Simple Steps to Being a Prosperity Thinker – Episode 476

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. This one is going to hit closer to home because Kim, we’re going to be talking about your home state, the Lone Star state of Texas. And there are some serious things that are happening. Now, I don’t expect you to know all the details because you don’t read the news and that’s a good thing. But you know how to be positive and that’s a better thing. And we’re going to be talking of that today. So could you kind of maybe wrap us in of what’s happening in your locale and what you’ve heard with farmers, ranchers and like the scope of things overall right now? Absolutely. And I want to bring in how you started your sentence, which was prosperity thinkers.

[00:50] And I have been so, so grateful when we did our rebrand and we were able to get that URL, which is actually incredible when you think about it. And that we were able to choose Prosperity Thinkers LLC as the name of our company. And again, you know, be able to have that as our website because it is such an important approach to life. The ability to think from a prosperous standpoint. And it’s interesting, you know, you bring up Texas is having a lot of issues with their cattle. And cattle affect America because we are a beef eating country and it is sad what’s going on. We’ve got drought issues. We’ve got farms that are struggling to make money. And we’ve got government more involved than it should be that are, I think, creating not only possibly direct problems, but then the cascading impact of unintended consequences.

[01:53] And then you have farmers that are just wanting out. And so the cattle market is becoming flooded. And you could look at all of this from a very scary standpoint. It could be very alarming. It would be very easy for you to mentally get swept up in the actual movement of what’s going on with the cows and the lack of water and, you know, just thinking all of that through. Or you could stop yourself, take a different approach. And please know this is not about cattle and water in Texas. This is about you and what’s going on in your life. And as human beings, we always have, our family has referred to them as lean years and green years. And so here you have a time that has a lot of lean years already occurring for certain businesses.

[02:51] It’s a time when we’re, so we’re recording this in the middle of 2022, where we’re looking ahead and there could be lean years in the stock market, which has a very much ripple effect across all types of businesses. And nevertheless, individual families, some businesses, lean years, some businesses, green years. So how you approach those years is so important. And whether you choose to have a prosperity oriented perspective where you’re looking for the positive possibilities that are there, even in the face of lean years. And if you should be on the other side of it, where you’re in green years, awesome, then let’s be looking for the positive possibilities. Let’s be looking at the situation through a prosperity lens and identifying maybe some areas that we could help, or maybe some areas that we could take advantage of, or maybe some areas where if we really focused on what we wanted,

[03:58] instead of focused on what we were afraid of, that we would see some possibilities, some opportunities, a way through, a way around, a way over. Maybe it’s even a way under the problem at hand, because it’s not so much the problem at hand. It’s not knowing how to think about it. You’re mentioning the thinking about it. At any time, we have the opportunity to choose how we think about it, regardless of how intense that moment may be or perceived to be. And so your language is so critical right now, and not just for cattle, but because of the differences. And it meaning, I think we both experienced this in a lean year, when we’ve been faced with adversity, it may take a little bit more effort and time to recalibrate our thinking.

[05:00] But on the flip side, when we’re having a green year and we’re doing really well, it may take a little bit of effort and time to look at it and to be more prosperous. Instead of, you know, at least for me at times I’ve seen in the past, when it’s a very green year, everything’s a great opportunity. And you almost have to stop and say, okay, that’s wonderful, but what’s further out? What’s bigger? And you have to recalibrate in a good way. And I think it’s easy to even forget to do that when it happens. Yeah, it’s interesting. As human beings, it’s so easy to truly just be selfish. And that’s a good thing, too. I mean, we want to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves, our families, our businesses, because if we don’t, we certainly cannot serve others.

[05:52] And at the same time, in both lean years and green years, I feel like it is so important to broaden our perspective and our point of view a little bit, or maybe a lot, depending on your situation, as it relates to what you’re thinking about. So you can go from individual to family to business to community to possibly county, state, nation, world. And broadening that perspective, that point of view, again, whether it’s lean years or green years, will absolutely come back and help you in all the way back to the very beginning yourself. And then it will help you with your family and it will help you with your business, et cetera, et cetera. And so it’s important to just stop the fear mongering. It’s important to shut off the news, which is why, as you indicated earlier, I don’t pay a lot of attention to it.

[06:55] I have a couple sources that I do watch so that I’m not completely numb to the things that are going on in the world. And I make sure that I am very selective about what I’m reading, what I’m listening to, what I’m watching, because just like we have to pay attention to the food that we put in our bodies, we must pay attention to what is going into our mind. And so sometimes if it’s necessary for me to address news, I will do some spiritual or inspirational work beforehand, sometimes also after the fact, to make sure that my thinking is on the highest level possible. Because decisions, when they’re made in fear, are usually not good decisions. And so we have to be open to a way to get ourselves out of fear mode and into that prosperity thinking mode.

[07:54] When we’re looking at the landscape of whatever it is that we’re going to be working on, whether it’s a health issue or it’s a cattle issue or a food issue or a business issue or, you know, a variety of supply issues, et cetera, et cetera. We really, really want to watch our thinking, going into it, during it, after it, and making sure that it’s at the highest level possible and making sure that we have the broadest picture or point of view possible. You know, in the movies, they talk about POV, point of view, and they talk about raising the point of view. In other words, get the camera up a little higher so it can see a larger landscape. And we can do that with our thought. And when we do that, we are able to see a different perspective, possibly help more people find a way, as I said earlier, around, through, under, above, et cetera.

[08:49] And this is all good thinking exercises. It’s good things for us to talk about with our families. It’s good things to share with spouses and not try to keep that kind of thing to ourselves. And at the same time, I think it’s really important to make sure that what’s not only going on in our thinking, but also what’s coming out of our mouths is what we want to experience. In other words, I was just at a family dinner recently and everybody got going on the airplane problems and, you know, this flight’s delayed and that luggage is lost. And I literally did what’s called a pattern interrupter. And I just said, Hey, Labor Day is coming up soon. What should we do that would be fun? Because I didn’t want to keep having, nobody was even getting on a plane.

[09:39] I didn’t want to keep having airplane stories circle the conversation. I love that. That is so good. I’m going to give you the badge of master deflector on this one right here. That’s really good. So to not put you on the spot, but to put you on the spot. If you were having this conversation with a cattle rancher that they feel like the world is against them. Meaning, Hey, I have this land. I did the work, but now I’m having a difficulty with my crop. I’m having a difficulty with water. I’m having a market that’s getting flooded with a commodity that is lowering price. That’s a lot of emotions. How do you help a person in something like that? What would that conversation look like? Yeah, it’s a great question.

[10:33] And believe me, I do not take it lightly at all. I’m not making light of the situation. And I think a lot of times, prosperity thinking can be thought of that way. And that’s not it at all, because we know that doesn’t get us any results or help anybody. So I think the most important thing to do is get clear for yourself where your higher power is. And whatever that is, if you think it’s yourself, awesome. If you think it’s a spouse, beautiful. If it’s the dog, fine. If it’s God, beautiful. If it goes by another name, that’s great. But having a higher power to turn to and to be grounded in before you go tackle the human scene is very, very helpful. So whether it’s spiritual things or inspirational things that you read or listen to or talk through or whatever, do that first.

[11:22] Like literally every day, sometimes every hour. Then go tackle the human scene and focus on what you can control. Now, and a lot of times we don’t feel like there’s anything that we can control. But there are usually some things if we will take the time to sit down and think about it. So when we focus on what we can control and then we do those things and we think about those things and we talk about those things and we inch forward. And as I said, it’s a day by day issue. Sometimes it’s an hour by hour issue. And when we need to, we go back to the inspirational or the spiritual standpoint to get grounded. And then we go forward again and we take baby steps and we try to be as prosperous in our thinking, as grateful in our thinking as possible.

[12:18] And in our language, because again, it matters what’s going on in our brains, but it also matters what’s coming out of our mouths. And sometimes that is just a repetitive. One tiny inch of gratitude, one tiny clarity of human step to take. One tiny inch of gratitude, one tiny bit of clarity of a human step to take. And from those two things, you can find a way forward. Absolutely. And then my follow up question is this. From your experience, the clarity that you get, let’s say you’ve done the work, you’ve started to get your thinking correct. You’re using the gratitude, your source to make yourself whole and you’re moving there. How often is it that the solution appears at the very beginning or do you see it that it appears down the path or towards the end?

[13:14] Yeah, that’s I think really all over the board because sometimes the solution is going to take some time to work itself through. But you say the solution is if there’s only one and it all comes at once. And I don’t think that’s accurate either. I think those little baby steps that I talk about are solutions. And sometimes the solution is a couple steps forward and then a step back as you learn more and navigate more. A little movie clip that my sister loves to show is Harrison Ford in one of his movies where he’s dealing with snakes or whatever. And he’s having to take a step out like off of a ledge before he can see the next step down. And the next step down literally appears after he has already taken the step off the ledge.

[14:15] So he took a step without knowing that a step would be there. And I think that’s a really good mental picture of what we have to do sometimes is listen, take a step, listen, take a step, and trust. And sometimes maybe that, as I said, is a couple steps forward and one step back. Sometimes maybe it means falling. Failure is a way to learn. And maybe it’s considered a failure by an outside community, but not by yourself. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And it is so much of how you think about it. But I can guarantee this. If you go into something with a perspective of I can’t figure this out, you are correct. That’s so true. You know, as you’re explaining this, and I think what we’ve done in this episode is one of those episodes that you’re going to favorite and go back to, depending on where life is.

[15:21] And so I want to add in one other piece to this, which is it’s the same process, for me at least, the same process when things are going very well. Meaning it is one step ahead, and then the opportunity finds itself in one step ahead. And it tends to be that where I started and where I thought I was going to go usually don’t end up. It’s something better. And it’s just like when there was a problem, when I have a giant problem and I start fixing it, I realized the problem’s not as big in the solution or solutions are much different. And so this is one of these episodes, for me at least, it’s going to be like save, listen, repeat. It was really good for us. Well, thank you for saying that, Spencer.

[16:11] And much gratitude to all of our listeners. And we trust that the work that we’re doing in these conversations are valuable to you and that they are worth re-listening to. Absolutely. So for all of you listeners, I know that you love the podcast. We look at the download numbers. The podcast is growing like crazy. We are touching so many lives throughout the U.S., Canada, and countries throughout the world. We’re getting feedback. So if you haven’t already gone on Spotify, click that button that gives the ratings for Spotify. Just say, hey, if it feels like a five-star to it, we’d love to see that. For Apple, share your feedback. And on top of that, know that there’s one other way that you can consume and continue to have good information to you, and that’s through the newsletter.

[17:02] So the newsletter is one of those ways where you can read it and you can see articles on top of your reading. So right now, depending on your state, if it’s tumultuous like the cattle industry, then you need the retrieve of good information, both reading and auditory or visual. And if times are very prosperous, then you need to calibrate yourself to contain you down that. And this was a really fun one, Kim. I’m for sure going to be saving this one myself as well. Well, thank you, Spencer. Always a joy to talk with you. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.