Don't layout a series of lessons on how to get rich and then diss the world's richest person.
Kinda screws with your karma, as well as your own personal reputation.
The founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton, was the richest person on the planet when he died. His personal study and quest was to improve the quality of living for as many people as he could. His Wal-Mart empire has long been pretty much the only big-box store for miles in the middle of the Midwest. And it's a huge success story all on its own. Read "Made in America - My Story" by Sam Walton - and compare this with Dillard's.
The point is not the place itself, or the corporation, but how you process it that counts.
Mike's approach in this lesson leads the reader to reject him as arrogant - something he perhaps got from his copywriting study of Dan Kennedy. (But money only amplifies who you already are, as many find out.)
Of course, I could tell Dillard a few things about writing in a way that people don't reject what you're saying. But that comes from some decades in the self-help field and finding what I did in my own "Freedom Is (period.)"
People are too easily willing to reject what you say or your examples. Especially when you challenge their key datums or are generally obnoxious, arrogant, or a mixture. When you talk to people, it's generally best to let them make up their own mind - and encourage them to do so.
My own point of rejection with Dillard came in his Lesson 5 called "A Mind Wired for Money" and we'll get to it in a second. First, let's go over all the great things in that lesson which I can agree with. (Again, the video doesn't completely match the text - we are dealing primarily with his text lesson here.)
Requirement #1: A Core Desire.
This, as I've covered before, is all from Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich." Of course, he got it from the 500+ makers and shakers he interviewed. It was so key with them that he had it as his first principle of 13 in that book.Dillard views this through his Pain Vs. Pleasure metaphor, which he seems to have gotten from Bob Serling. This is very, very limited as a master concept, even though workable.
To say life is motivated by pain is much like people who misquote Buddha as saying "Life is Suffering." No, it isn't and no, it isn't.
Robert Cialdini had 7 points which are used to influence people. Abraham Maslow had 8 motivations people use - from the merest physical survival right up to self-actualization. Lester Levenson narrowed the sticky points of human interaction to be four (desires to, or to escape from: approval, control, security, and belonging.) Meanwhile, Joe Sugarman had 30 "emotional triggers" which prompt any sale or action from a sales piece.
Pick the metaphor which works best for you. (By the way, you can study Cialdini, Maslow, and Levenson in "Get Your Self Scam Free" by yours truly.)
Once you do understand the motivations from that book, you then can put the rest of Dillard's works into better perspective - even his notion that there are "5 Ways People Can Win." Practically, there is only one: win-win-win. This was touted by Stephen Covey, and he got it from his post-graduate study of 200 years of self-help texts in the U.S.
Everyone needs to win in every deal you make. This is why giving excess value works as a marketing strategy (even though it will be familiar to anyone who studied Wallace Wattles' "Science of Getting Rich.") Competition is a fiction. It only exists because you need an opponent. Figuring that you and the "other" guy are both here to do the best they can, and to exhibit native abundance we are each born with - that is far more valuable an approach.
Dissing Wal-Mart doesn't help anyone win.
"The Abundance Mentality"
In this section of Lesson 5 is where Dillard's Wal-Mart bashing begins. Saying that people who shop at Wal-Mart are only interested in saving money, who only look through the eyes of scarcity - it might have some measure of truth.That could be because 95-97% or more of all the people out there are trained in this very problem. Even the people who only shop at Beverly Hills - same percentage. As much as Dillard himself ran into when he got his first millions and admittedly spend them on "doo-dads" instead of re-investing them into further passive income.
However, it also shows that he's never read "The Millonaire Mind" by Thomas J. Stanley. This would show that the rich are also conscious of getting good value - aka: "cheap dates." They don't blow their money, but constantly work at how to re-invest it. Shopping at Wal-Mart would be premised on whether there was a great value. Just as you'd shop around for a car, and not just buy a flashy red sports car because you could.
This is where I recommend people study T. Harv Eker's "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" and attend his seminars (how's this for value: they're free.) Eker has been studying what truly makes people rich and why the rich continue to get richer (compared to the bulk of lottery winners who wind up more in debt than when they started.)
Anyone who becomes rich holds that concept in mind - that it's possible for them to influence their own immediate future and both attain and hold their wealth. This is data which was known before the time of Christ - and is through both the Old and New Testaments. (See Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret" for some of these quotes.)
Why Dillard Never Shops at Wal-Mart...
...is his "repulsion for poverty and weakness."This is at odds with his other statements in this section where Robert Kiyosaki taught him to let go of the emotional desire for money, to treat it just as a game.
Because the truly free, financial and otherwise, let go of the emotional baggage having to do with anything and everything. True, he says that "thoughts are things" - however, he goes on to claim that they are contagious.
The problem here is coming back to that use of pain as a motivation. Practically, the more powerful concept is letting go of all emotional desires, to treat money acquisition (and all abundance manifestation) as simply a game.
Yes, we are dealing with reprogramming the mind, which is my particular speciality (having devoted over 30 years at this point to that study.) You can check out Midwest Journal Press for a sample of these books I've written, edited, and published.
Your own journey will be your own. And I'm not telling you how or what to think.
Only that if what you've been thinking so far hasn't achieved the results you want, you should change what you're thinking.
In my own opinion, you simply need to get free of having to have emotions run your life. Emotions are a byproduct of living, they are not a starting point for motivation. You can find through out the ages, that the freest people act - and only act - regardless of emotional needs and wants. It's not that they can't get pissed off (Jesus clearing the temple of moneychangers has that example) but they aren't motivated by hate, anger, fear, or repulsion.
So it doesn't matter where you shop. It doesn't too much matter what thoughts run through your head. Contagion occurs only where you are running away from something. Doctors and nurses who work with the ill all day (and night) won't catch the illness - because they are not concerned with disease, and plan their lives to run regardless of it. The sickest people are the ones most emotionally attached to or fleeing from illness.
Be - Do - Have, and Have - Do -Be
It's correct that "you'll have to believe before you see it." And yet it's also correct to do your planning by figuring what you want to achieve or acquire, then you'll know what you have to do and how you will have to act to start with.
There video goes into this quite a bit.
The balance goes into something which Andrew Carnegie taught Napoleon Hill - a leader will decide quickly and hold that decision firmly. A follower will take a long time to decide and change that decision easily. (Carnegie was actually looking at his watch after he gave Hill the challenge to interview 500 world leaders and assemble his practical philosophy system. Carnegie held that any leaders' decision was made in 90 seconds or less.)
There is some point that what you are surrounded by influences your thoughts. Practically, they really just reinforce your thoughts.
This is essentially why I moved back to a very secluded lifestyle and only study those who are successful. To eliminate distractions and noise which would inhibit progress toward success.
It is also why I chose to invest nearly $1,000 in Dillard's kit. In order to study the successful. Only the successful. This we agree on.
The underlying point to success is to quit resisting anything and everything - to simply let the universe go. Only when you quit having to have emotional responses that either motivate or validate your life-operation is when you will be able to validly make the choices that are needful to you and your success.
You have to plan with the end in mind. You are going to wind up living that vision, and seeking to make that thought-pattern show up permanently in the actual universe around you.
Again, T. Harv Eker has one of the best routes of study down this line. And why I only talk about Eker and Dillard where you see this blog. You'll learn most about success by studying the successful. So this study is of people who became millionaires in a short period of time. We'll also study their ramp up to success, which in all cases is a matter of years where they changed their mindset into a success-oriented one.
This is the reason for this blog, this post, and this site.
Nothing to do with Wal-Mart, other than Sam Walton became the richest person in America using these same principles that Dillard lays out in his Lesson 5.
So don't resist, don't reject, just choose.
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