No matter what your political position may be, there are fundamental principles at the root of it all.  The challenge is in identifying the principle.  But once it is identified, the correct position (which aligns you with universal law) becomes more clear.

One position believes in the unlimited human potential – that no matter what causes a person to struggle, that person has within him or herself the power to rise above it, and through the struggle, that person can and will become stronger and better.

The other position believes that humanity at large is NOT made up of people smart enough to solve their own problems, and that it’s NOT okay to let people suffer the consequences of natural law when it is within a person’s or a nation’s power to give them an escape.  It’s a position that says it is inhumane to allow anyone to feel the pain that naturally accompanies the violation of principle, and that it is not charitable or Christian to do so.

It’s an honorable concern. But the principle upon which the whole conflict rests runs deeper than many good-hearted philanthropists realize.

For the fundamental principle that guides all of my political views, read my previous post: “Voting for Broccoli”

Now, about the Immigration issue in America… Mexico’s president Calderon addressed Congress and while his comments seemed to be popular among the leftists, this response from Tom McClintock embodies the principles of prosperity and personal freedom, no matter what country you’re from.  My response to his response follows. Watch the video first, and then read on:

People forget that there are fundamental principles that promote freedom and liberty. All the people of the world want freedom, but until they recognize, acknowledge, and abide by the correct principles that lay the foundation for their freedom, it will continue to elude them.

I don’t want to hear from someone who has not proven his political theories. Show me what it is about Mexico that should cause me to adopt Calderon’s philosophies? If Mexico were a thriving economic place where people wanted to live, then I’d listen to what he has to say about how to create a great nation. I think it would do HIM well to read the constitution and find out the principles upon which this nation was founded, and why his people want to run across our borders.

Don’t get me wrong; I welcome ALL who want to adopt the principles that make our country great. Adopt the principles if you physically come to America, or adopt the principles in your own country.  Either way, they hold the key to personal freedom no matter where you live.  When a person is determined to come the legal way, they are saying that they respect the principles that promote and protect freedom.

I should also add here that not all Americans live up to their claim to freedom. Whether a person lives free or not depends on how aligned that person’s life is with the universal principles of freedom.

No matter what country a person lives in, personal freedom begins with a shift toward adopting true principles. Just because a person makes it across the borders without getting caught does not mean they will live a life of freedom. I’m talking about true freedom.

For example, few people will ever know the true freedom that Victor Frankl discovered when he sat in a German concentration camp. He realized that no matter what anyone did to him, they could never control his thoughts. That was the one last freedom that could never be taken from him.

That’s where it begins. It begins in the mind. First, become the master of your thoughts and learn to respond to your conditions rather than react, and in time, life as you know it can no longer contain you, and ways open up for you to find better conditions.

Don’t cheat the process. Commit to principle and allow God to lead the way. Either the way opens up that brings you to America, or you discover that what you really want can be created right where you are.

Anything is possible – it’s THAT very belief that defines the American dream. As soon as people of other countries start believing it seriously enough, they’ll find that the principle is true universally, not not just within our borders.

It’s not about politics, it’s about principles.

For help creating more family time and money freedom right where you are, join me in the School of Life Mastery.

When all else fails, it’s time to go back to school. Click on this banner to begin your journey in the School of Life Mastery:

Temperance = moderation and self-restraint

I easily understand this in terms of harmful substances and addictive behaviors, but when I think about what “Temperance in All Things” means, I have trouble.

I haven’t been good at knowing how to be temperate in goal achievement, for example.  I aim high, and then I overbook myself and get overwhelmed by all that needs to be accomplished.

I haven’t known at what point I can say, “I’ve done enough.”

In fact, just that morning I was praying for some insight on how to keep up better with all that I juggle.

Part of my problem is that I’ve had the mindset that I can do anything – and so there’s no such thing as doing “too much”.  I don’t always know how to temper my over-ambitious tendencies, because frankly, they’ve helped me achieve some things that I’m pretty happy about.

However, sometimes my mortal body can’t keep up with the pace of my thoughts and ambitions… and so predictably, I go through periods of unbridled ambition, followed by periods of crashing and burning, until I regain my strength and start it all over again.

I’m telling you, that kind of pattern can eventually break you, like bending a metal rod back and forth over and over again.

That morning before church, however, I could feel that I was on the verge of another crash-and-burn, and so I prayed to receive insight on the matter that day.  I knew something wasn’t quite right about my methodology… but I just couldn’t seem to see how to be any other way.

Then Natalie, at the front of the room, began.  I’ll try to sum up the experience.  She said:

I like to make cookies.  In fact, I have a wonderful recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies that just works. Over the years I’ve used it, as long as I follow the right steps, we will predictably end up with perfectly delicious cookies.

If I set the timer for 13 minutes and take them out on time, they’re perfect.  But if I get busy and ignore the timer, pretty soon I’ll smell them, and I’ll run to the oven to take them out, but it will be too late.  They will be hard, dark, and good for nothing but to be thrown away.

There are four important steps for making a perfect cookie:

First, you mix the sugar, eggs and vanilla together.

Second, you add the flour and baking soda.

Third, you add the chocolate chips.

Fourth, you shape and bake them.

If I follow all but the last steps, I don’t have cookies, I only have goupy dough.  Can you imagine how your friend would feel if you brought her a covered, decorative plate with a carefully positioned pile of cookie dough lumps?

Baking the cookies has to be one of the most important parts – otherwise you just don’t have a cookie.  Baking them right determines if they will be quality or not.

The timer is important to help you make sure the cookies don’t burn.

There is a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants that speaks of doing God’s work.  It says, “And no one can assist in this work except he shall be humble and full of love, having faith, hope, and charity, being temperate in all things, whatsoever shall be entrusted to his care.”

We have been given a recipe for life in this verse.  I’d like to compare it to the recipe for cookies:

First, the sweet stuff (sugar): being humble and full of love.

Second, the substance (flour): having faith and hope.

Third, the little things that make all the difference (chocolate chips): doing charitable service.

Fourth, the process that transforms the mixture (baking): action, energy, and attention to your responsibilities – with all the ingredients listed above.

Finally, stopping the process when the timer dings: listening to that inner voice that quietly says, “It’s enough.”

She continued, but the lesson just to that point had a profound and lasting effect on me.  I felt that the lesson had been prepared with ME in mind – and it touched my heart that the Lord could and would answer me so directly. For the first time in my life I could finally understand that yes, there is such a thing as too much, and if you push the limits, you run the risk of ruining everything.  Too much of even the most wonderful things can turn into something bad.

Finding that middle place, trusting that it is by “small and simple things” that “great things are brought to pass” is an act of faith of the highest order.

I began to listen more carefully to the Spirit of God that serves as my “timer” – it quietly alerts me when I’m pushing things to long or too far, and when I think I may be hearing it, instead of rationalizing that “I can still do MORE!”, I think about burnt cookies, and it has helped me stop soon enough to avoid burning out.

Natalie concluded by giving us each a perfectly formed cookie and said:

Baking is what determines the quality of my cookie, and temperance determines the quality of my life.

Thank you, Natalie, for being an instrument in God’s hands that day – my prayer was answered in a significant way (and my family thanks you for it, too!) 

Are You Teachable?

A few years ago I hired a marketing coach to help me with my websites. At the time, my sites were generating somewhere around a whopping $29/month. Not nearly enough to even cover the expenses of running an online business.

At the time, we were generating sales offline through our events and book sales, but I really wanted to take my message online and reach more people quicker, and more automatically. I knew the information I had to share would help families all across the world create better lives for themselves and their children, so it was time to hire a coach who could help me do that.

Now, I know that there’s a lot of good information out there that would have helped me accomplish my goal, but I needed someone who could walk me step-by-step through whatever I needed to learn and implement, and I found Charlie Cook.

I hired him to coach me for three months, so we talked on the phone once a week and I spent every spare moment I had implementing his recommendations.

After implementing just a fraction of what he suggested, our sites began generating a predictable $4000/month.

Think about this: I spent a few thousand dollars to hire him.  Was it worth it?  Do you see how an investment in your mental capital can yield tremendous dividends?

I hadn’t talked to him in a few years, so I recently sent him a message of gratitude, to give him an update on what’s happened with our businesses since then. He responded with a gift that he’s letting me share with you, because he knows I’m in the business of teaching you how to be successful in whatever it is you’re wanting to do, too.

So if you have a business, or if you’re thinking about starting one, be sure to download his FREE ebook that will teach you the marketing secrets you need to know in this new economy.

Click HERE to get Charlie’s Gift

Enjoy!

Warmest regards,

Leslie

I’m telling you, mindset is everything! And these guys know “mindset” for successful business. They’ve built nearly 30 businesses from next to nothing… and have had some failures and some amazing successes – and we get to learn from their experiences in the trenches!

What is Bootstrapping? One way to describe it might be: building a really profitable business, starting with very little money.

When you register, you’ll be provided with the information on how to access the recording. (Because this teleseminar event  already took place.)

You’ll learn:

1) WHAT is the bootstrap mindset?

2) HOW does an entrepreneurial candidate discover if he/she has what it takes to bootstrap?

3) WHY is embracing failure so important to the “bootstrap” mindset of entrepreneurship?

4) WHY is idea creation so important to “bootstrapping” and HOW can it be accelerated?

5) There are certain tools you use to filter or prove your business ideas. What are the tools? How do they work? Why do you use these particular tools?

6) WHY is the Zig Zag principle so important to boostrapping success and HOW does it work?

7) WHAT does “climb high, sleep low” mean and WHY is it critically important to living in balance?

8 ) What does “crossing the line of balance” mean?

Bootstrapping is for:

• Those working in the corporate world who want a venture on the side
• Those who want an exit from the corporate world by growing a business
• Those in a position to bring a few thousand dollars to their dreams
• Those who already run their own business, who need help achieving their potential
• The working class who desire to break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck
• Those who have the entrepreneurial bug and need structure and direction

Fill out this form to be sent the REPLAY of this teleclass which took place on Thursday 2/18/2010.  (Keep in mind that you may hear mention of gifts or promotions that have since expired.)

More about “Bootstrapping”:

The Principles Taught Are Applicable to All

Any determined individual can employ the principles presented in “Bootstrap Business” and find success. The concepts are not specific to any one type of business and can be applied to small, private businesses or to technology-driven startups. The information is full of solid principles to help you create honest, long-lasting value, whatever your field may be.

Novice Bootstrappers Will Save Millions of Dollars

The wisdom and practicality of this information will help beginning business owners navigate the big issues: taxes, partnership agreements, scaling, and hiring, to name a few. There is no simple checklist to follow for making money or how to avoid losing money. Instead, a certain mindset and philosophy are required in order to make informed decisions. “Bootstrap Business” provides insight into that mindset as well as actionable guidance one needs to follow to avoid the big mistakes while developing a winning posture.

Business Owners Will Learn Principles and Practices They May Be Missing

There are huge numbers of existing small business owners who will greatly benefit from “Bootstrap Business”. This information was initially developed for startup entrepreneurs but have found that small business owners are the most vocal audience requesting this information. Many of the potholes small business owners must navigate on a daily basis are addressed. Issues such as how to scale a business, how to compete with larger companies, and how to manage cash flow are at the heart of their message.

Seasoned Entrepreneurs Will Nod in Agreement

Experienced entrepreneurs will embrace this information because it helps them better communicate the fundamental concepts they have experienced. It will provide them a structure and framework with which to build their future endeavors.

See you there!

Pros / per / i / ty

– noun: a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, esp. in financial respects; good fortune. Also encompasses wellness in one’s health, relationships, spirit, mind, etc. In short, life success.

But constant optimism isn’t necessary – it actually isn’t really even possible.  Without an emotional dip now and then, you’d never know a good day when you had one.

Even tough times contain benefits.  Families across the world are scaling back on unnecessary purchases and focusing on things that matter most like:

Family, faith, hope…

And if the economy has necessitated this change, then even a bad economy is something to be grateful for.

The world is full of illusions.  Many people are being tested right now to see if they will seek and cling to truth (there is abundance) and make choices that lead them to greater personal freedom, or whether they will let the ‘evidence’ of disaster overwhelm them and lead them to discouragement, and ultimately an even tighter feeling of bondage.

So, with that in mind, how goes YOUR battle?

Everyone goes through periods of discouragement, or there could be no real victory.

Everyone. Even people you look up to.

Even people who are doing well right now.

Discouragement is simply a natural part of the package called LIFE.

But what separates those who conquer the battle from those who are crushed under the weight of it, is just one thing.

The only thing that separates the victor from the vanquished is his or her thoughts in the heat of the battle.

It’s easy to think optimistically when things are going well.

It’s when things are TOUGH beyond belief that the real winners emerge. How do they do it? What do they know that perhaps you don’t know?

Keep reading…

The hardest part is thinking optimistically when things are NOT going well. A person might try, but if there isn’t enough knowledge and understanding to support that optimism, the optimism is fake at best, and can even become destructive at worst.

Don’t let your optimism destroy you.

You can’t just hope and pray that everything will work out. You can’t just affirm it superficially. You need to have the knowledge that gives you REASON to know that everything is going to turn out okay for you. There is a way to know for sure, and it isn’t just from making a decision that you’ll make it so.

The good news is that in hard times like these, for some, the greatest personal victories of all time will be won. No victory will ever be so great as the ones that come out of the most disastrous of conditions. So if you have it REALLY bad right now, you are among the most fortunate – IF – you make your daily decisions based on the knowledge I have to share with you.

If you’re ready to get on top of those bills and begin living the life you and your family were meant to live, order the FTMF program. I’ve got something special I am going to throw in, so keep reading…

“I can’t even describe what an amazing miracle this course has been in my life. Everything has changed and I am a completely different person from when I started this journey in January. I went from a happy, but blah, letting-life-take-me-where-it-will-and-be-happy-with-it person, to a vigorous and excited, let-me-partner-with-God-in-creating-miracles person. My husband is overwhelmingly excited to see this change in me and seriously awesome things are happening. I never would have imagined 8 months ago when I was sitting in my dingy apartment that I would be in a house on an amazing adventure with so many exciting dreams and achievable goals! TAKE THIS COURSE, it will change your life. I tell everyone that I can about it. Thank you Leslie and Trevan!” Katiev16

There is no greater gift you can give your family than the gift of HOPE. It begins with you.

You’ve got to take the lead on this and learn to live according to the principles so you can show your family how.

You might be the only person you know who is interested in this information. Don’t wait for anyone else to make the decision for you – you may be your family’s only hope.

There’s a reason why YOU are the one who has been drawn to this material – the one who bothered reading this message – and it could be because your nature is the most inclined to naturally influencing those around you for good by your example. Let them see how it changes your life.

You don’t even have to say a word – they’ll see it, they’ll sense it, and they’ll naturally become curious and hungry to discover your new found wisdom and knack for profiting from your setbacks.

What is the FTMF program?

The Family Time & Money Freedom (FTMF) program is a 12-week course that walks you step-by-step through two very important phases. In the first phase, I help you experience documentable success with an inconsequential goal – something that creates no inner conflict with old paradigms. This phase gives you the confidence to set a second goal – a bigger one – the kind that right now might blow your mind. Then during phase 2, I help you choose that bigger goal and then systematically help you achieve it.

Together, we build the neuro-pathways you need to have confidence and a pattern for accomplishing every goal you set for the rest of your life. This is why so many of our students get the FTMF program and go through it more than once, because after achieving their first big goal, they’re excited to see it work again for an even bigger goal.

The process doesn’t change – you simply use it time and again for increasingly difficult objectives. You’ll be a different person the next time through, and have a completely different experience with it. You’ll notice ideas and concepts in the material that you didn’t notice the first time through, because frankly, you weren’t ready for it.

This is how it is with everyone. We all notice and absorb the principles we’re ready to learn, only when we’re ready to learn them.

(Thank heavens for that, because if it all was understandable the first time around, you’d be overwhelmed. Your mind would shut down because physically you could not handle it all in one flood of enlightenment. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever been so enlightened that you get physically drained and need to sleep?)

Anyway, think about giving your family the gift of HOPE right now. I don’t mean: buy THEM the FTMF program, although I wouldn’t discourage that; but if YOU are the one who is hungry for the information, buy it for YOU, and SHOW them your transformation.

Inspire them by your example.

Hope is contagious, and as your hope grows, theirs will, too.

Order this week and you’ll get one free membership in the School of Life Mastery for one year ($359 value) at no additional charge.

Remember, you’ll have the online version available to you immediately – so you can get started even before your box arrives in the mail.

When money is tight, you can either stretch it as far as it will go and hope it doesn’t run out, or you can invest it in learning how to multiply the little resources you may have left.

Have faith in yourself. You have everything you need to win this battle.

When you can’t rely on anything or anyone else to give you what you need, rely on PRINCIPLES. You’ll feel a greater sense of peace immediately as you immerse yourself in understanding what they are and how they really work.

When you live according to the laws, you naturally enjoy greater confidence and clearer guidance on what your next step needs to be. Peace of mind is within your reach.

Let me help you find it.

All the best,

Leslie Householder

And then one day we were given the blessing of facing the fact that all the money reserves were used up.  I say it was a blessing, because what we learned in that moment changed our perspective completely.

I finally realized something.

We had previously experienced what it felt like to have a lot of money in the bank, and on that day we experienced the total opposite.  In the first case, we had a bunch of money in reserves, and zero cash flow.  In other words, we had not done enough in the way of creating income streams to replace the money as fast as we were spending it.

We weren’t spending frivolously; it was just the cost of living and investing in ourselves that was eating into our reserves, and it had been our primary objective to get the income streams flowing before all the money ran out.

As you can imagine, in the back of our minds we wondered what would happen if the money ran out before the cash flow was in place.

And then, on that fateful day we were fortunate enough to experience the thing we feared.  The money was gone, the resources were dried up, but we had several income streams in place that we had worked a long time to create.  The income was not guaranteed and never very predictable, but it was cash flow.

Trust me on this one: there was much more of a sense of financial security with NO money in the bank, but a little bit of a variable cash flow, than there ever was with a giant pile of money in the bank and limited to no cash flow.

I think the ‘flow way’ is more in alignment with the proper nature of things, anyway.  Money should stay in circulation.  It’s currency (current-cy)!  It needs to flow.  It needs to be utilized or it has no value.  Net worth is a facade.  As my co-author for Portal to Genius Garrett B. Gunderson says, “It’s just dots on a paper.”

Real wealth and real value comes from exchange.  Whether it is exchange involving money or not, there is no wealth in dormant resources.

Think of it this way: would you rather have a healthy 10 pints of blood flowing through your body, or would you rather have 40 gallons in a refrigerator and a body with NO blood flow? (How’s that for a visual aid?)

That’s what can happen to a person who is tempted to hoard, or who gets caught in the ‘accumulation trap’. It’s a formula for disaster.

Begin by coming to peace with how much you have, and let it flow.

(This brings up a point about charitable donations: Our bodies naturally create more blood when we donate some – and we don’t even have to know how we do it.  Same with money.  Even if you have only a little, don’t be afraid to let it flow to good causes.  Nature has ways of replenishing you again.  Have faith!)

So, instead of setting a goal to have a million dollars in the bank, remember, the pile of money doesn’t bring peace of mind – in many cases, it creates more anxiety because of the fear it will dwindle or that it might be mismanaged.

Peace of mind comes  from having a healthy flow, even if what flows isn’t very much.

Where there’s flow, things grow.  It’s the difference between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee.  It’s the difference between 10 pints flowing between your heart, lungs and brain, vs. 40 gallons in a refrigerator.

Whether you have a lot, or a little, it’s got to flow.  Don’t be afraid of running out when you’re putting your resources toward investing in your soul purpose.  The laws of success support you best when you’re doing what your heart is telling you to do.

Don’t be afraid to invest in the training you need that will help you develop those income streams.  As Bob Proctor taught me long ago, the cure for Fear is not Courage, the cure for Fear is Knowledge.

Let me show you how to have the peace of mind I’m talking about.  I’ll help you step-by-step to experience that transformation through the 12-week Family Time and Money Freedom (FTMF) home study program.  Find out more…

We listened to motivational tapes that urged us to believe in our dreams, and we knew that we could have any kind of life we really wanted, but when it came right down to it, it was always impossible to see where any extra money would ever come from.

I can see now that where we were, having faith in the face of scarcity was an impossible expectation.

The thing that made it so difficult is that we knew exactly how much money we were getting, and we also knew just how much our expenses exceeded that income.

If true financial success cannot be achieved without at least some degree of FAITH (believing in something without tangible evidence), how in the world is a person supposed to have that kind of faith when all evidence proves that it’s utterly impossible?

I learned that there are three things that, over the years, helped me build that necessary faith.

1. Continuing Education – learning new marketable skills and studying the laws of success
2. Work – investing time, money, and energy in other income streams outside of our regular jobs.  (Even when they didn’t produce a profit – and they didn’t – for nearly 10 years!)
3. Choosing to Believe in God, and believing that He was interested in our success – and trusting that it was being orchestrated, if we’d just kept moving our feet.

For nearly a decade, we worked and studied and worked some more.  We believed the abundance would have to find us sometime, if we just kept trying.

I think about the early settlers of my desert region… there were a lot of ditches to dig and canals to build before they were prepared to utilize a flow of water.  I’m sure it took many, many years to put those systems in place.

As you explore your talents and look for new ways to monetize them, just picture yourself digging ditches and building canals.  It’s so easy to think that a massive, sudden flow of money would solve all of your problems, but in reality, that gush could be just as devastating as a flash flood in a valley where the settlers are trying to create a system for a steady, constant supply of water instead.

You don’t want the gush until your systems are in place!

It dawned on me that after my husband took the leap toward full-time self-employment (when we really couldn’t predict exactly where the money would come from like we could when we had a regular paycheck), the more trenches we dug, the easier it was to have faith in God. Isn’t that interesting?

Having put forth so much unrewarded effort for that many years, in the face of scarcity, instead of saying, “I can’t think of a single place the money could come from,”  we could more easily say, “The water could come from any one of the hundreds of trenches we dug all those years!”

Compared to our first few years together, how much easier it now was to finally believe!  How much easier it was to have faith!  And faith is the critical element.  All the work in the world without faith can be just as useless as all the faith you can muster without work.

As they say, “Faith without works is dead.”  Truly without some personal effort, faith is meaningless.  Why? Because you demonstrate your faith BY working! You’re proving your belief in the abundant life by putting forth the effort to get those money-making systems in place.

And, when faith is low, work can help it grow, too.  This is why the unexpected cure for doubt in my opinion is: Education, and WORK.

If you can’t think of where to get the money you need, shift your focus to increasing your knowledge, and get to work finding some kind of meaningful services you can perform for others.

God did not bring you this far to fail now… stay in forward motion.  Your reward is waiting for you!

For a first-class education in the principles of prosperity, join me in the FTMF Program!

In this economy, if you don’t want to break, you’ve got to be flexible. Maybe your expected path to cash hasn’t panned out. Maybe all you’ve worked for has evaporated and you don’t know where to go from here.

To be flexible means to be open minded, to be teachable, to be able to bend into a form that may be unfamiliar, uncomfortable, awkward.

But when the alternative is snapping in half, it’s better to bend.

If you’re ready to look at how you might be able to thrive in this new economic environment, watch this video.

“See” you there!