Play the circle game

Play the circle game

If you use my four-minute, four-circle, goal-setting system described
earlier you can be the creator of your universe.

"You know, that's blasphemous," a seminar student once told me during
a break. "Only God can create the universe."

"But if you believe that," I said, "you must also believe as it is written,
that we were all created in God's image. And if you believe in God as
the Creator, and that He created us in His image, then what are we
doing when we don't create? Whose image are we living in when we
deliberately do not create?"

Try this: After you wake up in the morning, wipe the sleep from your
eyes, sit down with a pad of paper, and draw four circles. These are
your own "planets." Label the first circle, "Lifelong Dream." (And in
order to keep this example simple, I'll make it strictly financial, although
you can do it with any kinds of goals you want.) Your lifelong dream
might be to save a half a million dollars for your retirement years. So,
put that number in your "Life" circle. Then look at circle two, the next
planet in your solar system. That circle you will label, "My Year." What
do you need to save in the next year in order to be on course to hit your
life savings goal? (When you factor in the interest, it's less than you
think.) And when you arrive at the figure, make certain that it matches
up mathematically with your first circle. In other words, if you save this
amount, and save, say 10 percent more each year that follows, will you
achieve your "Life" number? If not, do some more math until you get a
direct connection between your yearly savings projection and your
lifelong goal.

Now that you've got your first two circles filled with a number, move to
the third circle, "My Month." What would you have to save each month
to hit your year's goal? Then put that number down. Three circles are
now filled.
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Now go to the final circle, "My Day." What do you need to do
today—that if you repeated it every day—would ensure a successful
month?
(By the way, as I said, this doesn't have to just be about money, it can
be about physical fitness, learning a language, relationship networking,
spirituality, nutrition, or anything important to you.)
The power of this system lies in thinking of it as a universe, which, as
Wayne Dyer keeps reminding us, means "one song." When you work
the math, you cannot help but see that each circle, if done successfully,
guarantees the success of the next circle. If you hit your daily goal
every day, your monthly goal is automatically hit—in fact you don't
even have to worry about it. And if your monthly goal is reached, the
yearly goal has to happen. And if your yearly goals are hit, the lifelong
goal cannot not be reached.
When you study the irrefutable mathematical truth contained in this
system, a strange feeling comes over you. You realize that all four
circles are ultimately dependent on the success of just one circle: the
circle labeled, "My Day."

Then you get the strangely empowering sensation that you have just
proved on paper that your day and your life are the same thing. There is
no future other than the future you are working on today. Your future is
not stranded out there somewhere in space.

This is what the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said,
"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before
it happens."

Remember that once you have worked out the math for this, the circle
game is only a four-minute daily exercise. Many times in seminars I
give, participants will say that they are too busy for all this goal-setting
activity. They have lives to live! But I like to remind them of
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the words of Henry Ford who said, "If you do not think about the
future, you won't have one."

And I also like to stress that I am only talking about four minutes a day.
The purpose of making the circles mathematically sound is that you can
remove the elements of "faith" and "hoping" from your action plan. You
know your goals will be hit. Who would you want to bet on, the tennis
player who has faith that she's going to win or the one who knows she's
going to win?

By drawing these simple four circles you can create your universe
anywhere, anytime. Waiting in line at the bank, sitting in the doctor's
office, waiting for a meeting to begin, or just doodling. Each time you
do it, your universe gets closer to you. Each time you draw the circles
you are hit with this revelation: There is absolutely no difference
between succeeding today and having a successful life.

In The Magic of Believing, Claude Bristol recounts a particularly
absent-minded habit of his that, looking back, may have had a bigger
impact on shaping his universe than he ever realized. He said that
whether he was on the phone, or just sitting in moments of abstraction,
he would always have a pen or pencil out doodling.

"My doodling was in the form of dollar signs like these—$$$$$—on
every paper that came across my desk. The cardboard covers of all the
files that were placed before me daily were covered with these
markings; so were the covers of telephone directories, scratch pads, and
even the face of important correspondence."

Bristol's later studies on "mind stuff experiments," "the power of
suggestion," and "the art of mental pictures" caused him to conclude
that his lifelong habit of doodling dollar signs had had an enormous
impact on programming his mind to always be opportunistic and

enterprising when it came to money. The fortune he acquired demands
that we take his observations seriously.

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