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Let’s face it, life is one long string of jobs. We need a way to get them done right; we need a surefire recipe for success. Financial success, sure—that’s what we’re talking about. But at the same time we want to be a success as a person: a good person, a truly happy person, a person who’s mentally and physically healthy.
The odds of success In all things Are 100%.
YOUR TO-DO LIST
What is the one job or project that I would really like to get done in my life right now? When would I like to finish it by? What exactly will it look like if I’m really successful at this task?
All failure comes from misunderstanding.
almost all of us misunderstand how to get something done.
Our whole life is a game of chance.
Success in big business is often defined not as what goes the way you expected it to, but rather how “flexible” we can be: how fast we can change course when things don’t go the way we expected.
The point is that 50,000 years of experience prove one thing. We still don’t know how to make things happen—we still don’t know why things happen—because if we did know then there would be no failure in the world.
knowing that we don’t know what will happen, knowing that we are just doing what we hope will work out.
six billion individuals, nobody really sure what to do, trying to work together.
YOUR TO-DO LIST Some more Quiet Sitting, wherever you’ve been doing it. Or switch places if that would make your mind more fresh. Take out the little pocket notebook and pen; write down five things you’re supposed to get done this week. Next to each item, write down the odds that you’re going to be able to finish it just the way you want: Finish writing this chapter by Wednesday. Odds of success: 70%. Reflect
Now go back and change all the odds to “100%
Sit with that for a while and see how diff...
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Getting through school itself didn’t seem to make much difference.
The moral of this story is that sometimes you just have to admit that what you’re doing isn’t working—even if you’ve been doing it for a long time, even if it’s comfortable for you, and even if everybody else is still doing it despite the fact that everybody can see it doesn’t really work. Sometimes we just have to be brave enough to jump.
When that happens, this happens.
that for one thing to happen something else always has to happen first
Notice that we just said “real cause.” This is what we call the “cause of the causes”:
LOOKS-REAL VS. IS-REAL
Go find the cause of the causes. And that happens to be karma, because what goes around really does come around.
This is important
HOW KARMA WORKS
whenever we do the tiniest thing at all, it plants a seed in our mind: it sets in motion a tiny little energy that will someday come back out of our mind to decide how we see the world.
YOUR TO-DO LIST
In your mind, write down three of the most successful things that ever happened in your life.
The First Law of Karma says: Whatever you want from life You must do for someone else first.
“Anything we do for someone else,” because with few exceptions we can only plant karma in our own minds by bouncing it off someone else.
Without other people, no seeds are planted; without seeds, there’s no success—and we’re back to playing the odds. We need other people.
This is important
Success isn’t just some random thing; life isn’t just a lottery. Good things should happen for people who do good things for others.
KM Rule #3: identifying our karmic business partners.
You have one job with each of your karmic business partners. You have to try to make them a success. Keep that in mind. You are going to concentrate all your efforts on making these other people successful. And then your own work will be successful—you don’t have to worry about it, you don’t even have to think about it much.
So who are my karmic business partners?
1. Co-workers
You have to make sure that the project makes them successful.
2. Customers
If you want Karmic Management to work for you, you have to get 100% fascinated about the idea of really making your customers successful.
3. Suppliers
4. The World
To be a success in this world, we need to do something to make the world itself a success. Our project has to do something for the world.
Cutting a $1,000 check to United Way in five minutes and then forgetting about it never made any company successful. You need to bring all your resources—all the skills and creativity of yourself and your whole team, and some serious amount of the project budget—to another project outside of your own. To someone who’s trying to get the same sort of thing done and needs some real help doing it.
At the top of four different pages write the names of the four groups of karmic business partners: co-workers, customers, suppliers, the world.
After the name, a clear description of what their success is going to look like by the time you get finished with them. Nothing big perhaps, but something very specific.
The line Between me and you Is artificial.
I actually need to stop focusing on my project and start focusing on how to make my karmic business partners successful. Then my own success will just happen on its own.
Everything has to start from you. There aren’t going to be any echoes rocketing back to me if I myself don’t make a peep.
You have to make the first move.
Karma says that everything that ever happens to me is coming from me. And so I can make anything I want happen by doing it first for someone else.
When you do act this way—when you drop the boundaries and work for everyone’s success—then for the first time in your life you are working in harmony with the laws that run the universe; for the first time you are working in sync with the very flow of power that creates all things. And then naturally you begin to feel this deep sense of peace and contentment.
But you are also your partners. What’s that mean?
