The cost of things.
Over the years, writing my book, MONEYLOVE, and doing seminars all around the world about the psychology of money and the difference between prosperity consciousness and poverty consciousness, I’ve been fascinated with the basic attitudes people have about money and the cost of things.
One situation that happened over and over and over again always tickled me. Someone would pick up my Nightingale-Conant MONEYLOVE cassette album and look at it’s $59.95 price tag and ask, “How long is it?” As if the length determined its value. Sometimes, in frustration, I would say, “ It’s three hours of brilliance compared to six hours of crap you might be able to find somewhere else. You make the choice.” Some folks even would pick a book to read based on its number of pages, as if the longer book was the better book. And many people would rather go to a restaurant and get a heaping plate full of mediocre food compared to more modest portions but much more delicious cuisine at a better restaurant. And I had to decide whether to risk alienating you with this next example, but decided to go for it, since it illustrates the same point.
Some years ago, I was playing blackjack at a casino in Reno, having traveled there with a good friend who lived in Nevada City, California and was playing the slot machines. I was lucky and ran $300 up to over $8,000. I said to my friend, “What do you want—I’m treating you to something special. Would you like a spa treatment, a full body massage, an elegant gourmet meal, a fancy new shirt?” He answered, “None of those, thanks, but there is a place about a forty minute drive from here called The Sagebrush Ranch.” He was referring, of course, to one of Nevada’s more than thirty legal brothels. So off we went. As we entered, the manager or madam announced, “It’s party time, girls.” And the prostitutes lined up to display themselves for the new customers. They were all very attractive, dressed in Victoria’s Secret type attire, but one stood out, in fact she stood head and shoulders above all the others. A young black woman, whose accent indicated she had recently emigrated from Africa. She was huge. A regular Amazon. Well over six feet tall, and probably over 250 pounds. But not an ounce of apparent fat. All beautifully proportioned. As the various working girls tried to entice us, she made eye contact with me and said, “Here you go, honey, more bang for the buck. The best bargain in Nevada, all this gorgeousness for no additional cost.” What happened next I’ll save for a memoir.
But she was right, on a dollar-per-pound basis, she was probably the biggest bargain in the entire state. But for someone who prefers their women petite, it wouldn’t be a bargain at all.
Let’s quickly switch from the seedy to the cacao seed. Here we have unheated, unfermented, unakalized pure dark chocolate, with the highest ORAC rating or antioxidant count of any food, and as an added bonus, the second highest natural source of antioxidants, the ACAI berry. Mixed together in delicious combination. And when people ask, “How much?” And I answer, “The wholesale cost is $110 for a box that will last a month or longer if you take the recommended amounts, depending on which of the three varieties you choose,” some people reel back and say, “$110 for those little squares of candy? You’ve got to be kidding!” Now here’s the tricky part. Because it is, after all, chocolate, and people are used to considering it a special treat, guilty pleasure, non-essential confection. Here’s where education comes in. This is not candy, no matter how good it tastes, it is a health food, some are calling it a superfood, and it offers tremendous health benefits, it may even prolong your life because of its high antioxidant content, the highest of any food in the world.
I have stated my opinion, after interviewing many longevity scientists for my earlier book, PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY, and reading hundreds of research reports as I work on my new book on the health benefits of dark chocolate, that these small dark chocolate squares, taken on a daily basis, three per day, could just extend someone’s lifespan by three to five healthy years. And some of the scientists think that’s too conservative an estimate.
Let me ask one of those essential questions that reveal some of our core values. If you knew for certain that this healthy dark chocolate would extend your life by three to five years, and it cost $1000. a month, would you be willing to buy it? In fact, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to come up with that $1000 a month?
And what if it cost $100,000 a month and was only available to the very rich? Don’t you think there would still be a long line forming, probably with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet at the head of it? But there is no certainty about it. Just some strong indications from the research to date. And is there ever certainty about anything, especially life? You could be walking home with your supply of healthy dark chocolate and get hit by an ice cream truck. There goes your certainty, with a dash of irony.
All we can say for certain is that there is a lot of highly respected research that indicates some strong health benefits from eating Xocai healthy dark chocolate with Acai berry added. Oh, and by the way, as more and more research results are reported and more people find out, there will be a steamroller effect, an explosion, tremendous momentum…and you could get in on the ground floor of what promises to be one of the most prosperous businesses of this century. And do it with a modest initial investment, and then just eating and sharing this yummy dark chocolate.
And by the way, broke and just out of prison, I had to borrow the money to get involved in this business. So don’t talk to me about how tough things are and how much you’re struggling. I empathize but don’t sympathize. These kinds of economic times always offer the most economic opportunity for those who can come up with just a little vision, a modicum of imagination, just a tablespoon of intention, direction, and sense of purpose. A lot of us are going to make a lot of money having a lot of fun and a lot of superb taste experiences—and some surprising health benefits.
Jerry Gillies
Have I aroused your interest or curiosity? Contact me at jerrygillies@gmail.com or check out the videos posted by my friends and upline sponsors, Susannah Lippman at www.Alphasonics.com or Hope and Thom Kiah at www.darkchocolatebenefits.net.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
A RESEARCH REPORT THAT COULD PROLONG LIFE
I know it's a long article, and research papers are not always the most fun to read, but with all the talk about antioxidant
levels and ORAC ratings, I think it's important to know something about how and why the rating was developed by the
Dept. of Agriculture. The following comes from the USDA Agricultural Research Service and though originally published in 1999, it contained some information I hadn't seen up until now, and reading it may help extend your lifespan significantly.
************************************************************
Can Foods Forestall Aging?
Studies at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston suggest that consuming fruits and vegetables with a high-ORAC value may help slow the aging process in both body and brain. ORAC--short for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity--measures the ability of foods, blood plasma, and just about any substance to subdue oxygen free radicals in the test tube.
Early evidence indicates that this antioxidant activity translates to animals, protecting cells and their components from oxidative damage. Getting plenty of the foods with a high-ORAC activity, such as spinach, strawberries, and blueberries, has so far:
raised the antioxidant power of human blood,
prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability in middle-aged rats,
maintained the ability of brain cells in middle-aged rats to respond to a chemical stimulus, and
protected rats' tiny blood vessels—capillaries—against oxygen damage.
These results have prompted Ronald L. Prior to suggest that "the ORAC measure may help define the dietary conditions needed to prevent tissue damage."
Prior is coordinating this research with Guohua (Howard) Cao, James Joseph, and Barbara Shukitt-Hale at the Boston center.
Science has long held that damage by oxygen free radicals is behind many of the maladies that come with aging, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. There's firm evidence that a high intake of fruits and vegetables reduces risk of cancer and that a low intake raises risk. And recent evidence suggests that diminished brain function associated with aging and disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases may be due to increased vulnerability to free radicals, says Joseph, a neuroscientist.
Such evidence has spurred skyrocketing sales of antioxidant vitamin supplements in recent years.
But several large trials testing individual antioxidant vitamins have had mixed results. "It may be that combinations of nutrients found in foods have greater protective effects than each nutrient taken alone," says Cao, a chemist and medical doctor.
For example, foods contain more than 4,000 flavonoids. These constitute a major class of dietary antioxidants and appear to be responsible for a large part of the protective power of fruits and vegetables, Cao says.
By the year 2050, nearly one-third of the U.S. population is expected to be over age 65. If further research supports these early findings, millions of aging people may be able to guard against diseases or dementia simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets. This could save much suffering, as well as reduce the staggering cost of treating and caring for the elderly.
Cao developed the ORAC test while he was a visiting scientist at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland. After joining Prior's group 5 years ago, the researchers assayed commonly eaten fruits, vegetables, and fruit juices with ORAC. [See "Plant Pigments Paint a Rainbow of Antioxidants," Agricultural Research, November 1996, pp. 4-8.]
"The ORAC value covers all the antioxidants in foods," says Cao. "You cannot easily measure each antioxidant separately," he adds. "But you can use the ORAC assay to identify which phytonutrients are the important antioxidants."
The researchers have been testing whether antioxidants other than vitamins are absorbed into the blood and protect the cells. And the results look promising.
Its in the Blood
Several laboratories have reported that people can absorb individual flavonoids thought to have protective powers. Prior and Cao now have good evidence that food antioxidants not only are absorbed, they boost the antioxidant power of the blood.
In an earlier study at the Boston center, 36 men and women ranging in age from 20 to 80 had doubled their fruit and vegetable intake. According to the participants' responses on a food frequency questionnaire, they averaged about five servings of fruits and vegetables daily during the year before the study. That intake was doubled to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily during the study.
To estimate ORAC intakes for the participants, the two researchers matched the questionnaire and the diet data with their own antioxidant values for each fruit and vegetable. Before the study, says Prior, the participants averaged 1,670 ORAC units daily. Increasing their fruit and vegetable intake to 10 a day raised the ORAC intake to between 3,300 and 3,500 ORAC units—or about twice the previous antioxidant capacity.
Based on the participants' blood samples, the antioxidants were absorbed. The ORAC value of blood plasma increased between 13 and 15 percent on the experimental diet. This supports results of a preliminary study in which Prior and Cao saw a 10- to 25-percent rise in serum ORAC after eight women ate test meals containing high-ORAC foods, red wine, or vitamin C. They tested red wine because it has a high ORAC value—higher than white wine—and has been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Ten ounces of fresh spinach produced the biggest rise in the women's blood antioxidant scores—even greater than was caused by 1,250 milligrams of vitamin C. An 8-ounce serving of strawberries was less effective than vitamin C but a little more effective than 9.6 ounces of red wine.
Prior says the increase in plasma ORAC can't be fully explained by increases in plasma levels of vitamin C, vitamin E, or carotenoids, so the body must be absorbing other components in these fruits and vegetables. The antioxidant capacity of the blood seems to be tightly regulated, he says. Still, "a significant increase of 15 to 20 percent is possible by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, particularly those high in antioxidant capacity."
The ORAC values of fruits and vegetables cover such a broad range, he adds, "you can pick seven with low values and get only about 1,300 ORAC units. Or, you can eat seven with high values and reach 6,000 ORAC units or more. One cup of blueberries alone supplies 3,200 ORAC units."
Based on the evidence so far, Prior and Cao suggest that daily intake be increased to between 3,000 and 5,000 ORAC units to have a significant impact on plasma and tissue antioxidant capacity.
Rats High on ORAC
Rat studies are yielding even more support for high-ORAC diets. The animals live only about 2 1/2 years total, so it's possible to follow the effects of high-ORAC foods on the aging process.
Joseph and Shukitt-Hale have been testing extracts of strawberry and spinach, along with vitamin E, in the rodents. And some of their results wouldn't surprise Popeye. A daily dose of spinach extract prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability normally experienced by middle-aged rats. And spinach was the most potent in protecting different types of nerve cells in various parts of the brain against the effects of aging.
The researchers started 6-month-old rats on four feeding regimens. Two groups got diets fortified with either strawberry or spinach extract, one ate the diet containing an extra 500 international units of vitamin E, while a fourth got the unfortified diet. Shukitt-Hale, a behavioral psychologist, had already put a group of rats through their paces to determine when they begin to falter in memory and motor function. She says the animals start to lose motor function around 12 months and memory at 15 months; the latter is equivalent to a 45- to 50-year-old human.
When the study rats reached 15 months, she had them doing gymnastics—such as walking on rods and planks and trying to stay upright on a rotating rod—all tests of motor function. She also had these excellent swimmers paddle around a deep pool until, using visual cues, they found a submerged platform on which they could rest. With this test, she measures changes in long- and short-term memory.
"None of the diets prevented motor loss," says Shukitt-Hale. The 15-month-old rats performed like middle-aged animals whether they got the extra antioxidants or not. But the spinach-fed rats had significantly better long-term memory than the animals getting the control diet or the strawberry-fortified diet. They remembered how to find the hidden platform better over time, she says, showing they retained more of their learning ability. The vitamin E-fed rats were somewhat less protected against memory loss than the spinach group.
"That's significant," she notes. "It's really difficult to effect a change in behavior."
Where Aging May Reside
Joseph looks for age-related changes in brain cell function, focusing on an area of the brain that controls both motor and cognitive function—the neostriatum. As people and animals age, the cells become sluggish in responding to chemical stimulation, he says. For 15-month-old rats, the striatal cells have lost 40 percent of their ability to respond to such signals.
Not so in the animals whose diets were fortified with spinach or strawberry extracts or vitamin E. Their striatal cells performed significantly better than those of rats on the control diet—especially the rats getting the spinach extract. That group scored twice as high as the control animals in Joseph's test.
The spinach group also scored best among the fortified diets in a test of nerve cells in the cerebellum, a part of the brain that maintains balance and coordination. The test was done by Paula Bickford, a collaborating pharmacologist with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.
Why spinach is more effective than strawberries is still a mystery. The researchers conjecture that it may be due to specific phytonutrients or a specific combination of them in the greens. While this research is still in its infancy, says Joseph, "the findings, so far, suggest that nutritional intervention with fruits and vegetables may play an important role in preventing the long-term effects of oxidative stress on brain function."
Prior and Cao also have early evidence that these foods protect other tissues. Subjecting rats to pure oxygen for 2 days normally damages cells lining the tiniest blood vessels, or capillaries, causing them to become leaky.
As a result, fluid accumulates in the rats' pleural cavity—the space surrounding the lungs. But that was minimized when the animals were fed blueberry extract for 6 weeks before the oxygen stress. Of all the fruits and vegetables tested with ORAC, blueberries are one of highest in antioxidant capacity.
In human terms, says Prior, the animals got the equivalent of 3,000 ORAC units. "If we can show some relationship between ORAC intake and health outcome in people, I think we may reach a point where the ORAC value will become a new standard for good antioxidant protection." —By Judy McBride, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Human Nutrition Requirements, Food Composition, and Intake, an ARS National Program described on at http://www.nps.ar s.usda.gov/programs/107s2.htm.
Ronald L. Prior, James A. Joseph, Guohua Cao, and Barbara Shukitt-Hale are at the USDA-ARS Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, 711 Washington St., Boston, MA 02111; phone (617) 556-3310, fax (617) 556-3299.
"Can Foods Forestall Aging?" was published in the February 1999 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
***************************************************************
And huge amounts of research has been done in the ten years since this report was first issued. At that time, no way,
using natural foods, or even manufactured supplements, could anyone approach the very high ORAC ratings now possible
with XOCAI healthy dark chocolate. As you check the numbers in the article above, remember the small 6 gram X Power
dark chocolate square has an ORAC value of 3,582. And in the recommended three-per-day dosage, the X Power squares
have an astounding 1,008 of Total Flavonoids. And those three squares equal about two pounds of raw spinach in ORAC
value.
As a journalist and investigative broadcast reporter for NBC Radio and other media, I had to learn how to digest lots
of data and boil it down to the essential. As I read over the Dept. of Agriculture report above, do you know the one
sentence that lept out at me? Read it again and see if you can guess.
Okay, here it is:
"If further research supports these early findings, millions of aging people may be able to guard against diseases or dementia simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets."
And to get totally unscientific here, and offer my own personal opinion (isn't that, after all, what Blogs are all about?).
Taking into account the voluminous amount of research currently underway on antioxidants, and all I learned about the early
research while writing my book, PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY, I don't think I'm going too far out on the limb to suggest
that consuming this high dose of antioxidants on a daily basis could reverse the aging process to the extent that it might
add three to five healthy years to our lifespan. And that is a conservative estimate. Read the data yourself, Google "Healthy Dark Chocolate" or "Antioxidant" and decide for yourself. All of this may account for the puzzled look on my face the next time someone suggests to me that about $100 is "too expensive" for a month's supply of XOCAI healthy dark chocolate.
Jerry Gillies
And by the way, I am now putting together a team of leaders to prosper and have a lot of fun eating and sharing this
healthy dark chocolate--as well as report back to me any health benefits for my next book. For more information, contact
me at jerrygillies@gmail.com And you can see some great videos on the blog of my friend and upline partner,
Hope Kiah, at www.darkchocolatebenefits.net, and check out the Chocolate For Health section on the website of my
closest friend and upline sponsor, Susannah Lippman, at Alphasonics.com.
levels and ORAC ratings, I think it's important to know something about how and why the rating was developed by the
Dept. of Agriculture. The following comes from the USDA Agricultural Research Service and though originally published in 1999, it contained some information I hadn't seen up until now, and reading it may help extend your lifespan significantly.
************************************************************
Can Foods Forestall Aging?
Studies at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston suggest that consuming fruits and vegetables with a high-ORAC value may help slow the aging process in both body and brain. ORAC--short for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity--measures the ability of foods, blood plasma, and just about any substance to subdue oxygen free radicals in the test tube.
Early evidence indicates that this antioxidant activity translates to animals, protecting cells and their components from oxidative damage. Getting plenty of the foods with a high-ORAC activity, such as spinach, strawberries, and blueberries, has so far:
raised the antioxidant power of human blood,
prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability in middle-aged rats,
maintained the ability of brain cells in middle-aged rats to respond to a chemical stimulus, and
protected rats' tiny blood vessels—capillaries—against oxygen damage.
These results have prompted Ronald L. Prior to suggest that "the ORAC measure may help define the dietary conditions needed to prevent tissue damage."
Prior is coordinating this research with Guohua (Howard) Cao, James Joseph, and Barbara Shukitt-Hale at the Boston center.
Science has long held that damage by oxygen free radicals is behind many of the maladies that come with aging, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. There's firm evidence that a high intake of fruits and vegetables reduces risk of cancer and that a low intake raises risk. And recent evidence suggests that diminished brain function associated with aging and disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases may be due to increased vulnerability to free radicals, says Joseph, a neuroscientist.
Such evidence has spurred skyrocketing sales of antioxidant vitamin supplements in recent years.
But several large trials testing individual antioxidant vitamins have had mixed results. "It may be that combinations of nutrients found in foods have greater protective effects than each nutrient taken alone," says Cao, a chemist and medical doctor.
For example, foods contain more than 4,000 flavonoids. These constitute a major class of dietary antioxidants and appear to be responsible for a large part of the protective power of fruits and vegetables, Cao says.
By the year 2050, nearly one-third of the U.S. population is expected to be over age 65. If further research supports these early findings, millions of aging people may be able to guard against diseases or dementia simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets. This could save much suffering, as well as reduce the staggering cost of treating and caring for the elderly.
Cao developed the ORAC test while he was a visiting scientist at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland. After joining Prior's group 5 years ago, the researchers assayed commonly eaten fruits, vegetables, and fruit juices with ORAC. [See "Plant Pigments Paint a Rainbow of Antioxidants," Agricultural Research, November 1996, pp. 4-8.]
"The ORAC value covers all the antioxidants in foods," says Cao. "You cannot easily measure each antioxidant separately," he adds. "But you can use the ORAC assay to identify which phytonutrients are the important antioxidants."
The researchers have been testing whether antioxidants other than vitamins are absorbed into the blood and protect the cells. And the results look promising.
Its in the Blood
Several laboratories have reported that people can absorb individual flavonoids thought to have protective powers. Prior and Cao now have good evidence that food antioxidants not only are absorbed, they boost the antioxidant power of the blood.
In an earlier study at the Boston center, 36 men and women ranging in age from 20 to 80 had doubled their fruit and vegetable intake. According to the participants' responses on a food frequency questionnaire, they averaged about five servings of fruits and vegetables daily during the year before the study. That intake was doubled to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily during the study.
To estimate ORAC intakes for the participants, the two researchers matched the questionnaire and the diet data with their own antioxidant values for each fruit and vegetable. Before the study, says Prior, the participants averaged 1,670 ORAC units daily. Increasing their fruit and vegetable intake to 10 a day raised the ORAC intake to between 3,300 and 3,500 ORAC units—or about twice the previous antioxidant capacity.
Based on the participants' blood samples, the antioxidants were absorbed. The ORAC value of blood plasma increased between 13 and 15 percent on the experimental diet. This supports results of a preliminary study in which Prior and Cao saw a 10- to 25-percent rise in serum ORAC after eight women ate test meals containing high-ORAC foods, red wine, or vitamin C. They tested red wine because it has a high ORAC value—higher than white wine—and has been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Ten ounces of fresh spinach produced the biggest rise in the women's blood antioxidant scores—even greater than was caused by 1,250 milligrams of vitamin C. An 8-ounce serving of strawberries was less effective than vitamin C but a little more effective than 9.6 ounces of red wine.
Prior says the increase in plasma ORAC can't be fully explained by increases in plasma levels of vitamin C, vitamin E, or carotenoids, so the body must be absorbing other components in these fruits and vegetables. The antioxidant capacity of the blood seems to be tightly regulated, he says. Still, "a significant increase of 15 to 20 percent is possible by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, particularly those high in antioxidant capacity."
The ORAC values of fruits and vegetables cover such a broad range, he adds, "you can pick seven with low values and get only about 1,300 ORAC units. Or, you can eat seven with high values and reach 6,000 ORAC units or more. One cup of blueberries alone supplies 3,200 ORAC units."
Based on the evidence so far, Prior and Cao suggest that daily intake be increased to between 3,000 and 5,000 ORAC units to have a significant impact on plasma and tissue antioxidant capacity.
Rats High on ORAC
Rat studies are yielding even more support for high-ORAC diets. The animals live only about 2 1/2 years total, so it's possible to follow the effects of high-ORAC foods on the aging process.
Joseph and Shukitt-Hale have been testing extracts of strawberry and spinach, along with vitamin E, in the rodents. And some of their results wouldn't surprise Popeye. A daily dose of spinach extract prevented some loss of long-term memory and learning ability normally experienced by middle-aged rats. And spinach was the most potent in protecting different types of nerve cells in various parts of the brain against the effects of aging.
The researchers started 6-month-old rats on four feeding regimens. Two groups got diets fortified with either strawberry or spinach extract, one ate the diet containing an extra 500 international units of vitamin E, while a fourth got the unfortified diet. Shukitt-Hale, a behavioral psychologist, had already put a group of rats through their paces to determine when they begin to falter in memory and motor function. She says the animals start to lose motor function around 12 months and memory at 15 months; the latter is equivalent to a 45- to 50-year-old human.
When the study rats reached 15 months, she had them doing gymnastics—such as walking on rods and planks and trying to stay upright on a rotating rod—all tests of motor function. She also had these excellent swimmers paddle around a deep pool until, using visual cues, they found a submerged platform on which they could rest. With this test, she measures changes in long- and short-term memory.
"None of the diets prevented motor loss," says Shukitt-Hale. The 15-month-old rats performed like middle-aged animals whether they got the extra antioxidants or not. But the spinach-fed rats had significantly better long-term memory than the animals getting the control diet or the strawberry-fortified diet. They remembered how to find the hidden platform better over time, she says, showing they retained more of their learning ability. The vitamin E-fed rats were somewhat less protected against memory loss than the spinach group.
"That's significant," she notes. "It's really difficult to effect a change in behavior."
Where Aging May Reside
Joseph looks for age-related changes in brain cell function, focusing on an area of the brain that controls both motor and cognitive function—the neostriatum. As people and animals age, the cells become sluggish in responding to chemical stimulation, he says. For 15-month-old rats, the striatal cells have lost 40 percent of their ability to respond to such signals.
Not so in the animals whose diets were fortified with spinach or strawberry extracts or vitamin E. Their striatal cells performed significantly better than those of rats on the control diet—especially the rats getting the spinach extract. That group scored twice as high as the control animals in Joseph's test.
The spinach group also scored best among the fortified diets in a test of nerve cells in the cerebellum, a part of the brain that maintains balance and coordination. The test was done by Paula Bickford, a collaborating pharmacologist with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.
Why spinach is more effective than strawberries is still a mystery. The researchers conjecture that it may be due to specific phytonutrients or a specific combination of them in the greens. While this research is still in its infancy, says Joseph, "the findings, so far, suggest that nutritional intervention with fruits and vegetables may play an important role in preventing the long-term effects of oxidative stress on brain function."
Prior and Cao also have early evidence that these foods protect other tissues. Subjecting rats to pure oxygen for 2 days normally damages cells lining the tiniest blood vessels, or capillaries, causing them to become leaky.
As a result, fluid accumulates in the rats' pleural cavity—the space surrounding the lungs. But that was minimized when the animals were fed blueberry extract for 6 weeks before the oxygen stress. Of all the fruits and vegetables tested with ORAC, blueberries are one of highest in antioxidant capacity.
In human terms, says Prior, the animals got the equivalent of 3,000 ORAC units. "If we can show some relationship between ORAC intake and health outcome in people, I think we may reach a point where the ORAC value will become a new standard for good antioxidant protection." —By Judy McBride, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Human Nutrition Requirements, Food Composition, and Intake, an ARS National Program described on at http://www.nps.ar s.usda.gov/programs/107s2.htm.
Ronald L. Prior, James A. Joseph, Guohua Cao, and Barbara Shukitt-Hale are at the USDA-ARS Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, 711 Washington St., Boston, MA 02111; phone (617) 556-3310, fax (617) 556-3299.
"Can Foods Forestall Aging?" was published in the February 1999 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
***************************************************************
And huge amounts of research has been done in the ten years since this report was first issued. At that time, no way,
using natural foods, or even manufactured supplements, could anyone approach the very high ORAC ratings now possible
with XOCAI healthy dark chocolate. As you check the numbers in the article above, remember the small 6 gram X Power
dark chocolate square has an ORAC value of 3,582. And in the recommended three-per-day dosage, the X Power squares
have an astounding 1,008 of Total Flavonoids. And those three squares equal about two pounds of raw spinach in ORAC
value.
As a journalist and investigative broadcast reporter for NBC Radio and other media, I had to learn how to digest lots
of data and boil it down to the essential. As I read over the Dept. of Agriculture report above, do you know the one
sentence that lept out at me? Read it again and see if you can guess.
Okay, here it is:
"If further research supports these early findings, millions of aging people may be able to guard against diseases or dementia simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets."
And to get totally unscientific here, and offer my own personal opinion (isn't that, after all, what Blogs are all about?).
Taking into account the voluminous amount of research currently underway on antioxidants, and all I learned about the early
research while writing my book, PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY, I don't think I'm going too far out on the limb to suggest
that consuming this high dose of antioxidants on a daily basis could reverse the aging process to the extent that it might
add three to five healthy years to our lifespan. And that is a conservative estimate. Read the data yourself, Google "Healthy Dark Chocolate" or "Antioxidant" and decide for yourself. All of this may account for the puzzled look on my face the next time someone suggests to me that about $100 is "too expensive" for a month's supply of XOCAI healthy dark chocolate.
Jerry Gillies
And by the way, I am now putting together a team of leaders to prosper and have a lot of fun eating and sharing this
healthy dark chocolate--as well as report back to me any health benefits for my next book. For more information, contact
me at jerrygillies@gmail.com And you can see some great videos on the blog of my friend and upline partner,
Hope Kiah, at www.darkchocolatebenefits.net, and check out the Chocolate For Health section on the website of my
closest friend and upline sponsor, Susannah Lippman, at Alphasonics.com.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
A SOCIALLY SECURE EXPERIENCE
“My name is Marche, pronounced “mar-shay,” it’s French.” With that introduction, I knew I wasn’t facing a typical government worker/bureaucrat. She’s an imposing black woman (I’m sorry, that just seems more accurate than an imposing "African-American" woman..there’s a history, maybe just in white consciousness, of such figures in movies, sometimes, in bygone years, they would play the maid or housekeeper, but you knew they ran the whole operation and were a lot smarter and more competent than their employers—Queen Latifah or Oprah Winfrey would play the roles today--and I just reminded myself to talk about my early appearance on OPRAH in a future posting.)
I was broke and just out of prison, I desperately needed some kind of positive response about collecting Social Security benefits, and she immediately set my mind at ease with her calm, compassionate, and highly efficient presence. Her fingers flew over the keyboard of her computer as she talked to me in a way that left me awestruck, having been forcibly removed from the cyber world for twelve years, and she, or at least her nimble fingers, seemed superhuman.
I had several problems or obstacles. For one, I did not have the one document considered absolutely essential, a birth certificate. For all I knew, it was floating around somewhere in the labyrinth of the Folsom mail system. I had been trying to get a copy for over a year, with the help of several friends on the outside. It took literally months to find the right place to contact and get the right form to fill out. But my copy never came, and I was paroled. (it showed up weeks later, forwarded to my parole agent’s office from Folsom). But Marche tossed that problem aside as if were a gnat flying harmlessly around. She did the same with the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license or California I.D. I had been told I needed one of the other. In fact, it is the one solitary thing the Department of Corrections pays for when an inmate paroles. So I had gone that first day of freedom to the DMV and applied. They took my picture and fingerprints and then told me it would take a couple of weeks. In what I now have to regard as “the good old days” before 9/11, you would get your I.D. or license a few minutes after getting your picture taken. So much for a more efficient era called the computer age.
None of this daunted Marche, who plowed through the red tape with her fingers on the keyboard, and told me I would be paid for the month of August, even though it was the end of that month, and would receive my first benefits check very shortly, in early September. She told what materials I would have to eventually get to her, like an address when I found a place to live, and a copy of that elusive birth certificate, and sent me merrily on my way.
And I really mean merrily. I don’t know if I have the descriptive skills to accurately convey what such an oasis in a mostly uncaring world feels like to an emerging ex-convict, being forced to live in a county where he doesn’t know a soul, without family or assets, and only the pair of pants and one shirt he paroled with. I was floating as freely as Marche’s fingers over that keyboard. She had not only made my day, she had reinforced my belief in the basic kindness of my fellow human beings, and the basic abundance of the universe I was now re-entering. I felt kinship with FDR, who invented Social Security, and whom my mother had worked for in several of his election campaigns. I even remembered how the first time I had ever seen her cry was the day he died. It was a very special moment, thanks to Marche, filled with hope and the awakening of new possibilities.
Flash forward a couple of months, and I am now very involved in my new life. Working on my literary agent’s suggestion that I submit a book proposal on the health benefits of one of my true passions, dark chocolate. And surprisingly involved in marketing a specific brand of such chocolate that appears to be the single healthiest and most nutritious product on the planet, and whose taste is described by a young friend as “The Bomb.” One of my goals is to enroll really strong leaders in this business with me, and assist them in becoming financially independent as well as a lot healthier, while having lots of fun eating and sharing dark chocolate. And I immediately thought of Marche, thinking to myself, “I wonder if she would possibly be interested, if she could use some extra income, or has any health issues, or—most importantly—loves dark chocolate.” I don’t know the answers yet, as I haven’t figured out how to approach her. Wait a minute, maybe I can send her a note and suggest she check out this posting..Aha!
Jerry Gillies
And if you want to find out why this company, MXI, is called "The Company With A Heart", contact me via e-mail
at jerrygillies@gmail.com This is a team operation, as such you can also check out the blog of Hope and Thom Kiah at
www.darkchocolatebenefits.net. And do any of this only if you love dark chocolate and like to have fun
earning a great income. If you prefer milk chocolate and are the serious type, don't bother, this isn't for you. We still
think you're a great person and wish you lots of luck, we just don't want to work with you.
I was broke and just out of prison, I desperately needed some kind of positive response about collecting Social Security benefits, and she immediately set my mind at ease with her calm, compassionate, and highly efficient presence. Her fingers flew over the keyboard of her computer as she talked to me in a way that left me awestruck, having been forcibly removed from the cyber world for twelve years, and she, or at least her nimble fingers, seemed superhuman.
I had several problems or obstacles. For one, I did not have the one document considered absolutely essential, a birth certificate. For all I knew, it was floating around somewhere in the labyrinth of the Folsom mail system. I had been trying to get a copy for over a year, with the help of several friends on the outside. It took literally months to find the right place to contact and get the right form to fill out. But my copy never came, and I was paroled. (it showed up weeks later, forwarded to my parole agent’s office from Folsom). But Marche tossed that problem aside as if were a gnat flying harmlessly around. She did the same with the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license or California I.D. I had been told I needed one of the other. In fact, it is the one solitary thing the Department of Corrections pays for when an inmate paroles. So I had gone that first day of freedom to the DMV and applied. They took my picture and fingerprints and then told me it would take a couple of weeks. In what I now have to regard as “the good old days” before 9/11, you would get your I.D. or license a few minutes after getting your picture taken. So much for a more efficient era called the computer age.
None of this daunted Marche, who plowed through the red tape with her fingers on the keyboard, and told me I would be paid for the month of August, even though it was the end of that month, and would receive my first benefits check very shortly, in early September. She told what materials I would have to eventually get to her, like an address when I found a place to live, and a copy of that elusive birth certificate, and sent me merrily on my way.
And I really mean merrily. I don’t know if I have the descriptive skills to accurately convey what such an oasis in a mostly uncaring world feels like to an emerging ex-convict, being forced to live in a county where he doesn’t know a soul, without family or assets, and only the pair of pants and one shirt he paroled with. I was floating as freely as Marche’s fingers over that keyboard. She had not only made my day, she had reinforced my belief in the basic kindness of my fellow human beings, and the basic abundance of the universe I was now re-entering. I felt kinship with FDR, who invented Social Security, and whom my mother had worked for in several of his election campaigns. I even remembered how the first time I had ever seen her cry was the day he died. It was a very special moment, thanks to Marche, filled with hope and the awakening of new possibilities.
Flash forward a couple of months, and I am now very involved in my new life. Working on my literary agent’s suggestion that I submit a book proposal on the health benefits of one of my true passions, dark chocolate. And surprisingly involved in marketing a specific brand of such chocolate that appears to be the single healthiest and most nutritious product on the planet, and whose taste is described by a young friend as “The Bomb.” One of my goals is to enroll really strong leaders in this business with me, and assist them in becoming financially independent as well as a lot healthier, while having lots of fun eating and sharing dark chocolate. And I immediately thought of Marche, thinking to myself, “I wonder if she would possibly be interested, if she could use some extra income, or has any health issues, or—most importantly—loves dark chocolate.” I don’t know the answers yet, as I haven’t figured out how to approach her. Wait a minute, maybe I can send her a note and suggest she check out this posting..Aha!
Jerry Gillies
And if you want to find out why this company, MXI, is called "The Company With A Heart", contact me via e-mail
at jerrygillies@gmail.com This is a team operation, as such you can also check out the blog of Hope and Thom Kiah at
www.darkchocolatebenefits.net. And do any of this only if you love dark chocolate and like to have fun
earning a great income. If you prefer milk chocolate and are the serious type, don't bother, this isn't for you. We still
think you're a great person and wish you lots of luck, we just don't want to work with you.
Friday, December 19, 2008
IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT!
O.K., I confess, I cannot resist checking out my book MONEYLOVE by Googling it. The first item this time led me to
Amazon.com and the following review by Wanda Christine:
By Wandachristine (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
Last summer I found myself in a used book store in Los Angeles, as I was browsing on one of the shelves I found a tattered copy of Jerry Gillies book "Money-love....". Later that day I showed it to my girlfriend who quickly begged me to give it to her; but I told her that it was meant for me; but I would try to find another copy for her. Well I went home that night and started reading it and I could NOT put it down. I have read many prosperity books thoughout the years; but this one really made a difference and it still does to this day. When I started applying the techniques from the book my career changed and so did my finances and when I lost interest and focused on other things; my career went nowhere and my money became funny. So now I've picked my tattered copy back up again and I've applied myself this time; I mean I am "working it"! He gives a very simple diagramed plan on how to save for various pleasures and essentials. I made a diagram of his plan for myself when I first read the book; but I never really applied it; well a few weeks ago I went back and pulled that old diagram out and updated it and guess what IT'S WORKING! All I needed to do was to have patience, which is very hard for me. I want to see results and I want to see them right away and when I don't I stop. Not this time my plan is working. As soon as Amazon has some copies that show up on their website I will be buying one for my girlfriend. I will never give up my copy and you won't either once you've read and applied the principals in your own life. Like I said, "It works if you work it".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hope she doesn't think I'm stalking her, but curiosity led me to try WandaChristine.com, and it turns out she's a quite
stunning and accomplished actress. She's appeared on many TV shows, including one of the ones I really enjoyed when I was in prison, Judging Amy. She also wrote and performed in a one-woman show, I'M A WOMAN AND I'M BAD. How could anyone resist a title like that? So I went one step further and tried to e-mail her. So far, no response, but I've enjoyed the proactive approach, which is somewhat new for me.
In addition to my prison memoir, and my book on the healthy benefits of dark chocolate, I am working on a seventh
self-help book, THE GREAT ESCAPE: 12 Essential Freedoms From An Imprisoned Self-Help Author. In it, I will discuss and illustrate the techniques I've learned from some great mentors and taught and used to make a terrible experience--prison--a joyful, creative, triumphant segment in my life. One of the freedoms is THE FREEDOM TO DECIDE. What I discovered many years ago was that it is important to be able to make decisions, as quickly as is possible and appropriate to the situation.
And the success isn't necessarily tied to the results of that decision, but to the making of it. So it doesn't matter if WandaChristine gets in touch with me. My success and feeling good has to do with doing the deciding to reach out. If she does get back to me, that's an additional triumph, frosting on the cake so to speak. We need to separate the decisions we make from the results they produce, realizing they are two separate events. And making decisions is like exercising, instead of building muscle, it builds the decision-making parts of our brain.
WandaChristine's review speaks directly to this aspect of making decisions. She says that the concepts in MONEYLOVE worked until she lost interest and focused on other things. But she was able to decide to go back and try again, and it really worked for her this time. And understand this, it doesn't matter what the ideas contained in my book were, what is most important for WandaChristine's success was her willingness to make the decision to apply some new ideas to her life. You see, another truth about decision-making is that it is always about taking action. And the ability to take action in this way is a
success in and of itself, no matter how it turns out. You either learn by it turning out to be a mistake, or you learn by it being
a good decision that works for you. In other words, it works if you work it. But even if it doesn't work, your working it is
the real success story, and you have learned how to work it some more and better and faster.
Enjoy the process. Jerry Gillies
(if you'd like to find out more about the healthy dark chocolate business I am now working, and how I want to assemble a group of people to work it and have health, wealth, and a lot of fun doing so, contact me at: jerrygillies@gmail.com
and to get a sample of the kind of people I'm working with, check out Hope and Thom's blog at darkchocolatebenefits.net)
Amazon.com and the following review by Wanda Christine:
By Wandachristine (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
Last summer I found myself in a used book store in Los Angeles, as I was browsing on one of the shelves I found a tattered copy of Jerry Gillies book "Money-love....". Later that day I showed it to my girlfriend who quickly begged me to give it to her; but I told her that it was meant for me; but I would try to find another copy for her. Well I went home that night and started reading it and I could NOT put it down. I have read many prosperity books thoughout the years; but this one really made a difference and it still does to this day. When I started applying the techniques from the book my career changed and so did my finances and when I lost interest and focused on other things; my career went nowhere and my money became funny. So now I've picked my tattered copy back up again and I've applied myself this time; I mean I am "working it"! He gives a very simple diagramed plan on how to save for various pleasures and essentials. I made a diagram of his plan for myself when I first read the book; but I never really applied it; well a few weeks ago I went back and pulled that old diagram out and updated it and guess what IT'S WORKING! All I needed to do was to have patience, which is very hard for me. I want to see results and I want to see them right away and when I don't I stop. Not this time my plan is working. As soon as Amazon has some copies that show up on their website I will be buying one for my girlfriend. I will never give up my copy and you won't either once you've read and applied the principals in your own life. Like I said, "It works if you work it".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hope she doesn't think I'm stalking her, but curiosity led me to try WandaChristine.com, and it turns out she's a quite
stunning and accomplished actress. She's appeared on many TV shows, including one of the ones I really enjoyed when I was in prison, Judging Amy. She also wrote and performed in a one-woman show, I'M A WOMAN AND I'M BAD. How could anyone resist a title like that? So I went one step further and tried to e-mail her. So far, no response, but I've enjoyed the proactive approach, which is somewhat new for me.
In addition to my prison memoir, and my book on the healthy benefits of dark chocolate, I am working on a seventh
self-help book, THE GREAT ESCAPE: 12 Essential Freedoms From An Imprisoned Self-Help Author. In it, I will discuss and illustrate the techniques I've learned from some great mentors and taught and used to make a terrible experience--prison--a joyful, creative, triumphant segment in my life. One of the freedoms is THE FREEDOM TO DECIDE. What I discovered many years ago was that it is important to be able to make decisions, as quickly as is possible and appropriate to the situation.
And the success isn't necessarily tied to the results of that decision, but to the making of it. So it doesn't matter if WandaChristine gets in touch with me. My success and feeling good has to do with doing the deciding to reach out. If she does get back to me, that's an additional triumph, frosting on the cake so to speak. We need to separate the decisions we make from the results they produce, realizing they are two separate events. And making decisions is like exercising, instead of building muscle, it builds the decision-making parts of our brain.
WandaChristine's review speaks directly to this aspect of making decisions. She says that the concepts in MONEYLOVE worked until she lost interest and focused on other things. But she was able to decide to go back and try again, and it really worked for her this time. And understand this, it doesn't matter what the ideas contained in my book were, what is most important for WandaChristine's success was her willingness to make the decision to apply some new ideas to her life. You see, another truth about decision-making is that it is always about taking action. And the ability to take action in this way is a
success in and of itself, no matter how it turns out. You either learn by it turning out to be a mistake, or you learn by it being
a good decision that works for you. In other words, it works if you work it. But even if it doesn't work, your working it is
the real success story, and you have learned how to work it some more and better and faster.
Enjoy the process. Jerry Gillies
(if you'd like to find out more about the healthy dark chocolate business I am now working, and how I want to assemble a group of people to work it and have health, wealth, and a lot of fun doing so, contact me at: jerrygillies@gmail.com
and to get a sample of the kind of people I'm working with, check out Hope and Thom's blog at darkchocolatebenefits.net)
Saturday, December 13, 2008
COMPLIMENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
If you just logged in for the first time and want to know the answer to the question: WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JERRY GILLIES? just click on the archived posting with that exact title. In the meantime, on with my life as an ex-convict and parolee.
One of the most debilitating, dehumanizing things about prison is that you almost never receive any positive feedback in the form of compliments or acknowledgements. No, "Good job mopping that floor, Gillies," or: "We really appreciate your not stabbing your cellmate." Seriously though, I kept going for twelve years because there were people out there who would write and say nice things about me and the impact my friendship, seminars, books, or tapes had on their lives. And from time to time someone would send me a quote of mine from this strange new thing called The Internet. Not much opportunity or space to have a Compliment Bulletin Board, one of the strategies I created wherein anytime someone pays you a nice
compliment that lifts your spirits, you ask them to put it in writing and put it up on your board. One of my favorite ones
came from Linda Gray, the actress who played J.R.s wife, Sue-Ellen on DALLAS. Afer someone gifted her with my affirmation series of cards, Seminar-In-A-Package, she wrote to me saying: "You have made a positive dent in my life!"
This coming from a beautiful actress reportedly making $60,000 a week and whom everyone said was a delightful, insightful, spiritually evolved person, was a blessing I will never forget. And when someone like Louise Hay or Alan Cohen would mention me or my book, MONEYLOVE, in one of their books, it reminded me of something positive and productive I had accomplished.
So here we come to the point of this rambling exposition. The other day, as I had done on several previous occasions since my release, I went online to Amazon.com and typed in my name. It showed my six books, but this time I did something differentlly. I had noticed before that there were a bunch of self-help books listed after mine and figured it was just a
marketing ploy by Amazon. But this time I looked more closely and found, to my amazement, that every one of the 38 books
listed, published between 1988 and 2008, quoted me or mentioned me in some positive way. Wow! I was stunned and couldn't even react for a few minutes. Then I was incredibly moved. Here, while I had been stuck in prison, people were writing books and acknowledging that I or my writings had somehow impressed them, so much so they felt the need to share this with their readers. And just to give you an idea of the eclectic collection of books and authors involved, here is that list, (which you are free to skip over if you find it completely uninteresting):
ACTS OF FAITH by Iyania Vanzant (1993)
MAKING A LIVING WITHOUT A JOB: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love by Barbara Winter (1993)
A DEEP BREATH OF LIFE: DAILY INSPIRATION FOR HEART-CENTERED LIVING by Alan Cohen (1996)
I HAD IT ALL THE TIME: When Self-Improvement Gives Way to Ectasy by Alan Cohen (1994)
THE HANDS-OFF MANAGER: How to Mentor People & Allow Them to be Successful by Steve Chandler and Duane Black (2007)
MIND MAGIC TECHNIQUES FOR TRANSFORMING YOUR LIFE by Marta Hiatt, Ph.D. (2001)
DARE TO WIN by Jack Canfield (1996)
SUNBEAMS: Sages, Saints and Lovers Celebrate the Human Heart by Sy Safransky (1993)
THE BACKDOOR GUIDE TO SHORT-TERM JOB ADVENTURES: Internships, Summer Jobs, Seasonal Work, Volunteer Vacations,
and Transitions Abroad by Michael Landes (2005)
LIVING THE LAW OF ATTRACTION: Real Stories of People Manifesting Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Rich German and
Robin Hoch (2008)
SECRETS OF SELF-EMPLOYMENT: Working From Home by Paul Edwards and Sarah Edwards (1996)
THE PRACTICAL DREAMSER'S HANDBOOK: FINDING THE TIME, MONEY, AND ENERGY TO LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE
by Paul Edwards and Sarah Edwards (2001)
HIKE YOUR OWN HIKE: 7 LIFE LESSONS FROM BACKPACKING ACROSS AMERICA (Wanderlearn) by Francis Tapon (2006)
FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY by Susan Jeffers (1988)
CORAZON DE MUJER (HEART OF A WOMAN) Spanish Edition by Sheryl L. Roush (2008)
THE POWER OF RISK: How Intelligent Choices Will Make You Very Successful by Jim McCormick (2008)
INQUIRE WITHIN by Mary Engelbreit (2003)
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SUCCEED AFTER COLLEGE by Gayle Kimball (1993)
THE SUBCONSCIOUS DIET by Hugh B. Sanders (2005)
FROM THE FILES OF A SEX THERAPIST: Bedroom Secrets Teach Keys to Success by Carole Altman (1998)
FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS GIFT BOOK: You Can If You Think You Can by Meiji Steward (2000)
DAILY RICHES: A Journal of Gratitude and Awareness by Jane Bluestein, Judy Lawrence and S. J. Sanchez (1998)
THE PROSPERITY AEROBICS by Cary Bayer and Margaret Tanzosh (2006)
THE TRADE-OFF: My Husband/Your Wife by Robert H. Rimmer (2000)
LIVING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE: Staying In Control In A World Gone Bonkers by Cher Holton (1999)
75 PRINCIPLES OF CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP: Inspired Skills For 21st Century Business by Michael Shantz (2008)
BRINGING FORTH THE MAN: A Handbook For Single Moms Raising Teenage Boys by Richard V. Eastman (2006)
IGNITING THE SPIRIT AT WORK: Daily Reflections by Marilyn Mason (2001)
SUCCESS: Quotational Living by Wayne Klausing (2006)
DESIGN THE LIFE OF YOUR DREAMS: Using The Unique Energy of Each Month To Expand The Twelve Areas of
Your Life by Winnie Shows (2006)
HERE WE ARE AGAIN by Robert H. Rimmer (2001)
THE MONEY ADVENTURE by Egbert Sukop and Egbert Sukop (1998)
365 DAILY DOSES OF COURAGE: Inspiration To Help You Take Leaps In Your Life by Jim McCormick (2003)
AT THE HEART OF YOUR LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP: Love Deeply, Live Fully, and Grow Closer Together From
Near Or Far by Catherine Day (2002)
SECRETS OF THE WORLD'S TOP SALES PERFORMERS by Christine Harvey (1990)
A COLLECTION OF WISDOM by Rodney Ohebsion (2004)
MARKETING MASSAGE: How to Build Your Dream Practice by Monica Roseberry (2001)
VIRTUAL REFLECTIONS by Brenda K. Wiederhold (2004)
So many things come up when I look at the above list, like how some of these authors thought to include a quote from me, a mention of me or my work, or a recommendation to read one or more of my books, and yet they probably had no idea
that I was in prison. And they are still doing this now in 2008, when no one other than close friends has even heard from me in twelve years and all of my books are out-of-print. Another thought is that I'd really love to have all these books in a pile in front of me--maybe I'll go to the large main library in San Francisco and pull them all and cart them to a long table--what a mind-boggling trip that would be! And it all makes me realize how world-altering The Internet has become, since this list
couldn't or wouldn't have been compiled without it. I know this is an ego trip on my part, but I hope you'll allow me one once in a while--they've been few and far between in the past twelve years.
Jerry Gillies
If you want join me, and I mean directly join with me, in my next big thing, the healthy dark chocolate adventure,
contact me at jerrygillies@gmail.com
One of the most debilitating, dehumanizing things about prison is that you almost never receive any positive feedback in the form of compliments or acknowledgements. No, "Good job mopping that floor, Gillies," or: "We really appreciate your not stabbing your cellmate." Seriously though, I kept going for twelve years because there were people out there who would write and say nice things about me and the impact my friendship, seminars, books, or tapes had on their lives. And from time to time someone would send me a quote of mine from this strange new thing called The Internet. Not much opportunity or space to have a Compliment Bulletin Board, one of the strategies I created wherein anytime someone pays you a nice
compliment that lifts your spirits, you ask them to put it in writing and put it up on your board. One of my favorite ones
came from Linda Gray, the actress who played J.R.s wife, Sue-Ellen on DALLAS. Afer someone gifted her with my affirmation series of cards, Seminar-In-A-Package, she wrote to me saying: "You have made a positive dent in my life!"
This coming from a beautiful actress reportedly making $60,000 a week and whom everyone said was a delightful, insightful, spiritually evolved person, was a blessing I will never forget. And when someone like Louise Hay or Alan Cohen would mention me or my book, MONEYLOVE, in one of their books, it reminded me of something positive and productive I had accomplished.
So here we come to the point of this rambling exposition. The other day, as I had done on several previous occasions since my release, I went online to Amazon.com and typed in my name. It showed my six books, but this time I did something differentlly. I had noticed before that there were a bunch of self-help books listed after mine and figured it was just a
marketing ploy by Amazon. But this time I looked more closely and found, to my amazement, that every one of the 38 books
listed, published between 1988 and 2008, quoted me or mentioned me in some positive way. Wow! I was stunned and couldn't even react for a few minutes. Then I was incredibly moved. Here, while I had been stuck in prison, people were writing books and acknowledging that I or my writings had somehow impressed them, so much so they felt the need to share this with their readers. And just to give you an idea of the eclectic collection of books and authors involved, here is that list, (which you are free to skip over if you find it completely uninteresting):
ACTS OF FAITH by Iyania Vanzant (1993)
MAKING A LIVING WITHOUT A JOB: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love by Barbara Winter (1993)
A DEEP BREATH OF LIFE: DAILY INSPIRATION FOR HEART-CENTERED LIVING by Alan Cohen (1996)
I HAD IT ALL THE TIME: When Self-Improvement Gives Way to Ectasy by Alan Cohen (1994)
THE HANDS-OFF MANAGER: How to Mentor People & Allow Them to be Successful by Steve Chandler and Duane Black (2007)
MIND MAGIC TECHNIQUES FOR TRANSFORMING YOUR LIFE by Marta Hiatt, Ph.D. (2001)
DARE TO WIN by Jack Canfield (1996)
SUNBEAMS: Sages, Saints and Lovers Celebrate the Human Heart by Sy Safransky (1993)
THE BACKDOOR GUIDE TO SHORT-TERM JOB ADVENTURES: Internships, Summer Jobs, Seasonal Work, Volunteer Vacations,
and Transitions Abroad by Michael Landes (2005)
LIVING THE LAW OF ATTRACTION: Real Stories of People Manifesting Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Rich German and
Robin Hoch (2008)
SECRETS OF SELF-EMPLOYMENT: Working From Home by Paul Edwards and Sarah Edwards (1996)
THE PRACTICAL DREAMSER'S HANDBOOK: FINDING THE TIME, MONEY, AND ENERGY TO LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE
by Paul Edwards and Sarah Edwards (2001)
HIKE YOUR OWN HIKE: 7 LIFE LESSONS FROM BACKPACKING ACROSS AMERICA (Wanderlearn) by Francis Tapon (2006)
FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY by Susan Jeffers (1988)
CORAZON DE MUJER (HEART OF A WOMAN) Spanish Edition by Sheryl L. Roush (2008)
THE POWER OF RISK: How Intelligent Choices Will Make You Very Successful by Jim McCormick (2008)
INQUIRE WITHIN by Mary Engelbreit (2003)
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SUCCEED AFTER COLLEGE by Gayle Kimball (1993)
THE SUBCONSCIOUS DIET by Hugh B. Sanders (2005)
FROM THE FILES OF A SEX THERAPIST: Bedroom Secrets Teach Keys to Success by Carole Altman (1998)
FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS GIFT BOOK: You Can If You Think You Can by Meiji Steward (2000)
DAILY RICHES: A Journal of Gratitude and Awareness by Jane Bluestein, Judy Lawrence and S. J. Sanchez (1998)
THE PROSPERITY AEROBICS by Cary Bayer and Margaret Tanzosh (2006)
THE TRADE-OFF: My Husband/Your Wife by Robert H. Rimmer (2000)
LIVING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE: Staying In Control In A World Gone Bonkers by Cher Holton (1999)
75 PRINCIPLES OF CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP: Inspired Skills For 21st Century Business by Michael Shantz (2008)
BRINGING FORTH THE MAN: A Handbook For Single Moms Raising Teenage Boys by Richard V. Eastman (2006)
IGNITING THE SPIRIT AT WORK: Daily Reflections by Marilyn Mason (2001)
SUCCESS: Quotational Living by Wayne Klausing (2006)
DESIGN THE LIFE OF YOUR DREAMS: Using The Unique Energy of Each Month To Expand The Twelve Areas of
Your Life by Winnie Shows (2006)
HERE WE ARE AGAIN by Robert H. Rimmer (2001)
THE MONEY ADVENTURE by Egbert Sukop and Egbert Sukop (1998)
365 DAILY DOSES OF COURAGE: Inspiration To Help You Take Leaps In Your Life by Jim McCormick (2003)
AT THE HEART OF YOUR LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP: Love Deeply, Live Fully, and Grow Closer Together From
Near Or Far by Catherine Day (2002)
SECRETS OF THE WORLD'S TOP SALES PERFORMERS by Christine Harvey (1990)
A COLLECTION OF WISDOM by Rodney Ohebsion (2004)
MARKETING MASSAGE: How to Build Your Dream Practice by Monica Roseberry (2001)
VIRTUAL REFLECTIONS by Brenda K. Wiederhold (2004)
So many things come up when I look at the above list, like how some of these authors thought to include a quote from me, a mention of me or my work, or a recommendation to read one or more of my books, and yet they probably had no idea
that I was in prison. And they are still doing this now in 2008, when no one other than close friends has even heard from me in twelve years and all of my books are out-of-print. Another thought is that I'd really love to have all these books in a pile in front of me--maybe I'll go to the large main library in San Francisco and pull them all and cart them to a long table--what a mind-boggling trip that would be! And it all makes me realize how world-altering The Internet has become, since this list
couldn't or wouldn't have been compiled without it. I know this is an ego trip on my part, but I hope you'll allow me one once in a while--they've been few and far between in the past twelve years.
Jerry Gillies
If you want join me, and I mean directly join with me, in my next big thing, the healthy dark chocolate adventure,
contact me at jerrygillies@gmail.com
Friday, December 12, 2008
THE LONG QUEST FOR LONGEVITY
Life is really amazing, sometimes downright unbelievable in the ways everything comes together or comes full circle.
Take antioxidants and longevity. I actually was one of the very first laymen to write about free radicals and how they could be countered by antioxidants. This came from the many prominent scientists I interviewed for my 1981 book, PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY. This was about using your mind to extend your life, but the first third of the book was devoted to the science of longevity. My premise was that people were not going to be able to take advantage of the biological opportunities science would bring if they kept telling themselves they would be old at 65 and dead by 80.
Among the scientists I interviewed is one whose name prominently appears in some of the XOCAI literature.
The interesting thing, and maybe not surprising, is that many of these longevity researchers are still going strong almost thirty years later. Dr. Richard Cutler was, in 1980, doing his research at the Gerontology Research Center, which came\
under the jurisdiction of the National Institute on Aging. This is what I wrote in 1981:
"Free radicals is the term applied to a specific type of molecules. As Dr. Richard Cutler mentioned, free radicals are a by-product of the metabolism of oxygen. They are called free radicals because they are unattached and unstable fragments which zip around the body tissue, entering into reactions with other chemical compounds. These free radicals are thought to be responsible for a lot of so-called cellular garbage. Dr. Denham Harman of the University of Nebraska believes the critical factor in aging may be lipid peroxidation, which involves the formation of certain nonfunctional molecules when free radicals react with unsaturated fatty acids. This results in lipofuscin being produced, a fatty pigment which can take up over 30 percent of the cellular space, leading to an unstable and not very healthy situation. Dr. Harman contends that compounds called antioxidants, which inhibit free radical damage, may be able to slow the aging process. Studies have shown that high doses of antioxidants given to laboratory mice may protect them against cancer and certain aging processes. It apparently will be several years before any sort of antioxidant drugs will be available for humans in the high doses that seem necessary for results."
I can't even begin to imagine what I would have thought back in 1981 if someone had told me that approaching the second decade of the next millenium, I would be talking about and marketing those necessary high doses of antioxidants in the form of three small squares of exquisite-tasting dark chocolate. As I said, life is amazing. And let me clarify something here. I was not the prescient one, mentioning free radicals and antioxidants so many years ago. I hadn't heard of either before interviewing the longevity scientists. They were definitely ahead of their time, and probably still are. Just as those of us involved in sharing the healthy dark chocolate story are ahead of the wave that is surely coming, when everyone will wonder why they didn't know about and start taking this astoundingly delicious health food jam-packed with all the high doses of antioxidants any longevity scientist could ask for.
Jerry Gillies
(For more on this healthy dark chocolate and how you can get a taste and get
involved with my prosperity team, contact me at: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
Take antioxidants and longevity. I actually was one of the very first laymen to write about free radicals and how they could be countered by antioxidants. This came from the many prominent scientists I interviewed for my 1981 book, PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMORTALITY. This was about using your mind to extend your life, but the first third of the book was devoted to the science of longevity. My premise was that people were not going to be able to take advantage of the biological opportunities science would bring if they kept telling themselves they would be old at 65 and dead by 80.
Among the scientists I interviewed is one whose name prominently appears in some of the XOCAI literature.
The interesting thing, and maybe not surprising, is that many of these longevity researchers are still going strong almost thirty years later. Dr. Richard Cutler was, in 1980, doing his research at the Gerontology Research Center, which came\
under the jurisdiction of the National Institute on Aging. This is what I wrote in 1981:
"Free radicals is the term applied to a specific type of molecules. As Dr. Richard Cutler mentioned, free radicals are a by-product of the metabolism of oxygen. They are called free radicals because they are unattached and unstable fragments which zip around the body tissue, entering into reactions with other chemical compounds. These free radicals are thought to be responsible for a lot of so-called cellular garbage. Dr. Denham Harman of the University of Nebraska believes the critical factor in aging may be lipid peroxidation, which involves the formation of certain nonfunctional molecules when free radicals react with unsaturated fatty acids. This results in lipofuscin being produced, a fatty pigment which can take up over 30 percent of the cellular space, leading to an unstable and not very healthy situation. Dr. Harman contends that compounds called antioxidants, which inhibit free radical damage, may be able to slow the aging process. Studies have shown that high doses of antioxidants given to laboratory mice may protect them against cancer and certain aging processes. It apparently will be several years before any sort of antioxidant drugs will be available for humans in the high doses that seem necessary for results."
I can't even begin to imagine what I would have thought back in 1981 if someone had told me that approaching the second decade of the next millenium, I would be talking about and marketing those necessary high doses of antioxidants in the form of three small squares of exquisite-tasting dark chocolate. As I said, life is amazing. And let me clarify something here. I was not the prescient one, mentioning free radicals and antioxidants so many years ago. I hadn't heard of either before interviewing the longevity scientists. They were definitely ahead of their time, and probably still are. Just as those of us involved in sharing the healthy dark chocolate story are ahead of the wave that is surely coming, when everyone will wonder why they didn't know about and start taking this astoundingly delicious health food jam-packed with all the high doses of antioxidants any longevity scientist could ask for.
Jerry Gillies
(For more on this healthy dark chocolate and how you can get a taste and get
involved with my prosperity team, contact me at: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
XOCAI DARK CHOCOLATE--MIRACLE SUPERFOOD?
With so much hype in the world, so many false claims, so many expectations pumped up and then suddenly deflated, I have been reluctant to say much about the health benefits of this dark chocolate, XOCAI, I've found myself involved in talking about and marketing.
But when people you know tell you about their results and the results of people they know, it is hard to resist the possibility that this stuff may just be the healthiest health food ever to emerge, or should I say "re-emerge", since in its purest unheated, unprocessed form, it has to be pretty close to the stuff the Aztecs and Mayans worshipped in sacred ceremonies and only allowed their rulers to have.
I guess in terms of marketing, we're lucky it tastes so fantastic and that so many people love dark chocolate and want it just on those terms. We talk about it having this potent antioxidant content, where three of these small X Power dark chocolate squares are equal to almost two pounds of raw spinach, but it is still hard to imagine something that tastes so good is so good for us, until the stories start coming in. Like this one that was sent to my new friend Juliana, who
sponsored Hope, who sponsored my dear friend Susannah, who sponsored me. It's from an associate priest in the
Santa Fe Catholic church, Carol Calvert:
"Here is my testimonial so far:
I have been on the Xocai faithfully since 9/21. When I began my blood pressure was fairly high, often above 155 over 107. The other day it was 126 over 78, which to me was thrilling.. Other things I have personally noticed which are very interesting....mood elevation, more consistent energy, very rarely am I plagued with hot flashes, which BC (before chocolate) were a big annoyance, and a very interesting pain relieving quality. I woke up one night with a sore throat and had a square, it helped significantly. Yesterday morning, I had severe back pain, lower right radiating to the front, which was reminiscent of kidney stone type pain. I was waiting for a friend to come out of getting a colonoscopy so could not leave. I took a square and to my delight within a short time the pain subsided....It returned in the afternoon, and I took another square...the pain left again. A few hours later it returned and again I chased it away with chocolate!
Love,
CC"
In an earlier posting, I talked about taking lots of ephedra for weight loss and energy, back in the early 1990s, when it was legal and thought safe. And how it led to the behavior that got me sentenced to 12 years in prison. What I didn't mention was that it may also have had something to do with my diagnosis in prison of atrial fibrillation, which necessitated my being put on several medications. These include the very potent blood-thinning drug Warfarin. I once asked a prison doctor what would happen if I didn't take it. He said I could suddenly "stroke out." So I've been pretty faithfully taking my 5 milligrams a day.
Well, earlier this week, I went for my monthly blood test, and my doctor, Julia Yin Yin Myint (really! She's from Burma and seems very competent.) contacted me to let me know she wanted me to cut down on my Warfarin, down to 4 milligrams
a day. The test showed a positive change. I asked if increased antioxidant consumption could affect this, and her answer was that I should make sure I am taking consistant amounts of whatever I am taking. She had read some of the literature on dark chocolate and on the Acai berry. So now I am being a little more conscious of how much chocolate I am eating every day, wanting to keep it as consistant as possible. Perhaps this is just a small result compared to some of the ones others have reported, but its a beginning. And exciting to me, because I've wanted to get off Warfarin ever since I saw an episode of CSI where it was used to kill the victim.
And by the way, the example is often given that three small squares of the XOCAI X Power chocolate is equal in its
ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) rating to almost two pounds of raw spinach. No one is suggesting that we stop eating spinach. Frankly, I love the stuff and have since childhood, when my mother cooked it with sliced hard-boiled eggs.
One of my all-time favorites! I couldn't understand, watching the Popeye cartoons, why his friend, Wimpy, preferred hamburger (which I didn't like as a kid) to spinach, Popeye's miracle food. My longtime friend, Susannah, and new friend, Hope, both living in Sante Fe, actually went to the store and bought two pounds of raw spinach to take pictures of for
Hopes blog (check it out, lots of neat information at: www.darkchocolatebenefits.net) and it's a lot of spinach, eight full plates' worth. But I must admit when I saw it on the blog, all I could think of was how much I'd enjoy some cooked up with hard-boiled eggs! Though eight plates might be a bit much every day even for a spinach lover like me. And it cost Hope and Susannah over twelve dollars compared to $2.65 for the three X Power Squares.
Anyway, I don't know how much I'm going to talk to people about the health benefits. The literature is out there, and lots more will be coming out, especially when the University of Utah researchers finish their XOCAI-specific study. And I wouldn't want to build up hopes and expectations for people with serious medical problems, like high blood pressure and diabetes
(though diabetics love the fact this dark chocolate is safe for them to eat). My approach to people who have medical issues and want to try this new health food is to just start eating it on a regular basis and see what happens. Meanwhile, enjoy the taste, the sheer non-guilt-ridden joy of it.
And speaking of guilt, the most recent cartoon I wrote the caption for that was drawn by Ed Blais and sold to The Sun shows a judge speaking to a defendant at his trial: "I'm sorry, I can't accept a plea of Not-So-Guilty."
And if you want to check out the taste for yourself and explore not only the joy, but the income possibilities, do get
in touch with me as I build my healthy dark chocolate prosperity team. jerrygillies@gmail.com
Jerry Gillies
But when people you know tell you about their results and the results of people they know, it is hard to resist the possibility that this stuff may just be the healthiest health food ever to emerge, or should I say "re-emerge", since in its purest unheated, unprocessed form, it has to be pretty close to the stuff the Aztecs and Mayans worshipped in sacred ceremonies and only allowed their rulers to have.
I guess in terms of marketing, we're lucky it tastes so fantastic and that so many people love dark chocolate and want it just on those terms. We talk about it having this potent antioxidant content, where three of these small X Power dark chocolate squares are equal to almost two pounds of raw spinach, but it is still hard to imagine something that tastes so good is so good for us, until the stories start coming in. Like this one that was sent to my new friend Juliana, who
sponsored Hope, who sponsored my dear friend Susannah, who sponsored me. It's from an associate priest in the
Santa Fe Catholic church, Carol Calvert:
"Here is my testimonial so far:
I have been on the Xocai faithfully since 9/21. When I began my blood pressure was fairly high, often above 155 over 107. The other day it was 126 over 78, which to me was thrilling.. Other things I have personally noticed which are very interesting....mood elevation, more consistent energy, very rarely am I plagued with hot flashes, which BC (before chocolate) were a big annoyance, and a very interesting pain relieving quality. I woke up one night with a sore throat and had a square, it helped significantly. Yesterday morning, I had severe back pain, lower right radiating to the front, which was reminiscent of kidney stone type pain. I was waiting for a friend to come out of getting a colonoscopy so could not leave. I took a square and to my delight within a short time the pain subsided....It returned in the afternoon, and I took another square...the pain left again. A few hours later it returned and again I chased it away with chocolate!
Love,
CC"
In an earlier posting, I talked about taking lots of ephedra for weight loss and energy, back in the early 1990s, when it was legal and thought safe. And how it led to the behavior that got me sentenced to 12 years in prison. What I didn't mention was that it may also have had something to do with my diagnosis in prison of atrial fibrillation, which necessitated my being put on several medications. These include the very potent blood-thinning drug Warfarin. I once asked a prison doctor what would happen if I didn't take it. He said I could suddenly "stroke out." So I've been pretty faithfully taking my 5 milligrams a day.
Well, earlier this week, I went for my monthly blood test, and my doctor, Julia Yin Yin Myint (really! She's from Burma and seems very competent.) contacted me to let me know she wanted me to cut down on my Warfarin, down to 4 milligrams
a day. The test showed a positive change. I asked if increased antioxidant consumption could affect this, and her answer was that I should make sure I am taking consistant amounts of whatever I am taking. She had read some of the literature on dark chocolate and on the Acai berry. So now I am being a little more conscious of how much chocolate I am eating every day, wanting to keep it as consistant as possible. Perhaps this is just a small result compared to some of the ones others have reported, but its a beginning. And exciting to me, because I've wanted to get off Warfarin ever since I saw an episode of CSI where it was used to kill the victim.
And by the way, the example is often given that three small squares of the XOCAI X Power chocolate is equal in its
ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) rating to almost two pounds of raw spinach. No one is suggesting that we stop eating spinach. Frankly, I love the stuff and have since childhood, when my mother cooked it with sliced hard-boiled eggs.
One of my all-time favorites! I couldn't understand, watching the Popeye cartoons, why his friend, Wimpy, preferred hamburger (which I didn't like as a kid) to spinach, Popeye's miracle food. My longtime friend, Susannah, and new friend, Hope, both living in Sante Fe, actually went to the store and bought two pounds of raw spinach to take pictures of for
Hopes blog (check it out, lots of neat information at: www.darkchocolatebenefits.net) and it's a lot of spinach, eight full plates' worth. But I must admit when I saw it on the blog, all I could think of was how much I'd enjoy some cooked up with hard-boiled eggs! Though eight plates might be a bit much every day even for a spinach lover like me. And it cost Hope and Susannah over twelve dollars compared to $2.65 for the three X Power Squares.
Anyway, I don't know how much I'm going to talk to people about the health benefits. The literature is out there, and lots more will be coming out, especially when the University of Utah researchers finish their XOCAI-specific study. And I wouldn't want to build up hopes and expectations for people with serious medical problems, like high blood pressure and diabetes
(though diabetics love the fact this dark chocolate is safe for them to eat). My approach to people who have medical issues and want to try this new health food is to just start eating it on a regular basis and see what happens. Meanwhile, enjoy the taste, the sheer non-guilt-ridden joy of it.
And speaking of guilt, the most recent cartoon I wrote the caption for that was drawn by Ed Blais and sold to The Sun shows a judge speaking to a defendant at his trial: "I'm sorry, I can't accept a plea of Not-So-Guilty."
And if you want to check out the taste for yourself and explore not only the joy, but the income possibilities, do get
in touch with me as I build my healthy dark chocolate prosperity team. jerrygillies@gmail.com
Jerry Gillies
Monday, December 8, 2008
IF THEY DON'T GET IT, DON'T GIVE IT
As I begin to approach my circle of influence, I notice an interesting thing: the people most interested in the healthy dark chocolate and its business opportunity are usually my smartest and most successful contacts. They “get” it. Right away, with little effort on my part. Which leads me to come up with a thought---“If someone doesn’t get it, don’t give it.” In other words, if they can’t see the possibilities immediately, don’t waste you valuable breath trying to enroll or convince them. If they do sign up, they’ll probably be more trouble and take more time than they’re worth. I don’t mean to be cruel, just realistic. If someone hasn't emotionally and intellectually evolved into a prosperity conscious or success-destined (another new term of mine) state of mind, then they just aren’t ready.
Another one liner popped into my head as my landlord rushed off just as I was telling him about the opportunity. He’s always running around and always complaining about his financial struggles. Here’s my comment: If you’re always running around and aren’t a happy millionaire, you’re running in the wrong direction.
There are certain people you immediately know are going to be successful. My friend Brent, for instance. I met Brent while we were both inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. Despite temperatures that summer often reaching above 110, we walked the track for an hour a day and talked about things like relationships, business, making money. Brent was arrested for figuring out a loophole in a major airline’s frequent flyer program. The airline said he stole $7 million in frequent flyer miles. When the FBI threatened to go after his employees in his online travel agency, which included his wife and brother, Brent took a plea agreement. A huge fine and 18 months imprisonment. When he got out, he went back to work and in a few weeks was able to pay cash for a Lexus for himself and another for his wife. He even paid an attorney $5000 to look into my case, though the attorney ripped us off, demanding another $5000.
One episode that informed me as to Brent’s prosperity philosophy came when I sent him a list of about ten authors, including H.L. Mencken, asking him to find out which ones were in paperback so I could order them. The next thing I knew, about twenty books arrived, all the paperbacks available for all the authors. Brent told me when I called him that, since money was no object, it didn’t seem to make sense for him to bother making up a list, it was easier to just order the books. There’s a term to conjure and fantasize with. Imagine yourself saying--in fact, do say it out loud several times: MONEY IS NO OBJECT
There’s a good goal for each of us—to get to a place where we can honestly feel that MONEY IS NO OBJECT.
And remember, we don’t want whiners and whimperers in either of our legs.
Jerry Gillies
To find out more about my healthy dark chocolate prosperity team e-mail me:
jerrygillies@gmail.com
Another one liner popped into my head as my landlord rushed off just as I was telling him about the opportunity. He’s always running around and always complaining about his financial struggles. Here’s my comment: If you’re always running around and aren’t a happy millionaire, you’re running in the wrong direction.
There are certain people you immediately know are going to be successful. My friend Brent, for instance. I met Brent while we were both inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. Despite temperatures that summer often reaching above 110, we walked the track for an hour a day and talked about things like relationships, business, making money. Brent was arrested for figuring out a loophole in a major airline’s frequent flyer program. The airline said he stole $7 million in frequent flyer miles. When the FBI threatened to go after his employees in his online travel agency, which included his wife and brother, Brent took a plea agreement. A huge fine and 18 months imprisonment. When he got out, he went back to work and in a few weeks was able to pay cash for a Lexus for himself and another for his wife. He even paid an attorney $5000 to look into my case, though the attorney ripped us off, demanding another $5000.
One episode that informed me as to Brent’s prosperity philosophy came when I sent him a list of about ten authors, including H.L. Mencken, asking him to find out which ones were in paperback so I could order them. The next thing I knew, about twenty books arrived, all the paperbacks available for all the authors. Brent told me when I called him that, since money was no object, it didn’t seem to make sense for him to bother making up a list, it was easier to just order the books. There’s a term to conjure and fantasize with. Imagine yourself saying--in fact, do say it out loud several times: MONEY IS NO OBJECT
There’s a good goal for each of us—to get to a place where we can honestly feel that MONEY IS NO OBJECT.
And remember, we don’t want whiners and whimperers in either of our legs.
Jerry Gillies
To find out more about my healthy dark chocolate prosperity team e-mail me:
jerrygillies@gmail.com
JERRY GILLIES: I WON'T DANCE (with all of you)
This amazing healthy dark chocolate opportunity is not for everyone. I hate to sound like an elitist, which has become a perjorative term in recent years…as if wanting to be the best and noblest and most discerning is somehow a crime, but there are people I am not interested in working with.
The other day, I was having a conversation with several children of a friend of mine, one was a young man of twenty-seven, one a young woman who is twenty-two, the third her younger sister who’s sixteen. The topic became chocolate, as it had when we’d met a couple of months earlier before I had even heard of XOCAI and MXI. And they all agreed that they didn’t like dark chocolate, but loved milk chocolate. Dark chocolate was “too bitter,” “not sweet enough,” “too different from the chocolate we grew up with.” Great marketing genius that I am, did I try to convince them otherwise? Of course not—you can’t argue with someone’s taste buds. It’s a matter of conditioning, years of habits, and the taste sensations that most please us. Some people just don’t have discriminating palates, some people would rather have Thunderbird wine in a cardboard box than a fine bottle of Dom Perignon. Some people would rather have a grilled cheese sandwich than lobster.
Everyone is entitled to their personal taste, and they are not wrong, they are just not people I want to be in business with. So maybe I am an elitest, maybe I am a snob—maybe I am a dark chocolate bigot. But, in this business, I only want to partner up with people who love dark chocolate. Let the others market cleaning products and pimple creams, and I wish them well. I feel badly that unless they are eating two pounds of spinach a day, they have no way of getting the antioxidant protection of our delicious dark chocolate products, but that is their choice, and I wish them well.
A good friend and teacher of mine was Ken Keyes, Jr., a great philosopher/workshop leader, inspiring force in the Human Potential Movement, and author of many books, including the classic Handbook To Higher Consciousness. He taught that unconditional love was the path to success in all areas of life. And I asked him once, “Ken, you say you love everyone unconditionally, but I notice at conferences and such that you very specifically choose certain people to join you for lunch—aren’t they meeting certain conditions before you invite them?” He said something then I’ve never forgotten, and consider one of those profound statements that can alter one’s whole perception of life and the way things are or ought to be: “Jerry, I do love everyone unconditionally. But everyone is doing their own dance. And you might be doing the Tango, while I’m doing the Waltz. I can enjoy and admire your Tango, but I want to dance with someone doing the Waltz. So I usually enjoy sharing meals with people who are doing my dance.”
I will not apologize for the fact that I enjoy doing this business with people who love dark chocolate. I don’t intend on talking anyone into liking or loving it, there are too many people who are passionate about the taste to waste time on those who aren’t. We dark chocolate lovers might be an elitist, discriminating, egalitarian group—but we’re an awfully large segment of the population, and boy, do we have fun hanging out and doing business together.
Jerry Gillies
(Want to join my healthy dark chocolate success story? Get in touch: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
The other day, I was having a conversation with several children of a friend of mine, one was a young man of twenty-seven, one a young woman who is twenty-two, the third her younger sister who’s sixteen. The topic became chocolate, as it had when we’d met a couple of months earlier before I had even heard of XOCAI and MXI. And they all agreed that they didn’t like dark chocolate, but loved milk chocolate. Dark chocolate was “too bitter,” “not sweet enough,” “too different from the chocolate we grew up with.” Great marketing genius that I am, did I try to convince them otherwise? Of course not—you can’t argue with someone’s taste buds. It’s a matter of conditioning, years of habits, and the taste sensations that most please us. Some people just don’t have discriminating palates, some people would rather have Thunderbird wine in a cardboard box than a fine bottle of Dom Perignon. Some people would rather have a grilled cheese sandwich than lobster.
Everyone is entitled to their personal taste, and they are not wrong, they are just not people I want to be in business with. So maybe I am an elitest, maybe I am a snob—maybe I am a dark chocolate bigot. But, in this business, I only want to partner up with people who love dark chocolate. Let the others market cleaning products and pimple creams, and I wish them well. I feel badly that unless they are eating two pounds of spinach a day, they have no way of getting the antioxidant protection of our delicious dark chocolate products, but that is their choice, and I wish them well.
A good friend and teacher of mine was Ken Keyes, Jr., a great philosopher/workshop leader, inspiring force in the Human Potential Movement, and author of many books, including the classic Handbook To Higher Consciousness. He taught that unconditional love was the path to success in all areas of life. And I asked him once, “Ken, you say you love everyone unconditionally, but I notice at conferences and such that you very specifically choose certain people to join you for lunch—aren’t they meeting certain conditions before you invite them?” He said something then I’ve never forgotten, and consider one of those profound statements that can alter one’s whole perception of life and the way things are or ought to be: “Jerry, I do love everyone unconditionally. But everyone is doing their own dance. And you might be doing the Tango, while I’m doing the Waltz. I can enjoy and admire your Tango, but I want to dance with someone doing the Waltz. So I usually enjoy sharing meals with people who are doing my dance.”
I will not apologize for the fact that I enjoy doing this business with people who love dark chocolate. I don’t intend on talking anyone into liking or loving it, there are too many people who are passionate about the taste to waste time on those who aren’t. We dark chocolate lovers might be an elitist, discriminating, egalitarian group—but we’re an awfully large segment of the population, and boy, do we have fun hanging out and doing business together.
Jerry Gillies
(Want to join my healthy dark chocolate success story? Get in touch: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
MONEYLOVE AND MONEYFUN--THE JERRY GILLIES WAY
It may be the ultimate example of life imitating art. You may remember that in the old Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, his character wakes up in the future and talks about the silly people back in the 20th century who thought chocolate was bad for you and sprouts were good, and it was now common knowledge that the reverse is true. What a cosmic joke we are living!
That’s right, it’s really funny, and if you can’t see that, then you need to wake up, just like Woody Allen did, and stop taking yourself so seriously.
“What do you do?”
“I enjoy the most delicious chocolate in the world, and get other people to join me in enjoying it.”
“No, I meant, what do you do for a living?”
“That’s what I do for a living, a fantastic living—and I have fun doing it and the dark chocolate is super healthy.”
Doesn’t the above almost sound like a comedy routine? You are living a comedy routine, a contrarian existence in which you are talking about the health benefits of what used to be considered the ultimate sinful food in terms of good nutrition. And you are excited about a great financial opportunity during a period when most people are scared to death about their financial future. And you are having fun doing it.
While a lot of people say to me, “It’s tough times right now, time to tighten the belt and lower expectations,” I say, “This is the perfect time to dramatically change how we’ve thought about earning a living. We’re in a new millennium, with a new President elected because he promised a new way of doing things, and we are missing the boat if we don’t take this opportunity to change the way we’ve been thinking about work and earning an income.
In my bestselling book, MONEYLOVE, I talk about the importance of pleasure, and that the more pleasure you have doing the work you do, and the more pleasure you have with the money you produce, the more incentive your subconscious mind is going to have to produce even more. It’s like subjecting your own brain to behavior modification—and believe me, most of us need some of our behavior modified. I remember so vividly a highly respected former banker who did many financial seminars and was very successful. In the stock market crash of 1987, he lost everything, over a million dollars. And what he told me was, “The thing that really upsets me about it is that I never had fun with that money. I kept postponing vacations, kept working hard to build up my fortune, and I had a fortune and it’s all gone now, and I never had the benefit of it other than as fantasy.” In MONEYLOVE, and in this new healthy dark chocolate business I’m building along with all the rest of you, it’s vital to our financial and emotional health that we not only keep having fun eating the product, but that we allocate a portion of all our profits to specific fun goals, whether it’s taking a trip, buying a fun toy at the electronics shop, taking a friend out for a surprise gourmet meal, getting a great massage, etc. In MONEYLOVE, I had a series of affirmations I called Prosperity Proclamations, and one of these was:
As a former journalist, what brought me a lot of a success at NBC Radio was the fact I could read a long news report and boil it down to the essentials that needed to fit into a five minute hourly newscast. And when I was in charge of editing the Governor’s news conferences when I was a newsman at WRVA Radio in Richmond, Virginia. I applied the same skill to editing his words, getting to the essence of what he said, and passing those edited sound bites on to all the other news organizations in Virginia.
Here’s my point—I think some of us have missed the point, or at least one important point about why MXI is unique. It promotes fun as an essential part of making a living. Other companies stress taking care of such serious things as the kids’ education, sudden health emergencies, survival in old age. Our MXI earnings will take care of that and a lot more, but what does the company stress as a major reward of doing this business? Fun trips and cruises! The important message this sends out is, “Do this business and you’re going to have a lot more fun in your life!” And it all starts with the most basic fun thing any of us have ever done in our lives—eating chocolate.
Jerry Gillies
That’s right, it’s really funny, and if you can’t see that, then you need to wake up, just like Woody Allen did, and stop taking yourself so seriously.
“What do you do?”
“I enjoy the most delicious chocolate in the world, and get other people to join me in enjoying it.”
“No, I meant, what do you do for a living?”
“That’s what I do for a living, a fantastic living—and I have fun doing it and the dark chocolate is super healthy.”
Doesn’t the above almost sound like a comedy routine? You are living a comedy routine, a contrarian existence in which you are talking about the health benefits of what used to be considered the ultimate sinful food in terms of good nutrition. And you are excited about a great financial opportunity during a period when most people are scared to death about their financial future. And you are having fun doing it.
While a lot of people say to me, “It’s tough times right now, time to tighten the belt and lower expectations,” I say, “This is the perfect time to dramatically change how we’ve thought about earning a living. We’re in a new millennium, with a new President elected because he promised a new way of doing things, and we are missing the boat if we don’t take this opportunity to change the way we’ve been thinking about work and earning an income.
In my bestselling book, MONEYLOVE, I talk about the importance of pleasure, and that the more pleasure you have doing the work you do, and the more pleasure you have with the money you produce, the more incentive your subconscious mind is going to have to produce even more. It’s like subjecting your own brain to behavior modification—and believe me, most of us need some of our behavior modified. I remember so vividly a highly respected former banker who did many financial seminars and was very successful. In the stock market crash of 1987, he lost everything, over a million dollars. And what he told me was, “The thing that really upsets me about it is that I never had fun with that money. I kept postponing vacations, kept working hard to build up my fortune, and I had a fortune and it’s all gone now, and I never had the benefit of it other than as fantasy.” In MONEYLOVE, and in this new healthy dark chocolate business I’m building along with all the rest of you, it’s vital to our financial and emotional health that we not only keep having fun eating the product, but that we allocate a portion of all our profits to specific fun goals, whether it’s taking a trip, buying a fun toy at the electronics shop, taking a friend out for a surprise gourmet meal, getting a great massage, etc. In MONEYLOVE, I had a series of affirmations I called Prosperity Proclamations, and one of these was:
EVERY DOLLAR I BANK IS ACCUMULATED WEALTH
FOR MY PERSONAL PLEASURE
FOR MY PERSONAL PLEASURE
As a former journalist, what brought me a lot of a success at NBC Radio was the fact I could read a long news report and boil it down to the essentials that needed to fit into a five minute hourly newscast. And when I was in charge of editing the Governor’s news conferences when I was a newsman at WRVA Radio in Richmond, Virginia. I applied the same skill to editing his words, getting to the essence of what he said, and passing those edited sound bites on to all the other news organizations in Virginia.
Here’s my point—I think some of us have missed the point, or at least one important point about why MXI is unique. It promotes fun as an essential part of making a living. Other companies stress taking care of such serious things as the kids’ education, sudden health emergencies, survival in old age. Our MXI earnings will take care of that and a lot more, but what does the company stress as a major reward of doing this business? Fun trips and cruises! The important message this sends out is, “Do this business and you’re going to have a lot more fun in your life!” And it all starts with the most basic fun thing any of us have ever done in our lives—eating chocolate.
Jerry Gillies
(If you want to join the fun--contact me: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
JERRY GILLIES--ALREADY A DARK CHOCOLATE LOVER
One of the basic concepts in network marketing as well as other sales and marketing ventures is that you will be most successful if you can honestly say you would share the benefits of what you were selling with friends and acquaintances even if you weren’t making a profit on it. I start out with a great advantage in this department, as do many of you—I already loved dark chocolate and was already telling friends about the best brands in terms of flavor that I discovered.
Even in prison, where we did not have access to dark chocolate, I kept up with the health reports being issued as new research was steadily producing results in the past decade on how beneficial dark chocolate was. Over the course of my 12 years of incarceration, I often talked about my love of dark chocolate and how much I missed it, and how deprived I felt that I couldn’t try the new brands coming out on a regular basis. I even whined about not getting to taste the new dark chocolate Kisses and M&Ms.
When I was in the Federal Correctional Institution at Tucson, Arizona, and we were allowed to order books from the Tucson library system, one of the books I ordered was THE EMPERORS OF CHOCOLATE, the story of the long rivalry between Hershey and Mars—one of the best books about business I’ve ever come across.
About a year before parole, I asked my longtime friend Susannah Lippman to try several varieties of dark chocolate and send me her honest opinion, so I would have an idea of which ones to try first once I was out in the world. On my parole day, August 24, 2008, as I arrived in San Francisco from Folsom State Prison, one of my very first stops was a Walgreens, and I was surprised and delighted to find they had a large selection of dark chocolate. I bought a number of bars I could not really afford on what was left of my $200 “gate money” after my train trip. Two I particularly liked were the Cacao Reserve Dark Chocolate Truffles in a small tin container by Hershey, and the Ghiradelli Twilight Dark 72% bar.
When I arrived at the apartment of another longtime friend, Bonnie Weiss, where I was spending my first night of freedom prior to reporting to the parole office in San Mateo County the next morning, she had gotten several other gourmet brands of dark chocolate as a welcoming gift. So I already had a commitment to enjoying and sharing dark chocolate. And we three, Susannah, Bonnie, and I…all seemed to agree on which were our favorites. Flash forward several weeks and I get a call from Susannah in Santa Fe telling me she has just tasted the best dark chocolate of them all, and she got it from her health practitioner, and it was chockfull not only of flavor but exceptional health benefits. Whoa..my brain and taste buds said…here is something I’ve got to get my hands on and mouth on.
contact me online at: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
Even in prison, where we did not have access to dark chocolate, I kept up with the health reports being issued as new research was steadily producing results in the past decade on how beneficial dark chocolate was. Over the course of my 12 years of incarceration, I often talked about my love of dark chocolate and how much I missed it, and how deprived I felt that I couldn’t try the new brands coming out on a regular basis. I even whined about not getting to taste the new dark chocolate Kisses and M&Ms.
When I was in the Federal Correctional Institution at Tucson, Arizona, and we were allowed to order books from the Tucson library system, one of the books I ordered was THE EMPERORS OF CHOCOLATE, the story of the long rivalry between Hershey and Mars—one of the best books about business I’ve ever come across.
About a year before parole, I asked my longtime friend Susannah Lippman to try several varieties of dark chocolate and send me her honest opinion, so I would have an idea of which ones to try first once I was out in the world. On my parole day, August 24, 2008, as I arrived in San Francisco from Folsom State Prison, one of my very first stops was a Walgreens, and I was surprised and delighted to find they had a large selection of dark chocolate. I bought a number of bars I could not really afford on what was left of my $200 “gate money” after my train trip. Two I particularly liked were the Cacao Reserve Dark Chocolate Truffles in a small tin container by Hershey, and the Ghiradelli Twilight Dark 72% bar.
When I arrived at the apartment of another longtime friend, Bonnie Weiss, where I was spending my first night of freedom prior to reporting to the parole office in San Mateo County the next morning, she had gotten several other gourmet brands of dark chocolate as a welcoming gift. So I already had a commitment to enjoying and sharing dark chocolate. And we three, Susannah, Bonnie, and I…all seemed to agree on which were our favorites. Flash forward several weeks and I get a call from Susannah in Santa Fe telling me she has just tasted the best dark chocolate of them all, and she got it from her health practitioner, and it was chockfull not only of flavor but exceptional health benefits. Whoa..my brain and taste buds said…here is something I’ve got to get my hands on and mouth on.
Jerry Gillies
(To get your hands and mouth on some of this great healthy dark chocolate and find out more,contact me online at: jerrygillies@gmail.com)
Sunday, December 7, 2008
JERRY GILLIES IS BROKER THAN YOU RIGHT NOW
Some of the people I talk to nowadays about prosperity consciousness and/or the healthy dark chocolate business I am starting to put my focus and energy into, put me on a pedestal. “Look,” they say, “we’re not bestselling authors, we’re not in your enviable financial position.” Let me set the record straight, and since I now have a record, a prison record, I can easily do that. MONEYLOVE was a bestseller, it’s true, and probably earned me at least a quarter of a million dollars, plus all the seminars and tapes. But it was first published in 1978, and has been out-of-print since 2002, though alive and well online where a thriving business is done in used copies. Unfortunately, I don’t get a penny from these, the royalty on already published copies was paid out long ago.
And right now, as I write this, and am awaiting my introductory order as a new Executive in this exciting healthy dark chocolate business, my total assets are $40, as I also await my next Social Security check. When I paroled on August 24th from Folsom State Prison (yes, the one Johnny Cash performed at and sang about, though he never was an inmate there), I was given the standard $200 cash as “gate money.” I had to buy my train ticket to San Francisco, and coincidentally enough, my first purchase at a Walgreens drugstore was several brands of a product I had missed terribly for over a decade of incarceration—dark chocolate. I also had a check for $800, saved from earnings from my cartoon gagwriting. This was a fun and mind-stimulating activity that isn’t very profitable in real world terms, but the $80 to $100 a month that came in allowed me to have a relatively abundant prison lifestyle, with cans of tuna, sodas, summer sausages, etc. from the prison canteen. I had not ever been on The Internet, this is not allowed inmates, who are pushed out into an overwhelming cyber world with no preparation whatsoever. I had no place to live, since the friend who was going to take me in suddenly died. And the terms of my parole were that I had to live in San Mateo County, a place where I knew no one, for the next thirteen months. (can you hear the plaintive sound of violins in the background?) It was several days before I knew for certain that I would be able to collect $977 in monthly Social Security benefits, and my $1000 was going fast as I had to pay $80 a night for a motel room while I looked on Craig’s List for a room to rent. I was lucky that my friend, Susannah Lippman in Santa Fe, gave me the Apple PowerBook I’m writing this on when got a new one.
I finally found a room in San Bruno, in a house owned by a charming, kind man who emigrated from Fiji six years ago, though his ethnic roots were Indian, as are those of 40% of the Fiji Islanders. A beautiful Pacific paradise, but not much to offer in the way of jobs. The only furnishing in the room was a carpet, so I had to walk over to Target and buy a $70 air mattress, plus linen, to sleep on. I only had one pair of pants when I paroled, and had to get some clothes, a cell phone, a table or desk for my laptop, a printer, and high speed Internet connection. I was broke pretty fast as you could imagine, especially when my room rent was $650 a month. And thankfully, a beautiful and kindly case worker at the San Mateo County Human Services Agency approved my request for food stamps, so I get a debit card with $83 worth of food allowance per month. All this is a pretty humbling experience, but also exciting and challenging. I don’t focus on the things I can’t have yet, but on how much fun it is going to be to tell people, once I am solvent and prosperous again, how broke I was when I started my re-entry into society. So don’t talk to me about your shrinking 401K, or the fact your house is worth $100,000 less this year, or that you can’t afford a new SUV, or steak and lobster dinners, or had to cancel that cruise this past summer and go to the beach instead.
I am going to be wealthy as soon as possible, and the only way I can do this in this new business is to help make other people wealthy. I am sure some people I turn on to this opportunity will work harder and maybe even smarter than I will, and make a lot more money than I will. But my needs aren’t much, and after where I started out, even a modest amount of prosperity is going to seem like millions. I might even be able to get my first car in over twelve years, and a nice apartment, and a real bed. And I plan to have fun every step of the way! And share every step through these blogs. Maybe my next bestseller will be entitled: “From Prisoner and Pauper to Multimillionaire--Eating and Sharing Chocolate.”
And right now, as I write this, and am awaiting my introductory order as a new Executive in this exciting healthy dark chocolate business, my total assets are $40, as I also await my next Social Security check. When I paroled on August 24th from Folsom State Prison (yes, the one Johnny Cash performed at and sang about, though he never was an inmate there), I was given the standard $200 cash as “gate money.” I had to buy my train ticket to San Francisco, and coincidentally enough, my first purchase at a Walgreens drugstore was several brands of a product I had missed terribly for over a decade of incarceration—dark chocolate. I also had a check for $800, saved from earnings from my cartoon gagwriting. This was a fun and mind-stimulating activity that isn’t very profitable in real world terms, but the $80 to $100 a month that came in allowed me to have a relatively abundant prison lifestyle, with cans of tuna, sodas, summer sausages, etc. from the prison canteen. I had not ever been on The Internet, this is not allowed inmates, who are pushed out into an overwhelming cyber world with no preparation whatsoever. I had no place to live, since the friend who was going to take me in suddenly died. And the terms of my parole were that I had to live in San Mateo County, a place where I knew no one, for the next thirteen months. (can you hear the plaintive sound of violins in the background?) It was several days before I knew for certain that I would be able to collect $977 in monthly Social Security benefits, and my $1000 was going fast as I had to pay $80 a night for a motel room while I looked on Craig’s List for a room to rent. I was lucky that my friend, Susannah Lippman in Santa Fe, gave me the Apple PowerBook I’m writing this on when got a new one.
I finally found a room in San Bruno, in a house owned by a charming, kind man who emigrated from Fiji six years ago, though his ethnic roots were Indian, as are those of 40% of the Fiji Islanders. A beautiful Pacific paradise, but not much to offer in the way of jobs. The only furnishing in the room was a carpet, so I had to walk over to Target and buy a $70 air mattress, plus linen, to sleep on. I only had one pair of pants when I paroled, and had to get some clothes, a cell phone, a table or desk for my laptop, a printer, and high speed Internet connection. I was broke pretty fast as you could imagine, especially when my room rent was $650 a month. And thankfully, a beautiful and kindly case worker at the San Mateo County Human Services Agency approved my request for food stamps, so I get a debit card with $83 worth of food allowance per month. All this is a pretty humbling experience, but also exciting and challenging. I don’t focus on the things I can’t have yet, but on how much fun it is going to be to tell people, once I am solvent and prosperous again, how broke I was when I started my re-entry into society. So don’t talk to me about your shrinking 401K, or the fact your house is worth $100,000 less this year, or that you can’t afford a new SUV, or steak and lobster dinners, or had to cancel that cruise this past summer and go to the beach instead.
I am going to be wealthy as soon as possible, and the only way I can do this in this new business is to help make other people wealthy. I am sure some people I turn on to this opportunity will work harder and maybe even smarter than I will, and make a lot more money than I will. But my needs aren’t much, and after where I started out, even a modest amount of prosperity is going to seem like millions. I might even be able to get my first car in over twelve years, and a nice apartment, and a real bed. And I plan to have fun every step of the way! And share every step through these blogs. Maybe my next bestseller will be entitled: “From Prisoner and Pauper to Multimillionaire--Eating and Sharing Chocolate.”
Jerry Gillies
You can be part of that amazing success story--yours and mine--contact me: jerrygillies@gmail.com
TEMPORARY VERSUS PERMANENT
We can often change our reality by choosing where to put our attention. People often ask how in the world I survived twelve years in prison. I answer that I not only survived, I thrived. Friends were constantly amazed at how upbeat my letters were. I often encouraged them rather than the other way around. One of the major reasons I could do this was because I utilized a concept I first talked about in my bestselling series of motivational tapes by Nightingale-Conant. It’s simply to view anything bad, scary, or disappointing that happens in your life as a temporary aberration, an out-of-the-ordinary event that is very temporary in nature.
Even though twelve years is a long time, in a long life it is only a temporary block of time. The other part of the equation is to view any success as part of a continuing and permanent trend to your highest goals. I remember one of the first cartoon gags I wrote that was sold. Bunny Hoest and John Reiner did it for PARADE MAGAZINE, which has a circulation of nearly one hundred million thanks to being included in so many Sunday newspapers. It showed a portly middle-aged man, who looked remarkably like me despite the fact that Bunny had never seen me. He was in a his underwear holding some newly issued prison clothes as one guard says to another, “He says as a former CEO, he’s entitled to a corner cell.” My fellow inmates in building 5 at Old Folsom got a big kick out of that one. And I saw it as the beginning of many more gag sales, much more recognition, spreading fame and influence in the cartoon world. That didn’t really happen, but I generated a lot of heat visualizing that it would. I saw it as the beginning of new success in my life, and it did lead to all sorts of success experiences.
This was underlined at my trial. I and my closest friends saw my harebrained scheme to hijack an expensive motorhome as an aberration, a temporary break in the productive, law-abiding life I had led. Many acted as character witnesses. My old friends, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, co-creators of the CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL books, the undisputed bestselling books of the nineties, wrote long letters to the judge on my behalf, saying the Jerry Gillies they knew would never commit such a crime, and it had to be a temporary loss of sanity. We hear a lot about “temporary insanity” but never about temporary sanity. Sanity is the default mental state. Anything else is an aberration. At this moment in early December, as I await my first shipment of XOCIA products, I am broker than I’ve ever been in my life. But I’m not poor, and I have an inner certainty that this new business venture, my first in nearly fifteen years, is going to take off in a burst of permanent momentum. The Law of Attraction, which I first talked about thirty years ago, is a permanent law. You can dent it a bit, but never destroy it. This current economic situation is a temporary one, Any personal deprivation you are now experiencing is temporary. And in the future, as you look back on this time in your life, you will see it is the time when you made a strong change for the better. You deserve it, a lot of people want you to have it, and its manifestation has already begun.
Even though twelve years is a long time, in a long life it is only a temporary block of time. The other part of the equation is to view any success as part of a continuing and permanent trend to your highest goals. I remember one of the first cartoon gags I wrote that was sold. Bunny Hoest and John Reiner did it for PARADE MAGAZINE, which has a circulation of nearly one hundred million thanks to being included in so many Sunday newspapers. It showed a portly middle-aged man, who looked remarkably like me despite the fact that Bunny had never seen me. He was in a his underwear holding some newly issued prison clothes as one guard says to another, “He says as a former CEO, he’s entitled to a corner cell.” My fellow inmates in building 5 at Old Folsom got a big kick out of that one. And I saw it as the beginning of many more gag sales, much more recognition, spreading fame and influence in the cartoon world. That didn’t really happen, but I generated a lot of heat visualizing that it would. I saw it as the beginning of new success in my life, and it did lead to all sorts of success experiences.
This was underlined at my trial. I and my closest friends saw my harebrained scheme to hijack an expensive motorhome as an aberration, a temporary break in the productive, law-abiding life I had led. Many acted as character witnesses. My old friends, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, co-creators of the CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL books, the undisputed bestselling books of the nineties, wrote long letters to the judge on my behalf, saying the Jerry Gillies they knew would never commit such a crime, and it had to be a temporary loss of sanity. We hear a lot about “temporary insanity” but never about temporary sanity. Sanity is the default mental state. Anything else is an aberration. At this moment in early December, as I await my first shipment of XOCIA products, I am broker than I’ve ever been in my life. But I’m not poor, and I have an inner certainty that this new business venture, my first in nearly fifteen years, is going to take off in a burst of permanent momentum. The Law of Attraction, which I first talked about thirty years ago, is a permanent law. You can dent it a bit, but never destroy it. This current economic situation is a temporary one, Any personal deprivation you are now experiencing is temporary. And in the future, as you look back on this time in your life, you will see it is the time when you made a strong change for the better. You deserve it, a lot of people want you to have it, and its manifestation has already begun.
Jerry Gillies
And to find out how some temporary effort can lead to permanent prosperity..get in touch: jerrygillies@gmail.com
IN MONEYLOVE, THE MOST IMPORTANT PART IS "LOVE"
I think it’s important that my readers know one thing—I am not attempting to teach them how to do the healthy dark chocolate business. The company provides an amazing abundance of training materials, information, and how-to instruction in every imaginable media format. I would not, could not attempt to improve on this powerful and impeccable array of resources.
What I am attempting to do is focus on the psychology of success, as I did in my bestselling book, MONEYLOVE, and hundred of seminars around the world, including Canada, the Bahamas, England, South Africa, and even Belgium, where I went on my own dark chocolate binge before anyone ever heard about the health benefits. My most fondest memories from that country are the chocolate, the restaurants in and around Brussels, a French fry stand in the central square of a small town outside Brussels, and doing a MONEYLOVE SEMINAR in the banquet room of a restaurant located in the middle of a lake on a small island, everyone having to travel by flat-bottomed ferryboat, and having the seminar translated into French, so that I often got two laughs from a funny comment, one for the English and one for the French—I loved it.
What it takes to do any kind of business successfully is confidence, an inner certainty that you are doing exactly what you should be doing. And knowing how to maximize and enjoy that success when it happens. The stronger you feel about your own potential, the more easily you attract other people to join you. With the right level of passionate commitment, you don’t need to even know the marketing plan, the health benefits, or how good the chocolate tastes. People will be attracted to the business because they are attracted to you. The Moneylove philosophy is to love what you do so that you do it so well, people will show up to do it with you.
I’m a pretty good blackjack player—and have even taught some lessons. I noticed that when I was winning, people come up and stood around me, they wanted to be close to that winning energy. So the more you love doing it, the more fun you have, the more you believe your life is constantly moving in a profoundly positive direction, the more people will want to be a part of your circle. And the higher level of conscious awareness you are manifesting, the higher level of people who will show up.
It’s not really about chocolate, or good health, or lots of money—it’s all about love. Loving yourself enough to know you deserve optimum success, loving others enough that you want to make their lives better, and loving the prosperity you create so that you have the comfortable and fun-filled life you deserve.
What I am attempting to do is focus on the psychology of success, as I did in my bestselling book, MONEYLOVE, and hundred of seminars around the world, including Canada, the Bahamas, England, South Africa, and even Belgium, where I went on my own dark chocolate binge before anyone ever heard about the health benefits. My most fondest memories from that country are the chocolate, the restaurants in and around Brussels, a French fry stand in the central square of a small town outside Brussels, and doing a MONEYLOVE SEMINAR in the banquet room of a restaurant located in the middle of a lake on a small island, everyone having to travel by flat-bottomed ferryboat, and having the seminar translated into French, so that I often got two laughs from a funny comment, one for the English and one for the French—I loved it.
What it takes to do any kind of business successfully is confidence, an inner certainty that you are doing exactly what you should be doing. And knowing how to maximize and enjoy that success when it happens. The stronger you feel about your own potential, the more easily you attract other people to join you. With the right level of passionate commitment, you don’t need to even know the marketing plan, the health benefits, or how good the chocolate tastes. People will be attracted to the business because they are attracted to you. The Moneylove philosophy is to love what you do so that you do it so well, people will show up to do it with you.
I’m a pretty good blackjack player—and have even taught some lessons. I noticed that when I was winning, people come up and stood around me, they wanted to be close to that winning energy. So the more you love doing it, the more fun you have, the more you believe your life is constantly moving in a profoundly positive direction, the more people will want to be a part of your circle. And the higher level of conscious awareness you are manifesting, the higher level of people who will show up.
It’s not really about chocolate, or good health, or lots of money—it’s all about love. Loving yourself enough to know you deserve optimum success, loving others enough that you want to make their lives better, and loving the prosperity you create so that you have the comfortable and fun-filled life you deserve.
Jerry Gillies
(I really love this dark chocolate, the people involved, and the prospects of having a team that will make prosperity history.)If you think it would be fun, profitable, educational to come play with me, get in touch: jerrygillies@gmail.com
THE PURPOSE OF THE JERRY GILLIES BLOG: FUN!
I just saw Arianna Huffington, founder of one of the world’s most successful blogs, HuffingtonPost.com, on The Daily Show. Watching this show, by the way, via HULU.COM, a free video site, is a special treat as we were not allowed access to cable during my 12 years in prison. No Sopranos, no Colbert Report, no Discovery Channel or Bravo or Fox News or MSNBC or CSPAN. And I had a chance to meet Arianna back in the 1980s when she was involved with the spiritual group, Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness, led by a religious quack named John-Roger, whom I still think she considers a friend.
My friend, Jack Canfield, was ostracized, or as the Amish would say, “shunned” by the group. Jack, co-creator of the Chicken Soup For The Soul series, had been brought to Southern California by John-Roger to be the Education Director for Insight Training Seminars, a competitor of EST and similar intense consciousness-training workshops. It was supposed to be separate from the MSIA movement, but John-Roger usually made an appearance and gave a talk and I thought it was spiritual tripe. Jack eventually came to agree with me, especially when it was discovered that John-Roger was having sex with two brothers on his support team, and paying each a lot of money to keep it a secret, even from the brother. Jack Canfield blew the whistle on this, and he was banished. He and his lovely wife, Georgia, were ignored by every friend they had in the MSIA and Insight Training community. If they went to the supermarket and encountered a former friend, that friend would rush out before completing their shopping. Anyway, this always pops up from my memory banks when I see Arianna Huffington.
But she is smart and insightful and I like much of her political reporting. On the subject of blogging, which she has a new book about, she said it has to be about your passion, and it should not be perfect--it should be more like a rough draft, written off the top of your head. Well, my blog certainly qualifies on these counts. It’s about my love affair with dark chocolate, my excitement about the XOCAI opportunity and building a successful team of prosperous partners, and a chance to make a powerful and impactful re-entry into society after being broke and in prison for 12 years. My purpose is to make it fun. The business, the challenges, working with all types of people from all walks of life. There is one thing I don’t have to focus on making fun: the consumption of this fantastic health dark chocolate.
My friend, Jack Canfield, was ostracized, or as the Amish would say, “shunned” by the group. Jack, co-creator of the Chicken Soup For The Soul series, had been brought to Southern California by John-Roger to be the Education Director for Insight Training Seminars, a competitor of EST and similar intense consciousness-training workshops. It was supposed to be separate from the MSIA movement, but John-Roger usually made an appearance and gave a talk and I thought it was spiritual tripe. Jack eventually came to agree with me, especially when it was discovered that John-Roger was having sex with two brothers on his support team, and paying each a lot of money to keep it a secret, even from the brother. Jack Canfield blew the whistle on this, and he was banished. He and his lovely wife, Georgia, were ignored by every friend they had in the MSIA and Insight Training community. If they went to the supermarket and encountered a former friend, that friend would rush out before completing their shopping. Anyway, this always pops up from my memory banks when I see Arianna Huffington.
But she is smart and insightful and I like much of her political reporting. On the subject of blogging, which she has a new book about, she said it has to be about your passion, and it should not be perfect--it should be more like a rough draft, written off the top of your head. Well, my blog certainly qualifies on these counts. It’s about my love affair with dark chocolate, my excitement about the XOCAI opportunity and building a successful team of prosperous partners, and a chance to make a powerful and impactful re-entry into society after being broke and in prison for 12 years. My purpose is to make it fun. The business, the challenges, working with all types of people from all walks of life. There is one thing I don’t have to focus on making fun: the consumption of this fantastic health dark chocolate.
Jerry Gillies
(the other night, one of the company's top earners did a training call and talked a lot about how much fun she was having--that's what I'm talking about. You can make a lot of money a lot of different ways, but few of them are as fun-oriented as this.) Find out more by contacting me at: jerrygillies@gmail.com
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JERRY GILLIES?
Well, the answer to that is South of San Francisco, in a county where he knows not a single soul, because he is forced to live there for at least a year as a condition of his parole from Folsom State Prison this past August. And hardly any of the two million readers of my book, MONEYLOVE, have a clue of where I've been for the past twelve years, let alone why.
In 1996, I was arrested for trying to hijack a motorhome and sentenced to 12 years in prison. How the hell did this happen?
Well, it started with a network marketing company that sold some excellent nutritional products. More on that later.
I had originally been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for an investment scheme involving underwriting bonds in Europe. It had paid off successfully for eight years, when something went wrong--I still don't know what, but the bottom line was all the money was supposed to come back through one of the most respected banks in England, Barings, and you may remember they had one of the biggest bank busts in history in 1995. I then went a little crazy as the date approached for me to report to federal prison. I decided I needed to avoid prison--I was panicking--by stealing a motorhome and becoming a fugitive, since I had almost no money, having lost it all in the overseas investment. I didn't know why I did something so out of character, a fact testified to by several character witnesses, including old friends Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, the co-creators of the Chicken Soup For The Soul books. But as soon as I got locked up, my mind seemed to clear, and I started writing, something I hadn't done for several years prior to 1996. In 1998, my cellmate, Keith, who was a meth addict, told me some of his symptoms, and they seemed to fit what I had gone through. I then, for the first time, began to suspect one of that network marketing company's products designed for energy and weight loss...and it really worked. But it contained high grade Ephedra, one of the main building blocks for methamphetamine. I had taken it three times a day for five years. So I could no longer be self-righteous about never having done drugs or alcohol, or even tobacco or coffee. A very humbling experience to realize how stupid I had been and how unaware of what was going on in my own mind and body.
But I used my time in prison productively, writing a full-length mystery novel, which is now going out to publishers, and planning a self-help book based on the tools I used to overcome the dehumanizing, debilitating prison experience. I was broke and in prison, but never defeated. I had two stories published in CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE PRISONER'S SOUL, which I helped Jack Canfield plan and title. I also had two stories in the follow-up book by their editor, Tom Lagana, SERVING TIME, SERVING OTHERS, the title of which was taken from one of my stories in the first book. I also wrote cartoon gags,including many for Bunny Hoest and John Reiner in PARADE magazine, read by about 100 million people in Sunday newspapers, and for such top cartoonists as Roy Delgado, Ed Blais, and Bob Vojtko, who sold cartoons based on my gags to Harvard Business Review, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, The Sun, Medical Economics, and others. Not much money in gagwriting, just 25% of whatever the cartoonist gets, which is meager pickings at best. My most recent check for The Sun was $8.75. It shows a man on the phone saying, "I can't make it to the poker game tonight, my wife called my bluff." I may include some of the cartoons on this blog site. They paid for about $80-$100 worth of canteen items at the prison store each month, like my daily Coca Cola, ramen noodles, tuna, mayonnaise, potato chips, and so on.
I therefore got to live in relative abundance for an inmate.
I also got one of the most prestigious jobs in any prison in the world, as a member of the Folsom Blind Project, which translates texts into Braille, records books on tape, and prepares closed captioning for educational videos.
My radio training prepared me well for recording books on tape. And, from my point of view, one of the best things about the job was that it wasn't working to support the corrupt prison system, but rather for junior colleges and various charitable organizations, including The Lions Club.
There were many areas of deprivation in prison, especially at Folsom, where I spent most of my incarceration. No citrus fruit, sugar, tomatos, onions, cable TV, napkins, (toilet paper, single ply, was used for everything, including blowing your nose and wiping your face at meals and it was in short supply, often being sold on the thriving black market).
But two of the things I missed most were dried fruit and dark chocolate.
Raisins, dried apricots and figs, and dark chocolate of any kind were not available for over ten years of my life. And these were the first things I wanted when I got out, not filet mignon and lobster, though those were further down on my list.
In 1996, I was arrested for trying to hijack a motorhome and sentenced to 12 years in prison. How the hell did this happen?
Well, it started with a network marketing company that sold some excellent nutritional products. More on that later.
I had originally been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for an investment scheme involving underwriting bonds in Europe. It had paid off successfully for eight years, when something went wrong--I still don't know what, but the bottom line was all the money was supposed to come back through one of the most respected banks in England, Barings, and you may remember they had one of the biggest bank busts in history in 1995. I then went a little crazy as the date approached for me to report to federal prison. I decided I needed to avoid prison--I was panicking--by stealing a motorhome and becoming a fugitive, since I had almost no money, having lost it all in the overseas investment. I didn't know why I did something so out of character, a fact testified to by several character witnesses, including old friends Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, the co-creators of the Chicken Soup For The Soul books. But as soon as I got locked up, my mind seemed to clear, and I started writing, something I hadn't done for several years prior to 1996. In 1998, my cellmate, Keith, who was a meth addict, told me some of his symptoms, and they seemed to fit what I had gone through. I then, for the first time, began to suspect one of that network marketing company's products designed for energy and weight loss...and it really worked. But it contained high grade Ephedra, one of the main building blocks for methamphetamine. I had taken it three times a day for five years. So I could no longer be self-righteous about never having done drugs or alcohol, or even tobacco or coffee. A very humbling experience to realize how stupid I had been and how unaware of what was going on in my own mind and body.
But I used my time in prison productively, writing a full-length mystery novel, which is now going out to publishers, and planning a self-help book based on the tools I used to overcome the dehumanizing, debilitating prison experience. I was broke and in prison, but never defeated. I had two stories published in CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE PRISONER'S SOUL, which I helped Jack Canfield plan and title. I also had two stories in the follow-up book by their editor, Tom Lagana, SERVING TIME, SERVING OTHERS, the title of which was taken from one of my stories in the first book. I also wrote cartoon gags,including many for Bunny Hoest and John Reiner in PARADE magazine, read by about 100 million people in Sunday newspapers, and for such top cartoonists as Roy Delgado, Ed Blais, and Bob Vojtko, who sold cartoons based on my gags to Harvard Business Review, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, The Sun, Medical Economics, and others. Not much money in gagwriting, just 25% of whatever the cartoonist gets, which is meager pickings at best. My most recent check for The Sun was $8.75. It shows a man on the phone saying, "I can't make it to the poker game tonight, my wife called my bluff." I may include some of the cartoons on this blog site. They paid for about $80-$100 worth of canteen items at the prison store each month, like my daily Coca Cola, ramen noodles, tuna, mayonnaise, potato chips, and so on.
I therefore got to live in relative abundance for an inmate.
I also got one of the most prestigious jobs in any prison in the world, as a member of the Folsom Blind Project, which translates texts into Braille, records books on tape, and prepares closed captioning for educational videos.
My radio training prepared me well for recording books on tape. And, from my point of view, one of the best things about the job was that it wasn't working to support the corrupt prison system, but rather for junior colleges and various charitable organizations, including The Lions Club.
There were many areas of deprivation in prison, especially at Folsom, where I spent most of my incarceration. No citrus fruit, sugar, tomatos, onions, cable TV, napkins, (toilet paper, single ply, was used for everything, including blowing your nose and wiping your face at meals and it was in short supply, often being sold on the thriving black market).
But two of the things I missed most were dried fruit and dark chocolate.
Raisins, dried apricots and figs, and dark chocolate of any kind were not available for over ten years of my life. And these were the first things I wanted when I got out, not filet mignon and lobster, though those were further down on my list.
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