You must do whatever you can to remove your attention from disease.
• Distract yourself from thoughts of disease, and put all of your focus and attention on doing things that make you feel good.
• Make your happiness the number one thing in your life.
• Resist nothing, love everything!
• Know that there is no such thing as incurable.
• As you love completely and feel the joy within you, disease cannot exist.

Dr. Demartini about The Secret: