Friday, June 09, 2006

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.
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