MidLifeRescue.com Blog

It’s 2010 and I’ve just turned 50 and recently gotten laid off from my job. Usually when this happens, and trust me it’s happened quite often in the past 30 years, my usual MO is to call a trucking company and get back into a truck and haul ass across the USA. Then I get pissed off and quit and look for another job and the process starts all over again. The only 2 exceptions to this rule(when I stayed at a job for more than a year) was when I was in the military from 1978 until 1985 and when I bought my own truck from 2000 until 2006. In between these times I’ve worked in two factories, one which I got fired from after three weeks and the other I quit after five days. I was also a 911 and Police dispatcher in Cheyenne, WY for two years, a job which I truly enjoyed and loved the people I worked with. I’ve tried opening a business with my brother selling tools, which I failed at and started two web sites, one which was quite successful but I quit because I got bored and the other one I haven’t touched for over a year and hasn’t been recognized at all.

I’ve been married three times and divorced twice. I’ve traveled all across the United States and Canada, did a quick trip into Mexico and got the hell out and had a life changing experience by visiting the Philippines. I’ve seen more than most people will ever seen yet still want to see more of the world.

I’ve heard that people my age tend to do a bit of thinking about where they are, where they have come from and where do they plan on going. I know some people that get down right depressed and wonder if this is all there is to life. I would probably be in the same book if it hadn’t been for a movie I saw 3 years ago and what I have done since to keep me from considering myself a “loser” . After all, I’m in the 4th quarter of this game of life and don’t have any savings, no retirement, not even a speck of life insurance. My credit is trashed and I’ve been bankrupt twice. Yes, two times I’ve thrown in the towel. I’ve tried to quit tobacco so many times I’ve given up counting. I put on too much weight and my hair is gray with a little hole on the top of my head where it quit growing. Throw in the economy that we’re in, I’m 1000 miles from my family and the town I live in is dying a slow death. I’m sick of driving truck and I don’t have a clue what I want to do with my life. What a perfect time to feel sorry for myself. I could gather with those who are in the same predicament that I am and what a pity party we could have.

There’s only one problem. And it’s not really a problem, it’s a blessing. All this mess that is in my life, I have created. It’s not Bush’s fault, it’s not Obama’s fault, it’s not my parents or friends or wife’s or ex-wives fault. The mess I am in is my own creation. Everything on my plate is there due to the choices that I’ve made throughout my lifetime. You may be saying, “What are you saying all this for? For us to feel sorry for you?” The answer to that is NO!
Let me take you back to the part where I saw this “movie” that changed my way of life and thinking. I was a member of Netflix and one of the specials was a movie called “The Secret” I didn’t have a clue what it was about and even forgot all about ordering it. When it came, my wife and I sat down and started watching it. I was mesmerized and my wife was bored to death, so she went to the other room to watch TV. I know there are lot’s of critics out there that don’t even want to hear about “The Secret” but that’s fine because what it did to me has set me on a different course of my life.

I am not a stranger to self help products. Back in the 80’s I was introduced to a program called TPN- The People’s Network which my good friend Frank G introduced me to. It was a satellite program that only showed self help programs on TV. It’s where I got introduced to Jim Rohn, Brian Tracey and Les Brown to name a few. I watched these programs religiously everyday and learned a lot but put none of what I learned into practice. Yet the seed was planted. I’ve also been a regular subscriber to Nightingale-Conant and spent hundreds of dollars on their programs over the years and still do to this day. Yet none of this stuff stuck. I was (and still am to some extent) a stubborn son of a bitch and would do things my way. When the going got tough, I got going. Run run run away! But something about this movie changed everything.

The first thing I learned was that I was responsible for everything that has happened in my life to this point. I was always broke and not a good businessman due to my own thinking. I was always moving to different places to keep problems behind me. If things got uncomfortable, I left. I didn’t want to deal with being uncomfortable or my problems. I kept everything inside until I blew a gasket and went off on people I cared about. I was wondering why some people were so lucky and I wasn’t. I was a pity party on wheels. Yet throughout all of this, I made some friendships that will never be broken. My family and I are very close and I love them more than I can say. But I was only looking at the negative stuff in my life, not the positive. With all the negative thinking I had, it’s no wonder all I got was negative stuff in my life. I didn’t know the correlation between what I was thinking and what was happening in my life. Now I do.

I owe a lot of my changes to my wife Mai Mai. She would constantly tell me, “Honey, if you think negative, you get negative. If you think positive then you get positive”, to which I’d reply to her, “Bullshit”. Fortunately for me, I do listen to her now and what she says is 100% true.

Those of you wondering if watching The Secret has made me a millionaire and I know you’re snickering while you ask this. The answer is not yet. Do I think I will become abundant, the answer is, of course. But the movie was only a start of my changing. When I watch it now I see where it is more of a feel good movie but it got me on this road that I’m on now and I’m grateful for it.

After watching The Secret my hopes and spirits were high, like the high I felt when I first quit drinking more than 20 years ago. But like when I quit drinking, both highs had to come down. I landed back on earth with a smooth landing but the big difference is that I want to change my thinking and change my life! I don’t want to go back to the Negative Nick I had become. Now don’t think that I’m as happy as a door to door religious preacher, because I do have some bad days. But nothing like before when I could take a bad mood and sit in my own shit for weeks at a time feeling sorry for myself and blaming everything and everybody for all my problems. Now I know that everything, and I mean everything that happens in my life is my own doing. Sometimes that sucks and means I’d better pull my head out of my ass because it’s only going to make things worse with my thinking and behaving that way.

For me, learning to change my thinking meant that I also had to open my mind to things that I would have laughed at before. One of the strangest ways of changing my life that took me a long time to accept, was this source called Abraham. I learned of Abraham-Hicks a couple of years ago. When I first got involved in changing myself I did a lot of research on the Law of Attraction. As you know, there are so many people trying to make money off of The Secret that if you Google the movies name you will find hundreds of thousands of sites that so called “experts” are there to help you out and take your money. I found out, the hard way, that there’s more bullshit than there is legitimate stuff on the topic of Law of Attraction. It seems after the movie came out, everybody was a specialist, which as I said, is nonsense, although I think I called it bullshit. Funny thing is, in the back of my mind, I knew that it wasn’t nonsense and that I was on the right path and I wasn’t going to give up.

One name that kept appearing in my searches was Abraham-Hicks. Apparently Esther Hicks was channeling ( a term they don’t like to use at all) source energy through her. She would go into a meditative trance and Abraham would speak through Esther by vibrating thought that was translated into words that the audience would understand. Those of you that know me can probably see the look on my face when I first read this. And you would be right. I thought to myself, “Talk about bullshit! Where did these freaks come from? They must have thought this gimmick up to get on The Secret bandwagon!”

After doing some research, I found out that Abraham-Hicks were in the movie but were cut out after the second release and had been talking about the Law of Attraction before the movie came out and were one of the main people wanted in The Secret because of their wisdom. Well imagine my surprise. So I decided to look into them further. I went to their web site and found out they had a free CD they would send to me explaining all about them. All I had to pay was shipping and handling. After all the cash I had blown on nonsense, I figured what the heck. What’s another $9?

I was excited! Maybe I was onto something hot! I was going to figure out this LOA stuff after all. I popped in the CD and as I was driving down the Interstate I heard a woman’s voice with a really weird accent, almost robot sounding. Man was I pissed! What the hell was this crap? She/He was saying how they vibrate through Esther and that in a nutshell, they know everything. That everything anyone asks for, it is given and that all you have to do is think good thoughts and be happy. Well that’s the abridged version of what I heard. I took the CD out and threw it into the back of my sleeper. But I didn’t throw it away. I was pretty disappointed, to be honest with you. If this is what the Law of Attraction was then I didn’t really want anything to do with it.

So I told myself that all that movie and all the scalpers trying to teach me everything about Law of Attraction was four pounds of shit in a two pound bag. I felt that I had gotten screwed again and what a waste of time and money. I kept reading that there were lots of people like myself who had seen the movie and tried to change their lives but nothing was happening!

So I purchased a CD from Nightingale-Conant from one of the “teachers” of The Secret who promised he had the answer that wasn’t in the movie and that if I purchased his CD then I would have the final piece of the puzzle. Man was I psyched about this. Finally, this “teacher” was going to tell me what was missing! I got the CD and sat in my living room with a pencil (it came with a work book, of course) and put this CD on. There he was, his voice, the “teacher”, going to fill me in on why things weren’t working. I could hardly sit still. It was a 6 CD course with workbook. I sat and listened to the whole program in 1 sitting. I had my computer on and whenever he told me to go to a website, I did. After I had listened to the program and visited the website, I packed it up and sent it back to Nightingale- Conant. The guy was plugging all of his stuff and I didn’t learn the secret that The Secret didn’t teach me. But if I wanted, I could go to his state and pay $5000 to ride in the back of his fancy car and get even more help. It seemed that no matter what I wanted to learn from this guy, I was going to have to dig deep to get it. More bullshit.

In the back of my mind, however, I knew that there was more to life than what was happening now. I quit believing in the church years ago and religion was not something I could relate to. My wife is a devout Catholic and so is my Mom (of course she is, Irish Catholic old school) but it wasn’t for me. I won’t go on my spiel about religion because I know it’s a sore subject but it’s not for me. I do believe in God or a Higher Power if you will. My good friend is an atheist and I respect his beliefs as well. But I knew that there were very successful people out there who followed and believed in the Law of Attraction and I knew that it worked and that it was up to me to find out what the heck I was doing wrong or not doing at all.

As I was cleaning out my semi, I found my Abraham- Hicks CD and decided to give it another try. Again as I listened to this voice and what it was saying, I was having a hard time believing what was being said. How simple it was yet humans had a way of making it harder that it really was. I threw it in the back again but kept it in the back of my mind. I was becoming more open minded a little bit at a time. But I still wasn’t ready to accept A-H.

When I purchased the free CD from Abraham Hicks, I also signed up for their emails. This is where I learned that they had some videos on YouTube.com. When I say some, I mean hundreds. I figured this is where I would do some more research and listen closely to find out that this chick is faking it! I really didn’t believe in their spiel and I was going to call their bluff. I am a pretty smart guy after all. Or so I thought.

I began listening to their videos and the first thing I noticed is that “Abraham” didn’t have that silly accent any longer~ AH HA! SEE!!! I couldn’t wait to pull the rug out from under her…or them….or whatever! I can’t remember the first video I listened to and watched. Here was this woman on stage, barefoot, speaking to an audience on a cruise. She didn’t seem the type to be pulling some stunt like I believed her to be doing, but you never know. After seeing the teacher and his stuff, I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I listened to the question and I studied her responses. She never hesitated or stuttered. She was fluent with her answers and seemed to know what she was talking about. I replayed it again to see if I might have missed something. And again. And again. Nothing. There were more videos and I found another one with a topic that interested me and listened again….and again. Still no sign of acting. I wasn’t 100% convinced, but I was listening and what they were saying was making sense to me. But what they were saying was too simple. All I had to do was think good thoughts, visualize and believe. Then they said something that made me put my guard back up again. They said, don’t believe in the reality that you see in your life now. Believe in the life that you want. Well that sounded kind of hokey pokey to me. So I listened to another video and another. I came to the conclusion that she really wasn’t faking it. But how could source energy (whatever the hell that was) speak through her? And what was all the talk about vibrations? I heard in The Secret that all things vibrate and to get everything a person wanted they had to vibrate in the same way. Weird? Very!

Soon enough I became a huge fan of Abraham-Hicks and still am to this day. I am a believer. I have seen Esther before Abraham took over and she’s a totally different person. Since then I have purchased a few more videos from their web site and they help me immensely. I have also found that there are some huge A-H fans out there and have connected with lots of them through FaceBook. My thinking on life and death have changed. Everything they say makes sense and is much easier for me to swallow than that of the religious sector.

Abraham-Hicks are not my only source of information either. I have become a big fan of Dr. Wayne Dyer as well. There are many others whom I am interested in listening to and learning from in the near future as well. I have since learned that all my older heroes like Jim Rohn (God rest his soul! What a man!), Brian Tracey, Wayne Dyer, Les Brown, Bob Proctor and others all believe and know that the Law of Attraction works…..whether you believe in it or not. And if they believe and they are so successful, then why wouldn’t I? One of the best books I have read is from a man named David Cameron Gikandi titled A Happy Pocket Full of Money. In my opinion, this is the newer and better version of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I highly recommend this book.

Why am I writing this blog? I don’t know. I’ve had a gnawing in the back of my mind for the past few days to write this, so I have done it. There is so much shit on the news and all around us how bad things are today. Worse than the Great Depression, some say. But I don’t believe it. I think people are being mind f***ed by the media which is bringing so much negativity not only here in the USA, but world wide. I quit watching the news so I don’t have to feed my mind with that garbage. There are many people that are making millions of dollars in these “hard times” because they aren’t listening to the nonsense either. If I hadn’t learned what I have over the past couple of years, then the situation I am in now would make me crazy! No job! Bills! The economy! What the hell am I going to do? I would be in a panic. But I’m not. I know that things will work out the way I want them to as long as I believe and take action to make my manifestations come through.

I want you to take a look at your life. If you’ve lost your job, like I have, then look for an opportunity to change what you have been doing. The hardest thing to do, in my opinion, is to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone. I have faith in myself that I can do whatever I want to. My old thinking tells me to get back behind the wheel and make some money. But I know what the end result of that will be and I don’t want it. So I’m listening to Abraham, taking it easy, chilling out. I know what I like to do but my mind says, “You can’t make money doing that. Yet Bob Proctor says that if I do what I love, then the money will come. He’s a multi-millionaire so I think I’ll listen to him rather than someone who is broke and says that it’s not true, go get a real job.

The bottom line is this, and my wife has told me this ever since I’ve met her: Never ever ever give up! You may not believe in the Law of Attraction and you may think that The Secret is a cult and nonsense and you may think that Abraham-Hicks is a fraud. That’s fine, but if you’re not where you want to be in your life now, maybe you should open your mind a bit and invest in yourself. Educate yourself via the Internet, Community Colleges, YouTube.com if you want. But you can’t make a better investment than investing in yourself!

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave me your comments. Because even though I am tchanging my life, those that know me know that you ain’t gonna hurt my feelings! Best of luck (you make your own luck, btw) and I hope you prosper and have an abundant life. Because that’s what your supposed to have! It’s why you’re on this earth! Believe it! And achieve it!

The internet is a fascinating tool that has so much information that it’s impossible to tap into the true potential of it’s power. It is also a huge flea market, whereas back in the early 90’s the majority of the information was free, now the majority of the information requires you to pay for it. Scammers and spammers are everywhere, as well as the assholes that give us viruses such as the Conficker.

Unless you live in a tree, you are aware of what is happening to the economy and also to the country…or are you? I am a subscriber to Agora Financial and receive many of their newsletters on a daily basis. I do pay for these newsletters because as I said earlier, it’s not like the old days where things are free. One of the latest newsletters that I received from them was saying just how bad it could get, and to be honest with you, it’s frightening. When the money stops flowing because people don’t have jobs anymore, which in turn causes more jobs to be lost which in turn causes more strain upon the states for unemployment benefits, which in turn causes states to cut back on many programs, including police and fire, which in turn causes crime to rise, which in turn causes fear and panic…to the point where we are broke, the dollar is worthless (which is closer than you think), to the point where we eventually have no middle class and have become powerless to do anything about it. The government has already set up a web site for those having problems right now during this financial crisis

It’s amazing how quickly the Fed’s have put up this web site yet how the people on Wall Street that caused all this calamity and the possible ruining of this great country, are still roaming free. Some probably have moved onto a nice tropical climate with their billions, knowing what is going to happen here and not wanting to be a part of it.

It’s amazing how the Fed’s are basically allowing these people, who were wealthy in the first place and greedy like Bernie Madoff to get away with ruining millions of people’s lives. Madoff, who got caught, in my opinion is also being used as a scapegoat. By being prosecuted (which he should have been), it will take the focus and the heat off the other criminals on Wall Street who actually did more harm to this country than Madoff did. To this day we have heard of nobody being charged with criminal wrong doing on what happened on Wall Street. Madoff is hated, as he should be, but I think he is being thrown to the wolves to protect the big wigs at Wall Street, who probably happen to have some of our elected officials in their pocket and maybe a bit of paper trail, that if brought to the public’s attention, would show that some of our hero’s in DC were also responsible for the crashing of the USA as well.

Living in Illinois, I was proud to learn that we were voted as the most corrupt state in the country. Other top contenders were New Jersey and New York. What I believe is that the entire political system is corrupt beyond recognition and will be the downfall of us all. My wife is from the Philippines, which had the honors of being the 3rd most corrupt country in the world back in 2003. I have to believe that the USA is among the top 10 corrupt countries now, with all that has gone on. Let’s face it, if you owe the government tax money, which I did for 3 years, no matter what, they got their money from me. We saw no money from the Bush administration’s tax refund, the government took it. If we had any tax money’s coming to us, the Fed’s took it so that we didn’t see a dime. It all went towards our debt to Uncle Sam.

So tell me then, since they were so vigilant with me, how could the new head of the IRS, appointed by the Obama administration, owe taxes and not know it? Or how can so many of the people that Obama was going to have in his administration owe taxes and the government not know it, famous people at that. Yet little old me, who they don’t even know what I look like, by God they know every damned penny I owe them and take it without hesitation?

We bragged to the world how good our way of life is, and how they too should do what we are doing. Capitalism was the way to go, Democracy ruled! Communism drooled! Yet all the while we bashed Cuba, because of their being Communists, we sold our souls to China who also happens to be communist, but they are our friends, whom we now owe trillions of dollars and pray to their Buddha that they don’t call in their debt from us because we don’t have it.

We loved Iran, then we hated Iran. Same for Iraq. Name a country and we’ve loved it and hated it. It’s a wonder we have any friends at all. With what has happened, not only have we collapsed our country but we have almost collapsed the entire world. Not the best way to make friends and push how great Democracy and Capitalism is.

So what happens next? I don’t know. I truly don’t think anyone knows. If it gets as bad as some forecast, then we are in for a change of life like we have never experienced. Ever! And how will our children react to that, since they are so used to saying that they want and they get?

I do believe in the Law of Attraction and still try to keep the positive thoughts and believe that there is an abundance on this planet for everyone. I also know that the LOA works both ways and the thanks to 24/7 cable news channels who just love this shit that’s going on now, the attraction will be negative by the majority. I won’t give up, no sir, and I will do my best to keep my head above water. But I also will not bury my head in the sand and say it’s all going to be alright when I know that it will be alright after we go through the journey that’s knocking on our front door.

I am a believer in the Law of Attraction and am grateful for all that I have learned in the past two years dealing with this universal law. I saw the movie “The Secret” and it truly did change my life. I’m still not a billionaire, nor am I a millionaire. As a matter of fact, I have a crapload of bills that need to be paid! My life has changed in the way that I think! I do believe that what you think about you become, which I learned from Mike Dooley. My wife has told me this for years and it wasn’t until recently I started to believe her. So in that aspect, I know the LOA works and that it has worked in my life for me. If I had not learned about the LOA, dealing with the current situation that’s going on in the world would freak me out. I would be watching FOX or CNN all day, just trying to “stay on top of things” and fill my head with all this negative crap that would make a basket case out of me. I’m not doing that. I know that there are opportunities out there if one is willing to look for them and, most importantly, take action on these opportunities.

Being a believer of the LOA and a huge fan of The Secret, I find it pretty amazing that the “teachers” of this movie have sequels for those of us that haven’t become millionaires yet. The movie took a pretty big hit from many skeptics and critics; to this day some have called it a cult movie. I don’t consider it a cult movie and don’t listen to critics anyways. What does surprise me is how most of the people in the movie now have their own remedies for those that couldn’t quite make the LOA work for them and if you were to buy their course, then you would completely understand and the miracle would work for you! I figured I would give it a try. I won’t say which “teachers” I purchased the courses from, but I will say it was a couple of the “MAIN” teachers in the movie. Now I was ready to start manifesting abundance and prosperity into my life!

I sat home and put on the CD , got out the workbook and other “FREE BONUS DEALS” worth millions of dollars. Everywhere you go on the net today, you’re going to get millions of bucks of freebies for only $39 or $47 or $97. Nice! I stayed home for 4 days listening to the information and doing the work assigned to me in the workbook. Well, that’s not totally true. I made a worksheet on my computer like the one given to me so that if I didn’t like the program I could send it back for a refund, which I did do, by the way. So after listening to this program and reviewing the workbook, I was supposed to have the secret to The Secret. What I had was disappointment. The secret secret was another exercise I had to do that was missing from The Secret and that little thing was what was preventing me from living my life of luxury. After completing the program and thinking about what I had just learned, I shook my head in disgust. The “Teacher” makes a crapload of money and I have more debt with nothing to show for it.

There is a new movie coming out now that is supposed to be so much more than The Secret ever was! This movie is the one that’s going to rock your world. It has most of the teachers from the first movie along with new teachers. This movie is going to take a person so much farther than the first one did. If you act now, you can get some great deals on products from these teachers. It seems that every single one of them has the secret to The Secret and that if you buy their stuff, which is not cheap by the way, then you will make so much money and have so much abundance that your head will spin. But you had better act soon because this is a limited time offer! What I have found this to mean is that they’re going to try and make you think that if you don’t buy it now then you will never see that offer again because it’s going to be sold out! Along with the million dollar freebies that come with it. I am finding out that most people are on to this nonsense and aren’t buying it as fast as the guru’s would like because it isn’t a few days later we get another email saying that the response to this program was overwhelming and that the servers crashed because of the traffic was so immense, but since I didn’t take advantage of this incredible offer, they want to offer me a deal of a lifetime, which is also on a limited timed basis! The offer this time, instead of the $97 is only $1! I can truly understand why there are skeptics out there who blast the LOA and these teachers.

I have purchased CD’s from Mike Dooley called Manifesting Change: It Couldn’t Be Easier which was an immense help for me. I didn’t agree with all of his teachings but the majority of it I did and it helped me very much. I do recommend it for those searching for more answers about the LOA and manifesting in your life. Another person I truly respect and like is Brian Kim. Brian breaks so that it is incredibly simple to understand and explains everything in detail, instead of the vague answers that you get from many of these gurus. I highly recommend Brian Kim!

I don’t knock the guru’s for trying to make a living although from what they brag about they are all rich and live in huge homes with all sorts of cars anyways. What I don’t like or respect is the way that the market their program as the one that will make the secret not a secret nonsense. And once you purchase this stuff you find out that it’s just more of the same information that you already knew about, regurgitated in a new way to make it seem new. I have become so fed up with these “snake doctors” and their “Potions”.

The LOA does work, I know this. I also know that it takes time for changes to appear, that nothing happens overnight. I also know that I won’t be able to see these changes happening to me and that I cannot give up on my goals. I have to keep positive thoughts and believe that what I want to manifest will come to fruition as long as I believe it in my heart and soul and am willing to take action to achieve these goals! Pretty simple stuff. And you heard it here. For FREE!

In my line of work, I get to meet a lot of different people. I get to meet people from all over the United States as well as people from all over the world, who have come to America to make their dreams come true. I met a gentleman from Croatia while I was in Hollywood, Florida this week. He is a fascinating man with an interesting view of the United States, yet a view I have heard from so many immigrants that come here.

He fought in the war for 2 years and saw that his country was unsafe for him and his family and took refuge in Germany. While there, he was offered an opportunity to come to the United States. He jumped at the chance because he knew America was the place for opportunity and for dreams to come true. Like most immigrants, their ideas of the United States mostly comes from movies and rumors. His reality was about to be challenged.

Upon arrival, this man was placed in northeastern Indiana. His first job was a dishwasher that paid minimum wage. He loved the job and worked very hard at it. He was grateful for the opportunity to work to support himself and his family. One day a man asked him if he wanted to work in a salvage yard working on a crusher. He had no idea what a crusher was but said sure, since it paid $9 per hour. He was willing to work as hard as necessary to succeed in this country.

He noticed certain things done in the USA that other countries did not do. The biggest thing that he noticed was how American’s took so much for granted. The fact that we have electricity almost all of the time, that the water was drinkable, that everyone has a vehicle and that there were so many jobs available here, yet the American worker only complained at the lack of things that they had! Where he came from electricity was sporadic. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. They didn’t have the clean drinking water that we have. Most people didn’t have any vehicles at all. These were all luxury items, yet here almost everyone has these “gifts” but complained because they wanted more “things”.

He also noted other events that would never happen in his country. He was watching a show on TV with his son where the police were fighting with citizens and being shot at. He thought it was a movie until his son informed him that it was a reality show called “Cops”. He could not believe that an American citizen would shoot or attack a policeman. The other thing that really bothered him was the fact that we had “welfare for life” in this country. While he was in Germany, he learned of the welfare system because they too have it. However in Germany, a person has 6 months on welfare and then is offered three different jobs. If the person refuses to work for any reason, after the 6 months is up they are taken off welfare and on their own. Here, he was shocked to see that people were driving nice cars, had nice clothes and were buying food with food stamps. “Why don’t they work?”, he asked me. “Because they don’t have to”, I replied. “There is no incentive for them to work, so they don’t.”

Through his hard work since arriving here 15 years ago, he has purchased his own tractor trailer and is leased to the same company that I am. He loves this country as much as he loves Croatia. He is also disgusted with the way the American government spends money, how people don’t work that are perfectly capable of doing work, and how American’s take this country for granted. “How can people expect the government to do everything for them? Why can’t they take responsibility for themselves?”

I didn’t have an answer for him because I totally agree with him. Our country is in quite a mess here, a mess which we brought upon ourselves. We cannot truly use our First Amendment rights due to the fact that we may offend someone by telling the truth, i.e. why we allow people to spend their entire life on welfare. I don’t know the outcome of this spiraling mess we are in but I do know that things are going to have to change because we cannot afford to continue on the path that we have been going down for the past 20 years.

I have talked to many immigrants that come to this country and I love to hear their opinion’s and ideas. They all have one thing in common. They all are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, they all want to work hard and they are all proud to be here and to be a part of this great country. They also believe that American’s take so much for granted and I agree with them again.

Having visited the Philippine’s in 2004 truly opened my eyes to what a great nation we are part of. We have so much here for our people that most countries would die to have. Even with all that is offered to us here, in my opinion, the majority of Americans are an unhappy people. In the Philippines, the people have so little as far as material items, electricity, and don’t you dare drink the water,yet they are so much happier than we are. Their dream is to come to America because they think this is the land of “milk and honey”. Yet we are a country that only wants money.

September 11th woke us up if only for a few months. Now we have buried our heads in the sand, waiting for President-elect Obama to get us out of this mess. We believe one man can make things better for us. We want this Prince Charming to take our troubles away. To me, this is incredibly naive and incredibly dangerous. I know that I am not counting on our government to help me. I will do it for myself. Hell, look at what the government’s already gotten us into! No way I’m going to trust one man to get me out of this mess!

This is a new year and I have high hopes. I do love this country with all my heart. I have served this country and would do it again in an instant. I know that we will survive this mess because it’s what American’s do. I keep hearing that old cliche, “The rich get richer and poor get poorer” and it’s because the rich are willing to take action to fix this mess while the poor sit back waiting for someone to do it for them. Where do you want to be?

I don’t watch the news very often. It’s all negative and it’s biased. I had some friends over for the weekend and apparently they love to watch the news, so CNN here we come!

The first thing I see is an angry man throwing a shoe at the President of the United States of America. A few things strike me (no pun intended) as I watch this. First, this guy is a helluva good shot! He almost got Bush! And I have to give Ole George credit! He dodged that shoe like he’s used to having them shot at him constantly! Very impressive. I didn’t get to see if the Secret Service put him in a choke hold and gave him a nuggie, but I can only imagine.

Next we watched the news about the economy. Holy crap, talk about kiss your ass goodbye! Lay off’s in the hundred’s of thousands, the mortgage crisis wasn’t over yet and it was going to get worse, the top 3 auto makers are claiming that they will go out of business, Russia is sending war ships to Cuba, the US isn’t invited to the South America summit this year, my boy Blagojevich got arrested, and on and on. Holy crap, how can people watch this stuff all day long and feel good about themselves? I watched 45 minutes and wanted to kill something! How could all this be happening and I didn’t know about it? As I said earlier, I don’t watch the news…exactly for this reason. I could actually feel stress coming into my body after watching this shit. I started getting nervous, my foot started tapping, my stomach started to get into knots. I drive truck for a living (I own my truck) and I’m already nervous after seeing how cheap and unavailable the freight is, and this just made me nuts!

Times are tough, I cannot deny that. I feel the crunch and I’m sure you do too. My wife has been told today that her job is ending at the end of the year. I felt the stress again. Still do.

I’ve learned a lot about the Law of Attraction and lots of the other laws of the Universe. I love to listen to Abraham-Hicks, Mike Dooley, Joe Vitale and others. I have a profile on Facebook and I have met lots of other like minded people. This information has helped me out tremendously and I have learned much about myself and my capabilities.

Having learned all of this information, I know that I have two options. My first option is to keep listening to the news and having my health deteriorate to that of an 80 year old man and just let life do it’s thing to me and hope I end up in a place where I won’t have to eat out of a dumpster. I can let my life follow the negative and cross my fingers and hope that it all ends well and my wife and I don’t have to go on welfare!

Or…I can take this knowledge that I have received and try it! I am the creator of my existence. I will decide what is going to happen and do whatever it takes to make the life that I choose come to fruition. I won’t listen to the news or the naysayers, I won’t listen to those that will try to avert me from my destination. I will succeed!

These are my options. The easiest option is the first one. Just be a follower, do what the other followers are doing, complain about the economy and everything wrong with the country. I can be pissed off all the time and not take any responsibility in my life, blame everyone and everything.

The second option is much more difficult. I actually have to take responsibility for my life and where I am now in my life. I have to take some action to achieve my goals. I have to keep concentrated on the end result and do whatever it takes to get there. Lot’s of work. Whew! If I am truly honest with myself, it really isn’t difficult at all. It’s easy. Plus I know the results before I get started.

So my friends, I choose to turn off the news and do it my way! I have lots of people that are interested in helping me achieve my results as opposed to those that choose to follow option 1 and try to tell me how I’m going to fail. I will succeed! According to the Law of Attraction, it’s a given as long as I ask, believe and am willing to receive and am willing to do the work to get there. Let’s see what happens!

What are you going to do?