I saw the movie The Wolf Of Wall Street some time ago. I thought it was better than average, but not great — I found it to be redundant, obnoxious at times, and too long. (American Hustle, another movie in a similar genre, is much better.)
After seeing The Wolf Of Wall Street I did some investigation of Jordan Belfort, the stock broker the movie was based upon. Belfort is a financial criminal. He participated in schemes and knowingly caused people to lose money (at his gain). Belfort could reasonably be called a thief.
Belfort also became extremely wealthy, and seems to be an advocate for the so-called Law of Attraction. Law of Attraction, or intentional manifestation as I refer to it, is essentially the notion of attracting particular life circumstances primarily through mental focus. That is to say one visualizes desires they would like to have come about, and these desires eventually manifest into life reality.
The Law of Attraction is unbelievable to many: the idea that we can imagine ourselves into the life we want goes against the story most people accept about how the world works. This story says, basically, that one must put in physical effort to see life change and to become financially abundant takes hard work and luck, or connections. This is a story about a small entity trying to influence a big and powerful world.
It’s also a story that I absolutely disagree with. I do believe, entirely, that the Law of Attraction or intentional manifestation is something valid — not because Law of Attraction is something powerful… it is we who are the powerful ones.
In fact we are big and powerful and the world that we perceive is small and insignificant. This world becomes big and powerful because we attribute power to it. And we become small because we diminish ourselves and create a (false) image of weakness and inadequacy.
The person that doesn’t do this, that doesn’t act to drain their power, has no achievement limitations. None.
Jordan Belfort had an indelible desire to become financially abundant. This was his burning focus and he refused to be dissuaded. Consider some of these quotes, attributed to Jordan Belfort:
“I believe in total immersion: if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts – rich thoughts.”
“Act as if you’re a wealthy man, rich already, and then you’ll surely become rich. Act as if you have unmatched confidence and then people will surely have confidence in you. Act as if you have unmatched experience and then people will follow your advice. And act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today – you will become successful.”
“Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny: they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance – if the circumstances around them suck they change them.”
These are classic expressions of intentional manifestation, namely, put the notion in your mind and behave as if it is your reality and it will become that. This is the basic blueprint Jordan Belfort used to become wealthy — and after losing his initial wealth due to his immoral behavior he appears to be on the way towards becoming wealthy again, in part, at least, from a new career as a public speaker and business coach.
It isn’t necessary to seek out Belfort’s expertise to understand all of his methods though — he expresses one of them in the quotes above, and this is the same formula many people have used to realize their own desires. Neither is this a new formula: Napoleon Hill wrote a book about it in the 1930’s called Think And Grow Rich.
It’s one thing to be aware of intentional manifestation, however, and to read about it and understand it intellectually. It’s another thing to have a fire within to achieve a desire that you will not allow to be extinguished. Jordan Belfort had this fire. The rest of us can learn from him, I believe — from his immoral behavior and failings, and also from his success.
