There are plenty of rich men and women out there. Yet most of us tend to respect those rich people more if they managed to get to where they are on their own, say without inheritance money. In fact, I personally love rags to riches stories and reading about how people made it big through sheer will and determination. Most people might label people as “self-made” when either a man or a woman goes from a regular life to that of a millionaire or billionaire. My question recently has been about where the law of attraction and the idea of deliberately creating things comes in. For instance, how does the lottery fit in to the self made millionaire definition? Would you consider it to be a fluke or a luck of the draw event? So would lottery winners automatically fall into the category of rich women and men who are not self made and who got it easy? I would like to explore this question, and if you disagree with me I would love to read what you think in the comments section.

After doing some extensive research in the area of the wealthiest women in the world, I discovered that most of the top women actually inherited their wealth. Personally, I don’t think there is anything wrong with gaining tremendous wealth through such means. However, I want this weblog to act as inspiration for the rest of us regular women out there, who want to be able to take charge of our finances and increase our incomes. So I started researching more into the self-made millionaire women out there.

Photo by Jeremy Brooks

Traditional Self Made Millionaires and Billionaires

Most of the time when we think of self made millionaires and billionaires we think of women who have made a great impact on this world. Indeed women like Oprah Winfrey and J. K. Rowling have captured the hearts of many people. It is probably because of their tremendous passions that they have amassed such large amounts of personal wealth. They are definitely examples of rags to riches, although they both came from different backgrounds. Oprah Winfrey grew up in an impoverished neighborhood and fed her imagination and her mind by reading many books. She states that she learned about all of the possibilities of the world through her readings and this helped her to expand her horizons. She made it big and landed her own talk show after working as a news anchor first. J.K. Rowling is the author of the hugely successful Harry Potter books. She was down and out on her luck when she first started writing the books. She was a single mother trying to make ends meet. After receiving a slew of rejections from publishers she broke through and got the first Harry Potter book published. Now she is one of the richest authors in the world.

Millionaires and Billionaires Through the Law of Attraction

I am a strong advocate of the law of attraction and the power of our intentions, when performed properly. I do believe that we possess tremendous personal power and that we can achieve anything that we put our heart and minds to. I have tried to incorporate this belief when writing for this weblog, since I think that everyone can benefit from the tools that the law of attraction can give us. For example simply being grateful taking the time to make goals for ourselves and following through with our intentions can make huge impacts and changes in our lives. I am a living example of these techniques. In addition there are several people who have been influenced by the law of attraction. Jack Canfield is the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and he often explains how he managed to create his current reality. He was flat broke and making less than $8,000 per year when he started to focus on increasing his wealth using the law of attraction. In the movie “The Secret” he describes how he would look at a pretend $100,000 dollar bill every day. After he started doing this consistently, things started to shift for him and he got lucrative ideas, events unfolded and he managed to amass a large fortune. Today Jack Canfield teaches some of the techniques he used to increase his wealth through positive thinking and other tools that increase the efficiency of the human attraction mechanisms.

Jack Canfield is definitely a self made millionaire. Although he used the law of attraction to set the wheels into motion, most people would agree that he created his wealth “by himself” and not through inheritance. However, I believe that we never do anything completely by ourself in this world. We are not in a vacuum and we are constantly supported by the good of the Universe, whatever name you choose for it.

Lottery Winners Via Law of Attraction

The final group of wealthy people I wanted to discuss were those who get rich through the lottery. Like most people, I used to think that the lottery was a hoax and that no one I knew would ever win. Until my childhood friend’s family won $12 million dollars. I will call my friend Sarah to maintain anonymity. After watching the movie “The Secret” my friend and her family decided to set the intention of winning the lottery. Her father wrote himself a cheque for $10 million dollars and her mother wrote herself a cheque for $500,000. The whole family was having fun with this new way of thinking and they enjoyed going through the exercise of planning what they would do with the money. They had organized how they would split the money, who would get what percentage and so on. My friend Sarah even started telling people that her family was going to win the lottery. Most people huffed, thinking it was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. But then in July 2007, her father went to check his lottery ticket, like he does every week. When he put his ticket into the machine, a song started playing and the numbers 12,000,000 started flashing on the screen. He remained calm, because he already knew he had won. He had set the intention and he knew that he was a winner. When he called his wife to let her know, she didn’t believe him because everyone had already been talking about winning the lottery so much. But it was true.

Personally I am a lot less skeptical when it comes to putting out intentions into the Universe. I don’t recommend that everyone should immediately rush off to buy lottery tickets. But I would like to change your perceptions about what a self made millionaire or billionaire really is. If someone were to set the intention of becoming a billionaire or millionaire, and they focused on their current joy and fulfillment I believe that they would achieve their goal eventually. I consider this to be the definition of a self made millionaire. In reality, I think that traditional self made millionaires and billionaires must have used the law of attraction along the way as well. Oprah Winfrey herself states that she did not know of the existence of “The Secret” but that she used some of its techniques in her youth to advance in her life.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the idea that we are all self made millionaires and billionaires. Does your definition include lottery winners and deliberate creators?

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