Have you ever said, “I should have better control of my finances?” Whether someone is financially successful or not, I hear this ALL THE TIME. So what’s the first step? In this episode, Cash Flow Expert, Chris Miles, will teach you how to take control of your money again so you can have the freedom you desire. Tune in now!
Chris Miles Bio:
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, and Entrepreneur on Fire, and he has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
—
Listen to the podcast here
How Can I Have Better Control Of My Money?
I want to walk you through another episode. I’m excited and impressed. We’ve more than tripled our readers since 2021. They’re excited about that and have you guys on board. That can be creating value for you. As a reminder, be sure to check out our website, www,MoneyRipples.com. If you got other topics you want me to address, please let me know. Email me at Chris@MoneyRipples.com.
I want to talk about 2016. Many people tell me they want to take better control of their finances. I get that question all the time. I’ve been hearing this over the years. There are a variety of reasons why people feel like they’ve lost control of their finances. You can do things like tracking your money and that can help but I realize there’s sometimes a much bigger problem than just the habits that you develop, not just the habits of what’d you do with your money but also the habits you create when you’re trying to emotionally deal with your money.
I did a post and I said, “Before you point fingers about your money problems or any problem for that matter, be sure to ask, ‘How have I created this? What have I done to do that? How have I created my financial situation?’” It’s funny when you see social media, a lot of people post the 2016 videos about how they felt 2016 went and showing Chris Farley tumbling down a hill or something like that. I’ve seen people trying to describe 2016 in one word. It’s not pretty and perfect.
I’ve had a crappy year as well but this year has been fantastic. It was probably the best year ever for me, whether it be in business, as well as a lot of things in my personal life too. A lot of times, when it comes to money, especially when people are talking about money or their business, it’s very interesting to see that a lot of people feel like they crashed and burned a little bit. I want to talk about that.
In 2017, you’re probably looking to create something better. The time starts now. You don’t start doing things in 2017. You start working on it now and build the momentum so that 2017 works well. I get it. For me, 2015 was a lot of life lessons learned, a lot of crashing and burning myself personally. A lot of the things I started to do, like December of 2015, led to my best year, 2016. Specifically, I want to talk about how you take control of your finance. This is going to apply to anything in your life such as your health, mental or emotional state, relationships and money.
Taking Control Of Your Finances
I want to talk about what to do if you take control of that. Many people lose control not because they don’t have control but because they give up control. Many of us become victims in our lives. For some people, that’s a harsh word. You didn’t want to use that word but that’s true. Maybe it feels like we are victimized or somehow we were out of control in the first place or something or someone put us out of control. I’m not downplaying anything when there come to be life events, especially unexpected life events, people that come in and out of our lives that do affect us quite a bit. Our control is how we, in turn, do that.
Many people lose control of their money not because they don't have control but because they give up control. Click To TweetA fantastic book that addresses that kind of control is a book Man’s Search For Meaning by an author called Victor Frankl. He talks about how he was a Holocaust survivor. He talked about the differences between those that died in the concentration camps and those that survived. It wasn’t so much about the state. Some people are executed but much of what he attributed to survivors was about how he chose to think and take that control. He was a psychologist by trade before the war. He was able to use that to his advantage from time to time. There were some very close calls in his life.
I remember one thing that he said, “They could strip my clothes, take away my home, my career, my family or my name but they can never take my mind.” The key thing here is most of that success comes not from just doing something but from how you think and see the world. If you see yourself first and foremost as someone who has been victimized or someone else has made your finances or your life worse, even been frauded out of money, which I’ve had some friends that talked about how they’d been in front of the money, fine. That’s great all but that doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t help you.
The best thing you could do is start to focus on, “What can I do? How can I respond from this point forward?” I went through some of the hardest financial times because of markets and everything else. Even though I made some choices that it was not favorable to the markets, the other choices made sense at the time. They didn’t seem that much of a gamble or a risk but when you’re focused on people that were real estate investors at that time and that’s all they did and they don’t have any money, during that period, it was a pretty rough transition for me to go from real estate investors to eventually transition towards, over the years, business owners.
When you have things like that and you have your life crumbling around you, it’s tough. I get it. I’ve been there, especially when people are like, “Why did this happen to you?” It’s very easy to not take that control, that responsibility and say, “This and that happened.” The thing is I had outside market conditions that affected my business and my personal finances but the thing that got me in was still based on the choices I made. I had a part of that responsibility. I held responsibility in that role. I had a responsibility ability to get out of it. Understand that you can’t be financially free if you think that everything’s outside of your control because you think it’s everybody else’s responsibility or fault.
How are you going to be able to get the good as well? That means it has to be somebody else giving you the good stuff, opportunity, money or whatever it might be. That’s simply not true. It’s not about other people giving you the opportunity. It’s not about other situations lining up perfectly like there’s a fairy godmother for you that’s going to make things better. It’s about how you can come out of it. Watch your mind.
Watch Your Words
Watching your words is the second thing. Stop saying things like, “I don’t have the money. I can’t afford it.” When you declare things like that or make those kinds of statements, not even questions, you create that reality. You stop yourself from thinking and creating solutions. If you want to take more control of your money, you cannot say things like, “I can’t afford it. I don’t have the money.” You can state and say, “That’s true. If I want this, I need to get the resources.” The more productive way to be able to address this is, “How can I find those resources? Where are they? Who has those resources? If I don’t have the money, then who does?”
What got me through a lot of what seemed impossible situations is, “If I don’t have the resources, who does? What can I do to create value for them in a way that I can be able to access those resources?” That can mean different things. It doesn’t just mean you borrowing money from people or getting them to invest in you. It does mean saying like, “What do people need? What do they want?”
I was recounting a story with somebody. This is a very successful businessman in Utah. I won’t mention his name. He passed away. I remember talking to him at lunch and asking him, “Did you ever go through tough times?” He said, “I did.” He talked about back in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, the interest rates were skyrocketing like crazy. He was in the car business. He knew that things weren’t working out too hot for him, especially as the sales went down. He started with the bank with a lot of money. He went over $9 million in debt that he owed. He had to figure out how to pay it back, plus he was running a business.
What he did is he started looking at the bank situation and realize the bank had a lot of real estate properties that were foreclosed on that people couldn’t afford to pay anymore. He said, “All these properties you have here that are sitting on your books doing nothing, I will sell these properties for you.” He became a realtor for the bank where he owed money. He said, “I’ll save these properties. From the proceeds that you make money off of, let’s use that to pay back my loans.” That’s exactly what he did.
For a couple of years, he went and started selling properties for these banks. Sometimes he hooked them up with friends. He had friends in higher places that weren’t struggling as much as him and people in general. He found ways to sell those properties and the next thing, he had his desk paid off. Soon, he was able to retire in the ‘80s when he was able to solve businesses too.
Most of your success comes not from just doing something but from how you think and see the world. Click To TweetThe thing is that there’s always a solution and way. We don’t always know what it is and it’s not always what we expect. Sometimes a solution for a very tiny percentage of people can be bankruptcy. That could be the best thing to happen to you but in most cases, that’s not. I’m saying you have to go bankrupt. I’m saying that for those of you that are reading this, which I know have a lot of followers like this. You’re doing very well financially but you could do better. There are solutions and ways to do it. Don’t think that you’ve got the best way.
On the flip side, if you’re a person that’s doing well financially, sometimes ego is the biggest thing that gets in your way. You like to pat yourself on the back and do a good job. You should but don’t ever assume that just because it’s good doesn’t mean it can’t be great. I would challenge you with that as well. Be careful how you speak. You could very well be missing out on seeing the best opportunities in your life because you get to a place of comfort and security. I love that. That’s cool but you got to be careful with that too.
Be careful of other words too. If you start making declarations like when you’re in business, “My business isn’t working and producing the way I want it to,” that might be true but the thing is what are you saying? The better question is, “How can my business and finances be better? How can I take better control of my life and my finances?” Don’t say things like if you’re working a job like, “I hate my job and my boss,” or whatever it might be. I touched some people who do very well financially and some that don’t but they work and want out of that job.
Speak Possibilities And Opportunities
I have a previous episode about how you can quit your job within twelve months. A lot of them are like, “I cannot wait to get out of my job.” Here’s the thing I can promise you. The more you think that way, the longer the process will be at any time. This has been true in my situation, as well as anybody else I’ve coached. If you’re not grateful for that job or whatever it is that you have, even though you want out of it, if you’re not grateful for it, you’re not praising it. It won’t praise you in return. In other words, it’s not going to pay you or get you the opportunity and situation to get out of that in the first place.
You got to speak power, positivity, possibilities and opportunities. That is the thing you need to do. We talked about the law of attention and I’ve taught about this before in other episodes. The law of attention says that wherever you put your attention towards expands and grows. This is also the law of atrophy. Whatever you ignore or neglect, it will decay and die. Think about that.
Whatever you put your attention and focus towards will expand and grow. That’s positive or negative. If you’re putting a lot of your attention towards the positive, you will see that that will grow. If you start putting a lot more attention towards gratitude, you’ll see more of those things. More that will expand and more of those opportunities will show up. Vice versa, if you’re focusing on what you don’t have, you will get more of that. If you focus on not having the right opportunity show up, you’ll find out that opportunities will never show up.
Going back toward the end of 2009 when I was about to get out of my situation, I remember that I started to switch my thinking that summer. I started saying, “It’s not serving me to whine and complain about what was going on. Instead, I’m going to be grateful. I’m going to find that one grateful thing.” I remember Donald Trump’s book, Trump Never Give Up. He talked about a lot of his struggles, which are bigger than any of ours. Readers, his struggles were bigger than yours.
Going $900 million in debt is not something any of us will ever see, nor do we care to ever see. He went to $900 million in debt. He was in the hole and was able to pay them off in three and a half years. The one thing he said is that he learned the focus on at least one positive thing. Even if everything else is negative that day, he would find something to focus on. He would direct his thoughts towards that, regardless of all the other crap he was dealing with. I say the same thing. It worked for me. When I started putting that focus there, things started shifting. It took a few months but a few months are a lot better than a few years. The previous year and a half before that, I was focusing a lot more on the negative and the problem rather than solutions.
This might sound basic and these might be things that you’ve heard before but I guarantee you need to read it again because the thing is that we cannot expect to solve problems the same way. Have you had a rough year this year? Fantastic. Let’s learn from that and focus on what you want. When people go through a rough time, they focus instead on what they don’t want to have to happen again versus what they do want. Find out what you want. Stop saying, “I don’t want any more of this.” Say what you want more of.
Ignoring Things Is Not A Bliss
Here’s another thing I have run to as well. Here’s the opposite part or the different angle. Some people who will try to take positivities tried to ignore what’s going on. Ignoring it does not help you either. Negligence. I mentioned the law of atrophy and decay. If you ignore your teeth, you will lose them. If you ignore your family, you’ll lose them. If you ignore your money, you’ll lose it too. I have some people who say, “I don’t want to focus on the negative things that can happen in my life, that I could die, get sued, this, that or the other.”
Trying to be ignorant is not the same as being positive. If you want to be proactive and get the life you want, ignoring things or being negligent of things is not bliss. Click To TweetTrying to be ignorant is not the same as being positive. If you want to be proactive and get the life that you want, ignoring things and being negligent of things is not bliss. Ignorance is expensive. Be careful of that. When people say, “I don’t want to focus on the bad things. I want to focus on protecting myself by having the right corporations or insurance. That doesn’t seem as much fun. Let’s focus on the money and making money.”
You can’t ever subconsciously make good money when you know that subconsciously somewhere deep down that you’re taking a gamble and a risk. This is why I teach people, “You still have to protect yourself, mindset, money and all of those things because those things are essential for you to be able to overcome. Protecting them doesn’t mean that you’re focusing on the negative.” It means that you’re trying to do the opposite. You’re trying to say, “Let me address these things and make sure that this is covered.”
It’s like wearing a seatbelt or driving without insurance. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven without car insurance before but you freaked out. You’re like, “I hope it wasn’t a car wreck,” or if you choose not to get the coverage for your rental car. “I hope I don’t get the car wreck if somebody would hit me.” You are worried. A lot of times, you attract the thing. Even though you’re not doing it deep down, you worry wait but what if it does happen? I’m not saying you get accidents every time but renting a car for a few days is a lot different than living a life for years. Many times people try to ignore things and that’s not good either
Don’t ignore things but put attention to the things that you want. It might mean addressing some tough issues. The thing that always comes back is you have the control to make it happen. You can never have financial freedom unless you take control. If you believe it’s some other circumstances or it’s based on your gender, race, religion or whether you get or do not get something, whether you believe it’s based on upbringing, your social or economic status and you believe that opportunity only comes to those that are in the highest places because you’ve been victimized by people because you’ve been hurt or whatever it might be, that somebody’s swindled you in an opportunity, you still chose to be in.
You need to take responsibility for that. You cannot have freedom without any responsibility. You must take ownership and control of that. Start to do that and say, “Let’s morph my words and talk about how I can create this opportunity. What’s new? What can I create?” Go from that angle. Stop putting all the energy towards what happened or where you’ve been. The thing is that it’s not about where you’ve been. It’s what you can create. I am so happy that I started to do this year more productively.
I’ve always done this to a certain degree but as I started to forget about the past, start to move forward, look forward and say, “Here’s where I am, what I have and what I can create,” it’s amazing how many opportunities show up. I don’t have to force my business. Seriously, one of the things that I have to remember to do every week is to make sure I give you a show. I always have thoughts and plenty of things to teach. The hard thing is to remember to turn on this microphone and serve you. I’m grateful I’m able to do that each week. I’m grateful for those of you that take action and do it. I’ve been getting posts on my Money Ripples page. I’ve begun getting many emails from you, talking about the things that you do or change.
I agree with you. It needs to stop now. Sometimes it’s hard to see it, I get it. Sometimes it’s hard to see from your eyes and perspective but it’s there. When it’s pointed out and you can start to see it and say, “Here’s what I’m doing and why I’m losing control,” it’s not because of the money situation. It’s because of you. It’s a hard pill to swallow but it is exactly the pill that will help you become free and heal you. I’m not talking about pharmaceutical pills either because those things can be crap. I’m talking about the very thing that you need to do to experience and have that freedom.
If you want a better 2017 and you want to have more control over your finances, that’s a goal. In the coming episode, I’m going to be talking more about some of the strategies but focus on this first. Focus on what you can create, not what’s happened and not what you’ve been a victim to. Focus on what you can create today. Have a wonderful and prosperous week.