I used to have the belief that if I want more money in my life, I would need to work hard for it. Fundamentally, I believe that if I want to make $100, I need to give at least $100 in value in exchange for cash. However, how I provide that value can vary dramatically.

My first job in high school was busing tables at a local restaurant. For that, I made minimum wage plus a small percentage of whatever the waitresses made in tips that day. Eventually, I graduated to waitressing. Then, I went to college and grad school, learned new skills, and got a higher paying job consulting with businesses about how best to market their products and services.

What I make now is considerably more than clearing tables at a restaurant, and it takes a lot less time to make $100 because the value I provide as a marketing consultant is perceived as much higher value than a bus girl at a restaurant.

In short, one of the quickest ways to manifest more money is to increase the perceived value of what you offer. If you do a job that virtually anyone can do, its perceived value is lower than if you do something more specialized – that fewer people can do.

Do What You Love

If you are stuck in a job that doesn’t pay well or isn’t interesting or undervalues your skills, perhaps it’s time for a change. Manifesting involves not only understanding what you want, but aligning yourself with the ways to achieve your goals. You will know when you are in alignment by the way you feel when you focus on it. If you feel happy and excited, you’ve opened yourself up to doing bigger and better things – and are one step closer to your goals.

Working in a restaurant left me drained. I had to work long hours with little encouragement. Every day, I did the same thing, so there wasn’t much reward in going to work. Now, I help people every day overcome their problems, challenges and obstacles. With each business I work with, I build new relationships and get to solve unique challenges. It’s much more exciting and motivating.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Do what you love and money will come.” This is only partially true. Doing what you love is a great first step, but you must also demonstrate to others that what you do has value to them. If you can help others find joy or make money or better their lives in some way, you are on the right track.

Be Bold and Take a Leadership Role

Once you’ve uncovered what it is that you enjoy doing, you must remove any fear and obstacles that hold you back. It’s easy to take a back seat to someone else and let them lead, but the secret to manifesting your desires is to take control of your destiny. You can’t do that if you let others lead the way for you – you will always be at the whims of another person who doesn’t share your dreams. When you are aligned with work you love, you can find the courage to press forward and lead.

Live With Passion

Finally, let your passion shine. When others see how passionate you are and how much value you add to their lives, they will be drawn to you. Most people prefer to follow rather than lead. They live boring lives and are just getting by. They suppress their desires for excitement and adventure by telling themselves they will have that in the future – when they get that raise, find a life partner, have children, retire, etc.

Life is short. If you always put off what you want in hopes that you will eventually get around to doing it one day, you will miss those great opportunities in the here and now. One day you will wake up and wonder how you got where you are and why you didn’t take risks along the way.

As Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Action Step – What Are You Passionate About?

If you currently journal, or took my suggestion yesterday to start a gratitude journal, take a few minutes to reflect upon what really gets you excited and passionate? What would you do if you won tonight’s $190 million Powerball jackpot? How would you live your life differently? What would you do on a day-to-day basis and how could you help those in your life?

Now, ask yourself, do you really need millions of dollars to do what you love? What can you do right now to make today more enjoyable? How can you help or show your appreciation to someone in your life today? That’s the secret to manifesting the life you dream of!

Financial independence is the American dream, yet for most people it remains elusive. In this 60-minute audio, Brian Tracy provides 21 laws of money that helped him and many of his students go from rags to riches.

Twenty-one laws are a lot to cover in an hour, so no one law is covered in depth. Tracy spends at most two to three minutes per law, gives brief examples of the law in action, and gives you a few tips on how to put these laws to work in your life. Here were my top six takeaways:

1. Decide to become wealthy – To become wealthy, you must overcome your limiting beliefs about money. People become wealthy when they decide to become wealthy – and then take the appropriate action steps. This isn’t merely about visualizing yourself with incredible riches, but deciding you won’t live as you currently are any longer and taking steps to change for the long term.
2. Find ways to create value – Money is the medium through which we exchange goods and services. We work for money, which we then use to purchase stuff. We negotiate the rate our labor is worth, and our customers and employers pay us based on their perceived value of how our work will benefit their companies or personal lives. What you are paid depends on the work you do, how well you do it, and how easy it would be to replace you. If you want to increase your wealth, you must increase the value you provide.
3. Never stop learning – Personal and professional development are critical to increasing your wealth because the more you know, the better you can do your job, the more valuable you become to your customers and employers, and the harder it would be to replace you.
4. Think long term – It is human nature to want instant gratification, but often our short-term objectives conflict with our long-term goals. Successful people are self-disciplined – they can make themselves do what they need to do whether they feel like it our not. They also prioritize focus on activities that will provide the biggest long-term rewards and put them closer to their goals.
5. Save and invest – It’s not how much you make, but how much you keep and what you do with that amount. Successful people live frugally, save at least 10 percent of their paychecks, and make sound investments that will grow and compound over time.
6. Success starts with baby steps – Accomplishing big goals starts with taking small steps each day. At first, getting into the habit of reducing debts, saving, and living frugally may be difficult, but as you make it a habit, it will become easier for you to continue.

The 21 Unbreakable Laws About Money offers a big-picture overview of how successful people look at money and wealth. This isn’t a step-by-step guide, though it is a nice introduction to wealth-building with practical advice that may change how you think about money. For those who want more hands-on training, Tracy pitches a more-expensive “Millionaire Maker” home study course at the end of the CD.

The site was started by a husband and wife team, Ray DuGray & Maria Ngo, The Entrepreneur Doctors who work out of Las Vegas. They are founders of the extensive Niche Information Center site that provides free articles for newsletter publishers on a wealth of topics.

I’ve been impressed with the stuff they currently have on their site. There are about 40 interviews with “featured experts” like Dave Lakhani, Mark Victor Hansen, Tom Antion, Steve Pavlina, and Ted Ciuba. Each interview is about 60 minutes. The only downside to these is that most aren’t downloadable (you can download the interviews with Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown, Ted Ciuba, and Charlie T Jones in a different “download library”). You must listen to each through their online mp3 player. It’s not a big deal, but I guess that’s motivation to remain subscribed.

There’s also a section that has affirmations on Think and Grow Rich. There isn’t much happening on the discussion forums, but I suspect once this gets up and running, they will be quite valuable.

While there is a lot of information on the site, I found it to be a bit cumbersome, buggy and difficult to use.

• There are a lot of links that don’t work yet and a number of sections under construction.
• Right now, there aren’t any downloadable ebooks, and I couldn’t find any videos – all the video links took me back to the homepage or to the audio links section.
• They also have 90+ experts listed on the site, but when you click on several of them, you’re taken to the generic audio page where their audio is nowhere to be found.
• Parts of the side menu also repeat, so it’s very confusing.
• A number of the side navigation links take you to pages that claim you don’t have access and to join the membership site. Since I only saw one level to the membership subscription, I have to assume that I should have access to these pages…
• There are a lot of ads on the site, which makes it confusing what’s part of the site and what’s not.

My advice is that if you do decide to join, forget about the site navigation and look for the “site map” link (it’s about a quarter down the page under the side navigation header called “info center”). This page contains a list of all working links on the site and is a lot less frustrating than trying to figure out where stuff is located.

I’m hoping they’ll clean up the site by the time they launch in May because the layout is really annoying. You have to spend time finding all the info they promise in their sales letter. That said, they do have a lot of good information on the site if you’re willing to dig (again, go straight to the site map page!). The 40 interviews are well worth the $3.95 trial cost.