What Does The Wizard of Oz Have to Do With Prosperity?
A lot, Dorothy. A whole lot. Bear with me before the tornado comes…
I got an idea this morning that came in the form of a question that popped into my head. “What’s it like being a millionaire?” Many personal development teachers, including Abraham-Hicks, talk about the value of acting as-if and of focusing on your life as you want to live it more than you do on how it is now. So when this question popped into my head, I decided to spend a little time writing in my journal and answering the question. Some very important ideas came out of this little exercise, which took me all of 10 minutes, and I’d like to share them with you.
The thing that struck me as I wrote was that the overall flavor of my life as a millionaire was not that different than it is now. I just had nicer stuff and more time to enjoy it. But I still woke up. I still spent some time writing in my journal and visualizing. I still made coffee and had breakfast. I wasn’t spending my time trying to figure out how to spend my money, which is what I might have done when having more money was all I could think about. The feeling was something like the realization Dorothy has at the end of The Wizard of Oz
So what I decided to do was to go through what I imagined in my “ideal scene” and write out some practices I could implement right away that will serve me in achieving my goals. One of them is the idea of lying in bed for a few minutes and being grateful. I have been doing this for just a few moments a day, but I decided to make this a real discipline because, for one thing, the time when we are just waking up is one of the most creative times for us. So if I spend some time giving thanks and thinking about my day, visualizing it as I would like it to be, this particular time is one of the best times to do it because my conscious mind is not in the driver’s seat yet.
Another idea was to create as beautiful and pleasing an environment at home as I possibly can. I don’t have to be a millionaire to do this. I just have to apply myself. Let go of clutter. Focus on the things in my home that are especially pleasing and meaningful to me and let go of the things that aren’t so pleasing. Catherine Ponder talks about this in her book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity
But the biggest aha I had from answering the “What’s it like being a millionaire” question is that I truly am closer to being one than I realized. In terms of creating the life I want, I know that gratitude is the stuff that dreams are made of. As Dorothy reminds us, there truly is “no place like home” (i.e. being grateful for what we already have — even if we have to really stretch our imaginations to find what we’re grateful for right now) when we’re looking for the place to start living our dreams.
I know that I’m going to be doing this little exercise again because it feels good and I have learned from it. Maybe you’d like to give it a try. If you’re already a millionaire or if you are focusing on other goals, just use them instead of the idea of being a millionaire. See for yourself that acting “as-if” has real benefits in the here and now. And maybe you won’t even need to take a tornado-ride to The Emerald City to realize you were rich all along and that even more is coming your way.
Leave a Reply
