March 29, 2007 by jacquie.

A few months ago, I made a promise to myself that I would be a star! I don’t mean the Helen Mirren or Barbra Streisand kind of star. I’m using the term star symbolically. What I promised myself was that I will stand in front of people and not numb out. Here’s how I envisioned this promise:  I actually see the audience and connect with them. I feel and express my emotions. I speak as naturally as I do when I talk with a friend over iced tea. I have fluidity of movement in both body and mind.  When I got my Promise Bracelet, I put a miniature of our Promise Power™ logo inside and said that I was going to be one of the stars in that logo.

On Sunday I began to realize that promise. A few weeks ago I resigned my coordinator position with the Pacific Mozart Ensemble. I took on the volunteer job three years ago when they were about to fold up their music stands and stop performing because the logistics of running such an organization had overwhelmed their leadership.  During my tenure, I accomplished my goal of creating a volunteer  force who worked efficiently and effectively, which allowed me to resign in order to have more time to develop my own business.  There is one job the singers can’t do while they are singing, so I stayed on as the House Manager for their concerts.

Sunday was the last performance of their Spring concert. As they finished their warm-up, they called me up front to present me with several extraordinary gifts. I wasn’t expecting such an event and found myself totally unprepared. The iPod, jewelry, and gift certificate to Chez Panisse are fabulous. That’s a lot of presents, anyone of which would have sufficed as a thank you! I was overwhelmed by the generosity of this group. It was the perfect setup for me to go numb.

I was amazed to find myself feeling very real and very alive. Imagine this. I was standing on the Director’s podium and the chorus of 40, all in concert black, were standing on the risers looking down at me. There I was crying – I was actually crying, a rarity for me. There I was, crying and at the same time saying how much that group means to me, and I saw them looking back at me. I really saw them! I saw their shining faces sending me acknowledgement, appreciation, and love. I’ve gotta tell you, that image will get me through any tough spot I encounter in the future. Remembering those faces and the outpouring of emotion will be my source of strength and courage. I can’t thank them enough for caring so much that they broke through the cement wall that I’ve been hiding behind for 63 years!

That’s a promise kept, a dream come true!

©2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 22, 2007 by jacquie.

Finally, I have my Promise Bracelet. It’s been a long time coming. It’s been eight  months since Elaine told me her idea and we decided to go on this adventure together. Talk about delayed gratification! Last week, I got my own bracelet. Elaine had the first prototype created a few months ago, and now we have 30 prototypes – 29 when we subtract mine!
I see at least two lessons from this process. The first is patience. The waiting wasn’t very hard because I had such a clear image of what we were going for. Once we decided on a design, it was easy for me to wait for it to come to fruition, especially after I saw the prototype Elaine wore. It was beautiful, and it already was alive in my imagination.
The second lesson is keeping the dream alive all those months. That’s where our partnership comes in. If I didn’t have Elaine, I’m afraid this idea would have gone the way of many others. I have tons of ideas. I wake up with ideas and get out of bed to write them down. My many ideas distract me from completing most of them. The partnership has kept me on track!
Elaine and I talk on the phone at least once a week; sometimes we talk every day. She lives over 100 miles away, but she comes to the San Francisco Bay area frequently and we often meet at a cantina near the freeway to exchange ideas and stories. (The tostadas are good, too!) This partnership has kept us focused on the business at hand for Promise Power. Elaine is the business and marketing wizard who has also designed and dealt with the manufacture of the bracelets. I create the books and programs that support the people who buy a bracelet and want to make a promise that will change their lives and/or make a difference in the world. It’s such a valuable goal that we’ve spent significant money and hours making sure that our promise succeeds!
Inside my promise bracelet I’ve placed the logo of our partnership. It reminds me that I have promised to make Promise Power successful and to be one of the shining stars of this organization.

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 15, 2007 by jacquie.

I’m considering stories to add to my latest book. Two of my favorite Law of Attraction stories involve my daughter. After Penny finished college, she set out to find a great place to live in Berkeley, California. In this university town, finding any place seemed impossible. One of my friends spent a year looking. People subscribed to rental agents and had to phone within minutes after a listing was posted to find apartments that were often dumps.

Penny had already lived in a so-so apartment; she was ready for something nicer. She found an ad for a “charming cottage” but “no dogs.” Bummer. She had Zoey, her fabulous pit bull-boxer mix—a sweetheart of a dog. She proceeded because the cottage was exactly what she wanted: a stand-alone gem with a fireplace, a garden, and a fenced in yard.

When Penny went to see the house, she took Zoey along and invited the potential landlady to meet her dog; somehow she was sure this woman who said “no dogs” was going to love her dog! Penny’s application was one of 100 would-be tenants’ applications to be reviewed over the next two days.

When Penny told me about this wonderful little house, I suggested that she imagine herself in the house. This was long before I knew anything about the law of attraction, it was just a natural thing for me. Since Penny was a nut for Christmas, I suggested that Penny imagine her Christmas tree in the house and also dream about a party in the back yard. She got the cottage. She and Zoey spent several years living happily ever after. That is, until the day the landlady said her sister was moving into the cottage and Penny had to move out.

Before I tell  my second story, I want to review how Penny used the law of attraction to get that cottage. First of all, she was clear about what she wanted. She took action to enroll in Homefinders and to be one of the first to see the place. She also presented her dog secure in the knowledge that the landlady would love Zoey (or at least accept her). Then Penny’s envisioning living in the cottage really lit her up. She took some final action by calling the landlady before the end of the application period to tell her one more time about how much she wanted to live in the cottage and how she planned to garden and take care of the place. Taking action is a major part of the law of attraction.

The second story starts where the first left off. At that time, I was studying with Robert Kirosaki and decided to explore the real estate market. My idea was to buy a house and rent it to Penny. She and I set off one drizzly Sunday and saw some mighty iffy houses. However, the last one on our list was better than Penny’s wonderful cottage. This was in the heyday of the housing market when sellers got many offers for thousands of dollars more than they were asking.

After we saw all the mother and daughter photos in the house, we told the owner/real estate agent our mother-daughter plan. She was so enchanted with what we were doing, she made a few suggestions such as having Penny buy the house rather than me because as a first time buyer, she could qualify for the loan faster.

During the waiting period, Penny did a fabulous job of envisioning living in that house, once again imagining her Christmas tree. She even drew the footprint of the house and positioned all her furniture. From our first sight, we had a definite feeling that Penny would soon own that little house, and she does. She lives there now—with her husband and her second dog, Kirby. The Law of Attraction works.   

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 8, 2007 by jacquie.

When I decided to attend the Mega Book Marketing  event two weeks ago, it seemed like a great idea. I had no idea how far off I was. It was so much more than a great idea that I don’t even have words to describe it. It was the best seminar event I’ve ever attended! This was the first time Elaine and I were in a marketing arena together and we confirmed what a great partnership we have. Our concept for Promise Power evolved as we realized that the tagline must be “Creating success one promise at a time.”

We won the lottery! Only a few people were lucky enough to present a pitch to a publishing agent, and we were two of them. Over the three days, we talked personally with luminaries in the self-help industry, Mark Victor Hansen being the most luminous! Even though he was the event’s brilliant conceptualist, we are scheduled to have a private conference with him in the near future. Mark and his partner, Jack Canfield, have sold 145,000,000 (yes, that’s one hundred and forty-five million) copies of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. They are amazing marketers and incredibly generous spirits.

We got wonderful information from the presenters, who are people with high integrity, open hearts, and incredible skill. These generous men and women gave us so much free information, I’ll probably still be implementing it when summer fades. All 15 presenters encouraged the 650 authors and would-be authors to move from wherever we are to wherever we need to be to make a difference in the world with what we write.

What did I learn from these three days? I learned to trust my instincts. Last week, I wrote about feeling lit up when I decided to write a book rather than create a website. I didn’t really know what that was all about except that it felt absolutely right. Now I know that having a book (rather than a website) meant that I would consider going to this book marketing event. It wasn’t so much about the book but all of the products that will come after the book and the validation about our Promise Bracelet idea. Many people literally lit up when we told them about using this symbol to remind them of their dream and to provide a book with the tools for making their dreams come true, even if they didn’t have a clue where to start. Men kept asking, “What do we get?” Patience, that comes next. Professional women are our first target market.

It would have been easy to think, “That seminar is too expensive, too long, and too far away.” I could have thought that I didn’t deserve to be there. Instead I thought, “I want to be there, I am worth it, and I will learn how to be a better writer, especially how to be a writer who has sold all of her books rather than being a writer with 400 copies of her last book sitting in her office. I learned to believe in myself, and that was certainly worth the price of admission!

Remember, dream big and believe in yourself.

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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