Just so y'all know... acting "as if" is not about owning a BMW.
It never was. It could be, if that's what floated my boat. But it doesn't have to be.
It's all about the feeling.
Manifesting principles are all about working and feeling your way to a better life, to a better frame of mind.
And in my books, the best kind of life has to do with quality - not quantity.
That means quality of living, quality of time well spent. Less 9-5, more doing what I was designed to do in life (and from wherever I choose), while balancing that 'career' with a bucket list that sounds more like a permanent adventure vacation mixed in with rest periods of rejuvenating hedonism.
How do I feel getting up in the morning, about to face another day of what it is that I do? Am I doing what I do best? Or am I just doing what I am doing because those are the cards I was dealt?
I believe in stacking the deck in one's favor.
Ferriss refers to quality of life as that which gives you the most freedom. In doing so, he compares relative income to absolute income. Relative income uses two variables (p. 36) - dollar and time, while absolute income uses one -dollar.
If you make $100,000 a year by working 80 hours a week, you've worked a total of 4,160 hours - minus your 80 hours vacation per year - 4,080 hours. $100,000 divided by 4,080 = approximately $24.50/hr.
That's your hourly wage.
And if you're lucky, you've had 2 weeks in the sun as a respite from all that stress. But your absolute income is $100,000.
Say you make an income of $50,000 a year, but work only 10 hours a week, you start to factor in the free time you have. This becomes relative income. 10 hours a week works out to 520 hours a year. 50,000 divided by 520 = you're making approximately $96/hr.
Dude B is making almost four times as much as dude A given the amount of time each spends actually working. It's all relative.
If you love what you do to the point where those hours feel more like fun than work, then by all means, knock yerself out. But my guess is that's the exception, not the norm for most people.
And to participate in a lifestyle that is based on relative income, you have to have an idea, a job, or a platform upon which you can slowly extricate yourself from the rat race, one hour at a time, until you are performing your 'duties' either remotely or without so many hours of stress-inducing office-environment obligations.
Hence the book. Which requires (almost always) an agent, who is part of a hierarchy without which your chances of having publishing doors open are practically nil - guaranteed.
(We are practically invisible in this world without the chains of command that bind us to each other).
Here's where that 'feeling' comes in again: It's only a good feeling when you control it and make it so.
If someone in the chain of command of your life - someone to which you have given certain power, responsibility or emotional authority - either doesn't step up to the plate, falls short, or is too busy to do so, then that feeling you have managed to sustain may be in jeopardy - UNLESS, you have a backup plan.
As I am slowly discovering, I will be waiting for weeks before anything I wrote will be read by my agent, let alone sent to a publishing house because, "That's just the way it is. Things move slowly in the field of publishing." One client at a time...
I won't get into the details that made me feel like I should have been mailed one of those numbers you pull from the dispenser at a deli along with my contract, except that I am in a 'queue' patiently waiting my turn.
And I have no choice. Or do I?
After getting over the shock that I am insignificant in the large scheme of things because I am unknown, unproven and unpublished, I turned once again to the thing that drives me forward...
Call it a feeling
It took me a few days to generate that feeling again that told me a combination of faith and hard work was my surefire recipe for success, but I got it back.
After managing to successfully generate and sustain a limitless possibilities feeling, based purely on speculation alone, unrecognized talent and sheer determination I am ashamed to admit, one conversation was all it took to send me spinning backwards into doubt mode.
And it wasn't even my agent's fault. She's just swamped and busy beyond. I could hear it in her voice. (That, and she asked me the same questions she did before, the answers to which she already knew).
I still think she's a gunner. I just have to give her time. But that's not the point.
Like I've said before - we are entirely responsible for our own 'feelings'. And those feelings are largely what dictates our successes and our failures.
I may not be able to control what anyone else says or does (or doesn't say or do for that matter), but the one thing I can control is how I respond.
That was a huge lesson for me this week. And it took me a few days until I could even write about it because I was so choked.
Now however, I'm back on board and ready for a new strategy. After all, if I want things to clip along more quickly, nobody's holding me back.
Except me.
Time to get out of my own way.
