Reacting to the Iconic 'Stop It!' Skit by Bob Newhart

In my mind, I recognized years ago that if the majority of the people are struggling and the minority of people are successful in achieving the goals and the aspirations that they're after, then I need to stop doing what the majority is doing, and I need to start doing what the minority is doing.

Dr. Switzer?

Yes, come in. I'm just. Just washing my hands.

I'm Katherine Bigman. Janet Carlisle referred me.

Oh, yes.

Buried Alive in a box.

Yes. Yes, that's me. Me. Should I lay down?

Oh, no, no, no. We don't. We don't do that anymore. Just. Just have a seat and let. Let me tell you a bit about our. Our billing. I. I charge $5 for the. For the first five minutes and. And then absolutely nothing after that. How does that sound?

That sounds great. Too good to be true, as a matter of fact.

Well, I can. I can almost guarantee you that. That our session won't last the full five minutes. Now, we don't do any insurance billing, so you would either have to pay in cash or by check.

Wow. Okay.

And I don't make change.

All right.

Go.

Go.

Well, tell me. Tell me about the problem that you wish to address.

Oh, okay. Well, I have this fear of being buried alive in a box.

I just. I start thinking about being buried alive and I begin to panic.

Has anyone ever tried to bury you alive in a box?

No.

No.

But truly thinking about it does make my life horrible. I mean, I can't go through tunnels or be in an elevator or in a house. Anything boxy.

So what you're saying is you're claustrophobic?

Yes. Yes, that's it.

All right.

Well, let's go. Katherine, I'm going to say two words to you right now. I want you to listen to them very, very carefully. Then I want you to take them out of the office with you and incorporate them into your life.

Shall I write them down?

Well, if it makes you comfortable. It's just two words. We find most people can remember them.

Okay, you ready? Yes.

Okay, you're there. Stop it.

I'm sorry.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Yes. S, T, O, P. New word it.

So, what are you saying?

You know, it's funny. I say two simple words, and I cannot tell you the amount of people who say exactly the same thing you're saying. I mean, this. You know, this is not Yiddish, Catherine. This is English. Stop it.

So I should just. Stop it.

There you go. I mean, you don't want to go through life being scared of being buried alive in a box, do you? I mean, that sounds Frightening.

Then stop it. I can't.

I mean, it's been with me since your child.

No, no, we don't go there. Just stop it.

So I should just stop being afraid of being buried alive in a box?

You got it. Good girl. Well, it's only been. It's only been three minutes, so that will be $3.

I only have a five, so.

Well, I. I don't. I don't make change.

Then I. I guess I'll take the full five minutes.

Fine. All right, well, what other problems would you. Would you like to address?

I'm bulimic. I stick my fingers down my throat.

Stop it.

Not of some kind. Don't do that.

But I'm compelled to. My mom used to call me.

No, no, no, we don't go there.

But I've been having this dream.

No, we don't go there either.

But my horoscope did say we definitely don't go there.

Just.

Just stop it.

What?

What.

What else?

Well, I have self destructive relationships with men.

Stop it.

You. You want to be with a man, don't you?

Mm.

Mm.

Yes.

Well, then stop it.

Don't be such a big baby.

I wash my hands a lot.

That's all right.

I wash my hands all the time. There's a lot of germs out there. Yeah, don't worry about that one.

I'm afraid to drive.

Well, stop it.

How are you gonna get around? Get in the car and drive, you. You kook.

Stop it.

You'll stop it. You'll stop it.

What's the problem, Kathy?

I don't like this. I don't like this therapy at all. You're just telling me to stop it.

And you don't like that?

No, I don't.

So you think we're moving too fast, is that it?

Yes. Yes, I do.

All right, then let me give you 10 words that I think will clear everything up for you. You want to, want to get a pad and a pencil for this one?

Right.

Are you ready?

Right.

Here are the 10 words. Stop it or I'll bury you alive in a box.

I'm sure I've seen that before, but it's been years. It's a great skit because there's an honesty behind it that highlights human stupidity. It's a humorous take on a really serious problem with human psyche when sometimes we get stuck in negative cycles because, oh, this is how it's always been done. And so you. You get sucked down that train of thoughts. And then someone from outside your circle of influence sees this and goes why are you doing that to yourself? Maybe they don't say stop it, but maybe they probably knock you upside the head in some fashion to wake you up in.

Yeah.

What was interesting as I thinking about this and like, I haven't watched this before and it's so funny because my wife and I, like, every once in a while, whatever, whether it be talking to someone else, like, this is one of our favorite videos, even though we haven't watched it a long time. But like, we just. You just remember it because it's really easy. It's only two simple words to stop it. And so whether it's something that we're talking about together, we'll just use it as a joke that comes up naturally in conversation, or it's someone that we're communicating with. And then we'll use that. We'll just say we'll stop it, but like in earshot of one another. So it's like a joke of ours. And then, like, you know, it's. It's a way that I can get her to laugh about something that brings you back to that video. And usually it's for something silly, stupid, irrational, or whatever that's going on. And I think about the idea of panic, fear, and like, irrational behavior and specifically around, like, markets. Nelson asked, you should talk about stock market graphs. It is common for investment advisors, you know, who sell, whether it's, you know, mutual funds or stock market stuff, like whatever that is, stuff that's tied to some index or market behavior. And you see, you know, you see the up and down lines. But what you see if you look at it is you see this trend line. There's a trend line there, but the trend line doesn't take into consideration those big gaping divots where the market crashes. And it's like, oh, what if that's your retirement date? And so I think about the people that we meet with every once in a while. And they talk about that we have in conversations with them. They talk about their experiences of loss, where they've made an investment decision and they lost a bunch of their money or it didn't work out as planned. And so Nelson called that big graph the mountain wave graph of lies, because it looks like a mountain range. Every once in a while, I'm meeting with people and they've got their money wrapped into these things. They don't have any knowledge base necessarily. They're not an expert on funds or the stock market. They haven't taken a course. They're not like an active trader, but they've got their money tied up in there. And all I hear is the stories about how it never seems to work out. Hey, they were up and now they're down. The result. Is that the definition of insanity? They're doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And in my brain, all I want to do is I just picture Bob Newhart going, stop.

Really is the definition of insanity, though? I mean, if traditional wealth creation teachings, if they truly worked, why are there so many people struggling? Why are there so many people living paycheck to paycheck or credit card to credit card? Why are there so many people that never can seem to get off that financial hamster wheel if the traditional advice worked? Doesn't make sense, right?

And then you get all these frustrations, and it's like they tell you, oh, well, you know, every time I do this, all the market crack, oh, I'm so worried. I'm just petrified in fear. These are those people who are just fearful, and they don't ever put their money or invest it in anything because they just sit on the sidelines. It's like, well, you don't want to go through life not being able to get any gains on your money that you're saving, do you? Stop it. Well, you don't want to go through life worrying about constant fear of the market destroying everything that you've built. Stop it. And then there's even, like, the people who, they're constantly dealing with the regular banking system. Well, you don't want to go through life constantly irritated and angry with your bank about charging you fees for this and charging you for that and making it difficult for you to access their pile of money by going through nosy, frustrating, irritating loan applications, which I hear about that stuff all the time. The type of line of work that we are. Like, you and I have another video. I'm sure we can point to it here, where we did a little rant on some of our personal banking experiences that we've had in 2023. In fact, the other day we were on the phone and you were, you were telling me an update to that story, which we probably don't need to get into here, but. But you're just dealing with banks in general. Right.

But just to jump in there really quickly, I did stop it. I was mistreated by my bank, and I believe that they didn't understand that, that I have options. And when you mistreat your customer and there was no effort on their part to make it right, I fired their butts. Big time and went and found another financial institution to manage movement of money. And, and I hinted to you in that video that I need to get my button gear and create an IBC policy that's corporately owned as well, which I still have to move on. But there are certain logistics that are like, like preventing me from moving forward on that right now. But regardless, I didn't stop it.

Every time you look at your bank statement and you see payments going to a third party lender, which I don't think happens for you whole like of a lot but for a lot of clients I imagine they're just going to look at their banks and it's like ah, I got to stop it. And it's like yeah, stop the flow of money going to those guys. Move it to an entity that you co own, start doing business with an insurance carrier that you co own so that you can see the advantage and the benefit and just like the simplicity of that. There's also people who, you know, they learn about Nelson's process becoming our banker. They start in the journey, whether it's through your YouTube videos, whether they go to watchibc.com or something like that, which is a great resource we have for people, they start going down the process, they begin learning, they start their journey, they get going with their coach and then they start taking policy loans which is a way of accessing capital from a third party, being the insurance carrier which you co own and then beginning to implement this process of activity that you do in your day to day life. That's what the banking part is. But they're not actually making loan repayments, they're not being an honest banker. They're doing what Nelson Nash talks about in his book of the grocery store where they're, they're taking the peas out the back door. And so that's another activity where hey, if you're doing this process, stop that. You need to be an honest banker. You need to start putting peas back on the shelf. I just think that this is an interesting video. I recognize there's so many areas where this plays out in life much more than what I used to just communicate with my wife about. And I love your analogy of how you actually are stopping to work with that one financial institution. I mean kudos to you for taking that initiative and more and more people I think need to do that. It's easy to go get advice everywhere but it's a whole nother thing to just swallow the red pill and just take it and get started, you know, get the process going well.

Very kind of you to say that, Rich, but I feel like we almost need to encourage people to zoom out. A lot of people don't recognize that they have to stop it because they're in a cycle doing something that everyone does, that everyone has always done. Everyone deals with a bank, everyone gets loans from a bank, and when they go to the bank, they have someone standing there waiting to serve them with a big smile on their face and they're greeted cordially and they're treated with professionalism and they just know that this is the way things are done because they haven't stopped their to think outside of the box, zoom out and think, wait a second, what do the extreme minority successful portion of the population, what do they do differently? Because in my mind, I recognized years ago that if the majority of the people are struggling and the minority of people are successful in achieving the goals and the aspirations that they're after, then I need to stop doing what the majority is doing and I need to start doing what the minority is doing. The whole stop it is like, yeah, but everybody has to work with a bank, Rich. Everybody has to have a banker. Everybody has to take out a line of credit or a credit card or like, because they haven't taken a moment to stop and say, wait a second, let's just question the status quo. Let's zoom out and see if there's another creative solution to the problem, which is, who is controlling my money? Who is controlling my capital? We always geek out over this stuff. And I happen to mention to you and a bunch of people that I recently watched the Ramit Seti Netflix special on financial education where he financially coaches random people on how he can help them improve their financial situation. And we're talking about one of the world's most successful financial thought leaders. And he's brilliant. He's extremely good at what he does, very successful in himself, and helps encourage people to get out of financial messes. However, in the entire Netflix series doesn't talk about banking once. And every single one of those people he was coaching were working with banks.

That's a big problem that exists with that bank. And it's interesting, I know you're like a Star wars fan too. So I envision like the Mandalorian or whatever. And he's like pointing at this book and saying, this is the way.

Hell yeah. We'll do a whole video on how Star wars relates to the image making concept.

You know, I, I could see it. There's, there's like a whole like the Galactic Empire oppression oriented thing.

And then you know, traditional financial institutions.

Yeah, you got like these, these Clone wars, like that's the people that work at all these banks, they're just clones of one another because it doesn't matter if you go to that bank or that bank, they're all doing the same thing and they're nice people, they're doing a great job. Except they're basically all doing the same thing. They're, they're reading from the same sheet of music. It's all cookie cutter. And here you are the person that is practicing the concept of infinite banking. You're the Rebel alliance, you know, like you're out there to try to make change so that people can have more autonomy and independence in their financial life. Hey man, if you're practicing infinite banking concept, you're a small minority in a great big ocean of people doing everything else. And cheaple to some degree.

Using Star wars analogy, I feel like believing in Austrian economics would be akin to believing in the Force because there are plenty of people in that Star wars universe that thinks the Force is just a fake religion or a fantasy, it doesn't exist. But people who do believe in the Force or Austrian economics, they're the ones that seem to gain the traction and the leverage and the advantage that everyone is seeking after. But only certain people are going to sit down and study the ways of the Force and learn how money actually works. And then other people are going to be like, ah, you guys know what you're talking about. Because I mean, I've seen the comments on your videos and Baker's Vaults and the Wealth Without Bay street podcast and there are clearly some mindset issues out there where people are so close minded they got the blinders on, they're the horse with the blinders. And they can't see anything outside that purview. They can't see any. And nothing exists outside their bubble. They're the ones that are sadly going to suffer in the long run.

Right, well, I'm glad that I don't work for the Empire. That's all I can say about that. So with that in mind, Andrew, thanks for being with me here. We got some more kickass videos right there. Go ahead, click on that. Watch it.