The Prosperity Zone
BY WILLIAM COTTRINGER Ph.D. & MARY BIEN

What does everyone want? That is an easy question to answer. Health, wealth and love. These are the "Big Three" on everyone's wish list.  These things are located in a treasure chest within your Prosperity Zone. Where is this magical place and how do you get there? The secret access code to your Prosperity Zone involves understanding and applying three somewhat paradoxical laws of life.

1. THE LAW OF ILLUSION:

Things are not always as they appear.

Much of the truth you see depends upon where you are standing. There are no realities other than relative perceptions, and yet people often act on distorted perceptions as if they were as factual as they think gravity always is. Sometimes, failure is really a disguised opportunity to start over again with better information.

Many people fail to get what they want because they are not clear as to what they want or can't ask for it clearly enough. They become frustrated and unhappy. The clearer the definition, the quicker you get to it.

2. THE LAW OF EFFORT:

The relationship between your efforts and -the results they get is a complicated one.

Sometimes the more effort you put into something the better the results; but other times the harder you try, the further behind you get. It is often a mixture of quality of approach and quality of effort that gets the best results.

If you want health, you have to eat right, exercise, sleep, reduce stress and hang around other healthy people. If you want wealth, you have to earn more, invest more and save more. This may mean finding out your most valuable skill or talent, developing it fully, and finding a way you can apply it easily and frequently to make the most money. Or it may mean you need to increase your income by a second job and reduce your frivolous spending habits. The results are always the same. You get back twice what you give. Life is a bank that only offers withdrawals after deposits.

Working smart is often finding the path of least resistance. The point here is that it is much easier to go with the natural flow of the river rather than to try and swim upstream against the current and gravity. But you have to see the natural flow of life before you can join it and this takes sensitivity and good timing. The end object is always to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be-whether it involves having more health, wealth or love - and there are usually smarter ways to do this than this than you first imagine.

3. THE LAW OF GESTALT:

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

To be successful in health, wealth and love, your thoughts, feelings and behavior all have to be in complete alignment. It does no good to have healthy thoughts if your behavior doesn't actually include the right diet, exercise, sleep and stress management habits. And it is a waste of time to try to program your mind to have positive thoughts if your feelings and behavior aren't working together to carry those thoughts out.

So how do you get these things working in sync so you can think, feel and do something in unison and get results? Your attitudes, beliefs, expectations, understanding and judgments help determine what happens to you. For instance, if you have a positive attitude, believe you can do something and expect to be successful, you will work harder and smarter to do the things that will help bring about success. On the hand, if you have a pessimistic attitude, doubt your ability and expect failure, you will sabotage yourself by not trying very hard to do any of the things that might lead to success. Even if you are "realistic" and expect mixed results, that is precisely what you will get.

Believe in health, wealth and love and expect to get those things. Then think them, feel them and do them without a whole lot of time intervening in between. The key is your perpetual striving to achieve balance.

By understanding and practicing these three life laws, you will have an abundance of health, wealth and love. Then you can teach others how to get these things and end up having even more.

@2004 William Cottringer, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is a success coach, sport psychologist and college teacher. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too. He can be reached at ckurtdoc@charter.net. Mary Bien is a certified hypnotherapistand ordained minister. She can be reached at marysgarden7@cs.com.