Changing mindsets

I’d been feeling weighed down by all the negative headlines lately. It seemed like anywhere I looked, bad news was there for the taking. I felt even worse when I started forking over an extra peso for my jeepney ride. I was tottering on the edge of despair after I bought some milk at the grocery and realized that from around P60 a liter, the price was now close to P80. This is not good, I told myself. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going hungry; in fact, I was earning more money than I’ve ever earned before, yet, I was worried about a future that wasn’t even real. The past few years have been lessons on abundant thinking, and I’ve learned that it doesn’t help to feel bad about anything at all because it only makes your situation worse. I wanted to do something to get the bad feelings out of my system.

I considered it timely when I received an email from my colleague about a seminar on attracting wealth. The man behind the training, John Calub, promised to show attendees how to use the Law of Attraction to create wealth and abundance. His training company is relatively new (he started it in 2006, bankrupt and inspired after meeting Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame), but he’s already making a name for himself in the training industry. I think I’ve mentioned the Law of Attraction here before, when I wrote about The Secret. In his email invite, Calub says he had something more to add—things that were left out from The Secret. Yes, he promised to teach the secret to The Secret! As funny as it may sound, it actually was. I have to be honest though—what really attracted me, however, was that it was a sponsored event, so I needed only to pay half of the P3,000 registration fee.

The seminar turned out to be another eye-opener that did help me manage my negative feelings. He taught us some meditation techniques—apparently, it’s easier to attract what you want at a certain level of thinking—and some techniques to let go of bad vibrations (what negative feelings essentially are).

He explained to us how we have mindsets that prevent us from being wealthy. First, he asked us to write down how much we have in our bank account, how much we thought we deserved, and how much we needed to have that would make us consider ourselves as wealthy. I wrote what I thought were fair amounts. Later on, he asked us, “Why not more?” Why not, indeed?

He said attributed our thinking to mass culture, beginning with telenovelas. What do you learn about the rich from telenovelas? A lot, apparently. We learn that rich people are some, if not all, of the above: Evil, abusive, unhappy, greedy, and selfish. And what do you we learn about being poor? Unfortunately, a lot of romanticized crap, like: It’s noble, heroic, worthy of praise, good, and honorable. The rich are often kontrabidas while the poor are the people we root for. Poor people are not bad; it’s just not good to be poor. Living a simple life is not the same as living an impoverished one.

Calub also gave us a sampling of some songs that imprint in us a mentality of lack, with lines like, “Ayoko na mangarap, ayoko na tumingin,” “Why does the sun go on shining? Why does the sea rush to shore? Don’t they know, it’s the end of the world,” and “Sad movies always make me cry.” I can add a song I’d made my anthem for some years: At Seventeen (with a killer opening line that goes, “I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens”). I still like the song, but I don’t sing it to myself anymore.

He recommended listening to upbeat music, of which there are plenty. There are The Carpenters’ upbeat songs like Top of the World (“I’m on the top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I can find is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around. Your loves put me at the top of the world”) and Abba’s I Have a Dream, which has been my current anthem after watching Mamma Mia. My other personal favorite is Greatest American Hero.

Calub echoes the same words in The Secret: “You become what you think about.” Think about it.

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