Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life by Jillian Michaels Read Free Book Online Page B

have taken the proper actions so you can rise to meet it, or you could blow it.
    This action part is the key to why so many of the self-help/law-of-attraction books already out on the shelves are ultimately not very helpful and even potentially harmful. Like a diet book that tells you that you don’t have to count calories, they prey on yourapathy and indirectly encourage lethargy and laziness. They’ll talk about the power of positive thinking and tell you that if you just wish it, it will come, but they leave out the part about putting in the effort. In effect, they tell you it is okay to be a passive bystander watching your life rather than living it full throttle.
    This type of entitlement talk is dangerous. Having the right to happiness means having the right to earn it, not having it given to you without effort and action on your part. When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life is easy, they may lose the courage and the determination needed in the face of adversity. This doesn’t mean that our natural state isn’t contentment and happiness; it just means that success in life is a proactive formula. Often we have to fight for what we believe in and persevere. Remember the old saying “God helps those who help themselves”? Make it your mantra.
    Books that promise success without action sell because their messages are easy for people to swallow, but they don’t work. The formula is incomplete. You’ll notice that this book has three parts. That’s because this book is not BS. This is just the first step; it’s important, but without the other two, it’s useless. Sort of like an engine with no gasoline. Dig?
    Even if you are a manifesting machine, visualizing your goals and bringing action to your intentions, sometimes in life things don’t turn out the way you want. In life there are such things as paradoxes, when outcomes contradict our expectations. But if our intentions are good, our actions will be, too, and they will have a positive result, even if it’s not the one we expected or thought we wanted.
    Let’s say that I want McDonald’s to go out of business, and I visualize their stores closing down and being replaced by their opposite, healthy mom-and-pop restaurants. I take as much action as possible to make it happen. I spread the word about McDonald’s use of unhealthy ingredients, I picket outside their restaurants, and so on. Here’s the catch: simultaneously, McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner is dreaming the exact opposite. He is visualizingbillions of people walking through those Golden Arches to buy his burgers and fries. He is starting initiatives like the dollar menu to bring people flocking to his franchises in droves.
    Bottom line: one of us will NOT get exactly what we want. But remember that on a subatomic level, we are all one and all connected. So when our intentions are in alignment with the greater good, positive things will happen.
    Maybe you’re thinking, What’s the point? If I want something and someone else doesn’t, what are the chances I’m going to be the one to get my way? The reality is that when you put that intention and action into the world, it has to come back to you. It might not look exactly how you’d planned. I might not shut down McDonald’s, but my efforts to do so might inspire McDonald’s to offer healthier menu options and alert their billions of customers to pay attention to the foods they are eating and get healthier. I might even end up opening my own chain of health food stores to help to change the world, and I might find happiness in that endeavor, despite the fact that McDonald’s is still a profitable company. And down the road, McDonald’s might do something with their profits that helps to cure a disease like cancer. I doubt it, but hey, you never know.
    There is just no telling what might come of your actions if you take them with deliberate and positive intention, and that’s where you have to trust yourself and the