What Disasters Teach Us – Episode 627

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Cam, today we’re gonna be talking about something that’s recently happened. We’ll delicately mention this. It’s the floods that have happened in Texas. You’re in Texas, even though it’s very far away because Texas is humongous. But it’s an opportunity for us to reflect on the things that are most important to also, maybe you can give some insight because you’ve helped families that have dealt with difficult and delicate situations of what to do if they can plan before and then what happens after something like this. Well, it is an interesting space because us human beings do not like to think about what might go wrong and that’s a good thing, right?

[00:50] We should not spend our lives thinking about what could go wrong. Yet the fact is that we need to be aware that being protected is an important space, being protected mentally, knowing that we have backup plans, being aware of what might need to happen. And so I know, for example, your family has go bags, right? Like you have bags that are packed that if somebody showed up at your front door and said, we need to evacuate immediately, you’d be out of the house in five minutes. And that’s a step that people can choose to take that provides peace of mind because then you can set all those concerns aside. Other families do things like store water in their closet, food in their garage. We’ve talked about some of these various things

[01:40] that you can do. And I think in the space of getting a family together when they might not be all together, that is often what happens in an event like a flood because maybe not everybody’s in the house. They’re out and about doing various things. I know there’s been kids at camp and that kind of thing. And thankfully in today’s world, our phones and the apps on our phones, there’s specific one that the Apple clan uses, another specific one that the Android clan uses. You may be able to make some suggestions yourself. This kind of thing can provide us so much peace of mind. And that’s really a very large part of protection because when you ask yourself, well, what would happen if, and then you can have a simple answer,

[02:32] then we no longer have to be worried about what would happen if because we’ve done the best that we can at providing the protection, purchasing the insurance, packing the go-bag, buying the food, having the app on our phone, whatever it is, so that we know that our family is going to be able to do the best that they can do in adverse circumstances. You know, really well said, because we don’t know in an emergency, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. So you’ve seen this happen to multiple people. There’s obviously a lot of mental and emotional anguish, trauma, things that are happening. What is it that you as an outsider have been able to see families go through? And then what is the overlying advice

[03:23] or principle that you would help guide them? Well, it’s specifically stated in our most recent book of Busting the Scarcity Mindset because when your family is going through a traumatic time, a dangerous time, a scary time, an unfortunate time, a challenging time, you know, whatever word you want to use, whatever circumstance you’re dealing with, finding the good, finding the good, digging for the good, developing the good, talking about the good. It’s so hard and it’s so valuable because our minds are absolutely powerful in helping us get through whatever physical mess we might need to clean up. So, you know, just think about this time or in this summer, you know, people are having parties at their houses

[04:16] and there’s a mess that has to get cleaned up when you have people over. You know, something as simple as that, you can either be grumbly and oh my gosh, I have to clean up this mess and this, you know, I can’t believe people left this stuff here. And you can go down that path and it’s super easy to do. And holy cow, once you head down that path, you just dig yourself a hole deeper and deeper. And it would be more extreme, but no different if you had to clean up from a natural disaster or move, right? You know, I’ve helped people mentally with moving. Like, oh my gosh, find some good and find some good about leaving the house that you’re leaving. Find some good about the new place that you’re moving into.

[05:01] Find some good about having to get rid of a bunch of stuff. Dig and find the good and raise those thoughts. Because if you dig the hole and go in the downward spiral of thoughts versus digging for the good to go in the upward spiral of thoughts, you will get the results either way. It’s entirely your choice. And the best thing in the world is that we can make that choice every single instant of every single day. You’ve seen this happen time and time again, meaning the emergencies of life. And an emergency, it could be a business failing, a business owner betraying another owner. It could be a family, a fire. It could be a death, a natural disaster, a lot of things that happen. You putting into perspective the thinking

[05:57] in positive terms, absolute gold. For the families that are fortunate right now, maybe they’re not in that part of the world where disasters hit. What are the simple little maybe paperwork or consultative things that they can do? What are things that can be done right now? Easy, not hard, but easy that they can start to take action on? I love that question. And it’s, you mentioned paperwork. It’s getting paperwork to the cloud. And so as we know, there are families that have lost paperwork because they lost their homes in the flood. And so getting paperwork to the cloud, even if you don’t love the system, it’s another storage spot. So you can do simple things like Google Drive, but you can also do things like,

[06:48] there’s a company called Forever. And I have a friend that is a representative of them and they have a private and dedicated longevity plan for helping people store pictures and all kinds of documents in the cloud. And then additionally, you wanna have backups to your backups because again, that paperwork that’s so critical, if our phones get lost in today’s world or even potentially computers, somebody could have a home office and their phone and their computer could have gotten lost in a flood or a fire or something like that. Then we want to have somebody else have the information, have the backups to the backups, use programs like LastPass or other things like that to support the physical phone and the physical computer

[07:42] should they no longer be available either. I totally agree. So we’re gonna switch gears to something different. You love this part. I’m gonna pull in an example. Years ago when Katrina hit, I went with a group of guys down to New Orleans and we tarped roofs and we shoveled muck and gross, but you know what, babies are gross and we still love them and so we do it. So let’s turn our time to service because when someone is in a difficult circumstance, we can be the outside that provides food, shelter, maybe time service. What does that look like to you and how do you operate as you lead this prosperity community? Well, thank you for asking. I think that there’s, for a lot of people, a feeling of overwhelm in that,

[08:38] oh my gosh, I can’t do anything because there’s just so much to do and whatever little bit I could do doesn’t seem very impactful and we need to really nip that very scarcity-oriented thought in the bud because you could help somebody with one comment, over the phone for example, if you were speaking with somebody or you could help people with donations if you didn’t feel like you had time and find organizations that you can give money to to know that money is being used specifically for the families that are dealing with a particular natural disaster or what have you or on the alternative side, if you have time, then look at your talents and all of us have the capability of doing physical work, right?

[09:29] And it’s something that I think us Americans have gotten out of a little bit, especially those that might be past their heavy duty physical work, maybe somebody’s in their 50s or their 60s or their 70s and they have time but they’re feeling like I’m not really sure that I’m capable of the physical work. That’s actually the time to do it, to get in there and shovel the muck or move the stuff or do whatever it is that you can do, bring your time and talent. We’re dealing with a situation that’s hardly a natural disaster but there were four days of food that needed to be dealt with and for me that’s just completely overwhelming. Like I don’t want it wasted, I don’t wanna eat it, I don’t want to deal with it

[10:15] but some people love to come in there and figure out what needs to be saved, figure out what can be used, figure out what can be frozen, that’s a talent. So look at the God given talents that you have and if it’s pure, I mean I’ll raise my hand for day labor, right? Like I’ll get in there and shovel the muck or put the tarps on or do some of the physical things because I do continue to work out, I do continue to do yoga, I do continue to do the things that enable me to physically contribute and then as stated I love just helping people stay positive, stay focused, those types of things but everybody has talents and sometimes it’s those more unusual circumstances that really let what could have been a hidden talent

[11:05] rise to the surface. So just looking around like what you did with your friends, you got yourself in the proximity of the mess, right? Tony Robbins says proximity is power. Well, you got yourself in the proximity of the mess so you could see some physical things that needed to be done. That’s always an option as is phone calling and then I’m gonna share one specific thing that is on the do not do list. And that- I didn’t think it was do not do. Yes, the do not do list has two things actually. Don’t get yourself mired in mental muck as we’ve already talked about but the one that I wanted to share is stop watching and listening to so much of the news, right? I mean, there’s an appropriate amount.

[11:59] You have to learn what’s going on especially if you have family in the area and of course you can check on them and do the normal things and you don’t wanna be insensitive or blind to the problem but to keep watching and keep listening to the news is not serving you nor is it serving those who have had the challenge to deal with. You know, that’s so great and that’s the perfect way to wrap this up. You know, this is, it is a sensitive topic because of what’s going on and I brought it up because, you know, speaking with a stranger last week who didn’t know anyone involved with it, she was emotionally wrecked and it’s good to empathize and sympathize with others and it’s good as you mentioned to be aware of what’s going on with our thoughts

[12:53] and one thing you mentioned, we can even leave a comment. That is a way to be participating in a very simple way. So Kim, this is awesome. What we do on this podcast is to make our world more prosperous. Sometimes it’s conversations about finance and sometimes it’s conversations about things that just help strengthen the family or the finances. If you know someone that’s going through a difficult time and you know that, hey, they need a little bit of space, share this episode. Every episode has something that’s positive that’s gonna help and if you like this type of content, make sure you’re leaving those ratings so that others can find it. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money

[13:46] and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.