Overcoming Financial Hardship During Chaotic Times - John Assaraf

Good morning. Now, is this coronavirus pandemic causing financial hardship in your life? This is one of the most challenging times that I can remember that people are having right now around finances. And it's not just money that's the issue. It's a combination of a variety of different things that are really driving people to be more stressed out than ever before. It's causing people to feel disconnected as opposed to connected, especially when you're on social media a lot and seeing so many people, you know, pretending that everything is okay. Well, let me tell you something. Everything is not okay for most people, all right? That's the bottom line truth. A lot of people are struggling mentally right now, emotionally right now, physically right now, financially right now, and in many cases, spiritually as well. And so to pretend that everything is okay and everything's going to be okay is not a wise mental and emotional state to be in. Now, I do believe that there are ways that you could end up being victorious over time, but you have to have the right mindset now, the right skill set now, and you certainly have to take the right actions into play. And so if you agree that there's a lot of financial hardship right now, give me a little sign. Either hit the like or the love button. Give me a little comment would be great. I want to be really serious about this topic today, and I'll share with you just some of my viewpoints on it. 17 million people lost their jobs in the first three weeks of this pandemic. Another 8 million are due to file or have filed in the last seven days. That means about 8% of just the United States states workforce, maybe 7% of the United States workforce or so is out of a job, and that is expected to climb to 10%. But if you take a look at what's happening financially, most people, you know, didn't have or don't have three months or six months or 12 months of cash in the bank for a rainy day like today. But now it's not just rainy. This is a freaking storm that's really hurting a lot of people. And so I want to have a little discussion and dialogue around what is the real situation for you. And I'm not expecting you to share your financial hardships, you know, on social media, But I do want to give you some tools to use as well. And I want to also let you know, I just started doing a free training series, either Travis, or every Friday last week, I did a series for free on how to train your brain to earn more income. This week I'm doing a session on Friday to be able to help you manage finances through this challenging time. Then I'm going to be doing a session for business owners managing their businesses through these crazy times and then 100 days to financial success. So if you want to sign up for it, there's a free link below. So in addition to today, the this Friday and next Friday, the Friday after, I'm doing some free sessions for you. So let's get back, okay, to what's going on right now. If you didn't have or don't have 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months of living capital, what do you think that's going to do to your brain? Right? And many of you know, mindset is what I focus on and managing emotions, of course, the strategies and tactics. But without having the right mindset and the right skill set, it's very, very challenging. And so what do you think is happening in your brain when this virus is threatening you to possibly have it? That's called what, an enormous amount of stress, right? So when there's a threat, there's enormous amount of stress. Cortisol's released. That anxious feeling is felt. What do you think happens to your emotions when you feel that way? Obviously they go out of whack and then you eat too much, you sleep too much, you do too many, too many drugs. You do things that calm you down and make you feel better, right? So you self medicate one way or the other through a variety of different means. What do you think is happening to your physical body under all that stress? It's freaking crazy, right? And then add on top of that financial stress that you need food, you need to pay your mortgage, your rent, your employees, you need to be able to see, okay, safety. And in the absence of being able to see your safety and your family safety, that causes an enormous amount of stress. So whenever we are feeling an enormous amount of stress, okay, whether it's the threat, stress like a predator is, may be coming to get you. The pandemic of this coronavirus may be coming to get you. If you get it, there's a certain percentage of people that are dying, okay? Now your life is on the line. So never in the history of our species have we had, okay, so many different threats coming at us at the same time. Would you agree with that? If you agree with that, just give me a little note or a little like, or a love or something to let me know that you are resonating with this message, okay? Because if we don't address the Real issues, the mental, the emotional, the physical, and the strategical and tactical of what to do. Most people will cave under the pressure and they'll be five years behind where they are right now. Instead of at least surviving, being safe and then saying, how do I get myself out of this? And how do I make myself 3 months, 6 months, 12 months from now better? Now let me share something with you. Not everybody, okay, is going to do well in this recession. I don't know how long it's going to be. 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. But those who learn how to manage their mindset and emotions and what they do will do better. Okay? Do better. There's only a small percentage of people that are going to do phenomenally well. And those are the ones that have been prepared for years to be in the position right now to be able to manage this. And so that's why I'm doing that free series that many of you have already signed up for. And I know a lot of you already showed up to last Friday's. There's another free session for about an hour this Friday and the next Friday, the next Friday. So my team will put a link for you if you want to sign up for it. And if you like this, please share it. So I want to give you a couple of tools right now. When we have an enormous amount of cortisol released in our bloodstream because our brain is under this constant state of threat, we can deal with it for a day, a week, two weeks. But this overabundance of adrenaline, this overabundance of threat ruins your adrenal glands and your ability to stay focused, to stay on high alert and to be in action. Many of you know, and I've given you all access to my free 9 inner sizes in here, the brain training audios to give you more focus, more calmness, less stress, etc. And if you didn't get it yet, on my pages, there's links to it. It's free. It's from my book Inner Size, which is a best selling book. There are inner sizes in there that are written, but I also created audios to give you for free. I can't do better than free other than do it for you. So my team will put a link for you for those who missed that as well. So when we're under an enormous amount of stress, the first thing you have to do, okay? And it's not hard to do, but that means it's also not hard not to do. The first thing you have to do is you have to calm yourself down. When we're under an enormous amount of stress, okay? The thinking part of our brain, the imagination part of our brain, okay, on solutions isn't working as well. Our imagination part of our brain is actually focusing, focusing on all of the negative. What if I lose my job? What if I have to close my business? What if I don't have enough money? What if I can't pay for food? What if I get the virus? What if I die? What if, what if, what if Negative. And let me tell you something, let's stop bullshitting each other and saying that, no, you are not going to get it. I'm not going to get it. I might get it. You might get it. That's just the damn fact. Now, can you do something to make sure you don't get it? Yes. Stay at home, okay? Quarantine yourself for the time being until we can figure some more stuff out and minimize, okay, the chances of you getting it so that we at least could take care of, you know, the really sick right now. Then whoever gets it, by that time, our systems should be able to take care of more people. Okay? But the first thing you have to do is you've got to get your mindset under control. You have to focus on the uncertainty, okay, that you might get it for a minute, a quick second, I might get it. What can I do about that? And then you focus on what do I do, okay, to manage my finances, okay? So since this particular session is about your finances, the first thing you have to do is you've got to get, okay, your mindset calm so you can respond instead of being in this reactive doom loop state of fear, anxiety, stress, uncertainty, unpredictability. When you are focusing on that stuff, you're working from a disadvantaged brain. Now, both of those options always exist. Stress is always within you. So is calmness. But you have to deliberately deactivate the stress response center in your brain. The emotional response center in your brain is called the amygdala. And whenever there's real or imagined threat, it fires off, okay, those neurotransmitters that cause you to feel stress. And so who's causing you to feel stress? It's not what you're watching on tv, it's the interpretation or the repetitiveness of what you're watching on TV or what you're reading or the discussions you're having. So shut down some of the inputs that are triggering your stress response. All right? Shut those down. So first and foremost, shut those down. A couple of you saw a Couple of tools and techniques that you know, like I said, if you just join me, there are nine free inner sizes, audios where I'll guide you through calming yourself down. Just download them, they're free. I don't even ask you for your email address. I just want to be totally transparent about it. Get them, download them, use them, help yourself, okay? You've got to participate in the rescue here. So one of the first things that you could be doing no matter what, is you have to calm yourself down by breathing. Our breath is one of the greatest tools we have. It costs you nothing. And as you can see right now with this coronavirus, it is critical for you to have your lungs working properly to be able to breathe. When we take deep breaths into our nose slowly and out through our mouth slowly, or we take one deep breath in and hold it for four or five seconds and release it out through our mouth, we deactivate the stress center in our brain, which means that we can reactivate our thinking center of our brain, our positive imagination side of our brain. Our imagination can go negative really fast and we have to work towards positive. You hear what I said? Our brain can go negative really fast. Why? Because it is wired for safety, for avoidance of pain, for survival. Real or imagined pain or danger activates that emotional center in your brain and automatically activates the stress hormones which causes you to fight, flee or freeze. Fight, flee or freeze. So some of you are trying to fight this. Good, keep the fight. But you can't keep the fight on too long. Some of you are freezing into inaction and some of you are fleeing, running away. Now let's shift over to finances, all right? Here is something I've been sharing now for four or five weeks. If you didn't pay attention four or five weeks ago, because who didn't come onto one of my channels every Tuesday morning at 9:00am Pacific, 12 o', clock, New York, and what is it, 5 o' clock, London? I'm on this channel, okay? Here and here. I'm on two channels now. So the first thing you've got to do is you have to reduce your expenses to the absolute critical, right? Now, if you didn't do it five weeks ago, or four or three or two right freaking now. Look at your cable bill, look at your water bill, look at your cell phone package. Look at if you can renegotiate with your landlord, if you can renegotiate with the mortgage company, if you can renegotiate any of your expenses to reduce them down to the absolute critical. Now so you have what we call is Runway. What you need is time. If we give ourselves some time, we could figure this out. But if you're out of Runway right now, means you don't have any money left, you don't have a job left. There's no more inputs for whatever reason. Okay? Then you have to figure out how do I get 30 days? Okay, I want you to reduce long term thinking to short term thinking. Why? I want all your energy and attention focused right now on 30 days. And if you can't look at 30 days, I want you to look at one week. What must you do? Now? I used a term right here, deliberately not. What could you do? Should you do, would you do want to do, like to do? Skip that kind of thinking. That's bullshit thinking. What must you do today, right now? Okay? Calmly, relaxed. Not out of panic or fear, out of deliberate, focused attention. Did you hear me? Deliberate focused attention. Which means you need to calm down, focus first. I know it's hard. I know it's hard when all the shit is hitting the fan. I'm not going to pretend that it's not hard. But you know what's harder? The pain and the suffering if you don't take deliberate, smart actions now. So right now you want to get calm and you have to ask yourself a question. One I already talked about. Reduce all expenses, business, personal, to the critical stuff. You can always add your cable back and you can always add your TV back and you can always add a better cell phone service. You can always add everything else. Right now, when we don't know how long things are going to last. We don't know which industry is going to come online first. If you're in a town or say. We don't know when restaurants will open. We don't know when arenas will open for concerts. We don't know when the tech industry will open, the retail industry will open, the airline industry will open. And we don't know people's reactions or response once they do. So what do you have to do? You have to play defense right now. If you are in a financial situation of uncertainty, okay? Now is not the time to blame yourself, shame yourself, feel guilty or justify. Right now you can figure out what you did or didn't do, you know, once you get out of this. But right now you figure out everything you need to do, okay? For survival and safety first. Does that make sense? If that makes sense. Give me a like, give me a love Give me a share. Let me know that you can hear me. I'm going to give you just some practical stuff right now. So safety first. So here is that part, the second part. Take your ego, okay? Your ego. Write this down. Somebody type this in. Your ego is not your amigo or my ego is not my amigo. So your ego is not your friend right now, okay? What do I mean by that? Your ego is going to say, hey, don't you know who you are? Okay? You can't just do anything that's beneath you. Bullshit, okay? Survival is not beneath anybody. So what can you do, okay? There are, for some of you, some businesses that you could actually be starting right now to deal with the situation we're in. If I didn't have my own company and my kids were here or they wanted to, they didn't work, you know what I would do? I would probably start a business, okay, of certified coronavirus free housekeepers who could come to your home and clean or go shopping or do something, you know, where they were properly dressed, they were certified that they had the antibiotics. I would come up with a business like that right now in this marketplace. Do you know why? Because I would use it and some of you would use it and some of our neighbors would use it. So there are going to be businesses that come out of this because somebody is focusing on how can I serve this marketplace, okay? How can I serve this marketplace? So some of you may have lost your job, some of you may have other businesses that are shut down. I get that. But what hasn't shut down is your brain. Unless you are shutting it down with the stress and uncertainty and the unpredictability, all right? So I don't want you to think like you're a victim of this, okay? It's shit happens, alright? It's called life. Shit happens. You cannot, okay, predict the weather really well or the oceans really well. But you can adjust your sales. And right now, my friend, this is the time to adjust your sale. This is the time to adapt. I've been talking about this for five weeks, six weeks now. Adaptation, okay? You have to become an adaptation. You have to twist, turn, and you've got to figure out how. You have the most powerful brain, okay, at your disposal. You can't rebuild your brain for a trillion dollars, for $10 trillion right now, for $100 trillion. But are you using it to stay stuck? To be a victim? To focus on the negative? Or are you using it to figure out how to survive and then hopefully thrive? Which one are you doing? Do you have the foot on the gas or on the brake? More so right now, what must you do? Okay? To survive and just get through this one week, 30 days, 90 days. No more waiting. No more wishing. No more hoping. No more wondering. No more being paralyzed by fear. No more freezing. No more wasting time. Right now, you can be. Should be figuring out how to do this all day long if you're not working. For those of you who have lost your jobs, I am so, so sorry. All right? I'm so sorry. And my question for you is. Okay, now what? How long do you want to stay in the misery, the wallowing of losing a job? I get that it's not convenient. I get that it's not fun. I get that it fucking sucks. How's that? Okay? And what are you gonna do about it? Today, Amazon and Walmart just hired 175,000 people. Is that beneath you? Not if you have to eat. Not if you have to just have some time to figure it out. Some money coming in is better than zero. So that's why I said, take your ego for now, all of us take your ego, put it aside and say, what must I do? How must I think? How do I manage my emotions? What must I do? And then I want you all to be in this one with me. Let's help each other out right now. Not in a week, not in a month, not in a year. Right now. Show your true identity right now. Not the one you talk about, not the one you think you are. Show your true identity with who you actually are. So if you think you're. You're a giver, give. If you think you're a leader, lead. If you think that, you know, you're smart, be smart. Right now is the time to rise. Right now is the time to level up and do what you must do for yourself. Your family, your community, your friends, other people. If there's ever been a time for us to really understand that we are connected, we are in this together, whether we like it or not. What I do affects you. What you do affects me. And when times are great, everybody's like, you know, on their high horse. What about when times are really freaking tough, right? Are you there to help another person? Are you there to help yourself? Are you there to help your family? Financial hardships break up families. Financial hardship break up friendships. Financial hardships, you know, make people feel less than. All right, so right now is the time that we lift. As we climb, right? As you climb and figure it out, lift somebody with you so that they climb, too. All right? Now is the time for us to be able to do for ourselves more than ever before. You need to take all of your knowledge, your skills, your awareness, your tools. And right now is when you need to bring them to the table to implement the and do it. No more thinking about it. Hoping, wishing and praying. Do those too. But be in action right now. Be in action right now. So couple tools for you. I mentioned this earlier from my New York. This is not New York Times best seller yet, but it's a best selling book. Number one on Amazon. You don't even have to buy the book. If you want to buy the book, buy the book. That's great. But I'm giving you nine free inner sizes audio intersizes where I will actually help you get calm, help you see your future, help you be focused and aware and help you use your brain better to navigate through these challenging times. Just go to the link that my team has put up either in my bio on Instagram or Facebook, in the feed and just download it. There's no email required. Just download it, share it with a million people. That's my gift to help you master your mindset and your emotions. If you want some deeper training as well, I'm doing a four week series that started last Friday on financial success and chaotic times. And I'll go deeper into some of these topics. Last week was how to retrain your brain for financial success. When you sign up for that, you'll get that one. Plus this week I'm doing financial success in uncertain times the following week for business owners. The following week, 100 days to financial success. So lots of free stuff on all of my pages, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, whatever the case might be, lots of free stuff. There's lots of programs you could sign up for if you want. That's always an option. I'd love to have you in my inner circle, but right now, okay, money, money, money. Money is a tool. It's a tool. We need it to buy food. We need it, you know, to pay for stuff. We need it to survive. Okay. It's just a tool that we, we do need money. So let's focus on how can you make enough for this week, make enough for this month, make enough for the following month. Could you start a business? There are plenty of businesses starting right now. Can you go and do some work with somebody who has a business that's thriving? It doesn't matter if you take 20% of what you normally get or 30% of what you normally get. It's better than zero. Zero means you are going backwards faster because you still have to pay for the expenses or you're getting further into debt. So you want to do is be in action, okay? Action. Action. Action. For those of you who follow the law of attraction, the last six letters is a C, T, I, O, N. Action. Okay? Hope you had a good day. I appreciate you. Thanks for following my work. If you like what I do, please share it so I can spread the message to as many people as possible. God bless you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. See you next Tuesday. For those of you who signed up for this Friday, I'll see you this Friday for another live training with some more strategies and tactics for you. All right? Have an awesome day. Thank you for sharing this on Facebook and thank you for sharing this on Instagram.