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Double your income doing what you love - book review

Tags: Abundance, Wealth, Money, Success, Law of attraction

I have just finished reading 'Double your income doing what you love' by Raymond Aaron. A provocative title, to be sure! Aaron’s book is a set of instructions for achieving goals using principles in tune with the much talked about ‘law of attraction’. Like most books in this area, this one is a mixture of good and not so good, but there are some real gems here. The following is a distillation of the important points as I saw them.

1. Set goals and record them. By setting goals you are already ahead of the game. Most people don’t know where they’re heading and so they can’t get there. Writing goals is a powerful signal to yourself that you intend to achieve them. The feelings invoked by this process call into motion the law of attraction, which starts to operate to get things done with and for you.

2. Do what you love. Why do you love certain things and not others? Do we, in fact, have a ‘life mission,’ as many writers suggest, or do we actually choose our experience from a smorgasbord of possibilities? Aaron assumes the former (I don’t entirely agree, but this is a topic for another time) and suggests that you should focus your energies doing only what you love since this is where your passion is and when you pour your passion out, the law of attraction starts to work with you and things start happening.

3. Delegate what you don’t love. The reason people procrastinate is because they don’t want to do the things they’re putting off. Although we’ve been taught that procrastination is a bad thing, in fact it is a signal that our energies are being focused in the wrong place. To get around this problem, Aaron suggests that we need to delegate tasks we don’t like to others (who may well like them). Like a lot of good ideas, our modern puritanical work ethic gets in the way and we start worrying about laziness and ‘passing the buck.’ These are not, in fact, terrible sins, but delegation doesn’t imply laziness anyway, it implies using our energies more effectively. Why do something you hate when you can get someone else (who doesn’t hate it and may even love it – yes, it takes all sorts to make a world) to do it for you? For me, this was the most important lesson to be gleaned from the book.

4. Develop in a holistic way. Aaron divides his areas for goal setting into six ‘pathways,’ which he abbreviates by using the acronym MAINLY. They are:

(a) Cleaning up a Mess
(b) Acknowledging something (showing gratitude)
(c) Increasing wealth
(d) Trying something New
(e) Learning something
(f) Doing something for Yourself

Aaron suggests that you cover these areas every month. These are good suggestions in that they are specific areas for setting goals and taking action, though other ways of dividing things up might work as well. I use a four-fold way of thinking about things – money, success, relationships and happiness.

5. Celebrate success. One of Aaron’s points seems to be that if you ‘lower the bar,’ you can enjoy success much more easily, and this makes you feel good, spurring you on to greater things. He suggests using an ‘MTO’ approach – set a minimum target (which you are almost certain you will achieve, something you’ll probably do anyway), a medium target (more of a stretch) and an outrageous target. Achieving lots of little goals over a long period will all add up to make a big difference and will also probably lead to the bigger being achieved, at least now and again.

Aaron also suggests writing goals as if they have already been achieved. He invites his reader to imagine themselves at the end of the year, writing a letter of congratulations to their past self for having achieved the goals that were set. This ‘annual backwards goals’ process has the benefit of making you feel as if you have already achieved the goals and hence invoking the law of attraction in a more powerful way.

6. Record goals in the right way. We’ve heard of SMART targets – Aaron takes this idea and slightly changes it as a result of his ‘groundbreaking research’ (something of an exaggeration – what he describes is neither groundbreaking nor research in any real sense), suggesting that goals should have specific characteristics. Goals should

(a) have a deadline
(b) be measurable (e.g. go to the gym ten times this month)
(c) be brief
(d) state the intended result and not the means of getting there
(e) be stated in a positive way, not as something you are going to negate
(f) state the total number of times, not stated as (e.g.) x times per month

That goals should be well written is a point well taken, but it is down to the reader to decide whether or not to adopt this system.

Aaron goes into great detail about setting and recording goals and seems to over complicate things with a stack of forms which have to be completed in just the right way and a scoring system for assigning numbers to the completion of various goals. For people who love making lists, this might be a very motivating thing, but it will not appeal to others, whom I suspect may just find the whole process a chore. When goal setting becomes a chore, of course, that’s when you’re not going to get anywhere. The law of attraction is all about feeling good, excited and energized. This is where Aaron seems to fail – he appeals to one kind of person and robs the joy and passion of goal setting from everyone else. The importance of being organized and keeping track of things lest life continue to drift along is well taken, but for me he goes too far.

I felt that with all the focus on planning, recording, doing, measuring, the fundamental way that the law of attraction operates is being distorted – our job is to imagine and feel the outcomes as if they have already happened; it is not our job to minutely plan how we are going to achieve our goals.

The writing style is very simple and clear, though there is a certain lack of humility about it – at times, the prose seems too full of itself for my liking. Also, Aaron has got copyright on a lot of his made up words and phrases, such as the MAINLY pathways, and I found the ubiquitous presence of the initials TM quite annoying. I also did not appreciate the regular sales pitches for his mentoring services.

The book is worth a read and I certainly got something out of it, though I hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly.

Seed Newsvine

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<h1>Double your income doing what you love - book review</h1><br />by sas_hkalchemy<br />I have just finished reading 'Double your income doing what you love' by Raymond Aaron. A provocative title, to be sure! Aaron’s book is a set of instructions for achieving goals using principles in tune with the much talked about ‘law of attraction’. Like most books in this area, this one is a mixture of good and not so good, but there are some real gems here. The following is a distillation of the important points as I saw them.<br /><br /> 1. Set goals and record them. By setting goals you are already ahead of the game. Most people don’t know where they’re heading and so they can’t get there. Writing goals is a powerful signal to yourself that you intend to achieve them. The feelings invoked by this process call into motion the law of attraction, which starts to operate to get things done with and for you.<br /><br /> 2. Do what you love. Why do you love certain things and not others? Do we, in fact, have a ‘life mission,’ as many writers suggest, or do we actually choose our experience from a smorgasbord of possibilities? Aaron assumes the former (I don’t entirely agree, but this is a topic for another time) and suggests that you should focus your energies doing only what you love since this is where your passion is and when you pour your passion out, the law of attraction starts to work with you and things start happening.<br /><br /> 3. Delegate what you don’t love. The reason people procrastinate is because they don’t want to do the things they’re putting off. Although we’ve been taught that procrastination is a bad thing, in fact it is a signal that our energies are being focused in the wrong place. To get around this problem, Aaron suggests that we need to delegate tasks we don’t like to others (who may well like them). Like a lot of good ideas, our modern puritanical work ethic gets in the way and we start worrying about laziness and ‘passing the buck.’ These are not, in fact, terrible sins, but delegation doesn’t imply laziness anyway, it implies using our energies more effectively. Why do something you hate when you can get someone else (who doesn’t hate it and may even love it – yes, it takes all sorts to make a world) to do it for you? For me, this was the most important lesson to be gleaned from the book.<br /><br /> 4. Develop in a holistic way. Aaron divides his areas for goal setting into six ‘pathways,’ which he abbreviates by using the acronym MAINLY. They are:<br /><br /> (a) Cleaning up a Mess<br /> (b) Acknowledging something (showing gratitude)<br /> (c) Increasing wealth<br /> (d) Trying something New<br /> (e) Learning something<br /> (f) Doing something for Yourself<br /><br /> Aaron suggests that you cover these areas every month. These are good suggestions in that they are specific areas for setting goals and taking action, though other ways of dividing things up might work as well. I use a four-fold way of thinking about things – money, success, relationships and happiness. <br /><br /> 5. Celebrate success. One of Aaron’s points seems to be that if you ‘lower the bar,’ you can enjoy success much more easily, and this makes you feel good, spurring you on to greater things. He suggests using an ‘MTO’ approach – set a minimum target (which you are almost certain you will achieve, something you’ll probably do anyway), a medium target (more of a stretch) and an outrageous target. Achieving lots of little goals over a long period will all add up to make a big difference and will also probably lead to the bigger being achieved, at least now and again.<br /><br /> Aaron also suggests writing goals as if they have already been achieved. He invites his reader to imagine themselves at the end of the year, writing a letter of congratulations to their past self for having achieved the goals that were set. This ‘annual backwards goals’ process has the benefit of making you feel as if you have already achieved the goals and hence invoking the law of attraction in a more powerful way.<br /><br /> 6. Record goals in the right way. We’ve heard of SMART targets – Aaron takes this idea and slightly changes it as a result of his ‘groundbreaking research’ (something of an exaggeration – what he describes is neither groundbreaking nor research in any real sense), suggesting that goals should have specific characteristics. Goals should<br /><br /> (a) have a deadline<br /> (b) be measurable (e.g. go to the gym ten times this month)<br /> (c) be brief<br /> (d) state the intended result and not the means of getting there<br /> (e) be stated in a positive way, not as something you are going to negate<br /> (f) state the total number of times, not stated as (e.g.) x times per month<br /><br /> That goals should be well written is a point well taken, but it is down to the reader to decide whether or not to adopt this system. <br /><br />Aaron goes into great detail about setting and recording goals and seems to over complicate things with a stack of forms which have to be completed in just the right way and a scoring system for assigning numbers to the completion of various goals. For people who love making lists, this might be a very motivating thing, but it will not appeal to others, whom I suspect may just find the whole process a chore. When goal setting becomes a chore, of course, that’s when you’re not going to get anywhere. The law of attraction is all about feeling good, excited and energized. This is where Aaron seems to fail – he appeals to one kind of person and robs the joy and passion of goal setting from everyone else. The importance of being organized and keeping track of things lest life continue to drift along is well taken, but for me he goes too far.<br /><br />I felt that with all the focus on planning, recording, doing, measuring, the fundamental way that the law of attraction operates is being distorted – our job is to imagine and feel the outcomes as if they have already happened; it is not our job to minutely plan how we are going to achieve our goals.<br /><br />The writing style is very simple and clear, though there is a certain lack of humility about it – at times, the prose seems too full of itself for my liking. Also, Aaron has got copyright on a lot of his made up words and phrases, such as the MAINLY pathways, and I found the ubiquitous presence of the initials TM quite annoying. I also did not appreciate the regular sales pitches for his mentoring services.<br /><br />The book is worth a read and I certainly got something out of it, though I hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly.<br /><h2>About the Author</h2><p><a href ="http://effortless-wealth.blogspot.com">Visit the Effortless Wealth blog for more articles</a> Submitted by: <a href="http://submitter.articlesite.co.za">Free Article Submitter</a></p> <br /><h3><a href="http://www.content4reprint.com/internet/double-your-income-doing-what-you-love-book-review.htm" title="Double your income doing what you love - book review">Article Source:</a> <a href="http://www.content4reprint.com" title="Free high quality articles">Content for Reprint</a></h3>