Having It All

Achieving Your Life's Goals and Dreams

John Assaraf

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781416563860
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

A The New York Times bestseller from a key expert in the internationally bestselling book The Secret, a transformative guide filled with practical exercises and powerful lessons to unlock your full potential, overcome mental obstacles, and establish empowering habits for a fulfilling life. No matter what you want in your life, Having It All will take you from where you are to where you want to be. Entrepreneur John Assaraf started with nothing and went on to create a multimillion-dollar empire and achieve the life of his dreams, earning himself the nickname "The Street Kid." Now he shares the best of what he's learned so you, too, can create the life of your dreams. Having It All contains practical exercises and powerful lessons to help you achieve greater happiness and long-lasting success. You will learn how to: -Develop and utilize the seven power factors all highly successful people use
-Apply the most advanced techniques that world-class athletes and entrepreneurs use to eliminate mental obstacles
-Pinpoint and design the exact life you truly want
-Use the power of your subconscious mind to develop empowering success habitsWhether you are looking to make significant changes in your career, relationships, or personal well-being, Assaraf's teachings offer a clear path forward. Having It All is more than just achieving financial success or professional milestones—it's about achieving a state of happiness and fulfillment that resonates in all facets of life.

PART I

The Street Kid’s Secrets of Success

CHAPTER 1

What Is Success?

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

—Leonardo da Vinci

With so many different beliefs about and definitions of success, it seems the word is overused. Certainly, success too often refers to how much money someone earns in a year or to net worth. Of course, earning a lot of money can be wonderful. Yet there are plenty of people who have acquired great wealth only to find themselves emotionally or physically broke. Relationships with a spouse or kids have been the sacrificial lambs for money. Many have even forfeited their own health for the mighty dollar. I don’t know one person who has lost good health and wouldn’t give every nickel to regain it. The same is true for those who have lost a child’s or spouse’s love in the pursuit of financial gain and material riches.

Many people achieve financial success at the expense of the rest of their lives. They keep thinking that once they make a certain amount of money, they’ll slow down and have time for other important things like family, God, and health. But most people never get there; there’s always more money to be made, one more thing to do. It’s usually too late before they realize that every day is the journey, and it’s not just about the money. It’s important to create a successful and fulfilling balance in each area of life.

One of my dear friends, Michael J. Stefonick, spent more than twenty years building a multimillion-dollar business while his marriage and relationship with his two kids suffered. Shortly after his annual physical, his doctors disclosed the results of an MRI scan of his brain. They found a large tumor that would soon cause him to go blind or kill him. When he asked for a solution to the problem, he was told surgery was the only answer; however, there was only a fifty percent chance he would make it through the operation.

Within seventy-two hours, Michael arranged to sell his company and made all the other necessary preparations in anticipation of his possible death.

After ten hours of surgery, a large and benign tumor was removed. Michael spent three weeks in the hospital, then went home for recovery, where he was nursed for several months by the very people he had neglected—his family. Today, he’s doing great and working to build a successful consulting business in the same industry in which he made his first fortune. More important, he’s also making sure he gives plenty of attention to his health, his kids, his ex-wife, and his true friends. Somehow, what’s important becomes obvious when life is on the line.

Guess what? Life is on the line every day, and you are trading what you do for it. In other words, life is a series of trade-offs, and every moment is literally spent: Time and, therefore, our lives are traded for the things we choose to do.

Imagine for a moment if my friend had been you. How would you have felt and reacted? Would you have wished you could go back in time and make different decisions?

PLANNING FOR TOTAL SUCCESS

Success can be incredibly elusive or it can come in abundance with the right mind-set and know-how. Few people really understand how to create abundance, particularly abundance in every facet of their lives. Fewer still have studied the cause of results. As a consequence, most people have no clue as to the awesome power that resides within them or how to tap into nature’s intelligence. Even successful people don’t really understand the true cause of their success. They can tell you what they do, but rarely can they explain why or how they do it.

Yet you can have it all, including but not limited to lots of money. Instead of realizing this, most people accept the way things are in their lives as some kind of foregone conclusion. They blame the circumstances or conditions into which they were born for the way they live today. But the truth is, you create your circumstances and reality. How many people have to overcome trying circumstances to create the life of their dreams?

Almost everyone who achieves success—which I define as fulfillment in all areas of life—faces difficult times. The trick is not getting sucked into the idea that those difficulties determine destiny. If I had continued to run with my street-punk friends, if I had allowed my health issues to hold me back, if I had given up when I felt abandoned in business, if I had gone back to shoplifting and petty theft after a series of devastating events I will explain later, if I had given up on love after my second divorce, if, if…If anyone had an excuse for settling for mediocrity, it would have been me. But I was lucky. I learned from my mentors that specific laws govern the universe, and specific tools can help you make the most of them. (You’ll learn about these laws in detail in chapter 4.) You simply don’t have to settle. God blessed you with the power to create whatever you choose in this life. The more you discover who you really are, the more you’ll believe you can create a life of total abundance and have it all.

The more you learn about the precision and exactness of our universe and, by extension, yourself, the more you’ll understand the power you have available to you, right now, to create a magical life.

YOU CAN BE HAPPY RIGHT NOW

Like success, happiness is too often misunderstood as a function of how much money you have. Just make enough cash, and you can buy happiness. Just get this or that thing or experience, and you’ll be happy. Not true!

I have certainly had the experience of pursuing money to the exclusion of everything else. Petty theft was a way for me to have lots of money, but it didn’t assuage my hunger to be something greater. I went through cash like water, emptying my pockets as fast as they were filled, going to the amusement park, buying gifts for friends, eating out, drinking alcohol. None of the money I “earned” and none of the material goods I bought could bring me happiness. Temporary relief and instant gratification, yes, but happiness, no.

Even after I stopped being a street punk, I still thought money would do it for me. I thought that the reason it hadn’t worked thus far was simply that I hadn’t had a legitimate way to earn it. So I became single-minded in the pursuit of career success, and there’s no denying I excelled. Intense focus on being a prosperous real estate agent definitely paid off. Learning as much as possible from the agents who were doing well, at their suggestion I also dove into the works of Tommy Hopkins and other sales training gurus who, it turned out, always seemed to include a healthy dose of personal development training, too. Fortunate for me, along the way to earning more than I ever had—and doing it legally, with integrity—I also earned my own self-respect and expanded my personal definition of success to include much more than the acquisition of money.

In 1982, when I was twenty-one and had just made my first fortune in real estate, I took a break from work. Using my savings, I embarked on a fourteen-month trip around the world, visiting California, Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. In all the time and all my travels, I never had a bad experience. Above all else, I was impressed with how generous and kind people were. In New Zealand, people would take me thirty miles out of their way just so they could talk with me, learn about me, be kind to me.

I was especially drawn in by the indigenous island cultures. Here were tribes of people living on small strips of land in the middle of the Pacific who seemed to be completely happy without the comforts we think are so important. No fancy cars. Heck, no cars at all. No television, no grocery stores, no health spas, not even a community center gym. How could it be that they had none of our materialistic possessions and yet were so content? They taught me this simple rule: Happiness is a personal choice and not the product of anything external.

Material things don’t have the power to make you happy. They can give you comfort and enjoyment, but not happiness. Instead, you must make the choice to be happy. You may not like some of the events or circumstances going on in your life, but the choice to be happy is yours. It comes from the inside, so you have complete power over it and can make this choice at any time.

Happiness means something different to each person. You must choose what it is to you and then create a plan for achieving it. It is not what someone else thinks you should be or have. It is all about making your own decision.

You are creating a life no matter what, so you might as well have it all. This book will help.

• The first step is understanding who you really are. We’ll explore this eye-opening subject in the next chapter.
• The second step is understanding the power you have within your own brain and how to tap into it at will. That’s the subject of chapter 3.
• The next step is understanding the major natural laws that operate and govern the universe and work with exact precision. In chapter 4, you’ll discover the seven major laws that affect you every day.
• Then you can begin to delve into why you are the way you are and why you’re getting the results you’re getting. Many people have never really stopped to examine their lives and their current results. But in chapter 5, you’ll examine and understand exactly what caused your habits and beliefs. You’ll determine which ones you still need and which ones you want to leave behind and change.
• Understanding exactly where you are in life now is what I call finding “true north.” (There are others in my field who refer to “north” in a similar way. I’m aware of at least two authors, Martha Beck and Stephen Covey, who have built on this concept in wonderfully empowering ways. I first heard the idea twenty years ago from my cousins, who learned it while they were in the Israeli army.) It is vitally important to be totally honest about your current results and not puff them up for the sake of ego. Chapter 6 will give you a new compass so you can choose a course more in line with exactly what you want. Regardless of what your current results are, you can improve them. The journey involves health, wealth, spiritual awareness, family, friends, and the career in which you choose to express yourself.
• Perhaps the most important part of this whole deal is determining what you want from and in your life, and then developing a real plan for getting there. In chapter 7, you’ll start to design the life of your dreams and begin your journey to greater accomplishments.
• The real key here is to first design your dream life, then create a plan that will move you in that direction. It’s no different from building a home. You sit with the architect, design the home you wish, and then move into action to build it. In chapter 8, you’ll realize how much you are the architect of your own life and that you are totally capable of designing and living a masterpiece if you choose.
• In chapter 9, you’ll learn the seven power factors every successful person must use to create a dream life. All these power factors are skills you can develop and use to create whatever you want.
• Many people have heard about visualization and meditation, yet few people use them on a daily basis. They are, without question, two of the best ways to catapult your life into calmness, serenity, and total success. In chapter 10, you’ll get all the details on why and how to use these awesome techniques to help you have it all.
• In chapter 11, we’ll explore what money really is and how to go about earning more. There are laws that govern money, and this chapter will help you understand those laws and apply them to your life.
• In the last chapter, you’ll see how faith can support you in creating the life of your dreams, no matter what your religion or practice.

Creating true success does not have to be trying, exhausting, or draining. It can simply unfold like so many other miraculous creations in our universe. Think for a moment. How hard does an oak tree try to grow? How much effort does the ocean put into the crashing waves? How much work is it for the planets to move the way they do in such perfection and harmony?

CHAPTER 2

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Who are you? If I asked you this question, you might point to yourself, tapping your chest with a thumb or index finger. If I told you no, that’s your body, then you might say your name. Again, an inaccurate answer. A name is given at birth, and certainly you existed before then. You existed before your parents were even aware of you.

Think for a moment about what it took to create you. Billions of years of evolution produced a sentient life-form called humans. Intelligent energy continuously reproduced and grew smarter and smarter with each generation.

Then two cells came together and miraculously multiplied, generating a body and a brain that rivals any other organism on this planet. This new organism matured into a mass of perfectly formed intelligent energy that, through your eyes, appears to be solid. Yet you are not a body or brain. Your body and brain, however, are parts of you.

You have to admit that for you to be here...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I.  The Street Kid’s Secrets of Success
• Part II.  The Life Design Matrix
• Part III.  Take Your Life to the Next Level
• About the Author