THE MINDSET OF HIGH ACHIEVERS | T. Harv Eker

He's an author, businessman, and motivational speaker known for his theories on wealth and motivation. He's the author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, which appeared on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. He founded the seminar company Peak Potentials Training. He's T. Harv Eker, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

Money is a result. Okay, that's what everybody doesn't understand. Money is a result. You're the cause, that's the effect. You are the root of your success. People ask, say to me all the time, "Hey, Harv, how do I be successful? How do I be a success?" I say, "If you wanna be a success, you have to be a success. You have to be the success.

When you are the success, then everything you touch will be a success." Everyone can be rich, actually, but a lot of people say, "Well, I don't really wanna be rich. I don't wanna do what it takes to be rich, but I wanna be comfortable." Now, that's a problem right there, by the way, 'cause comfort and convenience are the kiss of death to success. So you have to be willing to be uncomfortable in order to grow. And all that means is that you're going to be able to do something different than you've been doing before. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always got. You got to switch it up. But that's the problem, isn't it? The problem is most people can't switch it up. They want to, and they will for exactly one day. And if they're good, maybe two days. But it's hard to keep it up.

Why?

Because we're creatures of habit. You will need to change your habits. Don't try to change them all at once because it won't happen. You're going to have to change one main habit at a time. Now, if you can just change one habit, I promise you this, your life will change.

I just want entrepreneurs to know, number one, you're in the right place at the right time, but it has to be the right you in the right place at the right time. Number two, very— why I say that is because the definition of an entrepreneur or a person in business or even a person in a job is a person who Solves problems for people at a profit or for pay.

So what are you?

You are a problem solver. The biggest mistake almost everyone makes in the world of business and finance and money is they go out and they look for opportunities. Bad move.

Go ahead, what's an opportunity? How do you know?

It's almost impossible to find, right? So Don't look for opportunities. Look for problems. Look for problems. Solve a specific problem for a specific person. Duplicate that. The end result is rich. If you want to be rich, don't focus on money. Don't focus on rich. Focus on solving a problem, a specific problem for a lot of people.

Imagine for a moment you're with a 5-year-old child and you're walking down the street and you come across this ice cream store. And you go into the ice cream store and you order this single scoop of ice cream on a cone because they don't have any cups. Now, you give it to the child and of course, because they're only 5 years old, they have little hands and they kind of just wobbling out the door. And just as they're out, you know, as they're going out the door, the door hits their hand and the scoop of ice cream falls on the ground. Of course, they get very upset. They begin to cry. And being the kind and generous person that you are, what do you do? You go back into the— go into the store.

And just as you're about to order this other scoop of ice cream, the child sees the poster of the triple scooper on the wall.

And they go, "I want that triple scoop." And now, because you're a kind and generous person, what do you do? Do you now get them the triple scoop or you don't? No, of course not. Why would you set them up to fail? They couldn't even handle one scoop. What are you gonna load them down with, three scoops now? Now you might be laughing, except for one thing. There's a universe, the universe, and the universe has a principle of management. And the universe says this: until you show you can handle what you've already got, You won't get any more. The Bible says the same thing. To he who hath, more shall be given. Most people are running around with one or two scoops dripping all over the place. They have a financial mess on their hands and they have no foundation and they go, what? Give me more. Give me more. Give me more. And the universe, in its support of you, is saying, "Not until you clean that up." Every decision you make comes from you.

It's your decision.

So whether you make a lot of money or a little money are a result of the choices that you make and the actions that you take, right?

So they all come from the root of you.

So literally, we're talking about the possibilities of when you invest in yourself, when you invest in your mindset, your attitude, when you invest in your character, when you invest in learning more about your habits and changing those habits, when you invest in your personal development, you know, you're going to take a shortcut to that success. Because as I said, it could take 20, 25 years to get a big return on your financial investment, but how long does it actually take to get a return on your personal growth investment? Well, it's different for everybody. It depends on what kind of tree you are. Alright, what do I mean by that? There are some trees that when you plant the seeds, they just sprout the next year. They go from, you know, from nothing to 2 feet in a year, and then they just keep on going. And they grow to a certain height, okay?

Let's say this height.

But then there's other trees. Take the bamboo tree, for example. You know the bamboo story, where basically you plant the bamboo seed, And a year later you come back and you check on your bamboo tree and there is no tree. How come? Because it's still under the ground. 2 years later you come back and you come check on your tree. No tree. There's nothing to see. 3 years later, no tree. 4 years later, no tree. You start to wonder, there's no tree here. This thing must not have taken hold. The 5th year you come back, not only do you see a tree, You see a tree that could actually be 50 feet high in only 1 year.

How come?

Because what was it doing for the 4 previous years? It was growing its roots really, really deep, really, really strong so that it could handle that extreme skyrocketing growth when it came out of the ground. So a lot of you are fast-growing trees from the very beginning. But you gotta have stamina. That's why you have to keep on working on yourself. You have to keep on investing in yourself so that you don't just grow and then plop over by the first wind that goes by. Right? And a lot of you are— you are bamboo trees. You are growing deep, deep roots. And then you're gonna all of a sudden sprout, grow really high, and you'll keep it because your roots are deep. One way or the other, you have to invest in yourself. You have to keep growing.

Play to win. Rich people play the money game to win. Poor and middle-class people very often play the money game not to lose. They play the money game on defense.

Playing it safe.

Yeah, they play on defense versus offense. Their big intention is to have enough to pay the bills, and on time would be kind of a miracle, right?

And you know what?

If your intention is to have enough to pay the bills, if you'll notice, that's exactly what you're going to get.

We're always looking for the complicated things to do. You know, look for— it's got to be complicated, it's hard, and success is hard. And you know, we sometimes get quite focused on making sure we do the hard things, but sometimes isn't it true that it's the easy things that we have that we could do that by not doing them, things become hard, things become difficult, life becomes difficult. So, the goal is to do the easy things in life. Here's an example. We all know that we should eat our vegetables, eat more greens, eat healthier. Is that a hard thing? Is that a complicated thing? No, it's a simple thing.

Do you do it?

Most people, no. They don't do it and they don't do it enough, so they give that up. A little bit of exercise, we know that.

Do we do it?

For most people, no. They don't necessarily do it. Calling people back, answering emails, being in integrity, keeping your word, being on time, keeping your agreements. I'll get this to you tomorrow. Do you do it? Well, hopefully you do. But most of the times we don't. And they're not hard, they're easy. But it's the easy things that we don't do that make life hard. So the big insight here is that things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.

When we come into the world, we come in as an empty vessel. You don't know anything, you've got no information. And here you are, this empty vessel, this empty glass. And all of a sudden you come into the world and The second you get into the world, you get filled up with information.

From who?

Everyone and everything all around you. So pretty soon, you are a factor, a result of this information. And so why do you think the way you think? Why does anybody think the way they think? Because of the information that's been stored in the files of your mind. Your mind is nothing more than a big old file cabinet. It stores information. And so literally, the only thing you can think is what's in the files of your mind. And the only thing that's in the files of your mind is what you learned, what you were told, the information that's in there. You cannot pull out a file of a file cabinet that's not there. And that's the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. Successful people have files in their file cabinet that are files that lead to success. When Donald Trump makes a decision, normally that decision results in success. So why is it that his decisions result in success? He has files in his mind that are success-based files, wealth-based files. It's normal, it's natural for him. It's natural for most rich people because they have files in their file cabinet called their mind that result in actions that result in success. Most people are the opposite. Why? Because most people learn about money, about success, about happiness from people who aren't successful, wealthy, and happy. So if that's what you learn, what do you expect? So what do you do? Well, you need to reprogram. You need to relearn. You need to put some new information in the files of your mind, and then you need to have some new actions from those files, and you will get You say, "Hey, Harv, it's easy for you to say that.

You're really rich." Well, you know what? I wasn't always rich. And it's because I did that, because I was willing to take a shot on me, that I am really rich. You know, I came from a place where I wasn't not only the nicest guy in the world, but I thought I knew it all, but I didn't know anything, right? I didn't know business. I thought I knew that, but obviously I didn't. I didn't, you know, I wasn't, I was a very angry guy. I was a very, you know, not very nice to people. I was out of balance. I was, you know, doing lots of things that were very poor habits. And literally, I learned how to succeed. That's the cool thing about this. You can learn to succeed at what?

At anything.

You can learn how to be a piano player. I don't know anything about piano, but I bet you in 1 year I could learn how to be a piano player.

How?

Well, you say, by practicing, right? Yeah, but I could practice for a whole year to learn song and it still might not even get it. Why don't I take a shortcut? What's the shortcut? Get a teacher. Get a professional piano teacher to teach me how to play piano. And in 1 year I could learn lots of songs. I could do that, you could do that. Anything you want to know and be good at, you can do. You can learn how to do it. Remember, every master was once a what? Every master was once a disaster. So you can learn anything. There's not one thing that, you know, that you want to get involved you're involved in. If you want more money, you can learn how to do that. If you want better relationships, you can learn how to do that. You want better health, you learn how to do that. You want a better you, just want to learn how to be happier, you can learn how to do that. Every one of those things is a learnable skill.

You know, one of the things that I've had running since Wealth and Wisdom is that it's true that, you know, the truth is that sometimes I don't feel fantastic. Sorry. Sometimes I don't, and sometimes I'm a little upset, a little frustrated. You know, I have the emotional parts that come out. Anybody else relate to any of this? Yes? Sometimes, once in a while? Well, let me say this right now. So I get a little support, and a little support comes in the form of these words: Don't forget to wear your awesome glasses. And those are glasses. That on the front of them, everything you look at through those glasses is what? Everything is awesome.

All right.

They're special glasses. You put them on, everything is awesome. Now the question is, does that work? The question is, is that a bunch of BS or can that actually translate into reality? How many of you say it can actually translate into reality? Why would it translate into reality? Because you have a choice. You're going to look at things a certain way anyways, yes or no? You don't have a choice about that. You're going to look at it a certain way. The only question is, can you remember to look at them in an awesome way? Can you look at the good in it? That's all you have to, you know, can you do that? And the awesome glasses help us do that. So everybody right now, I want you to take your glasses, hold them right here, look at them, and notice that they say "awesome" right on the glasses. Right, right on it. All over them. Everything's awesome about these glasses. Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to take these glasses and I want you to put them on. And I want you to see the world. I want you to look at your friends. And say you're what? You're awesome. Everything you look at through these glasses is what?

Awesome.

They're there to help you, to help remind you.

Yes?

Now again, we can make up a story that says, "Yeah, that's a bunch of crap." Or we can make up a story that says, "No, I choose to look at it." I look at life this way. And the question is, which is true and which is false? And the answer is neither are true or false. The answer is that the way you look at it is the way it is. Yes or yes? Nothing has meaning except for the meaning we what? So we choose to make, give it the meaning of awesome. We choose to give ourselves the meaning of awesome. We choose to make the program what? The program is going to be what? It has to be awesome. If you decide it's awesome, it's awesome. Now the question is, whether it is or it isn't, will you have a better time if it is? Will you feel better about you if you are? Will you feel better about the people beside you if you look at them as they are? Will you feel better about life if you look at it as awesome? Is there a good chance that because, because you are choosing to look at, make up that story and choose it as awesome, that more awesome things will be attracted to you because of that. More than if you looked at everything in the darkness and terrible. And what's going to happen then? What's going to be attracted to you? The same. I don't see anything that could be bad about this, but I can only see things that could be good about it. Whereas the opposite route, if you're not sure if this is working, then you have to put on your life is shit glasses and you get to wear that all the time. Now you choose because you have the ability to choose. God gave you the right to choose which glasses you're going to wear because you have to wear one of them.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Jeff Semper asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, Leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of T. Harv Eker's top 10 rules meant the most to you. Leave it in the comments. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.