What is Permanent Prosperity?

You have the life you always dreamed of – the job, the family, the money; but something inside you says it isn’t enough. You used all the ideas in The Secret to manifest the life of your dreams; visualization, affirmations, and all the rest. But now that you have what you wanted, you wondered why you ever bothered. Are you at a crossroads?

That moment came for me on the day that my boss walked into my office to give me some good news. He wanted to let me know that he was ready to make me his partner and he had hired an attorney to put the paperwork together. This wasn’t a total surprise for me as we had talked about the idea off and on for about a year. It also wasn’t a surprise for me because I had been visualizing and working toward just that kind of opportunity for years.

“That’s great,” I replied, “let me know when you are ready to sit down and talk some more.” I smiled at my boss as he left my office, but I wasn’t smiling inside. I had wanted this to happen so badly, and now that it was here, I almost couldn’t care less. Nothing inside was saying “yes.”

Have you had a similar experience? Have you had the experience of focusing all of your energy on creating something only to later decide it wasn’t really what you wanted in the first place? Our minds, coupled with the power of the universe, can create anything we can imagine. We live in an abundant universe that every moment is asking us one and only one question: “What do you want?We can have everything we can imagine. But first, we have to know what to ask for.

What we are all looking for is what I call Permanent Prosperity. Permanent Prosperity comes when we take the tools we have been learning to use for manifestation and hook them to a big idea. It is prosperity that isn’t based on material possessions, but on gifts of the soul. With this kind of prosperity, we have no lack of any kind in our lives because our lives become about so much more that the things – jobs, houses, cars, and money – that we have been spending so much energy focusing on.

I have come to understand that there are three keys to living a life of Permanent Prosperity. When we start with these keys, we have something upon which to build everything else around. Without these keys, we end up just where I was on that day my boss made me that wonderful offer.

Key Number 1 – We need to have a vision. What is vision? Vision is the greatest dream we can dream for the world. In a sense, we are all like the three blind men touching the elephant. One touches the trunk and says the elephant is like a giant hose. Another touches the elephant’s side and says that the elephant is like a giant wall. The third grabs the elephant’s tail and says that the elephant is like a rope. All of them are right and all of them are wrong because none of them tell the complete story. Whenever we talk about vision, we are attempting to describe something enormous, but are doing so from our own personal and therefore limited perspective. Even so, it is still important to have a vision because it gives us the larger framework on which to hang the rest of our lives. When we seek vision, we are attempting to answer the question: “What kind of world do I want to live in?” Dream a little, and see where your vision takes you.

Key Number 2 – We need to know our purpose. We all come into the world with a purpose, a particular gift that is ours to give. The lucky ones among us find out what our purpose is early enough in life that we then create work that matches it. For most of us, we end up doing work that we chose by accident or happenstance. But don’t be confused; our work may not be the way we bring our purpose into the world – they are not necessarily the same thing. Purpose is much bigger than the kind of work we do. It’s how we show up in the world. It’s the song that we were born to sing, the gift we were born to give, and the piece of our vision that were are meant to embody. Ask, “Why am I here?” and see what answers begin to come.

Key Number 3 – We need to know who or what we are to serve. The fuel for the fire of vision and purpose is service. We need to know where and how we are to serve in the world; and we need to know who or what we are to serve. A life of service doesn’t necessarily mean joining the Peace Corps or giving away all of your possessions to the poor. What it does mean is that we deliver our purpose into the world in the service of our vision and in support of something that is bigger than our own personal selves. Service, in this context, means that we see our lives as being part of a bigger plan, a plan that is constantly unfolding and infused with love. Ask: “Who are my people?” and then watch to see who shows up.

Every moment of our lives we are creating the next moment with the thoughts that we hold and the decisions that we make. This will happen whether we consciously participate in the process or not. By creating our lives around vision, purpose, and service, we can assure ourselves of unlimited abundance and Permanent Prosperity.

Tags: Abundance, Manifestation, Power Of Attraction, Power Of The Universe, Prosperity, Purpose, Service, The Secret, Vision, Visualization