Workbook Part III:
Cooperation
To read the accompanying explanation for these exercises, go to chapter three: Cooperation. Click here.
Define Your Identity
This exercise will help you evaluate all the circumstances in your life. Your identity statement gives you a sense of what is important in your life and helps you flow with changes. You can revise your statement as often as necessary to accommodate changing circumstances and goals.
Purpose
What are the various roles you play in your life (student, relative, employee, etc.)?
What is your most fulfilling role?
How do you express your identity?
Name a couple of things you have always wanted to do that would express your identity more fully:
Beliefs
What is the meaning of life, as far as you can tell?
How does life work, what are the secrets?
What does it mean to have a good life?
What part of your outside life expresses your personal beliefs about life?
Name a couple of things you have always wanted to do that would express your beliefs even more:
Ethics
What do you believe is the difference between right and wrong?
Do you think right and wrong are relative, or are they absolute?
In your daily activities, how well do you follow your own ethical codes? Do you occasionally do things you would consider wrong?
Name a couple of areas where you could improve your behavior to coincide with your ethics:
Values
What do you value most about life?
What do you do to protect what you value?
What part of your life shows what you value?
Name a couple of things you have always wanted to do that would express your values more fully:
Summary
Look over what you have written and note the key words for each area.
Purpose:
Beliefs:
Values:
How do they tie together?
What single principle is at the center of your life right now?
How do you act on this principle in your life right now:
In your home?
In your workplace?
In the greater society?
Write down an overriding goal that takes all your values into consideration:
Boundary Worksheet
Here is the list of healthy boundaries in Dreaming Peace, Part III:*
Learn to say "no" when you need to.
Never let people take advantage of you. Use your intuition to know when someone is trying to cheat you.
Do not let other people make your decisions or force you into uncomfortable situations.
Know your limitations. Do not try to give more than you can give emotionally or physically.
Follow a code of ethics in every area of your life.
Tell people what you want them to know. Do not expect them to find out through the grapevine or ESP.
Consider people's level of interest and ability to help you before you discuss your personal issues.
Let relationships change over time without forcing your expectations. Allow trust and intimacy to develop naturally.
Accept emotional support from others without feeling indebted.
Ask for support when you need it, but do not expect people to drop what they are doing to help you immediately.
Put aside your personal problems when you are at work. Maintain a professional attitude when you are paid to do a job.
Learn to listen to others without needing to change their beliefs.
Choose one boundary that gives you trouble. If you do not know where to begin, just list the first boundary and come back to this exercise to work through the rest later. Write down one thing to work on now:
Boundaries may be damaged, completely destroyed, or absent. A damaged boundary is an acute situation and is easiest to fix. Destroyed boundaries are usually the result of years of manipulation and emotional abuse. A boundary may be absent if nobody ever taught you that you could have a boundary there. Think about your troubled boundary. How did it get into such bad shape? Does it need a little repair or do you have to start from scratch to develop a healthy boundary in this area?
What steps can you take to build, repair, or maintain this boundary?
Picture a situation where you can call on this boundary to protect you.
Imagine how you will react to the situation now, with a healthy boundary in place:
Identify Your Heroes
What type of person inspires you?
When you were a child, who were your heroes?
Who are your heroes now?
In your field of work or interests, who are the leaders?
Think of a famous person you admire. What do you like about this person?
If you have read any biographies, whose life story has inspired you the most:
In your personal life, who has inspired you the most?
Name a teacher who helped you learn valuable lessons:
Think of a specific individual you admire. What qualities does this person have that you wish to develop?
What qualities does the person have that you would like to learn?
If you met face to face with this person today, what would happen in the encounter?
Do you see your hero as a friend, a parent figure, a twin soul, or someone you need to put on a pedestal?
If you could be in contact with your hero on a daily basis, what sort of relationship would you like to develop?
Imagine you are in a situation where you and your hero have time to talk for as long as you want. Close your eyes and imagine the interaction. Make notes on what you experience:
What could you do to keep this inspiration in your life on a daily basis?
Have you ever been let down by a role model?
What can you learn from the person's mistakes:
The Imaginary Council
One effective way to work with mentors is to set up an imaginary council. Invite the most intelligent people you have ever known or heard about. If you commune with your imaginary council on a regular basis, the characters will start to seem real. This is similar to what writers feel when they are working a novel. If you choose the right people and, if they begin to function as real beings inside your mind, they will provide information from viewpoints that would ordinarily be unavailable to you.
Napoleon Hill said that he met with an imaginary council for several years when he was preparing for his career. He said it helped him overcome a poor self-image he acquired when he was growing up. He described his experience with the imaginary council as a voluntarily process of rebirth. Every night when he went to bed he visualized himself as the chair of a board consisting of Thomas Edison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Luther Burbank, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie. He asked them questions and listened to their advice. At one point, the characters became so real that he had to quit doing it for a while, but then he started again because he recognized the value in his meditation.
He said that Edison taught him about the spirit of faith, Emerson taught him how to understand nature, Paine taught him about freedom of thought, and so on. These men were his heroes. He studied their biographies and knew some of them personally. Although the whole process takes place in the imagination, it can seem like the great personalities of history are adding their ideas to yours.
When he opened his mind to the invisible counselors, it made him receptive to new thoughts and ideas from his subconscious mind. He said that at times when he faced a setback in his career, memories of his imaginary council would come back to reassure him. He likened his communication with his council to having a sixth sense and said that it isn't something that comes and goes, or something that someone can turn on and off. It develops slowly through practice.
You can get the same benefit as Napoleon Hill if you put together an imaginary council. First decide what problem you want to work on over the next month, or so. Write it down:
If you could talk to anyone in the world (living or dead), who would you choose? Think of people from any walk of life: famous, historical, family member, old friend, and mythical / fictional.
Now sit back and relax. Take some deep relaxing breaths and imagine what your conference room will look like. Imagine you are seated at a grand table and your imaginary council begins to file into the room and take their seats. Call the meeting to order and interact with the council. You can ask them anything. Remember to listen for their response.
When you are ready, wake yourself up and take notes on what you saw in your visualization:
Tune Your Mental Radar
This exercise will teach you how to use your subconscious mind like mental radar to search for solutions. Write the questions on an index card and use them to study the situation for a week. Thinking about solutions for a week will get your mental radar up and running to search for answers.
Name one overriding problem you must face this week (from your own life, at work, in your family, a collective problem in the world, etc.):
What would you do to solve the problem if you were in charge?
Name one small step could you take toward a solution:
Think about the highest possible outcome of the problem situation. What lessons could people learn?
What elements of the situation could be preserved and which need to go?
What could you do to contribute toward a resolution?
What could you change about yourself to help you see the situation in a new way?
Close your eyes for a few minutes and picture things the way you want things to turn out. Keep your mind focused on the highest outcome for everyone involved. Imagine how you would feel if things work out as you picture. When you are ready, make notes on what you saw in your visualization:
Answer these questions every day for the next seven days. Once you set your mind on the highest possible outcome for the problem, your subconscious will work like radar to look for creative ideas. Keep track of any ideas that come to you over the next week.
Steps to Riches
Napoleon Hill's basic premise was that whatever you believe, you can achieve. His philosophy boils down to this: All achievements begin with an idea. If you know exactly what you want and then stand by your plan with determination, you will succeed. He said money is just inert matter. It doesn't move, it doesn't think, it doesn't talk, but it can "hear." Therefore, you have to think of a way to call it. He said this could be through selling products, services, or ideas.
Think and Grow Rich offers a six-step plan to turn desires into wealth. In steps one through five you write a statement about how much money you are going to earn, along with how you're going to do it and when. The final step is to read the statement aloud morning and evening.
Hill believed that repetition was important. This was also a tenet of Earl Nightingale. His tape, The Strangest Secret, leads listeners through a similar process of writing and promising to recite a positive statement for thirty days.
Use the following exercise to write a statement that you will memorize and recite for the next thirty days.
Do some self-examination and decide what product, service, talent, or idea you could use to earn money. Write down your first impressions:
Determine how much money you will earn per hour, per day, or per job if you are successful:
How long will it take to accomplish this? Set a date or describe a time in your life when you could do this:
What steps do you need to take to accomplish your goals?
Explain why you want the money and what you will do with it:
Write a few sentences to summarize your goal. Be sure to use straightforward language.
Read your statement aloud morning and evening for the next thirty days.
Repeating your statement every day will keep your goals in the forefront and help you put your plan into action. When you read your goal statement, wrap it with positive emotions in order to communicate a positive message to your subconscious. Try to convince your subconscious mind that you are worthy and that your goals are natural. Also, try to imagine what you will feel like once your goals are a reality.
If you read your statement while thinking "Why am I doing this?" or "This will never happen," then your subconscious mind will pick up your doubt instead of your positive words.
Another obstacle for some people is to associate wealth with corruption. If you believe it is somehow wrong to earn good money, remember that earning money will help you pay your bills and get on with the more important things in life. You can do much more to help with collective problems if your personal financial life is in order.
Cooperation Quotes
Your final exam for each workbook chapter: choose one quote, write it on an index card, and post it temporarily where you will remember to read it several times a day. Extra credit: Look up something more about the author and context of the quote.
"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." - Arthur Rubinstein (Polish composer and mystical philosopher, 1887 - 1982)
"Kindness gives birth to kindness." - Sophocles (Ancient Greece, 496 - 406 BC)
"Pay no attention to what the critics say. There has never been a statue erected to a critic." - Jean Sibelius (Finnish composer, 1865 - 1957)
"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge." - Bertrand Russell (English mathematician and philosopher, 1872 - 1970)
"He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the door open." - Rabrindranath Tagore
"Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit." - Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese poet, philosopher, and artist, 1883 - 1931)
"Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks; and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks." - Philip Brooks
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
"Even evil and evil - doing can be overcome by suggestion." - Emile Coué
"If the right thing is established the wrong thing will fade away of its own accord because all things that are out of harmony contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction." - Peace Pilgrim
"That the thing that upsets people is not so much what happens, but what they think about what happens." - Epictetus (Greek - born slave and Stoic philosopher, 55 - 135 AD)
"Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits." - Rev. Fulton J. Sheen (1895 - 1979)
"And life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be." - Grandma Moses (1860 - 1961)
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances." - Martha Washington
"If I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me." - Abraham Lincoln
