This week, Life Training Online will be reviewing The Millionaire Course
The first four chapters or ‘lessons’ of The Millionaire Course, make up Allen’s ‘short course’. Containing the four essential elements for success, these chapters are essential reading if you plan on not working through the entire book.
The Millionaire Course is not intended to be a quick perusal and then get discarded like some cheap romance novel. It’s set up to be an interactive ‘success course’ where the greatest benefits are gained when you work through the exercises.
I do find Allen’s very simple and easy-to-understand style a bit repetitive at times, although his point is well made. However, my goal in reading any personal-development book is not to find eloquent literature but instead to find principles which easily apply to my life, and this book is packed with them. The style is a distant second in importance for me.
So let’s get on with it! As I mentioned in the overview, this book is broken up into 12 lessons. Today we’ll be covering the first four.
Lesson 1: Imagine Your Ideal Scene – List and Affirm your Goals
Stephen Covey’s habit, ‘begin with the end in mind’, makes up the central theme of this first lesson. As the title of the chapter suggests, you imagine your ideal scene, picturing how you would see yourself in five years if you completely represented your ideal definition of success. Where would you be? What would you be doing? Who would you be with? What kind of house would you own? And so on…
After writing about a page of this, you would go through this scene and break it down into specific goals. For example, if part of my scene involved owning a big white house on a hill (fyi, this is NOT one of my goals by the way, but bear with me 
), you would make that one of your goals.
The third step would be to take those goals and turn them into affirmations, essentially activating them in your mind. “I am now living in my big white house on a hill (lame, I know).” Doing this and repeating those affirmations, Allen says, will imprint them onto your subconscious mind — that “vast part of your mind that is intimately connected with, and, in some mysterious way, united with the whole universe.” (This has everything to do with the Law of Attraction).
Lesson 2: Write your plan as a simple, clear visualization
Just as a house requires a blueprint in order to be constructed, your goals require a plan in order to be met. Allen teaches you in this second lesson how to write a plan for your goals.
By creating a one-page plan for each goal, you convert your desires into intentions. It puts the subconscious to work and lets it know that this is not just wishful thinking on your part, but truly a desire that you are intending to realize. Allen also states that this is where the Universe will begin to reveal ways for you to accomplish your goal.
The last part of this chapter is set up as a mini-course on how to write a business plan. It goes into what steps to take, things that should be covered, as well as ways to seek financing. Succinct at best, this is intended only as an overview of the process behind creating a business plan and you would do well to seek more thorough sources if this is of interest to you.
Lesson 3: Discover your Vocation and Purpose
When I first read the title of this lesson, I thought that Allen would provide some great exercises that people can follow in order to find out their true purpose and vocation in life. Although he does offer suggestions and some questions you can ask yourself, it is not necessarily a how-to lesson, but instead is set up for the reader to explore the idea that each person has a distinct purpose in life. When your plans are aligned with this purpose, you will inevitably succeed.
Allen does offer some helpful suggestions and questions to bring you closer to your purpose such as, “Imagine you just won the lottery and had all the money you would ever need, what would you do with your life?” or through asking your subconscious, higher self, or God (whatever your belief may be) for the answer and then quietly listening for the answer. The answer, he explains, may come immediately or at a later time, but be assured that it will come.
If you’re looking for a more thorough exploration into how to discover your purpose, check out Finding Your Purpose in Life and The 4 Elements of Purpose.
Lesson 4: See the Full Half of the Glass
Understanding the difference between those who create success and those who continually struggle in life is the focus of this lesson. Once you can grasp this and in concert, apply the three previous lessons, you will achieve your desires. The focus of this chapter then, is your focus.
What we tend to focus on expands. If you’re constantly focusing on your problems, those problems will continue to grow. Successful people learn to focus on solutions. Through questions such as, “what can I learn from this?” or “what kind of opportunities can I gain from this problem?” you will be accessing your creative self and thereby come to know that “within every adversity is an equal or greater benefit.”
This has been by far my favorite chapter. Full of great wisdom, such as, “as soon as your dream becomes stronger than your doubts and fears, your dream begins to manifest”, the book is worth the buy for this lesson alone.
The Millionaire Course is the second of fifty-two books in Life Training – Online’s series 52 Personal Development Books in 52 Weeks.
