Jayson Lowe examines why most Canadians don't get ahead financially, citing Nelson Nash's insight that there are only two income sources: people at work and money at work. He draws on Earl Nightingale's finding that just 5% of people achieve long-term success, and argues that fear of failure and conformity keep most people stuck.
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If the minority of the people in the world accumulate and control the wealth, why do we continue to do what the majority of the people do financially? If you really want to make a difference, you really have to find out what your purpose in life is.
Hi. Have you ever wondered why some people get ahead financially in life and other people don't? And, you know, they ended up. They end up being frustrated and feeling unsuccessful. And does it appear to you that, you know, the number of successful people financially is less than those that aren't successful? So it's just like, why? Why is there fewer successful people out there than those that aren't? That's what I'm going to talk about today. And to help me with that conversation and this little video, I'm going to use four people that I have a lot of respect for. One is Arnelson Ash, the author of the book called Becoming youg Own Banker, the Infinite Banking Concept. The second one is Earl Nightingale. And Earl is one of the earliest motivational speakers that I think you can go and listen to and learn from here. His way of expressing what he learned in life. And the third one is Denzel Washington. And when I think of Danzel, I just. I have a lot of respect for this actor that comes out of Hollywood and just, you know, the way he handles himself and just the way he gets back to people. And I think he's got some interesting insight for us that will just help us get a bit of a foundation around this whole thing. And the fourth one is Garnet Gunnison. And now Garnet's a businessman, lives in the U.S. he's wrote a couple of books. And today I'm just going to share a little bit from one of his books as we work through this little topic about why there's a smaller number of people that get ahead financially and why there's a larger group of people that end up frustrated in life and just feel like they were unsuccessful. So with that, let me start with one of those, you know, reading out of Nelson's book. And so it's just a section, a small little section that I thought I'd just read you about. And it's under points to consider that Nelson had put in his book. And I just thought this was an interesting piece for us all to consider, so I'll just read it. It's just a chapter. There are only two sources of income, people at work and money at work. In the typical American family through the first half of the 20th century, the father worked outside the home and the mother managed the home, nurturing the family and instilling spiritual values as the children matured. Now it's widely accepted that a family can't make it without both spouses working outside the home. It takes two incomes just to make ends meet. Could it be a fact that the modern family has no money at work? So when you think about that, that's just kind of a key statement. The modern family has no money at work. Now the last thing I want you to take from that is that, you know, men should work outside the home and women should stay home. No, it's just about the family. Whether it's the woman working outside the home doesn't matter. If the family doesn't have money at work, it puts them in a predicament in a place that it's really difficult to get ahead. So that was the first bit that I wanted to share with you related to what I've learned from that particular author and a great man and just one who developed and taught people how to get ahead in life through the utilization of becoming your own bank. It's something that if you don't know about it, I'm just going to encourage you to take a few minutes. Here in Canada we have a great program that's called Watch I B C.
And that's a 90 minute video that you can just go to. It's going to give you all the background you need on his concept. Now secondly, I wanted to speak about Earl Nightingale. Now if you've never heard of Earl Nightingale, I'm going to encourage you to go to YouTube and put in just this statement, the Strangest Secret in the World, and look for the one that comes up. The Strangest Secret in the World by Earl Nightingale. Now that's an audio because it was done before. I don't know if there was much video when he shot that, but it's an audio. You get to listen to him speak. And he speaks about 30 minutes long and he talks about the strangest secret in the world. But the part that I wanted to share with you today is early on in that audio presentation that Earl did, he spoke about what we're talking about today, success versus lack of success. And he had done some research and the numbers that he came up with were out of a group of a hundred people, when they leave college or university and they're going, you know, they got all their life ahead of them, they've got great plans, they're inspired, they're going to set the world on fire and, you know, accomplish great things. There's only 5% of that group, when they get to the. Towards the end of life, that will be a success. 5%. What happened to the other 95% makes you wonder, you know, why is it that so few people get ahead financially in life and a lot more people are. Are unsuccessful? So Earl, when he talked in that audio, he talked about conforming the pressures of life and how we end up conforming to what others do. Now, there's a great quote, and this is by one of the four people that I wanted to speak about today, and that's Garrett Gunnerson. And it's like, if the minority of the people in the world accumulate and control the wealth, why do we continue to do what the majority of the people do financially? And I think when you think about that quote by Garnet, it just makes you think about, you know, we get busy in life. There's lots of pressures coming at us all the time. And, you know, we end up conforming to what people around us are doing. And, you know, we get into jobs and we feel constricted. You know, I gotta have this job. I gotta pay the bills. And we start to lose something throughout life as we conform to the world. So I just thought, now I'm just gonna do a bit of a share of a little video clip, and I'm only gonna show just over 30 seconds of Denzel Washington speaking to a graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania. That'd be Penn. And, you know, I would be pretty thrilled if I was one of those grads and someone like Denzel Washington was speaking to us. So I just took a little bit of it, and I just thought, well, let's have a look at it.
The point is, every graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed. But do you have the guts to fail? Here's my second point about failure. If you don't fail, you're not even trying.
I'll say it again. If you don't fail, you're not even trying. My wife told me this great expression. To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did. Les Brown's a motivational speaker. You made an analogy about this. He says, imagine you're on your deathbed, and standing around your deathbed are the ghosts representing your unfulfilled potential. The ghost of the ideas you never acted on, the ghost of the talents you didn't use. And they're standing around your bed angry, disappointed and upset. They say, we came to you because you could have brought us to life. They say, and now we have to go to the grave together. So I ask you today.
How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes?
So do you wonder when you get towards the end of the life and you're reflecting, how many opportunities will you feel that you missed in life? I know I'm going to have a few when I sit there and reflect on things. And a lot of time. Why is that? Well, I think Denzel did a great job during that address to that graduating class. And it's about the fear of failure, or when you fail, that's it, you quit. And one thing I really appreciated about, you know, that address that he does is that he talked about how many times he failed before he ever broke through. And the other thing is, it was something that he had a passion for and he just stuck with it. He didn't give up. And I think that's a big part of what happens for us, is we give up. We try something and it fails, or we hit a bit of a roadblock and we give up. That was one of the huge differences that Denzel spoke about, because he spoke about it from a place of intensity, because he had lived it. He talked to that class about how many times he'd been turned down when he had auditioned for parts and how yet. Because he stuck with it. Because it's something he had a passion for. Stuck with it. And he got to a point where he's been used across the world in just a great way, and he still is being used. So that's something I think we can reflect on. When we think about why some people get ahead financially and why some don't, it's because we're fearful. We don't take risks. We don't want to fail. So we just don't do things that we could have done. And we end up with all these opportunities at the end of life that we never grasped hold of. So that's just some food for thought. Now, next, I just wanted to go and speak a bit about some of the information about got from Garrett Gunnerson. Now, Garrett wrote two books, and they're both great reads, and I'd highly recommend that you go get them. One is what Would the Rockefellers Do? And the other one is Killing Sacred Cows. That's the one I want to read a bit from today. And it's just about financial myths. So he goes through that book just breaking down different myths that are out there and helping people, again, think and understand how they could do things differently than what the majority of people are doing. Again, if this quote that talks about if the minority control the wealth, why do we continue to do what the majority do financially? So I'm just going to read some of what Garrett put in his book and I'm going to read from page 238 and it's just a few words that I wanted to share with you. And he wrote, I believe that every person trapped inside the destructive power of myths has an innate sense that he or she is capable of much more than this state allows. Everyone stuck in a dead end job, everyone afraid to leave a bad situation for fear of losing benefits, everyone dependent on how government or a corporation does, everyone that watches there, he says 401K. That's a American.
Terminology. So here it's like your pensions, your RSPs, and realizes that that's not going to do for them what they thought they were promised. All these people know deep down that something is wrong with what we've been taught. And really when you think about that, that's where a lot of people get to. They realize that, hey, this isn't going to be the solution. So what do I need to do differently? Well, Garrett goes on to say, if you really want to make a difference, you really have to find out what your purpose in life is. So start there, there's the opportunity. Start with your purpose. And if you figure out what your purpose is, then you're going to have the desire and the confidence to go forward. So just a few questions that he put in his book that you could ask yourself to help you understand what your purpose might be. He starts off with a great one and I love this one. If you ask yourself, if money were no concern, what would you spend your time doing? What a great comment. Think about that and just put some thought into that. If money were no concern, what would you be spending your time doing? That gives you a real insight as to what, what makes you tick, what your purpose may be, and just a good place to go to. Another part is what do you believe in and consistently talk about? That's another question you can ask yourself, what do you believe in? He goes on to state, so what are your values? What are your priorities in life? What opportunities or circumstances do you currently have that may be helpful creating value for others? And how many people and what people do you know that are tremendously successful? One of the things I've always heard, and it's true, is that find people that have already done something, they're always successful and you know, really just start to adapt what they're doing in their life and, you know, ask them questions. A good mentor, someone that has already accomplished what you want to do would be a good place to go. And the other thing that I wanted to share with you today was just some more words from Nelson in his book. See, with Nelson, for him, he got to a place in life where he was, you know, in financial straits. He had a huge debt and you can read all about it in his book. He had accumulated over 500,000 in debt way back in the 1980s. And it was a real problem when interest rates jumped up to 21.5% prime and he had this huge debt. And then he discovered that he could do things differently. And he discovered this concept through that period of time where things were really difficult for him. I'm not going to go into the whole book, but I want to go back to read a little piece that really can hopefully give you some good insight as to what is it going to take. Because two things I'm going to start with page 13 of his book and he has a little quote here after he really realized that, hey, I'm in a bit of a situation. I've got all this debt. Honest introspection revealed that I could revise my spending pattern. That's kind of a key insight because what I wanted to share with you, I've come across a lot of people as I've, you know, talked and coached people and taught people about the infinite banking concept. And people get to a place where they go, hey, you know, this is something I could see myself using. But they don't start. And because they start looking at, well, you know, how am I going to start to capitalize my system? What am I going to need to do differently? And that gets to be a real block for them. And I just wanted to share with what Nelson experienced. He had to sincerely look at how he was spending money and make a decision in the short term to gain for the long term to really revise his spending pattern. Because in another part of his book, and it's just a worthwhile piece to read and it's on page 65 when he talks about. So, you know, you are convinced that this is something you want to do. And this is where, you know, I've seen people get you, they go, okay, this would be a great platform tool to have in my life to use to make a difference for me and my family. And they say, how do I get started? Well, the most important word that ness Nelson's words, again, that comes to his mind was desire. Without it, you probably can't do it. Remember Parkinson's Law? That's a great law if you don't know about it. And if you don't know about it, we've got some great videos on our channel that you can learn about Parkinson's Law or you can go look it up. And that law really speaks about basically wired in a way that as income rises, our expenses rise to meet that new level of income and you never get ahead. So that's one thing to remember. And Nelson says here, everyone is already spending all financial resources on what he or she thinks is best. There's got to be an honest introspection at this point and a commitment to get out of financial prison. And it must be a burning passion. So it's about changing priorities in life and recognizing that controlling the banking function personally is the most important thing that can be done in your financial world. If you understood what Nelson taught, you would get to that place where you understood that if you can control the banking function as it relates to your needs. So instead of having money constantly flowing away from you to someone else's bank, you get it flowing back towards yourself. And again, that's just a key principle that he taught. So with that, I just hope that you can see some of the reasons why, you know, some people are successful financially in life and where a greater majority aren't. And I hope through that you can just encourage yourself to go on and make a difference for you and for your family. Educate yourself, get a great coach, find someone to help you on this journey. And again, just take some more content in off of our channel. It's just going to help you. Nobody gets hurt by learning something new. Have some honest skepticism in whatever you do financially in life, but open your mind and look for who's done it successfully, why and how, and educate yourself. So with that, I just wish you well. Thank you.
