Dean Graziosi urges listeners to identify and reframe the personal "stories" that limit growth. He explains that the narratives that served earlier stages (getting out of hardship or achieving initial success) may block future scaling and must be examined, traced to their origins, and intentionally upgraded. Through candid reflection and personal anecdotes—about a critical teacher, early businesses, and buying a snowmobile—he illustrates how stories anchor fear (especially around selling) or drive momentum, and he encourages shifting perspective from blame to service-oriented action.
Chapters
What's the story? Where do you think that story came from? Who's to blame about that story? Who took advantage of you? Who? Who. Who did something sideways that put something in here? Maybe it's your parents to blame. It doesn't matter. It's not. We're not putting blame on them. We're finding the root cause so we could snip it. Remember, your story is your life. So how has this affected you? Has it been empowering as it brought you to a whole nother level? Or is it created regret? Has it created lost opportunity? Has it held you back from being who you were supposed to be, the woman that God, the man, that God, designed you to be, your full potential? What has it cost you? What is it? How has it affected your life? Let's just be honest. Real and raw. And I don't want you to think as I'm sharing this, thinking your life is pathetic and everything's screwed over. No, but if you're here, you're. You're either moving away from something that's painful or you want to move towards another level. We're just all on this journey. If we're not climbing, we're sliding. I truly believe that. If we're not growing, we're dying. So you're just on this journey. And the story. Please hear this. The story that gets you out of Egypt is not the story that will take you to the promised land. I want to tell you the story that helped me start my businesses is not the same story. So when I got to a hundred or to a million a year, it's not the same story I had when I had one employee. When I went to 50 employees, I had to adapt a new story. When I got nervous about scaling bigger and doing a company that, you know, tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars in revenue and. And people and worldwide and all this crazy stuff and partners. And I was scared to death. I had to revisit and say the story that got me to a million a year. Not the same story that could take me to 50 million a year. It's not the same story. I had to upgrade my story. I had to pick apart that story. I had to figure out where that story came from. I want you to write down what is the current story? Where did that story come from? Who's to blame? How did that get anchored in? And how's it affected your life? You've probably heard this before. You've probably thought about your story. Yeah. Yeah. It's a story holding me back. But I hope you see and I hope I've served you well today by this evolution of really digging in deep to not only identify the story, but identify the reason that that story is yours. Because when we do, we can find a way to disconnect with it a little later on. This is the foundation of life. This is the foundation of success. This is when we address the truth as we uncover what's held us back. We're identifying. You can't fix the problem. You can't go to the next level until you identify where you are. You know, kids, especially when curve balls start. I'm just going to digress here a second. When curveballs start, especially kids about 12, 13 years old right now are throwing 60 miles an hour curveballs, it's hard to hit. Kids get scared, right? If you walk up saying, oh, my God, I've struck out the last game, it's going to be a curveball that's going to be hard to hit. You will strike out 100% of the time. They said, you got to tell your brain, I'm hitting this time. This is mine. I can't wait for this pitcher to throw me that ball. I can't wait for him to throw me a curve so I can hit it. And that mindset shifts everything. If you go into every phone call saying, oh, my God, I don't close. I can't even get in their home. And when I do, I can't get them to say, yes, maybe I can close this one. You never will ever. So recognize that story we talked about, the positive point. You're pointing at the downed tree. You're pointing at the thing that could flip you over. There's no way you'll ever shift that. That's number one. Number two, I want you to think about this. You want to take away the fear of selling. First off, sell something you love. So I want you to look at through a different lens. You're doing them a disservice if you don't get to say. Get them to say yes, because they might not get in the best shape. They might not get the deal. They might not have the happiness. Whatever it is that you're offering, don't make it about you. If you walk in there thinking, can I sell them? That puts too much pressure on you. Your job is to go in and serve them, to make them feel good. If you make it about them, you'll never sell a day in your life. If you're one of those people thinking, I'm a story, I'm going To call bs. It doesn't matter if life's okay if you're here, you want more. There is a story that got you here. It's a new story that takes you there. We are going to continue this journey and we're going to really identify this with, going to put some pain on it, but we're going to also see why we're going through these stories and how we can use them as fuel, not the anchor. Because the easiest thing for you to do is continue the story and say, I can't believe I just wasted seven years of my life with that stupid story. I'm so dumb. And you just, you create another. You replace a crappy story with another crappy story and then you get another seven years. Mrs. Thompson, I remember you said, you'll never amount to anything. You're dumb, you're not working hard enough, you're not sounding it out. It's right in front of you. You're. She was judging me through a bad scorecard. I still can't read a book and comprehend it, but I listened to a book a week and I can remember almost the entire book. She didn't take the time to say, oh, you can't visually read. What about listening? What about watching, right? She was just going. She was looking through her lens with her own story. And I remember, I remember this, and this is not being rude to Ms. Thompson, but this really helped me right out of high school. That was seventh grade. And with the year out of high school, I'd already started a firewood business and a car business and I was doing pretty well. Literally. I was making more than my mom and dad. I was making more than any teacher. By the time I was 19 years old and I had gone, I'd love snowmobiling my whole life. And I didn't have the money to go snowmobiling. And When I was 19, I went and bought a $6,000 snowmobile and I paid cash for. And it was from my hard work of working on cars and all the things I was working on. I remember there was a snowstorm in my little town. Sorry I never told this story before and might even come across a little rude, but I'm in this little town, it's snowing like crazy, and I drive my snowmobile on the roads and everybody did back then. You'd pass the cops, they'd wave to you. I stopped at a light and I was next to Mrs. Thompson and I remember she was in an old beat up Ford Escort and it was 10 years old, and it was a disaster. Like, there was crap stacked up in the back seat and she just looked miserable in a car that was worth maybe 500 bucks. And I wasn't like, ha, ha. I just remember thinking, wow, I let her intimidate me. She judged me. Probably because she went home and hated her home, hated her own life. Or she thought maybe she wasn't smart enough to do something more. I don't know what her story was, but I remember not being like, ha, I'm richer than you. It was more like, wow, we gotta watch who judges us.
