Have you seen the movie Million Dollar Baby"? Hillary Swank plays Maggie, a woman from a poor, hillbilly, uneducated background with a dream to become a boxer.

It's not easy, but her drive and enthusiasm ultimately attract the people and places she needs. And she becomes a fighter. It's not long before she's earning some real money.

Dutiful, loving daughter that she is, as soon as she can she buys her mother a house. It's a modest house, but compared to the trailer the family called "home," it's a mansion. She presents it to her mother as a gift.

In one scene, Maggie drives with her trainer (that's Clint Eastwood's role) to give her mother and sister the keys to their new home. Maggie's proud but apprehensive as they walk from room to room.

Is the mother grateful? Does she acknowledge the daughter's selfless, loving act? Hardly.

In a blow worse than a left hook, she complains that she might lose her welfare benefits, her government support, if they find out she has a house. She's worried that she'll lose her poverty status if she's not blatantly poor. And she simply doesn't know how to be anything else.

Maggie found out that giving someone wealth doesn't make them rich. Her mother had a poverty mindset that she'd grown accustomed to. It fit her like her old clothes, and the idea of giving it up was beyond her capacity. She was poor, she defined herself that way, and no one was going to challenge her or prove her wrong.

In Mike Litman's book "Conversations with Millionaires," he includes an interview with personal development coach, author and speaker Jim Rohn. Jim talks extensively about what he learned as a young man from his mentor. In one example, the mentor talks about becoming a millionaire. Wouldn't it be great to have a million dollars, thinks Jim. No, says the mentor. If you set a goal to acquire a million dollars, you'll never be a millionaire. Set a goal to become a millionaire for what it makes of you to achieve it.

Is there a lottery where you live? How often have you heard of flat-broke lottery winners who were flat broke again in a couple of years?

Gaining a million dollars (and more!) didn't make them millionaires. It didn't change their mindsets. It didn't give them the attitude of gratitude, the spirit of generosity, the wealth sense that they would have learned had they grown into an abundance mentality. In their minds they were still flat broke, so naturally the universe accommodated them.

As we think about the law of attraction, it's easy to visualize attracting wealth as if we were magnets and cash was paper clips. But we don't just flip a switch and make it so. We need to "magnetize" ourselves so that once those paper clips stick, they stay stuck.

Maggie's mother wasn't magnetized. The paper clips were alien to her. The lottery winners weren't magnetized. The paper clips fell away. Our job is to build that magnetic pull so that it's natural.

There are plenty of "paper clips" to go around. Once we've become strong enough magnets, they won't be hard to find.
More Prosperity resources

Manifesting Home Runs

Recently I was in Cleveland, Ohio, about two thousand miles from my home in southern California, visiting my brother and his family. My sister-in-law and I took my eight-year-old niece to her first baseball game, where we saw the Cleveland Indians host the Minnesota Twins. We had excellent seats behind home plate, and little Caitlin loved the music, the “wave,” and everything about her first ballpark experience. Of course, it was even better when she saw her home team defeat the visitors 2-1.

I’m no baseball expert but I can say that this game wasn’t what you’d call an outstanding display of hitting. Few times did either team manage to get more than four batters up per inning. Both teams scored a run in the third inning, and it was the bottom of the eighth inning before we saw another score. Cleveland had loaded the bases with two out. Designated hitter Travis Hafner took one ball, one strike…and got hit by a pitch. Which meant he automatically went to first base, all the runners advanced, and Ronnie Belliard trotted home for the winning run. No heroics, no big hit, no dramatic, crash-into-a-wall missed catch. But an errant pitch that wasn’t enough to hurt the batter, but was enough to allow him to win the game for his team.

By the way, for those of you who don’t speak baseball, bear with me just a moment…

Did Hafner dream about getting hit by a pitch? Not likely. He’s a designated hitter—his purpose on the team is to step in and hit the ball, not have the ball hit him! But if you think about it, is his purpose really to hit the ball? Or is it to win the game? If you put it in that perspective, then he did exactly what he was supposed to do. He won the game for his team. It may not have been his preferred means, but he accomplished his end. A win is a win in the final tally.

When we’re working on manifesting a goal, what are we focusing on? Are we thinking about the means, or the end? It’s one thing to think, “I need money,” knowing you need it to buy a new car, and another to focus on “I need a new car.” Is it really the money we want to manifest, or is it the car? Maybe we win the car in a lottery. Maybe we inherit it from a long-lost uncle. But we have the new car, and it wasn’t the money we were after anyway.

It’s not up to us to determine the “how”; the universe is smarter than we are, and will do that for us. We need to look clearly for the “what,” and trust that the universe, the Divine, can handle the “how.”

Prosperity point: A Three-Legged Dog

I was in a veterinarian’s office and met a woman with one
very lively dog. He wagged, shook, panted, licked, and just
radiated joy the way only happy dogs can. He was so
spirited that it was a few minutes before I noticed the
atrophied hind leg. Funny thing, he didn’t seem to notice
it either. He didn’t care that he only had three legs. I
don’t even think he knew the difference. He was too busy
having fun.

In Lesson Twelve of Prosperity, "Overcoming the Thought of Lack," Charles Fillmore writes:

The mind of humanity is like the net catching every kind of idea, and it is our privilege and duty under the divine law
to separate those that are good from those that are not
good. In this process the currents of unselfish, spiritual
love flowing through the soul act as great eliminators,
freeing the consciousness of thoughts of hate, lack, and
poverty, and giving the substance of Spirit free access into
the consciousness and affairs.

That dog could easily have spent his life limping and
looking sorrowful, and no one would have thought any the
worse of him. Quite the opposite, we’d have taken special
care of him. But what a mistake that would have been!
Maybe he didn’t have the Westminster Dog Show in his future,
but that didn’t stop him from running, playing, and living a
full doggie life.

I have a friend who talks to me about his efforts to meet
women. He uses Internet dating sites, trades emails,
occasionally meets someone in person. He’s told me about
some of these encounters. A few times he’s been terribly
excited, having just made some wonderful connection with a
new woman. But sure enough, within a few weeks, she’s
called it off.

It doesn’t take much for us to dwell on what’s missing.
Something not so good happens, and it occupies our whole
thinking – never mind that the good stuff is still there.
One day of rain ruins our whole week on the tropical island.
The garden isn’t landscaped the way we want it, so we
forget how well we decorated the living room. Our eyes
aren’t the color we’d like, and we don’t notice our gift for
compassion (or our 20/20 vision!)

Fillmore explains that while we’re focusing on our
shortcomings, we don’t allow the Spirit the opportunity to
give. Not being able to pay the bills is overwhelming. If
your mind is a net, it will certainly catch that poverty
idea. But it’s up to you to strain that out and only
capture the ones that build, not the ones that destroy. If
you clog the net with the negative stuff, there’s nowhere
for the positive to flow in.

It won’t happen by accident, nor is it somehow ordained.
You get to choose. And you let the good stuff flow through
by choosing to think thoughts of love, gratitude, and
generosity. You know the phrase "garbage in, garbage out"?
It works both ways. Good stuff in, good stuff out.

Clean Closets

I have to admit, I’m not good at throwing things away. My closets are full of “well, I might need this sometime” stuff. And my garage? How does anyone ever fit two cars in a two car garage? Some of it is sentimental, like the little keepsake box that held my treasures when I was ten. Some of it is utilitarian, like the business cards of former customers (never mind that they probably don’t work at those companies any more.) But they’re all there, and they’re all taking up space in my drawers, shelves and closets.

I recently went to my closet to hang up a new sweater and realized how cramped it was in there. If I want space for new clothes, I’m going to have to get rid of some of the old ones! So I started going through the closet, and sure enough, the sentimental and utilitarian entered in. Aw, look at this blouse, it was a gift. I don’t want to get rid of a gift – it has meaning! And look at this skirt. It’s perfectly good, and if I ever have to dress for work every day again I’ll need it, won’t I?

It wasn’t easy, but I grit my teeth and filled a few bags with clothing to donate to charity. I convinced myself that the dress I hadn’t worn for ten years wasn’t serving me any more, that the shoes I forgot I had were outdated and useless to me. They might be good for someone else now, but not for me.

But it’s not just what we store in our closets that becomes worn out, that no longer serves us. It’s what we store in our minds as well. If we can’t let go of an old shirt, how much harder is it to give up an old belief? And how much more powerful that belief, that is with us always, than that shirt, that we can forget about for a while. But beliefs, like clothes and gadgets, outlive their usefulness to us and become clutter.