Mindset Matters – Episode 050

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler, and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey, everybody. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel, welcoming you to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. Once again, I have my co-host and bestselling financial author, Kim Butler, with us. Welcome, Kim. Oh, thank you, Todd. I’m so looking forward to our conversation today because this is an area that can impact anybody. So you can share this with your kids. You can share this with your best friend. You can share it with a super wealthy person. You can share it with somebody that doesn’t have any money at all.

[00:48] And it can help them. So I’m so excited to be able to talk about this subject. Awesome. Well, the topic of today is mindset matters. And again, you’ve already set this up, whether you have no money or a lot of money or whatever. Realize that you can’t help but be inundated by a variety of messages that you receive every single day. And most of the messages that we receive now are actually meant to look like news or meant to look like a service to us. More times than not, what they actually are, are they’re trying to kind of move us into a state of fear or a state of panic so that we will purchase a product or a remedy, you know, thinner, sexier, whatever. So Kim, that’s kind of my take on it, at least that’s how I see it from a marketing

[01:53] standpoint is so much today. You look at something, it looks like a news story. And then down at the very bottom, there’s these little bitty words that says it’s really an advertisement for somebody’s product. So we want to talk about how to have a positive mindset in a negative news world. So I’ll just kind of give that as an introduction and let you take it from there. Well, it’s perfectly well said. In a negative news world, I got told by somebody that CNN stands for constant negative news and whether it’s news from the television or print media or even blog posts and people’s Facebook feeds and other things, we have to be really conscious of our mindset. And to give a little background in terms of a story as to why we chose to spend

[02:45] some time on this today, I coach for strategic coach and the room is full in that session of about 30 entrepreneurs at pretty high levels of the game. The people that go to strategic coach are necessary to be in business for about three or four years minimum with a minimum of 100,000 of income. And so these are guys, I use the term guys, there are definitely some gals there that should from all intents and purposes, quote, have it together. And yet Dan Sullivan, the owner of strategic coach, chooses to spend a good portion of every day on mindset. Another example, Peter Diamandis, a huge, well-known entrepreneurial guy, technology guru, futurist. He has an event that I go to every year where again, I’m in a room of some high

[03:41] level thinkers and people that might on the outset look from a material standpoint, very successful, from a financial standpoint, very successful. And again, he spends much of our, that’s about a two and a half day event, time on mindset matters. And so it occurred to me that this is something that matters, number one. And number two, something that we should spend a little bit of time on, on our podcast, because we do have a principle of prosperity that addresses this. It is the first principle of prosperity. It is first on purpose. And it is called think. And so, okay, yeah, think from a prosperous mindset, turn your brain on when you’re looking at your finances. There’s many times that I think we over oversee this, gloss over it.

[04:32] That’s the word I want. We gloss over this principle of think when we really shouldn’t be. And so we want to have a conversation about mindset matters. And Todd, I think you found something in the news recently that prompted this discussion as well. Yeah, I was reading USA Today and USA Today, the title of the article was, can’t afford a 15 year mortgage, then don’t buy a house. And when Todd told me that, I just wanted to scream. For one thing, we know that the 30 year mortgage is the more effective way to buy a house anyway, and we can prove that. We’ll talk about that on another show. But more importantly, is this idea of can’t afford. And somebody a long time ago, and I wish I could remember who, because

[05:24] it’s a great line, encouraged me to think about those words differently. And they said, rather than saying I can’t afford it, ask yourself, how can I afford it? And so just that shift in thinking, that shift in thought, that shift in statement to question, which we all know that we can get better results when we’re asking questions and not always just spewing out or parroting information, can put us in so much better of a mindset in order to make progress in our lives. So it could be something as simple as a piece of clothing. Oh my gosh, I can’t afford that. Well, how could I afford it? Could I wait for it’s on sale? Could I earn a little bit more income? Could I do an extra job or phone call or create an opportunity where I

[06:19] would have the resources to do that? Or it could be something much, much bigger. The prosperity economics summit that we put on that’s for advisors, and of course clients are welcome, but that is a huge, huge challenge for us. And yet it was so important that we chose to adopt the question, how can we make this happen rather than just saying, oh my gosh, we could never make that happen and dismissing it verbally at the outset. So this mindset plays a role. And I want to be the first to admit that I too fall into, I’m going to call it the scarcity mindset. So if you wanted to have an opposite of prosperity thinking, it could be called scarcity thinking or the opposite of abundance thinking. That’s Peter Diamandis’ word could be called scarcity thinking.

[07:09] If you’re a Dan Sullivan disciple, it’s positive thinking or positive focus is actually what he calls his. And then the opposite of that, of course, would be a negative focus. So I want to admit that I fall into scarcity thinking or a negative focus just as much as anybody else does. The key is what I do when it happens. And I just want to share this with you as an example. And then Todd, I know you’ve got some examples too of what you do when negative thinking or scarcity thinking pops into my head. Sometimes I can identify it immediately and just brush it off almost as if it’s not my thought. And I certainly don’t have to think every thought that comes to me just because a thought pops into my head doesn’t mean that I need to spend

[07:57] time thinking about it. If somebody said, oh my gosh, you have purple hair. I wouldn’t go think about that or worry about that or debate whether I wanted to go look in the mirror. I would just brush it off. And we can choose to not think some of our thoughts as it relates to negative thoughts or scarcity thinking when they pop in. But sometimes I don’t recognize it and it’ll fester in there for a while and almost become some of my own thinking or parade around as if it’s my own thinking. And when I become aware of that, sometimes it takes much more to get myself out of that thinking. And one of my favorite things to do is walk outside. I’ve got access right by my desk, literally three steps.

[08:44] And I’m out in nature. And even if it’s on the patio of our office, it’s outside. And a lot of times that will help me shift my thinking. We have a dog that hangs out in the office. Sometimes it’s go pet the dog for a while. Emma the Great Dane, if you ever want to see a picture of that, you can check out our Facebook page. She appears there every now and then. And then sometimes it’s as simple as picking up and reading something different or sometimes making a phone call. When I’m really, really feeling in the scarcity mode, boy, this happened in 08 and 09 with us and some of the challenges that we worked through. When I could get on the phone and help one of you, one of our clients, then that made me feel better.

[09:31] So what I’m encouraging you to do is to think about your own things that can shift your thought, that can alert you that, hey, this thinking is not going to help you and this kind of thinking will. So whether it’s a shift in thought or a shift in geographic space or a shift in what you’re physically doing at the time, getting off those negative or scarcity thoughts and filling your mind with positive thinking and adopting that mindset. Now, I want to address one more thing. And then Todd, I want you to share your examples too. And that is this idea of fake it till you make it. So I remember learning that long ago. And, oh, if you don’t have as much money as you want, well, fake it till you make it.

[10:16] Something inherently wrong with the word fake it. That’s just, I don’t think anything that we want to be involved with. And so I’ve recently heard a better one and it’s act as if. Act as if this problem is solved. Act as if you can afford it. Act as if this opportunity is already there. What would you do? Act as if. And I like that much, much better than fake it till you make it. And I also like to remember that mindset matters. And so whether it’s every morning or every night or every noon, I make time to adjust whatever’s going on in my thinking so that my mindset is from a prosperous standpoint and that my mindset has the good things in it that can let us help clients and help me be a better person in my day

[11:05] and to the family that’s around, et cetera. So Todd, you have someone to share with us as well? Well, I think the hardest part of this for me was I got frustrated because I thought that I could control my thoughts. And you have to realize that that can’t happen. I mean, if I tell you don’t think about the color purple, what did you just think about? I mean, you can’t do that. The question is, as those thoughts come by, I picture sitting on a bridge, I’m watching a river under me, and the thoughts are just coming by and I’m selecting those thoughts. I can never completely get all negative thoughts out of my head. But the thoughts that I choose to act on, the thoughts that I choose to build with, those are my choices.

[12:02] So I think that’s important. And then I’ve got a question for you. Now, I swear this fits exactly what we’re talking about today. The Fed has been saying that they’re going to raise interest rates in QE3, which we are now here. And isn’t it interesting that we have taking a stock market dive that will pretty much inhibit them from being able to raise interest rates? I mean, do you think the whole thing was a matter of a mindset shift that caused that? Yeah, that is a fabulous question. Well, my husband, Todd Langford, who studies this kind of thing way more than I do, has said for quite some time now that he really doesn’t think they can raise interest rates because they really don’t have anywhere to go.

[12:56] And if they do, the spread at the banks will cause so many troubles that they’ll just bring them back down again. And we’ve seen that. They’ve been going up and down and up and down and up and down. So my guess is they wanted to change people’s thinking. And they put that news out there in an effort to do that, in an effort to shift mindsets, if you will. And possibly it did. We all know the stock market needs to come down. We know that prices are all out of whack with it. And so maybe their real goal was to have that happen and didn’t have anything to do with interest rates at all. Super. Well, is there anything that you’d like to share with our listeners as far as maybe tools or something that they could use

[13:40] or where they could go to get more information? Well, I’m thrilled that you asked that. And it’s just a pleasure to be able to have so many clients that are positive thinkers and doing good work. And we’re so grateful to be able to help them understand that the typical financial thinking that’s out there does not need to be a part of their lives. And the best proof of that that I’ve got is how successfully downloaded and how many times has been downloaded. Our financial planning has failed ebook and there’s an audio version of it as well. And I know that podcast listeners often like the audio version. So please, if you haven’t had a chance to grab that or if you want to share it with somebody,

[14:28] you’re welcome to do that. It’s there for anybody that’s interested in. It’s partners number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. And again, don’t get thrown by the ebook. You can get an audio download on that same website and there’s nothing else. There’s just a couple autoresponders to remind you to grab it. But you’re not opting in for a big long list of goodies. It’s just a simple ebook to reinforce the idea that mindset matters, to reinforce the idea that prosperity thinking is what we want to be focused on and not the limiting financial planning, media-based financial information that is typically out there. So partners number four, prosperity.com slash ebook. Super. And I have a favor to ask if you would go on iTunes

[15:19] and let us hear your comments. We shape our podcasts for the future based upon the questions that you ask and we’d also like your feedback. We’d love to know what you think of each of our episodes so that we know what you’re out there thinking, what questions are important to you so that we can build our future podcasts. This is No BS, Bunny Guy, Todd Strobel for the Prosperity Podcast. Once again, thank you, Kim Butler, and we’ll see you all soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.