Our minds are the most important resource that we have at our disposal. It is the lens in which we view the world. In that sense, people have found over the years that what separates wealthy people from poor and middle class people is not fate, not inheritance, not skin color, not country of origin, not even fancy cars and big houses (if you have read the first part you should be catching on). The main thing that separates wealthy people from the poor and middle class is their mindsets. Essentially they view the same world that you view but with a different lens. A lens that makes them earn, and most importantly, keep large amounts of wealth. Now none of these things that I talk about did I come up with myself. most of these were in a fantastic book that I read called Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. I strongly suggest you either listen or read this book. It has changed my life for sure. But I will make an attempt to combine that information with other sources and present it here. But first, I must start with a story because, lets face it, everyone loves stories.
I grew up in a fairly upscale suburb in Houston. Many people talked a lot of crap about it, but really it was a pretty awesome place to grow up. This place had a lot of people that engaged in different activities whether it was soccer, football, swim teams, and various school groups and clubs. Pretty much for every single one of these things fundraising is an important and necessary part of that. Whether it was for uniforms, equipment, or travel expenses. So you would always see them doing car washes or bakes sales or selling coupon books and many other things. I never thought much of it until I moved to downtown Houston when I went to UH. I lived in a part of Houston called the Museum District which was a very awkward mix of upscale living with poverty housing. The part I lived in was only a couple of blocks from the Third Ward which was a notorious crime ridden and poor part of town. It was at the busy intersection of Southmore and Almeda that I saw something over and over again that shocked and aggravated me.
Most of the time when I pull up to the stoplight I see the homeless people there begging for money, but sometimes I saw a different sight. It was a little league football team. All holding out there helmets while the dads sat back on some lawn chairs in the median. This is what poor people teach their kids. If you need money for uniforms, BEG ON THE SIDE OF THE STREET LIKE A FREAKING BUM!! I guarantee you that NO wealthy or middle class person would ever let their kids do this because they know that it takes WORK to make money. You can't just sit around and hold your hand out and expect someone to hand you an income. That is not how you become wealthy. That is how you stay poor. I REFUSE to give them money because I will not contribute to such poor education. If they want to stand on the street and sell water then I would buy one every time. I am not just going to hand them the money that I had to work for just because they want it. It turns out that what poor, middle class, and wealthy people teach their kids are vastly different. It all starts with their mindsets.
Wealthy Mindsets Vs. Poor Mindsets
The thing about mindsets is they are completely fabricated by you. They are not real. You can't go to the store and buy some wealthy mindsets. Anyone can change their mindset with a little hard work. Just being aware of the faults in your thinking are not enough to change them. Only determination and constant correction. Lets talk about a few REALLY important ones.
1. Poor People Always Claim To Be A Victim
I don't intend to make this blog be a political debate, but I've noticed something recently. I always see people on my Facebook and elsewhere complaining about the government and how it screws them and everyone else. But I've noticed something about these people. They are either unemployed or are very poor. They always seem to be the victim of some government law or some rogue cop that threw them in jail for "just breaking the law a little bit". You see the problem with being a victim is that if you think you are a victim then no amount of work or effort will get you out of the situation. You will just sit and cry until someone gives you something. Then when you run out you cry some more. This will never get you out of a situation. All situations that you face can be seen through different lenses. One sees "life happened to me and I just need life to stop happening to me so I can get ahead" the other sees "I created my life and I made a series of choices along the way that has brought me to this situation. I need to figure out where I messed up and make sure I don't do that again. In the mean time, I am gonna do whatever it takes to get ahead". Which lens do you think is going to get you closer to being wealthy? Eker summarizes this mindset into 3 categories: blame, justifying, and complaining. Lets look at each one.
Blame
How many times have you heard "oh well the economy is bad right now so I am having some trouble"? I bet a lot. And I would also be willing to bet that it is coming from someone who is poor or middle class. Do you see Warren Buffett on TV going "well the economy is bad right now so I decided to stop investing"? Hell no! Warren Buffett is still out there killing it! He is excited that the economy turned for the worse because he can buy stocks and real estate at MASSIVE discounts. Poor and middle class people spend so much energy looking for things to blame for their situations that they don't see any opportunities that arise. It is really something. They blame everything from the government to their manager to their spouse. The sad part is they are the only ones to blame. And until they realize this, they will never be able to change. So here is my challenge to you. Next time something bad happens to you, either financial or not, try to find the decisions that you made to bring you to that situation. Next time your spouse gets onto you for something say "Honey, I am sure there was a series of decisions that we made to bring us to this current situation. Maybe if we sat down together and figured it out we can avoid this in the future" then make sure you catch them as they pass out from shock. I promise that if you just quit blaming everyone for everything, it will change your life forever.
Justifying
We've all heard it at some point, "oh, money is not that important. Love is what really matters". I want you to try something. Next time your rent is due, go to your landlord and say "hey man, I know I said I would pay you but money isn't really that important. How about I just say something real nice to you and give you a hug instead." He will probably slap the crap out of you and then call security to drag you out of his office. Or go to the grocery store and say "I know I am supposed to give you money for these groceries but, you know, money really isn't that important. How about a high five instead?" Next thing you know you are getting thrown out of the store. Where is the love in that, right? Then you might blame the store and file a complaint because they hurt your feelings when threw you out.
Listen, anyone who says that money is not important doesn't have any. I promise you that a wealthy person will never say that money is not that important. Eker summed it up best, he said "money is extremely important in areas in which it works and extremely unimportant in areas which it doesn't." If you ever hear someone say that again, do them a favor and slap them as hard as you can.
Complaining
Complaining is the worst thing you can possibly do for yourself. Eker says it best when he says that "when you are complaining, you become a living, breathing crap magnet."Seriously, the more you complain the more bad stuff is going to come your way. Or maybe it is just that everything that happens to you will be viewed through your negative lens and will therefore be bad. Either way it is not helping you become wealthy or happy or anything else positive. So this is simple, shut the hell up! Next time you want to complain about something take out a piece of paper or open the little notes app on your phone and write down 5 things you are grateful for. Can't think of anything? Use the old Zig Zigler method. Look at your hand. Are you grateful that you have a hand? Then write that down. How about your foot? Your phone? Your finger? Your eyes? There we go. That is five things. After you have the five things written down, you probably won't feel like complaining anymore.
Have you ever had a job where you just seem to spend every dollar you earn even though you don't have any real expenses? That was me until my Junior year in college. In high school and college I had different jobs from grocery stores to mall jobs to summer camp counsoler. There was something I always had in common during this time, though. I almost never had more than $200 in my bank account and I would just spend all the money that I earned. I didn't even know what I spent it on other than it was just gone. So like most other Americans, I was always on the search for higher income. "oh if I just got a raise", "if I can just get a couple more dollars an hour", "if I could just earn more tips". That is what everyone is on the search for. The problem is that when they eventually get that extra boost they adjust their spending amount to account for it and then end up in the same situation. This is what Robert Kiyosaki calls the "Rat Race". You're stuck on the wheel trying to get the cheese and when you get the cheese you shove it all down your mouth at once and then run for the next piece. Pretty soon you're 55 years old and you don't have a dime to your name or are in debt. The point is that it is not about how much income you have or what your job title is. If you start to manage your money then you can start on your way to becoming wealthy. A janitor making 12k a year who manages their money and monitors their expenses could have more net worth than a doctor making 500k a year who has a negative net worth. In the book The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley makes an interesting discovery about the median salary of millionaires in America. The median salary for millionaires in America was $131,000. It turns out that only 8% of millionaires had a salary in the $500,000 to $999,999 range. That tells me that you don't have to have giant salaries to build wealth. If fact the results of the entire book can be summed up as "Rich people are good at managing their money".
So here is my challenge to you, no matter how much money you have or make, put yourself on a written budget. That is it. That is all I challenge you to do. If you have 5 dollars then make sure you budget that five dollars. It doesn't matter what the amount is, just the action. If you do this then I can guarantee you that you will find that you have a lot more money than you think and that you are spending a lot of money on things that don't really make you that happy. In the next part I will focus more on money management methods. But for now you can visit this website for help:
http://www.daveramsey.com/specials/mytmmo-gazelle-budget/
3. Rich People Harness Fear, Poor People Are Paralyzed In Fear
If you've read the blog posts so far you have probably learned a little about my personal life. One thing you may or may not know is that I am pretty much a adrenaline junkie. This mostly comes in the form of my love for skateboarding. Many people look at skateboarders and think we are wasting our life away, but there is something that I have taken away from my skateboarding that the average american may never learn. That is the knowledge of how fear works and how it feels to conquer it. There is always a progression through certain stages no matter what the situation is. Lets talk them through.
1. The Idea
This is where you first think of your idea. For us skaters it might be that stair set or that rail or that bowl. You first see one of your friends or a pro do something on it and you think "man, I want to do that!" For most Americans, it is a business idea or a career or a job that you think you could do. An idea of a product you can make. This is a glorious moment. All these thoughts of what it would feel like to land that trick or succeed in that business start to well up inside of you and you begin to feel empowered. But then your mind retaliates back.
2. First Contact
Almost as soon as you begin to experience these feelings of empowerment and positivity, fear comes in and says "whoa man! who the hell do you think you are?!" It wells up inside of you and gives you that pit feeling in your stomach. For skaters, this generally happens when you take that roll up to the stair set or rail and just look down it. All the scenarios of how you could fall and hurt yourself start to play through your head. All the scenarios of how your business or idea is flawed and how you could lose this or lose that cloud all your thoughts. No matter how hard you try to get rid of these feelings they won't go away.
3. The Defining Moment
Then comes the most important stage. This is point where you make a conscious choice to let fear control you or you control fear. Most people will overwhelm themselves with excuses of why they can't do it. "I'm not as good as that pro", "I don't skate this type of stuff", "I don't have the right degree for that job", "I am not smart enough to do that". This is where the story ends for the average. The poor might even blame someone else for them not going for it and then cry about it to everyone until they get something. But the select few might take the next step. They walk back to beginning of the run up to those stairs. You brain goes into full panic mode. Stress hormones are released into your blood stream and you begin to sweat and shake. But then you utter a phrase that has been uttered in probably every instance before someone did something truly great.
4. "F@#k It"
All higher order brain processes shut down completely. You can't think about anything, good or bad. You just run, drop your board, and jump. Inevitably you will fall. You will almost always fall at the beginning. Whether it is that tre flip down the 10 stair or opening that store you have always wanted to open. Maybe 2 people show up at your grand opening. Maybe you kick your board out and do the classic tuck and roll which, I promise, is never as graceful as you imagine it being. But you might realize that the fall doesn't hurt as bad as you thought it would. It really doesn't matter how close you got. The only thing that matters is that you pick yourself, wipe the blood off on your shirt, fist bump the filmer, and exclaim to your friends the sentence that you will say at least 10 times before you actually land anything, "Alright, I'm gonna land this right here".
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 Over and Over And Over and Over Again
Every time you step back up to that stair set you have to make a conscious choice to go for it again or not. When you see your investment into starting your business dwindle down to nothing you have to decide to give up on it or to keep pushing back. To put more money, time, blood, sweat, and tears into it. Once you make the decision, you say "f@#k it" and go for it again. This will happen a number of times before the cycle is ended.
4. The Glory
Bloodied, tired, sweaty, and poor you stand in front of your endeavor for the last time. You drop your board and pop the most perfect tre flip you have ever done in your life, catch it with your front foot, and land it bolts. All of the sudden customers start to line up at your door and buy your products. You start to actually turn a profit and that profit continues to grow. This is when you are hooked forever. You have successfully hulk smashed fear's face off. You roll away from that trick with the greatest feeling that you will ever experience. It is the skater's high. Our drug the we are hooked on forever always trying to get another fix. It is why we take to the streets and grind handrails and jump down stairs. It is why you constantly take risks on coming up with new products or new business endeavors. Other people think we are crazy and have no concept of rational thought. But it is just that we understand what it is like to fight for something so hard and then achieve it. The same thing that any self made millionaire probably felt when they made their first million. We understand that fear is only an emotion that is fabricated in our mind. It can be controlled and focused to make you achieve what average people never will be able to.
Rich people harness the power of fear and don't let it stop them from going for what they want. Now this doesn't mean don't research and do your homework on what you want to start. Wealthy people always make informed decisions. If you aren't informed then your are simply gambling which is not going to make you wealthy. But rich people do not spend a large amount of time educating themselves. They do it in the shortest and most efficient way possible. Poor and middle class people just coast through their life petrified by fear and always thinking about the risk in everything and never look for the opportunities. Therefore they never see the opportunities and just stay exactly where they are. Here is a simple rule of thumb, if you aren't feeling any fear or reservation about what it will take for you to achieve your goals then you aren't dreaming big enough.
I hope you guys enjoyed this post! In the third installment in this series we will go into systems to manage your money and be on your way to becoming wealthy!
Recommended Books:
Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker
The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley
Start, John Acuff
Extremely motivating >_>
ReplyDeleteWhen'd you become such a good blogger Josh lol