Top performers in all industries do what they do because they love to do it. For them, the work is its own reward. They understand how to create value and enjoy doing so. They don’t work just to earn money. But it’s also important to understand that they would not work for free. Looking from the outside in, this can be hard to understand. If the wealthy don’t need any more money, and they’re not working to gain more, then why do they do it?
A popular misconception has it that you accumulate money so you can stop working. But that’s someone without a wealthy mindset talking. People ask me all the time when I might retire. My answer is, why would I stop doing what I love? To me, retirement means pulling back from life and giving up on something that enriches and fulfills my life every day. Why on earth would I do that?
While wealthy people talk a great deal about money and creating income, they almost never utter the word retirement. This is because the only people who long to retire are those who spend their lives in jobs they don’t enjoy, or for which they have no passion.
By the same token, the idea that you should save for retirement strikes me as insane. The idea of saving for retirement is to deny yourself the life you want to live now so that you can hoard enough money to live the life you want in the future. That’s backwards logic! The whole idea is surrounded with the fear of future lack of resources. The money and energy being hoarded could be put to much better use…creating ongoing sources of income that will continue for your entire life—no matter what your age or health.
The wealthy understand that work gives them energy and renews their passion for life. Take Warren Buffet. He made billions, and he has given billions away. Warren Buffet, you can be sure, doesn’t need bigger, or more houses, cars or anything else. And you can bet he’s not working so he can retire some day!
No, Warren Buffet works every day because he loves finding companies that provide products that customers need and that can bring value to his shareholders. That is his passion. And he is passionate about every phase of his business.
When you find a career or a business that you’re truly passionate about, it no longer seems like work. It is an adrenaline rush. When you’re great at what you do, what you do invigorates you every single day. That passion can help others to achieve their goals as well.
This is exactly how I feel about teaching people the principles that can change their lives for the better. I get up each morning enthused and anxious to get started. I anticipate great things will happen every single day—and they do! For me, there is no bigger thrill than helping someone understand the wealthy mindset, and then seeing them take that knowledge and become a millionaire.
Successful people are not unique. But the one thing they have in common is that they are passionate. They have developed the inner strength to maintain a consistent persistency. This allows them to go beyond the point where the average person would have given up. That’s the wealthy mindset at work. It shows you how to see beyond the world of acceptable or average.
What does it mean to be average? If you gathered one hundred random people in a room and asked them how they view themselves in relation to others, I would estimate that 97 of them would say that they are about average. The term average has taken on a meaning far beyond its actual definition. In fact, average represents the midpoint, and as such can only represent one number. This means, simply by definition, that out of your group of one hundred people, ninety-nine are not average. Think about that.
Does this mean that they’re all lying? Not really. But ‘average’ has taken on a meaning that we often equate with ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable.’ Saying you’re ‘average’ gives a sense of belonging to the masses—even if it is far from the truth. The problem is the idea becomes lodged in the mind. Then you see people who achieve great things to be very far above yourself. You believe they are special or lucky or know something that you don’t. The difference between what you might consider an average life and a wealthy life is really quite small. Yet the perception of difference is huge!
It is this Attitude of Average which many people hold in their mind that hinders their ability to believe they’re just as capable as wealthy people. If they do try something new, they simply give up easily—assuming that the road to wealth is too difficult for them, and that they—being poor little average types—obviously don’t have what it takes.
It’s like being stranded on an island with a small dinghy. You find a note left by previous castaways telling you there is land to the east. But you can’t see it—you only have the anonymous words of an unknown predecessor to go on. What do you do? Do you sit on the shore and wait for a ship to carry you to what you perceive to be certain safety—not knowing when, or if, that would ever happen? Or would you get in the boat and start rowing?
To those who have traveled before you, the way seems obvious; they can’t understand why you’d hesitate. But in your mind, you consider the ‘what ifs’. What if the boat swamps? What if I lose my way? What if a shark eats me? You reason that the people who made it to land were lucky and had some kind of special help, or perhaps were smarter or more capable than you. Maybe they had something you don’t—a map or a compass.
And after all, you’re just an average person. How can you possibly accomplish such a feat? The fear grows in your mind and with it the expanse of water, however large it actually is, grows so huge in your mind that it may as well be an entire ocean. So you wait. Your entire life slips by while you hope for that ship to save you and take you to that place you’ve convinced yourself you can never reach on your own.
Many people live the lie of being average their whole lives. They convince themselves that they aren’t special enough to live a wealthy life. But you have the same capacity to learn and achieve as any other person—perhaps even more so. But you must leave this notion of being ‘average’ behind. You have to stand up and say “I’m willing to do what it takes”—and mean it. If you choose to start this journey to wealth and riches, you have to decide, up front, to finish—not ‘wait and see’ if you can handle it. Commit to it. Focus on it. Visualize its end—the result you so desire. Only then can you break free from the Attitude of Average and rise above to claim that which is rightfully yours. In order to be wealthy you must be willing to get in the dinghy right now and start rowing!
Before you can really begin to change the way you think, you first have to understand how your current thoughts and beliefs came to be. The mind is an incredibly powerful tool, yet few people ever stop and think about what creates their thought patterns, feelings and actions. Because of this, they become frustrated and confused by the results they experience; yet they feel powerless to change them.
A person’s overall attitude is a composite of their thoughts, feelings and actions—not one or two, but all three working together. These thoughts, feelings and actions are a product of our conditioned behavior, which includes the environment in which we were raised, the education we were given and the people and events that have influenced our lives. We are all a product of our individual experiences, so each person’s attitude is entirely unique. In order to understand how these ideas and actions have rooted themselves in our behavior, we need to understand how we learn.
Everything we know we have learned in four specific stages. Take the example of riding a bicycle. We start out in life not knowing or caring that bicycles even exist or that we might ever want to ride one. This stage is called Unconscious Incompetence. We don’t know that we don’t know. We go merrily though our day completely unaware that there might be a better way of transportation than our feet.
At some point during our childhood, we see others riding bicycles and the desire to ride one ourselves starts to blossom. This is the second stage of learning and is called Conscious Incompetence. Now we know we don’t know how to ride a bicycle and we try to learn. As you know, it takes much concentration and effort to balance on a bicycle for the first time. We work hard and focus our efforts at staying erect until we are finally able to peddle without falling over. This third stage of learning is called Conscious Competence. We have proven we can ride the bicycle through focused concentration and effort.
Through repetition we become so good at riding that we no longer have to consciously think about staying upright on the bicycle. This is called Unconscious Competence—when we become so adept at performing a particular skill, we don’t even think about how to do it anymore.
Once a skill is learned, the mind moves it into the subconscious and it becomes a part of us. We no longer need to think about it—we just do it. This same process is at work whether we are learning to drive a car, use a computer—or create wealth!
As humans, we think in pictures. If I told you to think of your car, your home or your family, you can see them instantly in your mind as clear images—snapshots of your life. But if I ask you to think of your mind, you have no picture. You might imagine a picture of your brain, but your brain is not your mind anymore than your knee is. Your mind exists in every cell of your body, but has no concrete physical location or manifestation.
As you and I think in pictures, it’s hard to understand your mind and how it works unless we have an image or picture of the mind. To illustrate and explain this process we will be using the stick person example. I have used this in all of my programs worldwide for over 40 years and feel indebted to the man who originated it, back in 1934, Dr. Thurman Fleet of San Antonio, Texas.
The top circle represents the mind or thoughts and the bottom circle represents your body or action. The mind is divided into the conscious and the sub-conscious. The conscious mind is the area where you receive all the input and experiences from the world around you. As new events and ideas are presented, your conscious mind has the ability to accept or reject any idea you choose. When ideas come to you from your surroundings, the conscious mind is the filter. This allows you to choose only those ideas and events you want to be emotionally involved with. The conscious mind is also where you create the dreams and goals that you want for your life.
Today, the best guess we can make is that, through the various kinds of media we all experience daily, each of us is bombarded with tens of thousands of images each and every day. Our conscious mind can effectively process less than a thousand of them.
The information age has made our lives more efficient, but it has also made them more complex. Every minute of every day, you are constantly choosing what your mind will process and be exposed to. But, like most people, you probably don’t realize it’s an active choice.
If you are constantly inundated with negative messages, you will choose negative thoughts and ideas. These are stored in your sub-conscious mind. The result? You become a negative person with negative ideas and opinions. If you want to think, feel and act more positively, you must guard your sub-conscious with your conscious mind. It is the gatekeeper. It allows you to choose what ideas you get emotionally involved with and what images you’re exposed to over and over.
The sub-conscious mind is the “emotional” or “feeling” mind. The ancient Greeks called it “the heart of hearts.” The sub-conscious mind only has one answer to all commands it receives from the conscious mind and that answer is “YES!” It accepts all ideas presented and incorporates them into your beliefs.
The sub-conscious mind has no ability to reject thoughts. This is why you need to use your conscious mind to monitor thoughts and ideas as you receive them—and close the gate when negative thoughts are approaching. If you worry about something happening, then the sub-conscious will move you in the direction of having that negative thing happen. Likewise, if you create a positive idea of how you want events to unfold or how you want to handle the unfortunate things that happen in your life, then the sub-conscious mind will internalize it and start working on the positive result.
Worrying and focusing on what you do not want takes just as much energy and time—if not more—than focusing on what you do want—and it works! You will always attract energy that you’re in harmony with. If your energy is largely negative, then that’s what you’ll get back.
With this basic knowledge of how your mind operates, we can identify how negative emotions or feelings were implanted into your mind. You may have been raised with the belief that you can’t get a good job without a good education. While this is completely untrue, repetition has planted it in your sub-conscious mind—so much so that you now only pursue jobs and opportunities that require exactly the level of education you have since you ‘feel’ unqualified to try for anything more.
Perhaps you experienced a failure at some point in your life. By constantly replaying the emotions it created in your mind, you build an overwhelming fear of ever failing again. The subconscious mind has no ability to distinguish between what is actually happening and what you are remembering. Constantly focusing on past negative events creates an overwhelmingly negative attitude.
The good news is that by understanding how ideas are implanted in the mind, we are able to remedy their effects. We can counteract negative with positive. Every day focus on your positive achievements. Very quickly, you’re diminishing the negative energy and attracting more positive events into your life. This is where visualization comes in. Remember, your mind can’t tell if you are simply visualizing your new wealthy life or actually experiencing it, so it accepts your vision as fact. Through repetition, this idea of wealth becomes a part of your beliefs and positively affects your results. Remember believing is seeing? This is that simple concept made real.
I know this sounds quick and easy. Just focus on positive thoughts and focus on repeating them, and eventually they’ll replace all the negative thoughts that you’ve built up in your subconscious over a lifetime. But there’s more to it than that.
You can never underestimate the power of your mind and how hard it will try to hold onto what it already perceives to be real. This power can be all-consuming. The effort it takes to overcome a deeply-ingrained idea can be exhausting. You need to know that up front. Prepare for a fight. This is going to take stamina and determination. And understand this, you’re quite capable of it.
The power of the sub-conscious mind to believe in something, even though your conscious mind knows it not to be correct, is an incredible phenomenon. Think of soldiers or accident victims who have lost a limb through a traumatic event. They can see and physically feel that the limb is no longer there, but the mind will continue to think otherwise. These patients will tell you that they can literally still ‘feel’ their limb attached. Sometimes, they will experience pain, or itching in the limb that has long since been severed. This can continue for months.
If it’s that hard to convince your sub-conscious mind of something so physically obvious, imagine how hard it will be to remove ideas and thoughts that have been lodged in your mind since childhood. Your negative inclinations don’t just disappear because you decided they should. It is an ongoing struggle and you have to commit to winning if you are to succeed.
Most of us live our lives without knowing—or caring—about the conditioning that governs our results. I call this conditioning the X Factor. And it’s very important that you understand your conditioning controls your logic.
Think about those two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright. They thought illogically. You see, for centuries, it was logic that told us we could 0 fly. The Wright brothers thought outside of the box; their ideas were illogical. And, if you’re going to win, you’re going to have to be illogical. However, this conditioning and logic is not important until you attempt to do something that challenges your conditioning.
The X Factor can be any ingrained belief, from what weight you think you should be to how to raise your children. For our purposes, let’s assume that X is the idea that you can never earn more than $100,000 per year. If you listen to those with a wealthy mindset, you may decide you want to earn $1 million per year. This new idea, the million dollars that is, is called the Y Factor. Now the war is on!
You’ll entertain the new idea in your conscious mind at first. Maybe you’ll visualize your new, wealthy life. The X factor will start gently. It will use logic, and try to convince you that maybe this new idea isn’t right, or at least, not right for you. Your internal dialogue with X may go something like this:
“There’s nothing wrong with how I’m living and I’m pretty happy. Why would I risk that?” And understand, your thinking is right. It’s not going to get you to the million dollars, but it’s right.
You may be able to push that argument aside. But if you do, the attack from X will get even more personal.
“Remember how hard you worked to get the job you have? What if this falls through and you can’t get anything close to this? You know you need those benefits for your family.”
X is relentless in its pursuit of what it believes. Even if you insist on believing that you will earn the $1 millon a year, X will keep chattering away in your mind, running through all the what-ifs and why-nots, over and over and over again. X wants to convince you that, no matter what you believe, there are far too many reasons it simply can’t be done.
Every time you visualize a good reason why this will work, X will offer a rational, sensible reason why it won’t. This is normal, and you should expect it. After all, X has been lounging around in your sub-conscious for a long time. X is comfortable there. Why would it want to move along? X wants you to do the same. It has invested a lifetime keeping you on the path you’ve always been on. Think about this—a path that’s familiar and comfortable. In fact, X’s very existence depends on you staying right where you are.
This is where persistence plays a key role. You have no chance against X unless you’re willing to constantly reinforce this new idea. Unfortunately, your X Factor still has a secret weapon: Fear.
When fear enters the picture, logic leaves. Think about that. When fear enters the picture, logic leaves. It really doesn’t matter how irrational or unfounded the fear may be; fear allows doubt and uncertainty to flood your mind and overcome this new idea that you’ve been so sure about. Let’s assume that you’ve decided to start a new business and have just started your first bit of marketing—and nothing happens. Even though you know on a conscious level that it takes time, on a sub-conscious level your insecurities are playing havoc with your state of mind. “What if no one ever responds?” “What if this is all a mistake?” “What if I fall flat on my face?”
No matter how much you think you want to try and develop a new mindset of wealth, your old beliefs about money will constantly try to wear down your resolve. If you make the mistake of giving in to this fear and worrying about it constantly, it will only serve to bring about your worst-case scenario.
Let me share a story with you about a woman named Sally. She decided to quit her job to become a writer. She was already well on her way. She was producing income from her writing before she quit her corporate marketing job. She tells of her own battle with X:
“I looked forward to quitting my day job for years. I’d always dreamed of writing for a living, and over the past four years had built my freelance business up to a substantial level. The week that I finally quit I was exhilarated and ready to start my new life.
That feeling lasted about seven days. The beginning of my second week working from home I was consumed by a feeling of fear that I can’t even explain. I’d already proven to myself that I could do this and I had enough jobs lined up to last several months. But still the what-ifs would not leave me alone. What if the jobs dried up? What if I missed my deadlines? What if my house burned down with all my research files! Most of them weren’t even rational or logical but they kept me awake at night worrying.
After a couple of weeks drowning in this fear, I realized that I’d hardly worked at all. I’d always thought that I could never really make a living writing and now, due to my negative mindset and constant worry, it was coming true! I quickly refocused my mind on the positive vision I’d had of creating a career I loved and refused to allow my mind to dwell on the fear.
Sure enough, the fear subsided but that doesn’t mean it has never reared its head since. It has, but now I know to immediately focus on the positive and refuse to allow it to distract me from what I really want for my life.”
You see, as Sally found out, your sub-conscious will accommodate any thought that you entertain. If those thoughts are negative, it will provide even more negative reinforcement. When you reduce your efforts, or quit because of fear, you give yourself a lot of good reasons for the decision you made—“It’s too difficult,” “I’m in over my head,” “I don’t have the skills for this.” But fear is rarely one of them.
Fear is actually the trigger for this mental rebellion. Fear provides an avenue for all the worries and concerns you’ve ever had to come pouring through. For many of us, it’s almost impossible to resist for any period of time.
When you introduce and implement a new idea or way of thinking, power comes from your belief that this new idea is right and good. If fear takes over, it closes off your channel to this power. It internalizes your problem. Fear can keep you from logically working out the next step that you need to find the solution you require. It shuts you down. It helps you make an excuse to give up.
Take starting a new business. Fear can rob you of the ability to see what is really going on in the marketplace. It can keep you from seeing additional opportunities. It can alter the way you perceive your current results. If fear dominates your mindset, you could easily assume that you’re a bad businessperson or that your product won’t work for the market you had envisioned.
But the truth could very well be that you are simply approaching the market from the wrong angle, and your marketing could be more effective.
You need to learn to push the fear aside so you can see it for what it really is. If you can master fear, you can look for solutions and not waste energy worrying. When you’re dealing with X and Y Factors, your channel of power is either open or closed. Only by constantly reinforcing the new ideas, and practicing new actions that support that idea, will you be able to keep this channel to power open. It is what gives you the tools to overcome your old way of thinking.
Remember, you have the ability to reject the fear your X Factor tortures you with. You have the choice not to dwell on the what-ifs. You don’t have to give into fear. I have a good friend of mine, Melonie Brown. She’s writing a book, “Let Fear Fail.” That’s a great title and it’s going to be a great book.
You choose to reject that fear by allowing yourself to become emotionally involved with the Y Factor and all the good it’s going to bring into your life.
Any new idea or thought process you introduce has to, with your help, grow strong—strong enough to overpower the old ideas deep-set in your mind. Those old thoughts don’t just magically disappear. It is a fight and a struggle. And once you’ve accepted the new idea and truly believe in it, you must remain vigilant. Keep that new idea strong and the negative ideas at bay, because given the chance, they’ll try their best to come home. Make no mistake about it. Close the door; don’t let them in.
Many people express their wants and desires as a wish. This is why: They hope that their lives will change but they have not made the commitment to make that happen. They want it to be easy—a fantasy that comes true with the wave of a magic wand. And of course, it doesn’t. They quickly fall back into old habits and never move toward what they say they want.
Eventually, they convince themselves it was just a pipe dream anyway, and that it never could have happened. The sad part is that it absolutely could have! They could have had everything their hearts desired, but they didn’t commit to the new idea. Thus, the old negative thoughts weren’t even disturbed. They didn’t even need to make an argument. And if you make it that easy on your X Factor, I promise you, you’ll get the same results. And I know you don’t want to go through life saying “I could have been a millionaire.”
The thoughts, habits and attitude of the life you have been living up to now have produced the results you now live with. These new ideas are a struggle to implement, but they will be what produce the life you dream of as long as you can stay focused. If you do, the new ideas will find a permanent home in your mind. This is the best result you can hope for. As the new idea becomes stronger, you’ll see the results manifest themselves in your life. Over time, it becomes your new paradigm or belief. If you can go from making $100,000 per year to $1 million then why not $10 million? Or $100 million? Why not?
I often tell people to start with the idea that they can turn their yearly income into a monthly income. This gives them an exact dollar figure to work with in their mind. It’s important to be precise. If you start with an idea that you just ‘want more money,’ that doesn’t give you a concept that you can become emotionally involved with. Five dollars is ‘more money;’ it’s just too vague. Once you have an amount—let’s work with $1 million—then you are able to start searching for ways to make that figure a reality.
Buy yourself a small calculator like I have and carry it with you all the time like I do. When I find myself with some extra time, waiting in an airport or flying from one place to the next, I will often take out this little calculator and start working out how I will make my next million dollars. The first thing I do is to punch the total amount I want to earn into the calculator—$1,000,000.
Henry Ford said if you want to make a big job easy, break it into small parts. I take what he said literally. I divide the million by 12—that’s for 12 months—meaning, I’m going to give myself a year to do this. One million divided by 12 is $83,333. That’s how much I have to earn every month, but that’s still a pretty big number. So let’s reduce if further. We’ll divide the $83,333 by 4.3—since there are 4.3 weeks per month. Our new number is $19,380. So, that’s how much I have to earn every week.
Now, for a brand new idea, that still sounds like quite a lot. So, I think I’ll break my week into two parts: Monday to Wednesday; Thursday to Sunday. I’ll divide $19,380 by 2, which takes the number down to $9,690. You may be thinking, ‘wow, I’ve got to earn $9,690 between Monday and Wednesday and then again, between Thursday and Sunday… and I’ve got to do that every week, all year long!’
I think we’d better apply Ford’s method to this once again. Divide $9,690 by 86. Now, you’re probably wondering, why 86? I just arbitrarily picked that number… I could have picked 74, but I didn’t, I picked 86. Stay with me—there’s a good idea here. The answer to that is $112.67. Let that stick in your mind, $112.67.
Now let me ask you a question. If I could show you how to earn, one thousand, one hundred and twelve dollars and sixty seven cents twice a week, every week, with very little effort, would you give me the $112.67 and keep the thousand? You’re probably saying, sure I’d do that. I have gone through this calculation in numerous seminars and I’ve never had a person say no, they wouldn’t do it.
Think of what I’m asking you. I’m going to show you how to earn an extra thousand dollars twice a week and $112.67 on top of the thousand, and because I’m originating the idea, it’s my intellectual property, you’re going to give me a fraction of what you earn, $112.67 twice a week. Stay with me. Now, I don’t have to figure out how to earn one million dollars any more, I just have to think of an idea that will enable you to earn $1,112.67 twice a week and when I’ve got that figured out, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble getting 85 other people willing to do what you’re willing to do.
Now, you see, earning money isn’t difficult if you think. The problem with most people is they don’t think. They’ve tricked themselves into believing that mental activity is thinking. That idea was a bit of a shock to me the first time I’d heard it. I was listening to Earl Nightingale’s recording, The Strangest Secret, where he quoted the late Dr. Albert Schweitzer who was being interviewed by a reporter as he got off the plane. The reporter asked the good doctor, what was the problem with people today? He thought about it for a moment and said, “People simply don’t think.” And, if you observe people as I have, ever since I first heard that recording many years ago, you will very likely find what I have found—that most people would never say what they were saying if they were thinking and they would most certainly never do what they are doing if they were thinking. Dr. Schweitzer was right—people just don’t think. When you begin thinking, which is the highest function of which you are capable, your whole life will change.
Let me give you some other examples, should you doubt that anyone—from any walk of life—can create this passive income. These are a few occupations that are very common, and I have several suggestions for creating passive income with each one of them:
Exercise Instructor: Create a unique exercise regime and write a book about it. Produce DVDs of this regime for various levels of students. Offer training seminars for other instructors to learn to teach your system. Create a diet workbook that goes along with the exercise regime.
Teacher: Create DVDs to tutor children in various subjects and sell companion workbooks. Write a book for parents on how to help their children learn better. If you are a coach, you can sell DVDs and books that help athletes train. If you are a music teacher, you can sell items that teach people to play the guitar or piano.
Contractor: Create DVDs to help people understand the basics of remodeling their homes. Write a book about how to find a good contractor and work with them effectively to build a dream home.
And finally, if you’re a Customer Service Representative: Create a how-to handbook on basic customer service skills to sell to employers. Create a DVD for consumers on how to work with customer service representatives to resolve problems effectively.
You see, from these examples that I have just shared with you, you can use the skills you have right now to create passive income. It doesn’t matter what those skills are as long as they provide value in some way. Don’t sit and think that you have nothing to offer!
Not only do you have the opportunity to create the life you dream of, you also have the ability to positively affect the lives of others. It is this desire and passion to get your knowledge out to those who can benefit from it that creates the passion necessary to put everything in motion. I experienced this passion as a young man in my 20s. Once I discovered the path to wealth, I wanted to tell everyone I knew! I wanted to share these ideas and shout it from the mountaintops—and for the past 40 years that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Now, you can begin your own journey of discovery and wealth. Each is different and your path will be as unique as you are—but it is there. Your road to wealth already exists if you have the courage to find it.
Now, for a quick review of Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 REVIEW
• Find what you are passionate about and use that passion to fulfill your dreams.
• Let go of the Attitude of Average.
• Your attitude is a combination of your thoughts feelings and actions.
• You must guard what your mind is exposed to.
• Don’t underestimate the power of your ingrained belief systems.
• You must persist in creating new thoughts to prevent falling back into your old negative patterns.
• Believe that you have the skills right now to provide value and create passive income.
• Don’t wait—decide to get in your dinghy and start rowing!
• Investigate multiple sources of income. Let me give you an example. Go to www.BobProctorMoney.com/CC—that’s an organization of people from all around the world who have come together to help each other set up multiple sources of income.