This MILLIONAIRE MINDSET Completely Changed MY LIFE! | Dean Graziosi

You know, the reason I'm even in this position now, even having this great conversation with you, and you're someone who I deeply admire, your work and everything else you put forth is because one person gave me an opportunity, even though I didn't have the. One of the companies that I own is a construction company. I didn't have the tools. I didn't have the equipment. I didn't have the. I didn't have the fancy trucks. I didn't have the. I didn't have team members. Like, it was just me. But I had an opportunity. And my father showed up for the first time in my life on a job site and said, hey, look, you do realize we used to make our scaffolding out of wood when you were a kid. I'm like, well, yeah. He said, start pulling wood out of the trash piles. And we literally built my scaffolding that I needed to start Monday out of the trash piles. So many times I get frustrated with some of the folks that I've worked with in the past because they don't grasp it. They don't understand it. They could literally look around them and see the kind of assets and resources that are there that may not be financial, but that doesn't make them any less valuable. And that's one of the things that I love about the resourcefulness piece, because it's absolutely true. I mean, that company went on to employ hundreds of team members across several states. But it all started in the humble beginnings. And I've learned not to despise the small beginnings. And I see that people are always in a rush to get to the end destination, not understanding that the process leads them to the destination.

And then the other thing, and I know you guys have all heard this, but I want to tell you, one of my favorite books is Shoe Dog. Do you ever read Shoe Dog?

I haven't, not yet. But I'm going.

Great. Put it on your list. Everybody, put it on your list. It's about the founder of Nike story and started with nothing. Started in a garage. Just hustling one sneaker pair of sneakers at a time. The quintessential entrepreneurial journey failed miserably. Bank took their money. Government shut down imports from Japan. Everything you could possibly imagine go wrong went wrong. But they're Nike and they're here today. And he tells the stories. He tells it so good. I listen to books, not read it tells a story. This time when the bank called his loan and he was late on paying people, and there were so many people he owed money To. He asked them to come to the building at one time, and he was making sure they didn't pass each other, because if they passed each other, they might see that two different people he owed money to. So he put them in different offices and all these different parts of the company and how they were stressed. And just when they thought they had it figured out, the merchant company said they could stop, like a million times. And he's like, all he kept thinking about is, when we get to a million, when we get to 100 million, when we get to a billion, when we become a household name, when we sponsor Olympic athletes, when we sponsor people in the NBA. And he said he didn't realize. He kept saying, when, when, when, when. And towards the end of the book, he said, you know, I look back now, and he said, I'm going to give all the money away to charity. We're already given 100 million a year away. When I die, it all goes to charity. And he said, I realized that I kept thinking when, when, when. And if. They asked him about his bucket list. And he said, stephen, he said, if I could have one thing, I'd realize. I checked off all the things on my bucket list, and they really didn't move the needle. He said, I wish I could go back and realize that when we were sitting at the conference table trying to figure out how to get the money or how to get the shipment from Japan, or how to get a merchant account back, or how to solve the problem, how to pay the bills, because that's when I was alive. That's when I was expanding. That's when I was taking uncomfortable action. I was mo. He's like, my bucket list would be go back and realize they were the times I was alive. Now I'm supposedly at the end destination, and I want to go back. And it just. Now, I might have paraphrased that, but I felt that emotion, and it puts me back in this space, that this is part of it. All the things that went wrong in your life. My partner and dear friend Tony Robbins said something once to me that changed my life. And he said a lot of things that changed my life. He said, life happens for us, not to us. How would your life be if you realize that the divorce, the change, the bankruptcy, the person letting you down, the spouse cheating on you and leaving you, all the things that you think are your anchor? What if it happened for you to sharpen the ax, to sharpen the tool, to put you on a journey to listening right now, to have opportunity to Be a part of a world when it shifts, that knowledge is the new currency. And you have assets that live inside your brain that are the resources that other people want. You don't even realize it. Like, there are so many things available. If you can shift and say, okay, I'm sorry if things bad for you. I'm sorry if people let you down. But what if that was your plan? What if God designed that for you to say, are you worthy of what you really want by overcoming the crap that you went through? And when I look through that lens, Steven, then I realized I'm glad I was broke. I'm glad I went to school and didn't have lunch money. I'm glad my father had a crazy temper and was a maniac. And I had to learn to emotionally connect with him through empathy and calm him down from not doing crazy stuff. All that stuff that seemed bad, that was my gift from God that allowed me to be the man I am, to start 13 companies and impact people and be married to the woman of my dreams. Like, I know that sounds crazy.

I failed miserably.

I've lived it, too, man. And the reality is, the very thing that we call struggle is actually the very thing we should be calling catapult.

Yeah. Great.

And it comes down to how we look at it.

Right.

You know, one of the things that you, Tony, myself, and all of us know intuitively, the movie reel that's playing in our head, we can choose to change that movie reel at any point in time.

True story.

You know, it's the stories. Right. So let's break down a little bit of the stories, because you and I both had to overcome massive stories that we were telling ourselves and to go on and do great things. So talk a little about the power of a story, because I know it's something that you know deeply.

Yeah. The power of the story. I know you've heard this before, so maybe this is just a time to hear it again. Right. We also know going to the gym puts us in good shape, but we can't go to the gym twice. We got to go six days a week. Right.

Right.

It's the same thing here about your story. How powerful in my. Like, in the overall scheme of things, when it comes to success, how important is your story? It's in the top 10. Like, it's. It's the top. Because the reason I'm going to be bold and say something, the reason you're not where you want to be at this very moment is in direct correlation to the story you Tell yourself on why you can't achieve it. And I know that because I've been there, Right.

I touched briefly on my dad. I'm gonna tell you something really quick. When I was young, my dad was the youngest of 12. And again, I'm not telling you a story to brag about me. I'm telling you a story just to open your eyes to a different way of looking at things. When my dad was the youngest of 12, he was physically abused. He was sexually abused. He's open about it or I would never share that, right? And when he had me and my sister, my sister and I, I guess I should say he swore he'd never hit us like his father did to him, but he emotionally messed with us big time. He. He couldn't handle his anger. My dad was the type that would take a bat and knock the windows out of every car in our driveway because he thought something was sideways and come inside and smash the kitchen table. And, you know, 11 years old, I came home from school throwing up blood because I was so scared. And at 12, I moved in with my dad. It was only. My dad only saw him every weekend, every Sunday or every other weekend. And I moved in with him because he was getting, like, out of control. I was fearful for my mom's life. And not true, now that I look back. But as a 12 year old, I was scared, right? So I figured, I'll solve this. I'll move out of my mom's house. Even though I loved it and had the BMX bike and a great stepdad. I moved out and I moved in with my dad. And I'll tell you, I was scared a lot. But then I realized that I could read my dad's emotions and I could tell when this anger, like, he just had so much. I have empathy for him. He's my dearest friend. Now he's 85, he looks 60, and he's my dearest friend. I love him to death, but I look through this lens of this hurt man. Rather than being mad and rather than saying, poor me, I'm like this guy. I don't know what it's like to be physically abused and get his teeth knocked out. When he was 12 years old and his mom was blind in one eye because his dad punched my grandmother in her eye with her glasses on, she went blind in one eye. Like, he watched all this stuff and he's just trying to navigate too strong. I'm an Italian man to go get therapy or anything. Long story short, I am telling you that I Did have a bleeding ulcer at 11 years old. So I was so stressed. But then I found a way, Steven, to get into my dad's heart. And I could feel when he was going down the bad path, and I could turn him. By the time I was 14, I could spin my dad and get him to look through the lens of love and gratitude. And I found a new man inside of him. And we did fishing and hunting and had all these incredible experiences. I just want to tell you something. In my teens, I remember wanting more, and I can remember the tale of two stories. I remember when things got tough, it was like there was a voice inside of me, Steven, that would say, hey, man, it's okay. You're not gonna be able to make it because no one in your family has money. Your dad's batshit crazy. Like, it's okay if you just settle for life. I remember that story speaking to me like a megaphone. But I also remember there was another voice that said, f that. Excuse my language. Like, you are a strong man. You were able to tame a man that everybody was afraid of. You were able to do this. If you could overcome that, you can overcome everything. So let me just fast forward 30 years. I can go on stage with my partner and dear friend Tony Robbins, and be 40,000 people in the audience, and I truly believe. I feel their soul. I feel what they need. I can walk out on a stage and I can be prepared and have a slide deck of something I was going to do. I'm like, no, no, that's not what they need right now. Hey, guys, I'm not using the slides. And I could speak to that audience and get the only standing ovation and have people crying and cheering. Why? Because my dad put me through that. And I had to learn to read my dad's emotions intuitively before he spoke. And I feel that is my gift from God, a gift from my father. I have to blame my dad for that natural talent, because I can do it. And I think that's why I'm a multiple New York Times bestselling author and 13 companies, and my team is my family. They're like my dear friends. I think all of that was because of that. Now it's the same story. I could have had the story on why I didn't move forward because look what my dad did to me. Or I could say, that story's the reason I'm so successful. Now. That's only one of a thousand stories that I could have went in two different directions. So what's the story you're telling yourself. And today, how can you say, how do I shift that story to be empowering? I don't have money. I'm not that good at school. I didn't do this. That's why I'm going to be successful. I have add that means that I could focus on more than one thing at a time. I'm going to crush the competition.

That's right.

That company's bigger than me. They'll never see me coming because I'm resourceful. They have lots of money. I have resourcefulness. Like, there are so many ways to shift the shitty story into an empowering story. If you do one thing, decide today that you want to switch it.

Hey there. If you really enjoyed that snippet, you're really going to love the full interview right here. So make sure you check it out.

Life's going to be brutal, no matter what, for the next 10 years. You might as well focus on what you do have. Focus on where you can go and be resourceful as hell, because that's where real success comes from.

Absolutely. You know, it's funny, as I look back at my journey, one of the things that I quickly remember was.