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How to AttrAct weAltH Using tHe

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if you heard there was a way to attract all the money you want, would you try it?It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you in the past or what your current situation is – you can live the life you want and never worry about money again. Earn More, Stress Less is your practical guide to living the law of attraction. It maps out a series of well–defined, realistic steps to help you get as much money as you want and putan end to financial worries.You’ll discover:• A clear explanation of how the law of attraction works• A way to decide exactly how much money you want• Simple, clear actions to start attracting wealth• Ways to stop worrying about money• Easy steps to develop a daily routine to maintain your cash flow• Examples, exercises, templates and how–to’s• Case studies of people who have used the

Earn More, Stress Less method to great success

“An astonishing guide to attract all the money you want and transform your life. Highly recommended.”Dr. Joe Vitale contributor to The Secret and bestselling author of The Key and The Attractor Factor.

Earn More, Stress Less is available now from all good bookstores or online at: &

How to AttrAct weAltH Using tHe secret science of getting ricH

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Extracted from Earn More, Stress Less published in 2010 by Capstone Publishing Limited (a Wiley Company), The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ. UK. Phone +44(0)1243 779777

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tHe science of getting ricH fergUs o’connell

It’s not enough to say that you want to have lots of money. Instead, you must create a clear and vivid picture of what you want.

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Go Do It 2.1Take time out. Find a quiet place. Make yourself comfortable. Relax. Now daydream about what it would mean to you to be rich. Imagine the life you would live, what you would do, where you would go, who would be with you. Picture the things you would be able to do that you can’t do now. Do this for five minutes.

Nice, huh? At some point in your life, you may have felt unhappy, restless, unfulfilled. You may have thought that ‘if only’ something were different – more money, more free time, a different house, a different partner, a particular change in your circumstances, a lottery win, whatever – then things would be different. It’s the When–Then Syndrome: When this happens, then I’ll be happy. So if you are one of these people, this chapter will show how to figure out what the ‘this’ is. Once you know what you really want it’s a simple matter to work out how much money you need.

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If you could wave a magic wand and have as much money as you wanted, what would you do with it? If I ask most people that question they’ll say things like, ‘clear my debts’, ‘pay off my mortgage’, that kind of thing. But if I then say to you that you could have still more – quite literally, as much money as you wanted – what then? Ask most people that question and they’ll say ‘I’d quit my job and never work again.’ Push them more and they’ll say that they’d buy ‘things’ like ‘a house with a swimming pool’, ‘a top-of the-range whatever kind of car’ or the like. Push them still further and they’ll talk about all the other ‘things’ they would buy. Okay, but what happens next? You have all this stuff. What do you do then? Recently I was having dinner with a friend and we drifted on to the subject of what we would do if we didn’t have to work. She said, ‘Er, I wouldn’t get up so early in the morning to go to work.’ ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but you’re going to have to get up some time.’ ‘Okay, so then I’d spend more time with my daughter.’ ‘Okay, but she’s fifteen now. She’ll be eighteen soon and going off to college. What are you going to do then?’ Long pause followed by a smile.

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‘I’m not really answering the question, am I?’ Some people know the answer to the question, ‘If you could wave a magic wand and have as much money as you wanted, what would you do with it?’ But, in my experience, many people don’t. They have a vague picture of the future involving a lavish house and lots of ‘stuff ’. But you can see that that’s not going to work if you want to build a ‘clear and vivid’ picture. If you don’t know what you want, then you won’t know what you want the money for. Because of this, you won’t be able to build a proper picture in your head. If you don’t know what you really want then you will build a list a bit like a shopping list. You don’t have a lot of emotional investment in a shopping list – it’s just a list. Similarly, if you just make a list of stuff, you will have no emotional investment in it. The picture you send out will not be clear and vivid and so the money won’t come to you. There’s a regular feature in the British publication The Sunday Times called ‘A Life in the Day’ where well-known (and sometimes not so well-known) people describe a typical day in their life. You come across similar features in a lot of magazines and newspapers. I’ve always been intrigued by it. I’m always intrigued by any insight into how people I admire spend their time.

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What I really want to do is to earn my living from writing fiction. Thus, I’m always interested in how novelists spend their time. One of the writers I really like is Alan Furst and I read this about him recently. ‘He spends mornings mapping the intricate world of his novels on yellow Post-it notes and pasting them meticulously into a frayed loose-leaf binder and afternoons digging in his wife’s garden.’ And looking on the author’s website there is a section called ‘Author Tour – 2008’ listing the cities and bookstores he will be visiting in June 2008. If you want to know what a novelist’s life is like then here is one example. It has always seemed to me that how somebody wants to spend their days and weeks is the best way of figuring out what they really want. If you can describe what an ideal day is for you, and then an ideal week, an ideal month, an ideal year, then you are a long way towards figuring out what you really want. In addition, once you’ve done this, you’ll then be able to figure out how much money you need to support the life you have imagined. So how are you going to do that? Begin by answering all of the questions in the following ‘How would you like to spend your time?’ questionnaire.

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How Would You Like To Spend Your Time? Questionnaire

A DayStart with a day – and write down the answers. In the life you want, what would a typical day be like?

• Where would you be living? With whom?• What sort of house would you be living in? Describe it in as much detail as

possible – the kind of detail you’d find in an estate agent’s brochure.• What time would you get up? Would you have slept well? What would you do first?

And then? And then? And after that? Write down your schedule to the end of the day.• Would you have a commute to a job or would you be working from where you live?• Or would you be working at all?• If you weren’t working, what would you be doing? (Even if the life you want is to be

as rich as Croesus and to laze around all day you’ll still have to have some kind of routine, so you should be able to write it down.)

• If you were working, where would you be working?• What would you be doing?

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• Who would you be working with?• What role would you have?• Would you have a car? What kind?• What other high-value objects would you have in your life?• When you went to a cash machine and checked your balance, how much money

would you have in your bank account?• In your pocket/wallet?• Would you worry much? A lot? A little? About what?• Would you be healthy?• What type of things would fill your day?• What things would you buy?• What luxuries would you buy – things that you don’t or can’t afford to buy now?• When would you finish work?• How would you know when you’d done enough work?• What would you do then?• How would you spend a typical evening? With whom?• Would you cook or go out to dinner? What would you eat? With whom?

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• What time would you go to bed? With whom? In your pocket/wallet?• Would you worry much? A lot? A little? About what?• Would you be healthy?• What type of things would fill your day?• What things would you buy?• What luxuries would you buy – things that you don’t or can’t afford to buy now?• When would you finish work?• How would you know when you’d done enough work?• What would you do then?• How would you spend a typical evening? With whom?• Would you cook or go out to dinner? What would you eat? With whom?• What time would you go to bed? With whom?

A WeekNow, if that was a typical day, what would a typical week be like?

• Would every day be a day like that or would there be different types?• Would weekdays be the same as weekend days?• Would you look forward to Mondays – or at least, not mind them?

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• Would you be sorry to finish work on a Friday because you’d liked it so much?• Would this become a problem?• How would you spend the weekend? Write out the schedule for the weekend days

the same as you did the weekdays.• Would you have more leisure time or ‘quality time’ (with children or family or friends,

say) than you do at the moment?

MonthsAnd how would one month vary from the next?

• Would certain times of the year – summers, for example – be different from other times? Busier? Quieter?

• What would Christmas or Easter or any other traditional holiday periods be like?• Would you be taking more holidays than you take now? If so, how much?• Are there people who are doing now what you’d like to be doing? If so, what do you

think a typical day/week/month/ year in their life is like? If so, what do you think a typical day/week/month/ year in their life is like?

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Get it all down in as much detail as you can.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DETAIlYou wouldn’t go into a restaurant and say to the waiter, ‘I’d like food, please, and lots of it!’ Instead you look at a menu, decide what you’d like and then ask for it. You may actually be very particular and detailed about what you ask for. You may say that you like your meat cooked a certain way. Or you may want to know if there are nuts or flour in some of the things that you are thinking of ordering. If you’re ordering wine, you may be very particular indeed, insisting on certain grape varieties or wine from certain locations or of a certain age. So it is when you are creating your clear and vivid picture. You have to be detailed. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Without detail, you don’t create a clear picture. Instead, the picture is fuzzy, unclear, imprecise, ambiguous, cloudy. Saying ‘I would like a fast, sexy red car’ is very – and I mean, very – different from saying ‘I would like a Ferrari 360 Modena F1 3.6 in Metallic Rosso Corsa with Scuederia Shields.’ (Not that I do – it’s just an example!) So the more you can do the latter and not

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the former, the better off you’ll be.

‘You must form a clear and definite mental picture of what you want… you cannot transmit an idea unless you have it yourself.’ (Wattles, 1910)

So, having some kind of vague longing is the least effective way to imagine the money you want. In fact, it’s not effective at all – it just plain won’t work. What you’ve got to do is to be as specific and as precise as possible and the rest of this chapter and Chapter 3 is about being exactly that.

What I want• Be in good physical health• Flexibility, part-time work, worthwhile work, independence• To develop excellence in my professional competencies• To be a business consultant extraordinaire with excellent profile, website, high value,

in demand, and develop tools, on-line services etc around my offering, skills, expertise• Income that is not dependent on my time• To work because I want to, not because I have to Work 3 days per week, summers off• More contact with people

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• people who are positive, inspiring • forum for meetings/discussions with like-minded people:• Opportunity to learn, expand thinking and to be challenged

• enjoyable and fun • possible work on some joint projects • combine skills• Be financially independent and have financial freedom• Have and build good quality relationships, both personal and business• Time with children: mixture of fun, exercise, chatting, hobbies, support• learn more• Have a teacher/mentor/coach/guide• Do a course(s)• Read books• Enjoy every day, enjoy leisure time (know when to stop work) and not feel guilty• Develop more interests, have more variety in a week/ month, e.g. go to concerts, do a

night course, do pilates/yoga• Have more fun!

Things I Want• Revamp our house (replace windows, redecorate, fab garden with interest areas, cool

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lighting) with low maintenance• Nice home office with nice view• House in France/Italy with pool, nice garden, etc• New version of my car• Revamp holiday home• Speed boat for fun water sports• Spend money on clothes, hair and beauty• Eat nice food!

How I’d like to Spend My TimeMixture of:Work days• Get up at 7 after good night’s sleep• Breakfast with family• Go to gym• Sometimes work from home office, sometimes visit clients• Nice meal• Time with family, e.g. telly/fun stuff or night course/relaxing activity• Bed at 11

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Personal days• Get up at 8• Coffee and croissants on patio• Gym/swim/walk/cycle• Pampering ‘stuff’, e.g. Reiki, massage• Coffee/lunch/pampering with a friend/meet girls for a chat• Shopping for clothes, house stuff• Cooking nice meal at home• Barbeque/dinner with husband and friends• Watch a movie on big flat screen TV!• Reading, drawing, puzzles• Bed at 11-12• Holidays • skiing holiday in Feb/March • easter/summer – time in house abroad • travel (1–3 months) to New Zealand, Australia, China, US, other • bed at 12–1• Project days • working on special projects myself, and with others, e.g. garden project or work project

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Just to give you a sense of it, here’s the result of one of my case studies, Kate, answering the ‘How Would You Like To Spend Your Time?’ questions.

THE NEEDS METERHere’s another good way of finding out what you really want. You could do this as well as answering the ‘How would you like to spend your time?’ questions. Here’s what you do.

1. Identify all of your needs. Needs, in this sense, are areas of your life where you need some kind of fulfilment. In the (hypothetical) example in Figure 2.1 I have come up with a set of eleven needs. You can take this and add to or change it any way you want. You can have as many or as few as you like.

2. For each of these needs, measure which ones are being fully met and which are not. Look at the example on the following page.

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tHe science of getting ricH fergUs o’connell

I have used a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is ‘my needs are being completely met’ and 1 is ‘my needs are not being met at all.’

3. Where your needs are not being met, identify those things that also need to be added to the life that you would really like. For instance, Figure 2.1 shows that the person has five areas that they would like to change: career, earning money, exercising, giving something back to the community (e.g. voluntary work, charity work), new house.

So if certain of your needs are not being met, you can add these to the picture you have created by answering the ‘How would you like to spend your time?’ questionnaire described in Chapter 1.

THEREFORE, HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED?To figure out how much money you’ll need, go through what you’ve just written down and look for anything that will require money. Write every item you find into a list. (A spreadsheet is a particularly good tool for doing this.) Then, for that same item, estimate/guess/try to figure out what it will cost and write that amount opposite the item.

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Your final list should end up looking pretty much like a bank statement. Here’s an example from another one of my case studies, Elizabeth.

DebtsMortgage 45,000.00Debt 1 23,000.00Debt 2 38,000.00Debt 3 2,900.00Debt 4 3,500.00Credit card 1,400.00

Nice to have

Home improvements 100,000.00 garden landscaped totally, house decorated and refurbished, sun room, new kitchen, solar panel and wind turbine, reed bed

New mobile home 100,000.00

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Jeep for me 24,000.00 Baby Pajero or FreelanderHarley Davidson for husband 26,750.00Fund for retirement 100,000.00

Would like to do

Mother 25,000.00 do up mum’s houseChildren 900,000.00 buy houses or clear mortgageKathy and Jill 100,000.00 holiday or cash, not sure yet!

1,489,550.00

Figure 2.2 Example of ‘how much money do you want’ list

If you’re wondering how to guess or estimate things, then here are some hints.1. For debts you can just look at your last statement to see what the outstanding

amount is.2. Let’s say that ‘be healthy’ is one of the things that comes out on your list. Then what

does this mean? Gym membership? Okay, call your local gym and ask them what

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their annual fees are. Or maybe it means a new pair of super duper running shoes. Okay, go into your local sports shop or look online to find the price. Decide what exactly the thing means and then get the price of it.

3. Let’s say, as the person above does, that you want to buy more of certain things – books, clothes, beauty treatments, meals in nice restaurants, whatever you like to have. Then maybe the best way to estimate these is to give yourself a weekly budget and then multiply that by 52. So, for example, you might say, ‘I want to have £30 a week for books, £150 for clothes and £150 for massages and beauty treatments and eat in a nice restaurant once a week (say £100)’. Then that comes to £430 in total, and multiplied by 52 is £22,360.

4. You’ll also need a weekly or monthly budget for necessities – food, heat and light, phone, mortgage, insurance and so on. You can figure out what some of these amounts are from your previous bills. For things like food or heating or electricity, which tend to go up and down, you can take an average of several previous bills. (Or, if all else fails, have a guess.)

5. For big-ticket items there are a couple of possibilities. Some, such as house renovations or garden landscaping, are completely open–ended, depending on your existing situation and what you would like to do. Take a guess for the moment so

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that you can put some number in your list. Then, in Chapter 3 we’ll talk about how to firm up these guesses and make them more accurate. You’ll do this by deciding exactly what you’re going to do and how much it will cost.

6. For other big-ticket items – say you want to buy a holiday home or a fancy car or some other expensive thing – finding out the price should be easy enough. For houses especially, you can look on the Internet. For things like cars and boats you can visit a showroom or talk to a dealer or look on the Internet.

7. It’s probably best to look at a period of a year, i.e. how much money you’ll need over a year. This, at least, has been my experience. Although you will start to see changes almost immediately, it will take time for everything you need to come to you. It will take time for the new things that you start to grow and mature. This is especially true if you ask big. Last year, for example, it was October before I saw the sudden quantum jump in my income that took me way beyond my target. This year seems to be following a roughly similar pattern.

8. As a general rule, guessing is always good. You can always take a guess – no matter how wild it is – and put that in your list. You can then replace it later on with the real information when you find it out.

In this way you should be able to put a price against every item on your list.

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Can you see how doing this takes some vague and unformed longing and makes it completely clear and vivid? It results in a list with costs attached. Once you have themoney – you can just go and buy what’s on the list.

Go Do It 2.2 1. Answer all the questions in the ‘How would you like to spend your time?’

questionnaire. Describe the life you would like – and write it all down – in as much detail as possible.

2. Do a Needs Meter for yourself (page 26).3. Now identify (and write down) all of the things you need – again in as much

detail as possible – to support that life. list them and show what they will cost as I did above. Total it up – in a spreadsheet, if you like. This is the amount of money you want.

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One final point. Obviously what you want can change over time. My list now is quite different from the list as it was a year ago. That’s okay. As the items on your list come to you, you can cross them off; and as you identify new things that you want or

tHe science of getting ricH fergUs o’connell 26

need, you can add them to the list. It’s possible that this chapter may have surprised and delighted and excited you. Doing the ‘How would you like to spend your time?’ questionnaire often does. Here’s what Kate, one of my case study people, said after doing it. ‘I found the first exercise writing “what I want” and “how I want to spend my day, week, month” great. It really helped get clarity around what I want. I found it to be positive, motivating and uplifting. Then, it really struck a chord with me to simply focus and spend time on the key things I want (and stop putting energy into what I don’t want.)’ One of the things Kate also found was that a lot of what she wanted right now wasn’t about money at all – it was about how she spent her time. Bella, another of my case studies, had a similar view. Asked about the benefits of the process, she said that going through it caused her to ‘cut out non-essentials’ and ‘ to look at things in a different way – to looking at what you really want/whatyou’re doing with your life.’ Knowing how you want to spend your time, what you want to do, ‘what you want to be when you grow up’ is one of the most vital pieces of self-knowledge you’ll ever uncover. And in terms of earning more, it’s the foundation upon which everything else is built.

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Successful people have been using these principles for hundreds of years. By following the powerful and eminently sensible steps outlined here, you can use the science of getting rich to realise your financial dreams too.

Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi

Part 1: Decide How Much You Want 1

Chapter 1: Ask Big 5You don’t have to settle for ‘just enough’ – nothing is stopping you from asking for all the money you want.

Chapter 2: Create a Clear and Vivid Picture of What You Want 15It’s not enough to say that you want to have lots of money. Instead, you must create a clear and vivid picture of what you want.

Chapter 3: Put It Out There 33The actions to take to begin the process of attracting money to you.

Part 2: Have a Plan 51

Chapter 4: Decide How the Money Will Come to You 55You must identify the ways that money could come to you and pick ones to pursue.

Chapter 5: Build a Plan 83You must build a plan for each of the ways that money could come to you.

Chapter 6: Carry Out the Plan 123You must execute your plans, dealing with the unexpected when it occurs.

Part 3: Believe 141

Chapter 7: ‘Act As If ’ 145You have to behave as though you already have the money you asked for. In doing so, you will remove major blockages from your life.

Chapter 8: Be Grateful 153You should be grateful when something good happens to you. When you are you’ll find that even more good things come your way.

Chapter 9: Stop Worrying 165You’ve got to stop worrying and here are nineteen ways to do exactly that.

Chapter 10: Stress Less By Problem-Solving 183If you accept the idea that the best antidote to worry is activity, then problem-solving is an essential tool for you to have.

Chapter 11: What To Do When Things Slow Down Or Stop 195If things seem to slow down or stop, you’ve got to give them a bit of a push. Here’s how.

Chapter 12: What Life Is Like When You Earn More and Stress Less 205A brief description of what life is like when you’re implementing the ideas in this book.

Chapter 13: Your Journey Has Begun 215

Appendix 1: How Earn More, Stress Less Works 219A simple guide to the Law of Attraction. It has a real basis in quantum physics.

Appendix 2: Earn More, Stress Less for Children 227How to earn more and stress less is a skill that should be taught to children.

Appendix 3: Checklist of the ‘Go Do It’ Exercises 233

Further Reading 241 About the Author 243 Index 247

“An astonishing guide to attract all the money you want and transform your life. Highly recommended.”Dr. Joe Vitale contributor to The Secret and bestselling author of The Key and The Attractor Factor.

ArE you rEAdy To gIvE IT A Try?

is available now from all good bookstores

or online at:

&

Join tHe eArn More coMMUnitY At earnmorestressless.com