EXCERPT: 'How to Rule the World from Your Couch'

Oct. 6, 2009— -- Laura Day's new book, "How to Rule the World from Your Couch," shows you and your company how to use intuition to produce successful solutions. Many exercises can be done right on the couch. Learn how to secure your ideal job, find your dream mate, maintain relationships at a distance, lose weight, make wiser investments, relate to your child and more.

Day, author of "Practical Intuition," has helped people from various fields tap into the power of intuition. Some of her clients are financial investors, scientists, celebrities and doctors.

After reading the excerpt below, head to the "GMA" Library to find more good reads.

An Overview

How to Rule the World from Your Couch is meant to inspireyou to be fully aware, conscious, active, dynamic, andalive in every single moment of your life. Much of this can bedone in total comfort, from wherever you want to be and withthe people you want to be with, as you move through what weall know as "normal life." The "normal life" you want. You donot have to be full of get-up-and-go to have success, find love,or earn a living. There are tools, innate tools that permit you todo much of the heavy lifting without your feet even touchingthe floor.

For more than twenty years, I have used and taught thesetools to make businesses stronger, to help people find love, healtheir own bodies, communicate with loved ones from afar, talkto their children when their children were unwilling to listen,to make better decisions to change the future in the immediatepresent, and to help people understand how to create their owndreams. Some of these dreams seemed impossible to achieve atthe outset. From challenges such as these, techniques were developedto create dazzling results in less time with less work. AsI will explain, most of the techniques can be initiated from yourcouch—by using every human being's ability to utilize the commonfield in which we all live to transmit and receive informationand motivation and to build a reality that others share. In thesepages are the compiled experiences of what works. Many of thesepractices will not fit into your concept of reality. Try them first,and then judge for yourself. Good scientists are always skeptics,but they do not allow their skepticism to keep them fromcommitting 100 percent to a hypothesis. Commit yourself 100percent for the length of a single exercise, and then, like a goodscientist, document everything. You will be astounded by theresults that you are able to create.

Living as we do in a culture of "experts," my greatest pleasureis to make you become your own best expert. In doing so, youalso become an expert for your families, friends, companies, andculture. Pardon the cliché, but together, we really can create abetter world. This world really, truly starts from your personaland individual experience—your very own power and ability tocreate the world that you want. When you know how easy it isto create this unique world, what is born is not insatiable desire,but rather unstoppable generosity.

I am an introvert. Although I have now, after fifty years oflife, trained myself to look comfortable and animated in public,I am my happiest and most productive on my couch, surroundedby my life and loved ones, where, in my own domain of peace,I can direct my intuitive ability to create and direct the changesthat I want, as well as attract the things/people/experiences I wantwithout having to go out into the world. I am now thankful tobe gifted in skills that allow me to have a full life, replete withfriends, love, work, and entertainment, which is all made possible,for the most part, right from my couch. Now I pass downthese skills to you.

In my first book, Practical Intuition, I presented practicaltechniques to help readers develop their intuitive abilities. In mynext two books, Practical Intuition for Success and Practical Intuitionin Love, I showed readers how to apply these techniques intheir professional and romantic lives, while developing a varietyof advanced intuitive skills such as telepathy and precognition. InHow to Rule the World from Your Couch, I introduce and explainthe various levels on which pure intuition can operate and demonstratehow they are always applicable and alive—even when(especially when!) you're just sitting there.

Let me hit you with something else: Have you ever experienced,in a fully visceral, soul-talking-directly-to-you kind of way,a shockingly clear, unbelievably useful piece of intuitive information,a tiny morsel of data that you simply, for the life of you,could not explain away? Have you ever just known something notjust because you knew it, but more because you sensed it? Manyof my students and clients (from doctors, engineers, and marketanalysts to businesspeople of all varieties, scientists, lawyers, andbeyond) have come to their own sense of intuition just this way—through some unexplainable flash of insight, or perhaps triggeredby something I said that worked for them. Regardless of how orunder what circumstances it occurs, when tapped into purely,intuition and insight become the breath of life. My clients mayhave been skeptical, but as pragmatists, they knew they couldnot ignore what they themselves had experienced firsthand. I believethat intuitively they knew they had tapped into a new wayof navigating. This sense made them hungry to know more andperhaps even led them to me. Though they may still be skeptics,guess what: they use these skills regularly anyway.

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military sage, said, "Every battleis won before it is ever fought"—and this wise and profoundmessage is exactly what this book is about. Engaging in battle isa waste of time. Goals can be achieved and, in fact, are achievedeffectively only when you use your intuition to map the waybefore you start the journey, anticipating and avoiding obstacles,arriving at landmarks in the right order with proper timing, and,when you can, following the scenic route.

We live in a world of constant activity, always doing, inmotion, on task. The reality is that your truest successes comenot only from what you do, but more so from your preparednessand ability to gather needed information in advance. The doingpiece is actually tiny, but only if you have laid down the properfoundation of readiness. Everything is available. Your only taskat hand is to position yourself properly to receive it. Think ofyourself as a perfectly designed state-of-the-art radio. You maybe able to send and receive all the right signals—but only if yourpower is on.

Everything you learn in this book will make your decisionsbetter, your relationships stronger, your actions more effective,and your life easier. Each of these abilities can become part andparcel of every decision you make. You will notice that as youhone your intuition, you will be engaged in a lot of inner work.Try to remember that your subconscious can use your intuitionto punish you, just as it can attempt to help you. That is why it isso important to be as conscious of your process and motivationas possible, which is why I believe documentation of your workis critical. Remember that you have the ability, through intuition,to know what is coming and how to prepare. Your history, pat-terns, areas of self-sabotage, reactions, and even your beliefs arewhat cause you to take the painful path, ignore the obvious, andcreate bothersome or even disastrous challenges. Think of it thisway: even in the most war-torn countries there are people whosurvive and thrive and help others do the same—and they are thetruest intuitives among us.

The goal of this book is to make me, and books like this, obsolete.As you work through each chapter, you will find that yourintuition will start to give you a more accurate view of your targets,and you will become a clearer, more powerful, and more directperson. Intuition itself, as I will explain, gives you the power,the questions, and the answers. It gives you the tools to create,to change, and to teach others, as well as the ability to be taughteffectively by those around you. The main problem that everyoneseems to share is the inability to understand that less work canyield more results. By "work," I mean the energy that we expendon the wrong things, creating the layers of complexity that we (ashuman beings with elaborate psyches) tend to (unconsciously)add to the different scenarios in our lives. Think about it: howcan adding complexity to a situation possibly be effective? Forthis reason, I don't advocate the "no pain no gain" philosophy oflife. Pain consumes time, energy, resources, and attention. I hopefor you to be able to refine your intuition to simplify, enrich, andenergize your life, so that reaching your goals becomes an organicpart of living every day.

The problem is that we are not even conscious half the timethat we are adding complexity to our lives, but as you will see,by learning to access our intuition we can start to clear the fog ofthese self-imposed challenges. In this way, we can learn to sim-plify the complex in order to find the shortest or most pleasurableline between you and your goals—whatever they may be.Intuition, you see, is innate. It is part of our human hard-wiring, to the point that two-year-olds rely on it to survive andaccomplish incredible things, mostly because they do not yet haveaccess to things like intellect, wisdom, or experience. Intuition isso simple that if you merely do the exercises at the beginning ofeach chapter (even without first reading the chapter), over time,through firsthand experience your intuition will start to fill insome of the blanks. I, as your guide through this process, havecreated and organized a program of experiences and tools in theform of the book's chapters to speed up your subconscious process—but it is for the sole purpose of helping you to access andallow your intuition to take over. You will see that as you start tolet go of the thinking, and actually start intuiting, you will havemore time, energy, and wherewithal to really enjoy this processand your life by easily creating success.

The process, in theory, is very straightforward and will belaid out at the beginning of each chapter. The real challengewill be to apply these techniques efficiently to your life, simplybecause you are complex and the world is complex, and becausewhat you potentially are able to do and what your beliefs, patterns,and subconscious will allow you to do are two markedlydifferent things. Part of the work of this book will be to give youa direct experience of intuition in a way that has a verifiable andpalpable effect on your life. It will do so by helping you to askthe right questions and by engaging you in effective practicesthat will help to bring these simple, innate abilities to life. Toyour life.

My goal is that the advice written in this book will prove itselfto you, once applied. I'll give you an example: the best first-time student I ever had told me that he didn't believe in intuition. Heattended my workshop as a favor to his wife and scared himselfsilly when, within thirty minutes, he got detailed, accurate informationabout someone he had never met just from holding theperson's name in a blank, sealed envelope.

If I can leave my students with any bottom line, it is this: donot complicate intuition. Just practice accessing it, document theprocess, and it will do the rest. Don't worry about doing it right.There is no right. I will start off with broad and somewhat non-Linear abstract exercises at the beginning of each chapter, and wewill get more detailed as the chapter progresses. You may evenfind that my details are unnecessary. You will see that if you keepworking through the exercises in each chapter, you will quitenaturally find your own way.

Typically, self-help authors have insight because they wereforced to find it to survive. Survival is a powerful motivator. Iremember being nine years old; my parents had separated andmy mother was lying in a coma in a hospital. I was not allowedinto intensive care. Unbelievable as it may seem, my father wasnot notified for days and my grandmother, who couldn't bear thepublic hospital, had gone home. I was essentially alone, sittingoutside intensive care, treating the indigents to coffee and snacksfrom a vending machine to keep myself distracted.

I "communicated" with my mother the only way that I could:I sent her my energy in the form of breath, thoughts, feelings,pictures, and memories—and in this way brought her back tome. I could tell her that I needed her with all of my senses, plead-ing with her to live. As I did this I could experience her body. Icould feel my attention doing things inside her to fix her. Someof what I "saw" confused me. There was a hole in her neck, tubescoming out of her arms, and bed sores forming on her bottom,shoulders, and legs. I hadn't actually seen my mother or receivedany information about her other than the fact that she was in intensivecare; however, in some effortlessly concrete manner, deepinside me, I somehow knew that these were her circumstancesand saw the full reality of what that could mean.

Someone noticed me wandering around the halls and sent achaplain over to speak with me. I didn't want to hear what I knewhe was going to say. He began, "Your mother's brain is badly damagedand it is unlikely that she will ever wake up. If she does wakeup she won't ever be the person you knew again." To get him tostop speaking so I could keep from crying I asked him questionsabout facts I "saw." I asked him about the tubes, the sores, and themachines I had seen in my mind's eye. He answered me calmly,and then he looked at me and said that it was unfair to me thatthey had let me into the intensive care ward. I corrected him andexplained that I had not been in the ICU. He asked me how I sawall of these things if I hadn't been in there. I didn't know how toanswer him; I only knew that my intuition had been right.

I also felt and heard her and her future. I knew that thistime, she would live and fully recover (as she did), but also thatI wouldn't have her forever. Did I have the emotional maturityto understand all of this information? No. But whatever I didunderstand intuitively helped me to help her survive and gaveme enough information to prepare for her suicide a few yearslater (fortunately, I didn't get the whole picture, which wouldhave devastated me). I spent the next few years filling myselfup with her and treasuring every moment. I also spent the nextfew years with my "sight" so closely upon her that my intuitionbecame sharper and more accurate (how she was, what she wasdoing, what I could do to make it easier). The day she died shewas in Kansas (with her parents after my parents' divorce), andI was in Philadelphia with a friend at a table tennis tournament.As a child I didn't have enough information to know to call thepolice there, in an unfamiliar city, as I would have done in NewYork when I felt something bad happening to her. I called myrelatives in the area (from a pay phone, using all the money I hadon me) and no one was home. I was extremely anxious that wholeafternoon, and when I returned home to New York that night myfather told me that my mother was dead.

Now, did my intuition tell me that my mother was dying?No. That would have been too much information for my subconsciousto handle. My intuition told me something might be verywrong, and I felt the need to try to check it out.

You will never see what is too much to bear, even if it iscorrect. That is why you need to constantly work on your ownempowerment so that you know that you have the capacity andtools to survive and thrive even when what you "see" is initiallydevastating. The good news is that intuition works just as effectivelyduring (and in creating) a positive experience. I have spentdecades learning how to uncover this amazing tool in its variousiterations and possibilities, so that it can be naturally used in dailylife—and not only when the chips are down.

One of the most important aspects of understanding intuitionis that it comes in a variety of related but distinct perceptualskills that we use haphazardly—and usually unconsciously—allof the time, which include:

• Gathering information—the flashes of insight gainedwithout using traditional sources of information.

• Mediumship—the ability to become someone or somethingelse with all of your senses and perceptions and to experiencethe world from that perspective, which allows youto work from within a person or situation—which for thispurpose we will call a "target"—and to experience that perspectivedirectly. When you experience something throughmediumship, you are aware of the subtleties that can beperceived only from the inside looking out. What you losein your own perspective, you gain in your target's experienceand opinion. You understand in subjective detail an evolvingcomprehension of your target as itself—how your target decidesto move and change, what its biases may be, its needs,discomforts, and history—and you begin to see how all ofthis data that lives in its awareness can be useful to guide behavior.When my students first do a paired mediumship exercise,they are completely thrown off by the stark differencebetween such internal (personal) and external experiences.They begin to understand the significance of rechannelingtheir focus when they witness sweet, gentle-seeming people enraged during a mediumship exercise or irritable individuals,through mediumship, experiencing a calm.

• Telepathy—the ability to send and receive informationfrom a distance, which allows you to engage in a compre-hensive and unlimited dialogue with your environmentand the people in it. This vital skill helps you negotiate,understand, attract, convince, and be present even at adistance. If telepathy is too "out there" for you, think ofit simply as a form of positive "messaging": your thoughtsand focus become vital messengers to whatever or whomeverit is that you wish to affect.

• Body heat telepathy—the ability to connect physicallyand emotionally with another from a distance.

• Remote viewing—the ability to perceive a physical locationor person at a distance, which allows you to experiencehow a person or situation is structured and how to changethat structure in a desired way. Although remote viewingcan make you miss some of the details you might obtainfrom other modalities such as intuition or mediumship, itdoes give you the diagram in context, which in many situationsis exactly the information that you need. Details cansometimes be misleading, as can perspective, when takenout of context. Remote viewing shows you the framework,along with its influences and relevant circumstances.

• Precognition—the ability to move a person or situationforward in time and accurately experience what will happen,which allows you to employ all of the skills above topredict possible outcomes with some level of accuracy andto make changes that will create the best possible scenario.

• Healing—the remote transfer of energy to produce a desiredinfluence on a person or situation. You can do a healing onpretty much anything—to the point of even directing yourenergy to start your stalled car engine. When you performhealing, your primary goal is not to obtain data but to focuson an outcome and marshal all resources to create it. Healinguses all the spokes of your intuitive umbrella for the purposeof creating change in the physical world. When you do healing,you may be less aware or completely unaware of theinformation you are working with. Your practice is to imposean outcome, a specific energetic dynamic, on yourself,another person, or a situation. Healing requires a kind of singularfocus that is the reverse of the "ask a question and allowthe periphery in" model that will be discussed in the nextchapter. You will notice, however, when performing a healingthat the periphery of your attention will give you muchintuitive information about your goal and how to create it.

As a practitioner, you can do a healing without everreporting the information you are getting directly to yoursubject. However, you will find yourself telepathicallynegotiating with the subject the whole time. When yourown body is the healing subject, a meet-and-greet called a "symptom dialogue" is helpful to separate the issue or illnessfrom yourself, so that you have the leverage to moveit toward healing. In this personal assessment, you lay outall your physical indicators, your blueprint for change. Justremember, the goal of any kind of healing is to changesomething to a desired state of functioning.

To learn to use these skills effectively, we will deal with eachone separately. We'll begin with intuition, since it is at the baseof all the other skills. Afterward, you can feel free to skip to anyof the other skills. The beauty of intuition is that as you workthrough each chapter you will find improvement in the area ofyour life where you use that particular skill (albeit unconsciously)the most.

I believe it is important to learn the individual spokes onthe wheel of intuition as unique and separate skills, so thatyou can use them to verify one another's information andperfect each skill to have a more accurate total process. Thereality is that most people depend on one of the skills alone,almost to the exclusion of all the others, and sometimes youeven become defined by a crutch—which, in turn, disables youfrom integrating the whole of your intuitive abilities to theirfullest expression. You may, for example, start to see that youneed to work on being less remote or less influenced by others'thoughts. Or you may realize that you are abusing mediumshipbecause every time you are with someone, his or her needsfeel like yours. You may be too engaged in perceiving whateveryone else is thinking, or what is happening at a distance orin the future, to be grounded in the now, where you can planand execute what you need to be whole, successful, and useful.Your intuitive abilities are senses that need to be regulated,directed, and managed like any other sense, because the powerof intuition is such that it can go out of kilter and perhapswork against you. Feeling someone else's opinion as your ownis confusing, and reacting to what people are thinking or doingwithout being consciously aware of what you are reacting to canbe disastrous.

As you refine your intuitive skills you will also be makingtimely and useful changes in the way you perceive and functionin the world.

So, how do we learn that we possess these abilities? Theanswer is simple: need. When we need them, we intuitively callupon them, whether we are aware of it or not. The gift of unbearableneed is such that those who have suffered a loss, especially inchildhood, are especially gifted in unusual ways. The unfathomablemakes you reach for tools you did not know existed, couldnot even have conceived of, and lets you use those tools to createsafety and harmony.

But if you are working outside the parameters of extremeneed, it is important to keep aware of what is in your field ofcontrol, what is at its edge, and what is out of your control. (I'mreminded of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer:"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to knowthe difference.") This way you spend your energy wisely. Youwant intuition to be as reliable a tool as it can be, and to do thisyou need to have a sense of what you can influence or createmost easily.

I will use the word effective a lot in this book. When you areeffective in being healthy, having dynamic relationships, creatingenough wealth, managing your day, your week, your year, yourlife, you have more time to experience the positive side of beingalive.

Depression is rampant in our society, and it is often becausewe have a lot to do, and not enough time to do it. We never feelcomplete. There is always something missing, something off.When your needs, dreams, and goals aren't met because you areexhausted and, therefore, not functioning effectively, you caneither be downtrodden or, as I would like to argue, decide tolive more effectively. You receive so much media "input" (to addto the influence of your history, parents, peer group, and community)about what you should want and who you should be,that it distracts you from getting what you really want, believe,and value. When you turn back inside and know what you reallyvalue and want, you get it. You cannot move in a hundred directionswith success, but you can move in one powerful, single, integrateddirection and fill a hundred needs effectively. When youput all of these intuitive skills together, that is exactly what youwill be doing. Your health will help your relationship will createpleasure will create wealth will create community will create . . .It doesn't matter where you start. Intuition has the potentialof being a circular chain of progress and positivity, one where youcan jump right in whenever you want.Intuition allows you to experience yourself and the worldin its totality. Your actions (when guided by the various realmsof your intuition) become commensurate with your skills, yourskills then find the information to improve, and you will start tomake choices to create and achieve goals. You will save time bypredicting mistakes and avoiding them, as intuition works onyour past to create a happier, better-functioning present, poisingyou for a more peaceful future—all of your separate parts workingtogether to the benefit of the whole.

What exactly is this "whole"? The whole is comprised of yourinner life and abilities; your outer life and achievements; yourinterpersonal life, past, present, and future; and your communitylife, or who you are in the world and how you can powerfullyaffect the world. Of course, this is a mouthful to describe thetotality of the human condition, but if you try to understandit as an integrated essence of being, you can start to see it as analmost effortless, experiential, pleasurable, and conscious way tolive.

Think of your life as the game board for this book. I alsoencourage you to consider that every technique is applicable toyour business, your clients, your relationships, and all the parts ofyour existence. In every chapter, I include language and exercisesto compel your family, colleagues, and friends to use their ownintuitions as well. I have also included group exercises for those ofyou who wish to teach these techniques or experiment with themin your company training programs, as well as "initiations" to useas class icebreakers, training evenings, or community experiences.Intuition is a powerful way to demonstrate to people how usefulwe all are to one another.

Remember that the exercises are intended to teach you (experientially)how to integrate the intuitive skills you learn in eachchapter into your life, until they are second nature for you. I know,life is busy. However, a little chunk of daily practice will be necessaryfor you to plug into the flow of intuition, and when you do, Iguarantee you will be glad you did. I have included exercises thatyou can easily structure into each day, in ways that will make yourthoughts and actions more effective. I hope that my suggestionswill streamline your practice, and the positive results you experiencewill encourage you to use more intuition. Your practice willbecome your process. The exercises have also been structured tohelp you resolve issues in yourself and in your life that may get inthe way of your success.

If you want to rule the world from your couch, I do needto point out some experiences and pitfalls that you may meetalong the way as you attempt to integrate this book, and theseskills, into your life. If you are aware of these impending snags,you will more easily be able to avoid them. Awareness is, in andof itself, a powerful and useful tool. The moment you becomeaware, you are already engaged with the world in a differentway.

Here are the top ten ways to get in your own way:

1. Not keeping notes2. Trying to remember every word in the instructionsinstead of simply experiencing the process3. Not doing the exercises4. Not applying the exercises to any real goals in your life5. Engaging in mental debates with me about theory insteadof doing the practice6. Evaluating the usefulness of what you are learning beforeyou learn it7. Looking to others for immediate feedback and validationof your abilities8. Not verifying the information that your intuition provides9. Judging yourself and your ability as you work10. Not knowing your goals

We tend to be our own worst enemy, which inevitably shutsus down and stunts our ability to use our most basic, innateintuitive abilities. We have subconscious goals that drive ourmistakes, creating trouble, pain, and a sense of total failure. Wework against ourselves, swimming upstream, struggling for thelead and falling behind. The exercises you do and the personalworkbook you create will be ongoing tools to train your attentionand heal the parts of you that block accurate intuitive informationand cause you pain.

A note of caution regarding the abuse, or misunderstanding,of intuition: do not get carried away and think that intuition isa way for you to will your desires into actuality. You do actuallyhave to play things out, take the necessary course of action inany given scenario, and not use intuition as an excuse for idlenessand self-deception.

My point is that you should not wait forintuition to solve your problems. Your process should become anactive, engaging, hands-on, hearts-open progression that you willembark upon, a journey not unlike life itself. Don't overmystifyor romanticize intuition—any more than you would overmystifyyour sense of smell or hearing.

If you live life as a gamble, you don't have to be an intuitiveto know that at some point you are going to lose. That's just howthe math works. Life is an interactive crapshoot, but intuitiongives you an edge. The trick is that you have to use it for it towork. Act on it and be courageous about addressing the parts ofyou, your expectations, and your illusions that get in the way. Ihave rarely met a person who, no matter how fantastic she thinksshe is, knows how fantastic she really is. You are a lot more ablethan you think. No matter how together you think you have itnow, no matter how successful you are, you cannot imagine, reallyimagine, being all that you can be. Intuition, however, canshow you the reality of all that you can be and guide you on thepath to getting there while still having time to read the paper andhave a nice brunch.

What if your couch isn't perfect, metaphorically speaking?What if your life, your relationships, your business, and yourmind are all a fine mess? I say you can still rule the world, butyou simply have to start with that first goal, perhaps acquiringa better couch, or a futon, or whatever that space of safety andsuccess means for you. You have to know that order, discipline,and integrity will be necessary for any consistent or worthwhileresult. You don't even need to have faith when you have an effectiveprocess that you follow without fail. That process will differfor each of you according to your preferences, needs, character,and goals. Whoever you are, at whatever stage of life, you canalways rule the world from your couch—or from any other placeyou may be perched.

I find that people often want a guru, and this is probably becausewe are conditioned to obey and accept others' perceptionsof the world and what they believe is correct/moral/the way. Thetruth is that everyone has access to all of his or her own answers,resources, and truth. There are no secrets or experts. When youuse intuition, you are your own guru.

Most important, and if nothing else, please have fun withthis book. Although these are powerful tools that should be usedresponsibly, they place you in direct communion with the part ofyou that is alive in the world, charting your own course, blazingyour own trail.