If so, be sure to tune in to the May edition of In a Word to find out exactly how it is done.
This month I interview Marc Allen,
who has achieved all of these things, in spite of the fact, maybe even because of the fact, that he is lazy! Allen works a maximum of thirty hours a week, sleeping until at least 11:00 am and taking all Mondays off. Allen embraces the dreaded L-word, relishes his laid-back lifestyle and believes that it is his unique gift to the world to demonstrate and share how he lives an abundant life, full of meaning, with plenty of time for all the rest, mediation and pastimes that he loves. He begins his book, The Type-Z (as in ZZZZZ) Guide to Success with these words:
“I’m lazy. I admit it. For years, it was one of the things that kept me from succeeding in life—after all, you’ve got to work really hard to succeed, right? That’s certainly what I was told, and certainly what I believed.”
Allen founded New World Library, the Marin-based publisher of New Age classics like Creative Visualization and The Power of Now
with Shakti Gawain when he was thirty years old, unemployed, and broke.
A failed actor and musician, Allen visualized his ideal life of owning a company that would produce his music and publish the books that he had yet to write.
How he went from struggling to pay the $65 a month rent on his “cheap little slum apartment” to the owner of a multi-million dollar business is a phenomenal story of success. Allen shares the secrets to his success in several books, including Visionary Business, the one we talk about on the show.
This interview was a real treat for me because when I moved to California from Virginia many, many years ago, my first introduction to the power of this type of positive, transformative thinking was reading Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization. Growing up in a traditional southern way, grounded in logic and practicality, this book, which promised that you could create your own reality by imagining it, seemed radically New Age, fruits and nuts, woo-woo. But, when in Rome, as they say…
Tossing aside my fears, doubts, and preconceived notions, I decided to give it a try, even going to Marin to take a class in Creative Visualization at Gawain’s center there.
The whole story is long, but, here’s the short version:
I had a hot pink, spiral notebook in which I wrote ten things that I wanted to create in my life. I hadn't looked at that list in years, but I recently came across it when rummaging through some old boxes:
I loved looking back on this list--a wild mix of the grandiose and superficial, meaningful core values, objective and subjective goals that only an ambitious, practical, clueless, optimist in her twenties could have created. (way before Sex in the City, I had never heard of Manolo Blahniks--my big dream was color-coordinated Nine West shoes!)
While some things are still in progress and probably always will be (travel the world, make the world a better place, shoes matching all my dresses) it is amazing to me now (so many years later) that all the objective dreams (getting married, buying a house, having babies, having a puppy, publishing something significant, drinking Dom Perignon) of a broke, young, unfocused, unconnected person like myself could have come true.
I hope you will tune into the show, listen to Marc Allen talk about making dreams come true, and then decide to create some dreams of your own.
