taught her. The second section, to be one and three-quarter hours
of prospecting as she had already been doing. The same amount of
time, just slightly different action. The results were different, too.
“All of a sudden, people are signing up,” she told me.
The Hollowness of Being Right
Righteousness is a poor standard for producing success. Everyone’s
experience of money is his or her own creation. This is good news
for those with the knowledge and willingness to examine their un-
conscious beliefs and attitudes about themselves and about money
that are the causative factors in their experience of money. A lean
purse is more easily cured than endured. For example, if you think
rich people are evil, then you are right. But there is more to it than
that. Loyalty to this belief attracts to you evidence that proves it true
and filters out contradictory evidence. The same is true if you be-
lieve that money is hard to come by, scarce, or will corrupt you.
This self-confirming dynamic also works for your opinions about
yourself. If you believe you are lazy and worthless, for example,
then you will tend to waste your time watching television, an activity
that serves to confirm the belief that motivated it. Every act is a self-
defining act. The impulse to improve is built into all of us; wanting
to change doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you. Would
you rather be right, or would you rather be rich?
What you focus on is what you get more of in your life. When
you focus on the negative aspects, you attract more of that negative.
The good news is then when you focus on the positive, you receive
more positive. For example, when we view ourselves in a more posi-
tive manner, we become more positive. Others will notice and re-
spond more positively. Have you ever noticed that when you smile
at someone, the person usually smiles back? Conversely, when you
sneer at someone, you tend to get a negative reaction from that per-
son. What are you focused on the majority of the time? Are you fo-
cused on the positive or the negative? Pay attention to your focus.
I (AF) worked with a client named Jim whose mind was strongly
focused on the massive debt he had accumulated. Jim had more
than $60,000 in credit card debt, an amount that was steadily in-
creasing. When I spoke with him about his finances, the primary fo-
cus of his mind was evident. He constantly talked about his debt as
if it had been a puppy that he watched grow into a full-grown dog.
Jim was so intensely focused on the growth rate of the debt that he
The Hollowness of Being Right 67