The Charged Life

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Summary:

If you handle your money in the right way, you can have more, give more, and enjoy your life more.

Here’s what you can do to start taking control of your money now:

1. Revisit your story about money. Where we come from and what we hear about money unconsciously shapes our lives. If you think rich people are negative or that having money is bad, you won’t attain wealth because you don’t want to be negative or bad. If wealth is something that brings you more happiness, joy, and service, you’ll want to make more of it. So, first, redefine what wealth means to YOU!

2. Make sure you automatically invest. When get a check from your employer, have some of the funds automatically go into your savings account or investment account. This way you won’t forget and you won’t spend the money unnecessarily. Automatically investing means your money will be earning money for you and working for you.

3. Ask the question, “How can I add more value in the time in which I serve?” Squeeze in more value. Hustle a little bit more. Serve even more. Adding more value to people in the same amount of time makes you more productive, gets you more recognition, and gives you more opportunities. There’s no traffic beyond the extra mile! Just add a little more than anyone else is doing, and you’ll be in a category of one.

4. Raise your standards for a reward! If you’re a high performer and really adding value but you’re still not being rewarded for your true contribution, raise your minimum of what you will allow in your life. Be bold, push the boundaries, and you will be rewarded.

When you follow these simple steps for handling your money, you will have a positive story about wealth, your money will be earning money for you, you will be adding more value, you will have a higher standard for yourself and you will be experiencing The Charged Life!

Full Transcript: 

How to handle money. First, wash your hands. Kidding.…that’s a great question.

How do you handle your money more intelligently so you can have more of it, so you can give more of it, so you can enjoy your life to the next level?

1.     Number one, I think you must revisit your orientation to wealth.

• If I say to you, ‘rich people,’ what does that bring up for you?
• When you think about rich people,what do you think of?
• Are they good? Are they bad? Are the rich, 1, 2, 3, 4% of the world good people, bad people?
• What are they like?
• What are their values like?
• Do you want to become one of them?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes you discover that where you live or where you came from or what you heard of about money in your life is absolutely unconsciously driving your life today. 

For example, I grew up in a very difficult economic situation. I grew up in a very difficult town and place, an old Irish mining town that had been economically depressed for nearly a century, where people didn’t have a lot, and people really struggled. Very blue collared, tried to get through the day, lots of poverty, lots of people struggling and I can share with you that there was this conversation often, about people on the other side.

There’s people on the other side of the tracks. There’speople on the other side who are wealthier. There was a lot of the culture Igrew up in where, ‘oh, those rich people.’ There was this projection offrustration, restlessness or anger towards ‘rich’ or ‘wealthier’ people, andbecause of that I didn’t ever want to become one of them. So I didn’t, for avery long time.

It’s funny, because one of the basic human drives we have isthe human drive for congruence. We want to be congruent in our thoughts and behaviors. 

If we think that a type of person is negative, our body, our mind and our subconscious will do everything it can not to become that. We don’t want to become something that we think is negative. 

So if you think wealthy people or rich people are negative, guess what you’re never going to attain? Wealth. And that’s why it’s important to revisit all those old stories and phrases we heard growing up, you know.

• ‘Money is the root of all evil.’
• ‘People with money are insensitive.’
• 'People with money are selfish.’

If you gain more wealth and success in life you’re just going to be more busy and you’re never going to have time for your family, and you’re going to forget anybody who ever came along with you and ever supported you and all these things. We think this big story about money.

So, what’s your story about money? Is it positive? Is it negative? Is wealth something that will bring you more joy, more happiness, more ability to give and serve and do something with in your life? Or, is it something that terrifies you because you think you won’t be able to handle the obligations that come along with it? 

You worry that if you make more money or to make more money you’re going to have to be away from your family more, so you never try.

Most of us have a lot of really bad assumptions about what it would take to succeed, but also what it would take to make more money, and ultimately to keep more money, to sustain more money. Because I bet you also think, ‘oh I heard it’s lonely at the top.’ Well who wants to be lonely? And if rich people are bad, who wants to be a bad person? If rich people are pushing family members away and becoming selfish, who wants to become that? 

So you have to redefine what wealth would mean for you specifically, not what the culture told you it could be.

I will share with you that after… I’ve been through the ringer financially in my life. I grew up with nothing and then I started making something in corporate America. I built something of myself. I started working really hard. I got a good job. I started climbing that corporate ladder. I discovered that the corporate world wasn’t for me, and so I left, I quit to start my own dream of doing videos and writing, and doing my seminars and all the things I do now. You know what, I did exactly what people predicted; I promptly went bankrupt. I went broke. I had no idea what I was doing.

It would have been easy at that point, very easy to quit, very easy to say, ‘oh you know what, money’s not for me,’ but I thought I know that sometimes if you don’t have money you can’t sustain the message. If you’re not earning than you can’t keep giving. I thought, ‘I have to change my orientation here. I have to get serious about making money and do it without all the guilt and the nonsense that my culture, the past or the popular media thrusts on people with money.’ 

Because guess what? There are also philanthropists. There are also people who take money and support their family. They send their kids to college. They get safer cars. They do well in their community. They buy books for kids. They do things that matter with their wealth and matter of fact, that’s most wealthy people.

It’s really hard to believe that if you’re not wealthy yet, but I can share with you, after I had my big breakthrough and I started learning how to build more value in the marketplace, everything shifted for me. For the first time in my life I had money. The funniest thing is, I didn’t even know what to do with it, because I never had it before so it was just there. 

Guess what? I started finding things to do with it, no problem, as you will. But those things I found to do with money, they didn’t tear me from my family or make me a bad person. I gave more to charities. I spent more time with my family. I could take them on vacations. We could go to the Caribbean together. I could do things for people I love, little gifts, treats and acknowledgements that made them feel happy.

I found ways to utilize it that made me happy and now I had no negative associations to it anymore. So, all I can encourage you to do if you have any hooks or negativity about rich people, or about wealthy people or about the top 1, 2, 5, 20, 30, 50%. If you have any negative thoughts about people in general, it’s time to clear those up and try to rewrite your own meaning about what it would take and what it would be to have wealth in your life.

2.     I think the second thing you already know, I just want to make sure you’re doing that, is that you are automatically investing.

If you’re not already doing that, please do that. It’s so simple. There are so many books on what you need to do. It just basically means, if you are in charge of putting money in your savings or into your investments, you’re in trouble. Because you’re never going to do it. And I’m not saying go hire somebody. It just means, when a check comes to you from your employer, have it automatically divert some funds to a savings account or investments account, so you never even see the money. You don’t have to write the check, you never see it, it’s just gone.

Just take 5 – 20%, whatever you can do, do something. Put it directly into savings or into an investment account. You can ask your banker about it. You can ask anybody about it. You can read tons of books, like The Automatic Millionaire or Money Masters. You can learn how to do this. All it means is you just never see the money, because if you’re in charge you’ll forget or you’ll say, 'this month i’m not going to do it,’ and then for four months you don’t invest and put your money away.

Warren Buffet was asked, what would he do if his family didn’t have money? What advice would he give them? He said, ‘you know what, to take whatever extra money they do have and put it in an index fund.’ Index funds beat the market over a period of time almost always, not always, but over a period of time they’re one of the safest investments. So put your money there. If you don’t know anything just keep putting money there and over a period of time it seems to do pretty good. It usually seems to work.

You can talk with any investment advisor or your banker to set it up so that your employer’s money comes to you or your business money comes to you, but not into your account. It comes to and through your accounts right into your money market fund, your index fund, and your savings. Just have it happen automatically so you’re never in charge of that money, because if you’re in charge of it you know what you do. You spend it or you lie to yourself and say, 'one day I’ll put it in there and it’s not earning money for you.’

Once your money is automatically placed in that investment account, that index fund or savings fund, it starts earning money for you and it’s working for you. 

Most Americans unfortunately, are going to retire with little to no retirement funds, because they never set it up automatically. Personally, I feel like it should be a political thing that people should have to do it as part of employment. It’s like make sure they’re guaranteeing their future will be okay, but I know that’s very controversial and the reality, now we have such a situation of so many people retiring with no money, not because they’re stupid or bad people, because they didn’t learn to beat human behavior.

Human behavior is to delay. Human behavior is to utilize resources now. So cut yourself out of the equation, and set up the process so that it happens automatically. Money is being diverted into your own account, earning money from you, setting you up. You have to do that.

3.     Third, I think it’s important for you to ask, 'how can I add more value in the time in which I serve?’

Meaning, if your day is eight hours a day for a company, how can you squeeze in more value in that eight hours? I don’t think it’s necessary for you to work 9-10-12-14-15 hours and, I think, for most people that’s a negative thing. It causes too much stress, too much lack of sleep, so their creativity goes down and their productivity goes down. But, if you’re working, within that time you’re working, how can you do a little bit more than the next guy or the next gal? How can you hustle a little bit more? How can you see the connections between what everybody else is doing in the company or what everyone else needs in the company and serve them?

How can you come up with a new idea for your clients, for your customers? It’s about adding more value in the marketplace in the same amount of time that gets you more productive and it gets you to be recognized more for what you’re doing. The janitor, who does more than just sweep the floors, but starts asking intelligent questions around the place in which they work to discover, how can we add more value, starts getting recognized more and soon gets other opportunities.

It’s time to add more value during the same amount of time that you are currently working. Most people are working at a mediocre level, and that’s not to be judgmental, it’s just the reality of the stats, the graphs or efficiency curves. You can tell, most people are just going through the motions in the day. They aren’t adding a tremendous amount of creativity or value they’re just doing what they were told. And so, if you can go beyond that… it’s like that old saying, ‘there’s no traffic beyond the extra mile.’ If you add a little bit more extra than anyone else is doing, you’re flying out there. You’re out there and you’re standing in a world by your own. You’ve gotten to a place where so few people can keep up with you they’re not even around.

People don’t try at work as hard as we think they do. It’s negative to say that, but we can see that from every single productivity study, efficiency studies at workplaces. Most people, because they don’t like their job, they aren’t giving to their job. 

But here’s the deal, what if you could teach yourself to like your job by giving more to your job?

What if you could learn to enjoy what you’re doing by thinking of new creative things to add to what you are doing? And by adding new creative things you start to get more results. By getting more results you usually get more recognition and rewards and you start to add value and eventually move on up or get paid more.

Now, in some cases that doesn’t happen, which is why I have this last point.

4.     Also, raise your standards for reward.

What do I mean by that? It’s like, if you’re a top contributor, if you’re what we call a high performer… many of you know I teach a program called High Performance Academy, I hope you attend it, it’s one of the best programs in personal and professional development in the US today. I can share with you, what we know at High Performance Academy, if you’re a higher performer, if you are giving and you are not being recognized it’s time to leave or to have a very honest conversation with the people around you and say look, ‘I’m giving a lot. I feel like I’m doing great value of service here and I don’t feel like I’m being compensated enough, so I need to have a forthright conversation of whether or not it’s time for us to revisit my contract or it’s time for me to leave.’

You have to have the boldness in life like that. If you are not being rewarded for your true contribution and you have to question it, because lots of people are entitled and say, ‘I’m contributing so much.’ And you look at it like no, you’re really not, you’re contributing the same as the 15 people around you. 

But if you’re really raising the bar on yourself and you’re really hustling and adding value then guess what? You deserve to be compensated. And if you’re not, it’s time to look for new places to go work. It’s time to look for new job opportunities or new employment or entrepreneurial opportunities.

Raise your standards. Raise the expectation. Raise your minimums. Raise your minimums of what you will allow in your life that is not good for you, do something that honors or respects you. Raise your minimums of what you expect out of your bank account. If your only expectation, if every month you’re like, ‘gosh I hope I’m going to have $500 in my bank account this month.’ You’re never going to become wealthy, ever! It’s mean to say that, especially when you’re there and I’ve been there. I’ve been in places where I couldn’t afford a burrito, so believe me I get it sucks when you don’t have money.

But if your only expectation is, ah you know, I hope I have $500 and every month you have $500 and you’re coasting through at $500, you’re never going to become wealthy. Because, at some point, you have to say, 'what is that number for me that I can aspire to and work myself into?' 

A lot of people who discover that six figure job, that $100,000 job, when you interview and ask them, how’d you end up at a six figure job? They all say the same thing. They say, 'I started looking for a six figure job.’ You’re like ’whoa!’ Isn’t that amazing?

How’d you end up in a six figure job? They started looking for jobs that were like that and they earned their way into it. They got the experiences or the results that were necessary to earn their way into it or, they just went buck wild crazy and started applying for jobs that were beyond their capabilities and some of them got lucky enough to get hired into them and that’s what happened. Sometimes to get paid at the next level you need to move your city, you need to move to another place, you need to move the employer, you need to quit, and you need to do something new.

But, you shouldn’t be afraid of doing something new that could potentially bring some new value, new lifestyle into your life experience. Sometimes you have to be bold, try new things, push the boundaries, and I think the more you do that with your career, your entrepreneurial opportunities, the way you look at money then you start to experience what we call, The Charged Life.

 Like this? Please share with your friends so that your loved ones can take control over their money and build the secure financial future that they deserve. - Brendon

Complement with “How to Add Stunning Value and Gain More Influence.”