Reset Your Financial, Emotional & Risk Thermostat

Your personality is essentially just a compilation of the decisions that you have been making and the decisions that you have been making over and over Create the feelings that create who you think that you are.

Yep.

And we're back with another episode of he said, she Said, except on camera this time. You guys were literally filming on camera right now, which is so weird because normally we are in a closet or on a floor trying to be quiet.

Trying to escape from these dogs. Puppy life is real.

Puppy life is real.

Real Grandma's banana's favorite toys right here.

Yeah. So for those of you who cannot see, I have round balls in my office a lot.

Round white balls in her office that she decorates.

Very modern, chic couch. Christopher, harder.

And.

And it has round balls for pillows, but our dog Bananas loves them. He carries the balls around all day long, and it's hilarious.

You know how many balls jokes I want to make right now?

You know what?

Speaking of your office, it's finally not like a sauna in here, you guys. We, I'm telling you, have had. Okay, we're at our Arizona home right now. Great home. Love the home. But it's really big, and it has all these different thermostats to control all these different zones in house. I can't figure out how to keep my office from being cold and your office from being a freaking sauna. And I, for the life of me, I think I'm missing a zone. I think I'm missing a thermostat somewhere.

I think zone. Like, I'm positive because I've looked everywhere. We've tried every thermostat. I figured out my thermostat is the thermostat in the back of the house. I'm on the opposite end of the house. And you guys, I have to go back there and see what the thermostat is set at all the time, because nobody goes to the parts of the home that they don't use.

So I literally have to go check.

On it or I'm gonn offer. Which is a great segue. Christopher Harder to what we're talking about today, we are talking about resetting your emotional thermostat, your financial thermostat. And there's another one. Do you notice thermostat, Your risk thermostat? Because right now, whether you know it or not, you have an emotional setting and an emotional comfort zone that you're probably hitting the ceilings on, and you're wondering why you're not able to break through. And it's because truly, right now Your thermostat is set there, and it is automatically going to go there no matter what. It's like, what is that? Part of our brain, the reticular activating system, where it literally. You put a number in, you put a thought in, and that's exactly what your brain is going to find. So if you have something programmed in there, that's exactly what you're going to get, no matter what, because it is truly your default in your brain.

Well, listen, this is not a new concept, but it's a very simple concept that has a profound effect on people's life. And the easiest way to think about it is this. The way that you set your thermostat in the house is. That's what you get. If you set it at 70, you're going to get 70. If you set it at 65, you're going to get 65. Now, a great example of this is if I went all the way back to my early 20s, my financial thermostat, you're going to laugh. I remember sitting down with a piece of paper and like, scribbling out my plan and collecting out my plan.

In your early 20s?

Yes, but not the way we do today. And at the time. Are you ready for this? My goal was if I could buy, I think it was three rental properties, live in half of one of them. I'd be able to pay the mortgages on them and then pay my bills and have an extra $2,500 a month. And I remember thinking, the extra $2,500 a month, I'd be rich. Like, I could go. I could go to the bars as much as I wanted. I could buy whatever clothes I wanted. I'd be buying rounds, whatever I wanted. Like, I'm telling you, young twenties, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Chris, who was, you know, working in.

Construction, like landscape construction, forever 21 for that, I mean, like, essentially a quarter of the store.

So listen, the point is not to make fun of the $2,500 a month goal. The point is to realize how far I have reset the thermostat, okay? So that now I can't even fathom that that was once my goal. Right?

Which is crazy. If you would have gone back and told yourself that your thermostat would be where it's at, like, your brain actually could not have wrapped around it.

So I'll tell you the first way I reset it, I put myself in new situations where people told me more was possible. So when I was doing this, I was doing landscape construction while going to College, But I didn't want to be in college, right? So I'd go to college during the day, and I'd go, like, plow at night in the winter, or I would go, you know, lay sod in the late afternoon after classes. And the people I was hanging around at that time, their goal was to get a couple rental properties and have an extra couple grand a month. I remember my foreman, Dave, who's a great guy, taught me a lot of great things. He would talk about that all the time. So I'm like, hey, pen to paper, this is my plan to get a couple extra grand a month and get a few rental properties. And then when I got kicked out of college, I remember my parents thought my life was over. And I was like, so happy. Like, yes, freedom. Because I really just wanted to be out, what, buying rental properties, participating in the economy. And I went and I got a job at this Ford Lincoln Mercury dealer, like, one of the biggest dealerships in town because I loved cars. So it made sense to me, like, go get a job doing what you want to be around all day. And when I got there, they told me in that first two weeks of training that a lot of the salespeople were making 60 to $80,000 a year. Now, guys, for context, this is the Midwest, and this is. Let me do some quick Math. This is 24 years ago.

Wow.

So probably year 2000. 1999. 2000 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You tell me I can make 60 to 80 grand. I'm like, whoa, I've hit the jackpot.

Yeah.

So guess what I did. I reset my thermostat because someone told me it was possible. And then they gave me two weeks of training on how to do it. And I believed it. Whether it's good training or bad training, I don't remember, but I believed it. And I went out there and I quickly became, in three months, the top selling salespeople salesperson out of 25 salespeople, because I reset my thermostat. And they said, well, if you do X, Y, and Z, you'll be able to go hit it.

You were shown. It's possible. Yeah.

And so I believed it and I did it.

You have to be around examples of people, and for some of you, a podcast or listening to us is going to be enough, or reading a book is going to be enough. But for some of you, it's not. That's just the first layer. And honestly, even for us, it was just the first layer of, like, okay, podcasts are amazing. Books are amazing. But then you gotta go and you gotta do the tangible, and you gotta be in the rooms, at the events, join the things. Get that job that you look at the person who's crushing it at work, and you set them as the goal. And you know, that is how you know it's possible. If anyone who is in your vicinity, if anyone that you are coming in contact with, that is how you know it's possible. And it becomes real. It has to become real for you.

Oh, my God. You know, I just thought of what. The people who are in your vicinity that keep dragging your thermostat down. It's like your parents when you're growing up, and you'd go and you'd sneak, and you turn up and they come in, like, turn it down before you leave the house. Right? Money doesn't grow on trees.

Well, 68 degrees. I'm like, why do. Why do we have to freeze to death?

And I know they meant well, but they are that person in your life who keeps pulling your thermostat down.

Shit, that's good, Chris. Right?

So that. That's how I started to reset my. My financial thermostat. And I remember being 21 years old, kicked out of college, making 80,000 bucks 25 years ago, 24 years ago, and thinking I had hit the jackpot because it felt like it at the time. And then what happened? All my friends started getting into mortgages, and they're making a ton of, you know, 100 grand, 150 grand. I thought, well, I want to. I want to do that.

Right?

And so I went and I talked my way into HSBC and started it as a.

Which is a bank.

Yep. Base level loan officer. And crushed it because someone said, look how much you could make. And here's the training how to do it.

Okay, let's run through emotional thermostat then. So emotional thermostat being. You have a personality. You think that that is who you are. You have a set point. I've been thinking about this a lot, talking about it a lot. I've actually been listening to the same podcast over and over. This is the fourth time I've listened to it already this year. It is Joe Dispenza and Ed Mylett. And it talks so much about this because, you know, right now, every single one of us is like, this is who I am, how I am. This is how I function. This is how I react.

Sorry, babe. It's just how I'm built.

Yeah, it's all made up who you are right now. Your personality and listening to this podcast is just mind blowing. So I'm going to give you the Cliff Notes. Your personality is essentially just a compilation of the decisions that you have been making and the decisions that you have been making over and over create the feelings that create who you think that you are. So every single morning, if I wake up and I start thinking of my to do list, that's a choice for me to think of my to do list. To immediately start to feel crappy, depressed, and overwhelmed about the day, therefore making me think that I am anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed all the time. And that's just how I am. But that started with the initial choice in the morning of what am I thinking?

Yeah.

So our personality is just strung together thoughts that turn into strung together choices that turn into strung together feelings that turn into essentially, Chris harder. So if you wanted to change your emotional state, what is the thought right now that maybe you're thinking that you would, you're trying to change? Like, what is something that you know could actually fundamentally change your personality and your emotional state if you worked on it more?

Well, listen, people have coined the term Chris Fitz. So if something disastrous happens, I do not lose my cool. I, like, calmly rise to the occasion and I solve it immediately. But if something little happens, like I forget my car key and I've already gotten in the car or, right, like little dumb. Anymore little dumb things that shouldn't set me off, I throw a crisp it, and after all these years, it looks.

Like a toddler who's freaking out not getting their way in a candy aisle, but also has to poop. Like, that's literally what it looks like. And it's almost like a little hulkish to like. And that's the sound. Almost like it's very crazy.

Well, so I guess that, right, is one of the things I'd like to improve. And we're talking about the other day, and you said, listen, when we finally have kids one day, you can't operate that way because you're gonna make it. You're gonna take a stressful situation, and you're gonna make it 100 times more stressful.

And they're gonna learn that and do that over again.

Yep. So to reset that thermostat of what sets me off, right? Because picture a physical thermostat. I'm like, anything right here sets me off. Well, I need to reset that thermostat in order to not be triggered anymore. And here's a great analogy. It's a choice. You know, the first example I Gave about my money mindset. Thermostat. That was evidence around me. But with an emotional thermostat. Yeah, it's evidence around you. Yeah, it's someone making you aware that you need to change it. But then it's a choice. And here's how I know it's a choice. If you think my Chris fits are bad now, and I'm talking to the audience, not you. Do you remember the temper that I had when we were dating?

Yes.

And one time I threw a great big temper over something and it was.

Something like you forgot something dumb.

Something dumb, something. And you said, that's it. I can't do this. I won't be with somebody like this. This is silly. And you left. And I thought, holy shit, she's serious. Like these little fits, these little tantrums, you know, way bigger than they are today. I thought you left and I thought you wouldn't come back. And so I remember being like, all right, listen, you know, I love you, I care about you. I really want to make this work. I promise I won't let myself do that like that anymore. And it changed what, 90% improvement or.

Whatever it did on a dime.

90% improvement on a dime.

I actually didn't believe it because it.

Was a choice to reset that thermostat. Right. So there's the third piece. If the first piece, when we were talking about money was somebody needs to make you aware that there's other settings out there. And if the second piece was, they got to teach you how to reset it, then the third choice needs to be you or third piece has to be you. And that's you need to make the choice to get your ass up off the couch and go reset it.

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I love that. Okay, last one. We're just going to do this one quick risk now. Risk in terms of even just doing things that you're not used to doing. You know, I think that expanding your risk tolerance is one of the most important things that we can do because it really is about just going and doing new things that are going to be the catalyst to everything that we talked about. It's a risk to go and stop being the introvert. It's a risk to stop being the person who's afraid to speak on stage. It's A risk to put your money somewhere where it could actually be invested and grow. Those are all risky things, and they're all so important in order to become the person that you want. So I think it's about just starting small and doing things that simulate as close as you can to. To creating what you want. So if you want to be a speaker, maybe you can start taking little risks on Facebook lives or Instagram lives, or small events, small community events, or hosting dinners with six to 10 people and getting up and doing a toast and facilitating during it, doing toasts, volunteering for toasts and things like that. So how can you simulate risk in your life without a lot of risk in the beginning?

Well, here's something that works for me. And just to keep using personal examples, remember the first, let's call it one quarter of our relationship as a perfectionist. And so I wouldn't risk anything if it risked making me look silly. Right. If I didn't know I would do good at it, then I wouldn't attempt it at all. And I started to see what I was losing out in, losing out on in life. We would not go jump off the waterfall. We would not go do this helicopter ride. We would not go do whatever because there was risk involved. Right.

You were worried your hair would get messed up and people would think you looked weird.

So when I started to get in touch with what I was losing by not taking the risk, then that was enough to make me decide to go reset that risk thermostat. Right. I'm going to go crank that thing up to a high risk. And now, like, let's fast forward to today. I use that in our investments that we make. I don't want to part with 100 grand here, 50 grand there, 200 grand there. I want that money in the bank. But guess what? That money's not safe in the bank.

No.

That money, mathematically, because of inflation, is actually deteriorating. It's shrinking in the bank. So what do I do to part with it? I think about, what am I going to miss? I'm going to miss out on this 10 grand a month. I'm going to miss out on this 15 grand a month worth of returns if I don't part with the money. And it's that extra step of saying, okay, what do I miss if I don't take this risk? What am I guaranteed to not have a chance at getting if I don't take this risk?

Yep.

And that's enough to make you step across that threshold and reset that thermostat.

Oh, I love this. All right, well, this is how we reset all the thermostats on our bodies. But we're still working out the thermostats in the home.

Yeah, I don't even know where to begin with that. We need an expert. If you guys are an H vac expert, come fix our thermostat.

You know what's so funny about being recorded, Chris? Is I use hand signals to say things like, let's wrap it up, or you're gonna finish it on, wait, you.

Can'T do this to me right now. By the way, I'm not the only one that throws fits. Lori has her version.

Well, when I'm trying to make sure the podcast is timely. So you want to close it?

I will. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. Love and appreciate you. And don't forget, I will send you some text magic so you can see the day with an abundant set of lenses the minute your feet hit the ground. If you want me to text you a positive money mantra, all you got to do is text me first. Text me the word daily so I know to put you on the list. Text me the word daily to 310-421-0416. Can text me the word daily to 310-421-04160. Totally free. It was Lori's idea, and now I freaking love it.

And we'll see you next week. Bye.

Sam.