16/06/2025
Rebuilding Yourself
Manifestation, Mindset, and the Daily Discipline of Becoming Using the Stepping Stones® Method
by Peter McLernon
👤 Author Bio
Peter McLernon is a spiritual entrepreneur, Vietnam veteran, father of four, and founder of multiple mission-led businesses. Starting as a scrap metal and second-hand dealer, he grew into a retailer, wholesaler, importer, manufacturer, and auctioneer — learning the laws of value, risk, and reinvention through real-world experience, not textbooks.
Over five decades, he built (and rebuilt) wealth from nothing, studied ancient wisdom, mentored leaders, and developed the Stepping Stones® Method — a daily ritual of visualization, faith, affirmations, and perseverance that transforms mindset into manifestation.
His work blends spiritual truth with practical grit, helping others move from survival to soul-aligned success.
Rebuilding Yourself
Manifestation, Mindset, and the Daily Discipline of Becoming Using the Stepping Stones® Method
He’s been a scrap metal and second-hand dealer, a retailer, wholesaler, importer, manufacturer, and auctioneer. He’s been broke, broken, and reborn more times than he can count. But through it all, one truth became clear: transformation isn’t something you wait for — it’s something you build. Daily.
In Rebuilding Yourself, you’ll walk through a raw, reflective journey of resurrection and realignment. Told through the lens of lived experience, this book blends ancient Hermetic laws with modern spiritual discipline to deliver a clear, grounded path to real-life manifestation.
You’ll learn how to:
Use the Stepping Stones® Method to manifest through visualization, faith, affirmations, and perseverance
Apply deep spiritual principles in business, family, and leadership
Rewire your thoughts, reclaim your power, and rebuild from any setback
Walk a path from survival to soul-led success — without bypassing the truth
This is more than a book.
It’s a blueprint for becoming.
Part One: From Scrap to Spirit
The Origin Story — Pain, Pattern, and Personal Reckoning
Chapter 1: Born of Blood and Burden
I was born into survival. Not the kind you write books about, but the kind that buries itself in your muscles — the kind that makes you flinch before you speak. In my family you didn’t dream; you endured. I carried weight, fixed things with my hands, and swallowed my silence like medicine.
My earliest memories are of noise — metal clanging, tools dropping, doors slamming, and voices rising. Scrap metal yards and second-hand dealings were my schoolrooms. I didn’t learn the alphabet from books; I learned it from bills, bartering, and bruises.
But there was always something underneath the noise — a pulse I couldn’t name back then. Call it spirit. Call it resistance. It’s what kept me watching, listening, and asking, Is there more than this?
Chapter 2: Baptism by Scrap and Struggle
My first business wasn’t born in a boardroom. It was born in grease, grime, and grit. I started as a scrap metal and second-hand dealer — driving old trucks, haggling for parts, trading tools in back alleys and garages.
Everything was second-hand — the goods, the chances, the wisdom. But the lessons? They were first-rate.
I learned negotiation not from textbooks but from men who had nothing to lose. I learned risk from every deal, every dented door panel, every cold call.
It was dirty. It was thankless. But it was mine. And in those deals, something bigger was forming — the discipline of becoming.
Chapter 3: Fire and Fi****ms — Vietnam
They say war changes you. But for me, Vietnam didn’t change who I was. It exposed what I’d buried.
The military trained me to react, survive, dominate. But beneath the noise of gunfire and the discipline of the field, I found another kind of silence. One that whispered, You were made for more than this.
In the chaos, I felt paradox: horror and brotherhood. Fear and freedom. Something cracked open in me out there. Not enlightenment — not yet — but a fracture big enough for the light to start leaking in.
Chapter 4: Marriage, Money, and Meltdowns
Love is easy when you’re winning. But I wasn’t winning. I was building — and breaking — all at once.
My marriage bore the weight of my ambition and my avoidance. I was providing financially but abandoning emotionally. I thought money was the answer. It wasn’t. And it almost cost me everything.
Success doesn’t heal your wounds — it hides them. Until it can’t.
And then? You either burn down… or break through.
Chapter 5: Stepping Stones to the Self
The first Stepping Stone wasn’t a ritual. It was a moment — kneeling on a cold floor at 3 a.m., broke, angry, and praying to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore.
Then came a thought: You don’t have to believe to begin. Just move.
I wrote down a sentence. Then another. I spoke them aloud. They weren’t affirmations yet — just whispers of a man trying to rebuild his mind.
That night, something shifted. Not everything. But enough. Enough to take the next step.
And that step became a stone.
Chapter 6: A Daughter’s Struggle, A Father’s Awakening
There’s nothing that cracks you open like seeing someone you love suffer — and not being able to fix it.
My daughter’s struggle wasn’t mine to control, but it was mine to witness. Watching her face battles I couldn’t solve brought me face-to-face with my deepest helplessness. And in that helplessness, something shifted. My pride softened. My listening deepened.
Her pain was a mirror. It showed me all the ways I’d avoided my own healing.
That’s when I realized: being strong isn’t about being hard. It’s about being honest.
Chapter 7: The Death of Ego
Ego doesn’t die all at once. It dies in layers — through humiliation, surrender, and the slow drip of daily truth.
For me, ego showed up as control. As pride. As always needing to be right. But every loss — financial, relational, spiritual — peeled it back.
At first, I fought it. Then I feared it. Then I finally faced it.
And when I did, I found that beneath the ego wasn’t emptiness. It was essence.
Chapter 8: The Mirror of Masculinity
What does it mean to be a man?
For years, I thought it meant being strong, stoic, and successful. But those were just costumes — armor I wore to hide my fear.
Real masculinity isn’t about domination or detachment. It’s about presence. It’s about holding space without needing to control it.
The more I stripped away the roles — provider, protector, performer — the more I met myself. And what I found wasn’t weakness.
It was warmth.
Chapter 9: 60 and Bankrupt — My Greatest Gift
Rock bottom has a way of clarifying your values.
At 60, I lost it all — business, money, reputation. I was supposed to be secure by then. But instead, I was shattered.
And strangely… free.
There’s something sacred about being emptied. You stop pretending. You stop performing. You start rebuilding — not from strategy, but from truth.
That’s when I began crafting rituals that were less about profit and more about presence. And that’s when things started to shift — again.
Chapter 10: Becoming the Creator
Creation is not about luck. It’s not about force. It’s about alignment.
To become the creator of my life, I had to first dismantle the victim and the warrior. The victim blamed. The warrior fought. The creator? The creator builds — from inner clarity.
I began each day not with hustle, but with a sentence: Who do I choose to become today?
And then I walked that answer. Step by step. Stone by stone.
Part Two: Hermetic Laws in Real Life
Spiritual Principles That Work in Practice — Not Just Theory
Chapter 11: Everything Begins in the Mind (Mentalism)
Your reality is a reflection of your dominant thoughts.
Before I built anything in the world — a business, a relationship, a ritual — I had to build it in my mind. The Law of Mentalism isn’t a concept. It’s a commandment: what you think becomes what you experience.
I started treating my thoughts like sacred architecture. Designing the life I wanted — first in belief, then in behavior.
And the shift was immediate.
Chapter 12: As Within, So Without (Correspondence)
Your external chaos is an echo of internal dissonance.
When I was arguing with the world, I was really at war with myself. This law showed me that my outer world would never change unless I changed the inner language I was living by.
So I stopped trying to fix others. I started facing me.
That’s when things around me began to move.
Chapter 13: Nothing Rests (Vibration)
Everything is in motion — even what feels stuck.
I used to believe that inertia meant failure. But this law taught me that every thought, word, and intention emits a frequency. I wasn’t stuck — I was just vibrating at a level that matched my old patterns.
When I changed my rituals, my results changed.
When I changed my speech, my space changed.
That’s vibration in motion.
Chapter 14: All Truths Are Half-Truths (Polarity)
Black and white thinking is a trap.
I once saw success and failure as opposites. Weakness and strength. Logic and intuition. But this law shattered that illusion. Everything contains its opposite. The seed of one is always inside the other.
Polarity taught me that instead of choosing sides, I could choose balance.
Chapter 15: The Pendulum Swings (Rhythm)
Everything in life has a rhythm — expansion and contraction, inhale and exhale.
When I resisted the downswing, I prolonged my suffering. But when I honored the swing, I found flow. I stopped seeing the “dip” as punishment, and started seeing it as preparation.
Rhythm isn’t random. It’s the pulse of progress.
Chapter 16: Cause and Effect (Causation)
There are no accidents. Only alignment — or its absence.
Every result I’ve ever had, good or bad, came from a pattern. A choice. A cause. The Law of Cause and Effect stripped away blame and handed me back the reins of my life.
Once I understood that everything was a seed — every word, every action, every belief — I started planting differently.
Intentionally. Spiritually. Strategically.
Chapter 17: Completion Through Union (Gender)
Masculine and feminine are not about gender identity — they’re energies. Forces within.
I had been living from one side: drive, discipline, direction. But without the intuitive, nurturing, and receiving energies, I was building with bricks but no mortar.
Union is power. Integration is strength.
This law taught me to receive as deeply as I give — and that changed everything.
Chapter 18: The Eighth Gate — Responsibility
There’s a law not written in the ancient texts. But it underpins them all: Responsibility.
Without it, all the others collapse. I call it the Eighth Gate because it’s the passage through which transformation becomes possible.
I stopped blaming life and started owning my choices. That’s when things began to obey me — because I was finally obeying truth.
Chapter 19: Spiritual Bypassing vs True Practice
I was meditating, affirming, reading books — and still sabotaging myself. That’s because I was skipping the hard part: doing the real work.
Spiritual bypassing looks wise but avoids the wound. True practice meets it.
Healing doesn’t happen in abstraction. It happens in practice. In pattern-breaking. In persistence.
No incense required.
Chapter 20: Thought Hygiene — Cleaning the Mind Daily
Your mind is soil. Every day, something grows. The question is: are you choosing what gets planted?
I created my Stepping Stones ritual to clean the mental field. Affirmations, visualization, focused repetition — it wasn’t just about feeling good. It was about programming a new identity.
You don’t become someone new by accident. You install it. Thought by thought. Day by day.
Part Three: The New Paradigm in Action
Leadership, Family, and Business in Alignment
Chapter 21: Repairing a Broken System Without Burning It Down
I’ve played every position — retailer, wholesaler, importer, manufacturer, auctioneer. I’ve seen how the system works and where it fails.
At first, I wanted to tear it all down. Capitalism felt like the enemy. But then I realized: the problem isn’t the structure. It’s the consciousness behind it.
What we need isn’t destruction. We need evolution — business built on presence, fairness, and soul.
Chapter 22: The Politics of Personal Power
I thought power meant control. I was wrong.
Power is presence. It’s knowing who you are and acting from that center — whether in a meeting, a marriage, or a crisis.
I began to rewire my leadership from authority to authenticity. From pressure to permission. And I found that real influence doesn’t come from force. It comes from frequency.
Chapter 23: Spirit and Soil — A Return to Harmony
As a manufacturer and importer, I once prioritized speed and scale. But the cost was disconnection — from product, from planet, from people.
I began to ask different questions: Was this created with care? Does this honor the earth? Does it align with my spirit?
Harmony isn’t a luxury. It’s a strategy — for sustainability, sanity, and soul.
Chapter 24: Stepping Stones — Tools for Spiritual Ex*****on
It’s one thing to know the law. It’s another to live it — daily, consistently, especially when you don’t feel like it.
That’s where the Stepping Stones ritual came in. Visualization. Faith. Affirmation. Repetition. These were not habits. They were sacred tools.
And every time I practiced, I got a little clearer. A little stronger. A little more aligned.
Chapter 25: The Sacred Economy
Money is not evil. It’s energy.
It reflects your beliefs, your boundaries, your values. I used to chase it, hoard it, fear it. Then I began to honor it.
I paid vendors with gratitude. I invested with intention. I saw money as a contract — not just a currency.
Sacred economy isn’t about being soft. It’s about being clear.
Chapter 26: The Businessman’s Awakening
My awakening didn’t happen on a yoga mat or in a monastery. It happened on a loading dock, in a freezing warehouse, surrounded by paperwork and pressure.
I was running multiple roles — scrap metal and second-hand dealer, retailer, importer, manufacturer, auctioneer — yet still felt empty. Success without alignment is its own kind of failure.
That’s when I stopped chasing profit and started seeking presence. I began asking better questions:
Does this business reflect who I really am?
Is this structure serving people — or just my ego?
What would it mean to lead spiritually, not just strategically?
That was the start of everything shifting. I didn’t walk away from business. I rewired it — from the inside out.
Chapter 27: The New Human
We are no longer in the era of domination. We’re in the era of integration.
The New Human is not harder or softer — they are more whole. Able to lead and listen. Build and surrender. Be fierce and feel deeply.
You don’t need to choose between spirit and strategy. The New Human embodies both — with humility and discipline.
Chapter 28: You Are the Change
The revolution isn’t out there. It’s in your routine.
Want to shift the world? Shift your thoughts. Want to change a system? Start with your speech. Want to lead differently? Live differently.
When I began to show up fully — aligned, clear, grounded — people responded. Not because I told them to. But because I became someone worth following.
Chapter 29: Leading with Soul - Conscious Leadership
Leadership isn’t about being in charge. It’s about being in coherence.
I used to lead through pressure. Now I lead through presence. I check in before I check boxes. I listen before I list tasks.
Your team will never out-evolve your energy. Lead from the soul, and you’ll grow something that lasts.
Chapter 30: Building Energetic Teams and Culture
You don’t create culture through policy. You create it through practice.
I’ve led warehouses, showrooms, and service teams. The most powerful ones weren’t the smartest — they were the most connected.
Energetic teams thrive when:
Roles are respected
Rituals are honored
Communication is clear
Energy is managed, not micromanaged
Culture is a frequency. And your leadership is the tuning fork.
Chapter 31: Money and Power as Sacred Contracts
Money and power aren’t evil — but they’re not neutral either. They are amplifiers. Whatever energy you carry, they will multiply.
I’ve held money with ego and I’ve held it with reverence. I’ve used power to dominate and, later, to elevate.
Now I see both as sacred contracts. They ask one question of you daily:
Can you be trusted with what you’ve been given?
Part Four: Tools for Transformation
Daily Discipline, Practical Ritual, and Manifestation You Can Feel
Chapter 32: The Stepping Stones Ritual
Every morning, I return to this:
Visualize the life I choose
Speak affirmations in the present tense
Move with faith, even when uncertain
Repeat the ritual — no matter what
This is the Stepping Stones Method. It’s not magic. It’s mechanics. Reprogramming your field, your thoughts, your trajectory — one step at a time.
Chapter 33: The Daily Alignment Practice
Alignment isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision.
I ask: What would alignment look like in my business today? In my parenting? In my body?
Then I take action from that place.
Consistency over intensity. That’s the code.
Chapter 34: Energetic Business Planning
Spreadsheets don’t scare me. But if they’re not infused with vision, they’re just math.
I now build business plans like rituals. I ask:
What is the frequency of this project?
Who does it serve, really?
Is the structure aligned with the soul?
Then I schedule accordingly. Energy first. Tactics second.
Chapter 35: Food, Body, and Frequency
Your body is your antenna. Treat it like static, and your life will fuzz out.
I shifted from fueling with stress to feeding with presence. Whole foods. Daily movement. Listening to my gut — literally and spiritually.
I don’t aim for perfection. I aim for alignment.
Chapter 36: Money as a Spiritual Tool
What you spend on reflects what you believe.
I tithe differently now — to causes that heal, to people that elevate, to systems that sustain.
Money is just language. Use it to write the story you actually want to live.
Chapter 37: Legacy Work — The 100-Year Lens
I used to plan for quarters. Now I plan for generations.
Legacy isn’t about what you leave behind. It’s about what you live now that lasts.
I ask: If my great-grandchild watched this decision, would they thank me?
That lens changes everything.
Chapter 38: Integration — A Life in Balance
I no longer segment my life: business here, family there, spirit on Sundays.
Integration means every room in your house — literal and energetic — feels like home. It means how you do one thing is how you do everything.
No masks. No divided selves. Just one whole human.
Chapter 39: Creating Your Own Ritual Language
You don’t have to copy mine. You just have to claim yours.
Ritual is personal. Your words. Your symbols. Your rhythm.
Start with intention. Add repetition. Layer in reverence.
That’s your language of power.
Chapter 40: Guiding Others: Coaching with the Laws
I don’t fix people. I witness them.
My job as a coach or leader isn’t to insert answers — it’s to hold a frequency that helps others remember their own.
When you live the laws, others feel them — without you needing to preach.
Chapter 41: Closing the Circle: Becoming the Stepping Stone
At first, the Stepping Stones were a ritual. Then they became a path. Now, they are who I am.
I am the affirmation. I am the frequency. I am the evidence.
That’s what it means to rebuild yourself:
You no longer walk the path.
You are the path.
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