When you’re focusing on being abundant or optimistic, have you ever had someone tell you that you are being naive, unrealistic, or not facing reality?
Are they right?
How do you know the difference?
In this episode, Cash Flow Expert, Chris Miles, teaches you the difference between truly being abundant and ignorant of reality. There is a distinct difference between the two. Tune in now to find out how to be abundant and not naive!
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Listen to the podcast here
Are You Being Naive Or Abundant?
I’m glad to be here with you. Summertime is always fun, and sometimes I have to figure out how to squeeze in these episodes to make sure I get them out to you each week. I appreciate you following and doing all that stuff, and be able to tune in for some great value. In fact, I’m loving how much response we’re getting and how many people have been on. Thank you for reading and checking in.
I want to address something that has come up quite a few times. It has come up in my own life and in other people from questions that I’ve gotten from many of you. There’s a common theme and whether it’s said in these words or not, it comes down to this, “What’s the difference between being naive and being abundant?”
I come from that world of being a realist. That’s someone who looks at things as what’s the reality of it and what’s realistic. I remember there was someone close to me about a year or so ago who said, “Chris, you’re being naive. You’re not looking at reality.” I want to ask you this question, “What is reality? What is reality to you?”
You Can’t Have Abundance Unless You Are Abundant
Some people say, “You’re not looking at the facts.” There are times when people do not look at the facts. There is a difference between being naive and being abundant, but I want to distinguish the two. I know many of you are on the path of trying to create more abundance and be more abundant. You can’t have abundance unless you are abundant. You can have lots of money, but still, be broke. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you in your mind still feel like you have enough, then you’re broke. You’re not in abundance. You’re in scarcity. It doesn’t matter how many things you have, you’re in scarcity. The thing about scarcity and abundance, it’s so subjective to how people will interpret them.
For example, they don’t see too many people other than a few environmentalists saying, “There’s only one Earth. We got to make sure we don’t mess us up.” Even if they throw global warming stuff still, you don’t hear people running around every day saying, “We only have one Earth. What are we going to do?” There are people that say, “I’ve only got $10,000.” “I’ve only got two cars and a house and food on my table, and everything that I possibly need, but I’m still paycheck to paycheck. I hardly have anything.” It has nothing to do with the numbers. It has everything to do with how you see it.
When someone says you’re being naive, there might be some truth to that. If you’re not looking at facts and when I’m saying facts, meaning if you’re not looking at your situation or able to look at it, or if you’re trying to turn a blind eye to everything then you can be naïve, if not ignorant. For example, if someone says they’re going through a hard financial challenge right now and I’ve been in this place too, but you don’t want to acknowledge that you’re going through a hard financial challenge or that you have a problem to solve, that is being ignorant or naive. You’re saying, “I’ll think my way and attract it.” If you sit around on your keester and do nothing then you will probably have issues.
Be Honest With Yourself
Eventually, that truth will catch up to you because it’s about honesty. Abundance is about honesty. It’s about being honest with yourself and with others. When you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll realize that everything is subjective and how you see it. Understand that when you look at a situation it’s so different.
Most people that come to me say, “Chris, I’m so embarrassed about my situation.” You’ve read this on other episodes. “Why are you embarrassed?” Especially, if they’re entrepreneurs, they’ll say things like, “I should be better off. I should be making more money. I haven’t been tracking my money the way I should be.” I’m like, “Join the club, most haven’t. Are you dead? No, you’re alive.”
The thing about scarcity and abundance is it has nothing to do with the numbers. It has everything to do with how you see it. Click To TweetIt’s interesting that I was able to be more abundant and more financially free when I went through my worst financial situation or my most challenging time financially, which is back from 2007 to 2008 era. When I went to that challenge and got to a point where I didn’t have anything. I have no money and no credit. My wife, at that time, and we’re selling off stuff like crazy and trying to do whatever we can to make ends meet.
Through miraculous experiences, it’s amazing how we kept going. If someone would look at that and say, “Chris, you’re not in reality.” I had several in-laws and people like that saying, “Chris, you should go back and finish your college degree and get a job. That’s what you should be doing right now. You should stop being so selfish and focus on your family.”
I’m not opposed to getting work and then getting additional work. I have no problem working hard. I have no problem getting a job. If you’re aligned with who you are, when your intuition tells you, “Don’t do that,” you follow it, regardless of what other people say. I’ve regretted so many decisions when I did it because someone I cared about or someone else said, “You should do this,” and then I didn’t do it or I did what they said, but not what my heart told me to do.
There’s a thing with intuition or that little voice that you have that sometimes, especially when you’re in an abundant state, it doesn’t mean you’re not in a challenging situation, but if you’re in a place of calm and peace and you feel a certain way, you go with it, regardless of what people say. That can get you a lot of criticism at times.
I remember going out the door and my wife and I had a big old argument and she was saying, “How are we going to get through this situation, Chris?” I remember saying, “There’s going to be a day when I will say, I told you so,” and then I walked out and slammed the door, and went off to work. It was a month or two later that I told her, “Do you remember that time when we got in that fight and I said that there’ll be a day I told you so?” “Yes.” “I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to knowledge it.”
That’s the thing. It’s funny how people are. Everybody has their own perspectives and that’s perfect. Everybody’s at different places. You’re at different places and everybody else is in different places. You need to have patience with that. You have to have patience with yourself and with other people. Also, understand too that abundance is a choice each day.
When I lost almost everything financially, that’s when I realized what real financial freedom was. That’s when I realized what abundance is. Abundance is when you choose abundance in the face of scarcity. You’re truly an abundant person when you can choose abundance in the face of scarcity or choose what’s against your natural knee-jerk reactions, natural human responses, or that natural man. When you can choose against that and go with your higher enlightened self and start to go with that, it’s much easier to not only be abundant but then the natural result of being abundant is having more abundance.
I hope you understand how important this is. To be abundant has nothing to do with numbers or situations. It has everything to do with how you see the situation. That is a true difference between being naive and being abundant. Being naive is when you turn a blind eye to things and you’re not looking at what’s going on. When you’re trying to ignore problems, you are being naïve, or when you try to attract your way to wealth.
I love the law of attraction. If you’ve read my show, you know this. I believe in it and you got to do it, but also understand there has to be some action and some application of that principle to make it work. You can’t sit around thinking about stuff. There’s got to be some intentional response to it. When that happens, that’s when things start to amazingly happen, but sometimes people will say, “I don’t know how to get out of the situation. I’m going to do nothing and hope that I can think positive thoughts and things get better.”
For me, the best way to have more positive thoughts is to start moving in the direction that I want to be in. It might mean going out and being uncomfortable, getting out and talking to people, networking with people, and doing those kinds of things. That is how you can create the law of attraction more abundantly in your life. That’s how you can create more abundance, but if you’re saying, “I know somehow something will happen.” It’s almost like someone’s saying, “Someday, my prince will come,” but you never leave your house. If you don’t do that, you’ll never find that person or that special someone doing that.
You can’t expect financial abundance if you sit around doing nothing. If you sit around and not create conversations with people because all wealth is through conversations. It is through the ability for you to help create value for other people that allows you to be able to see better results. Abundance is where you start to choose to do those things. You start to look at the situation and say, “How can I interpret this?”
For example, when I was going through my worst time, I remember that I got to a point and said, “It can’t get any worse than this,” but it kept getting worse. What shifted for me is when I started saying, “It could always be worse than this.” Think of the difference between those two responses. Some people might say, “Can it get any worse than this? How could it get any worse? This is horrible. This is the worst situation I’ve ever been in.” This could be you right now saying something like this.
Most of the time people will think this way because I say, “Look at the past, I wasn’t in a better place than I am now.” “My future doesn’t look so bright. It looks worse than my future than it does with my present.” You then start to get depressed, discouraged, or go into despair, but when you can start to look at it and say, “I can use those same creative powers of my mind and say, I can imagine a worse situation than this.” Even if you’re going through a rough time right now, could it be worse? It can always be worse.
This was big for me because when I realized, “It could always be worse than this,” and then all of a sudden, this feeling of gratitude came in. Gratitude is an essential part of abundance. If you’re going to be in an abundant state, you got to have gratitude. When I started to realize like, it could always be worse than this. “I still have a roof over my head. I’m healthy. I have a body that still works. I can do things. I can get out of the house. I can essentially provide for my family.” Even when I wasn’t providing for my family, I still knew I had the ability to do it. Even though I was struggling, I can make that happen.
The great thing is I was so grateful for is that all the way to get creative with our family finances, my wife at that time, didn’t have to go out and get a full-time job and do those things. We were still able to create it, even though we had to have help. Sometimes we had people that were generous. Sometimes we had a knock on the door and leaving us with a little gift or some milk and things like that. It made a big difference. It helped us through some tough times.
Again, from the outside, people would say, “Look at you. You’re deadbeat dad or husband.” They can say that. The thing is I wasn’t. I was struggling. I had financial challenges that they couldn’t even fathom that they had never had themselves, so they would come from that place of judgment. You got to be careful how you judge people because if you haven’t been in their shoes, you don’t know exactly what’s going on. You have no clue what the heck you’re talking about. That was the case. That’s where I realized that you had to forgive them because they don’t know what they do. That’s what happened and then eventually, we started to pull out of that situation.
When your intuition tells you don't do that, you follow it regardless of what others say. Click To TweetIt’s funny because even though we pulled out of that situation and that’s where I started to pay off over $900,000 of debt in 3 and 1/2 years, how some people still treated us as if we were broke, which again, proves a point. It has nothing to do with what the circumstances show. It has everything to do with your perception of your reality and the things you can still be honest with yourself. You can still be truthful and make truthful statements, but be abundant like I did. I could always be worse. I was grateful
I remember I had an experience where I went out to the mailbox again, another argument I had with my former spouse and telling her, “I bet you if there’s a check in that mailbox right now.” It was a communal mailbox. I walked down past a few neighbors’ houses and opened the mailbox, pulled up the mail, and then one of those mails was from the doctor’s office where we overpaid by $42. I remember I laughed hysterically. My neighbors probably thought it was crazy, but I laughed hysterically because I thought, “This is crazy.” I came back in and said, “See?” The natural response was, “Yeah, but that’s not enough.” “No, but it’s something.” “It’s not enough.” No, be grateful for it.
I’ve been taught this well and she said, “Be grateful for everything, even if it’s $10, $15, or $7.” There’s a check that I get every month for $7.13. I’m looking at that thinking, “That’s nothing,” but the thing is if you’re not grateful for it, what if that money will keep coming in? Be grateful for everything and say, “Look at this money coming in all the time.”
I have seen people who take it to a far extreme that are like, “Look at this, I attract money.” “Okay, good. That’s wonderful,” but the thing is that if you don’t go start looking at cause and effect and go to that reality of, “What am I doing to serve people, solve problems, and add value in a way that they want to exchange money?” You can’t say, “Money is always coming to me,” and you sit around and wait for checks to come.
You might get a few of those and that’s great, be grateful for them, but still remember that there are principles you need to apply. You can be even a much more abundant person when you’re out and about serving people, solving problems, and creating and adding value to people’s lives. That’s when abundance starts to take place.
In the last year, I went through my own biggest personal challenges and having to go through that, and there were some financial challenges that went with that too, the great thing is having understood these principles, the less I worry about something the less that occurs. I didn’t turn a blind eye. I didn’t mean that I didn’t have those financial problems that came up that had to address those challenges. The thing is when I would say, “I always know there’s a solution.” Money keeps coming in. It’s going to keep coming in because I’m doing right and I’m providing value. I also believe in the law of attraction when I’m doing those things that are right and I’m being true and honest to myself, that’s when those people are attracted to me.
Even though I went through a pretty big personal struggle and even working was hard for me to do, the thing is that I still always had enough money. There was always enough. It wasn’t always how I thought it would look, but it was always enough. I didn’t ever die. I always had a home and food, and could always take care of my kids, and all that was there.
That’s the thing I challenged you to do as well as when you look at this situation, be grateful, look at what you have, and acknowledge the truth of it. I read Donald Trump’s book, Never Give Up. He said, “If you only find one thing to be grateful for, focus on that.” I’ve started to do that ever since. Sometimes, it’s just breathing. I’m breathing. I’m alive, well, healthy, and strong. I’m happy. I’ve got great support. I’ve got great wonderful people around me. People love me or whatever it might be like.
You’ve got something that’s pretty amazing in your life. I can guarantee it. If you’re having a hard time finding it, then this is a great time to practice it. For most of you though, there are always solutions and answers, and be open to those opportunities. Look for abundance in your life. When you start to recognize abundance, it’s amazing how much more abundance shows up.
That’s what I have for you for this episode. If there’s any challenge or action I can give you from this is that start to recognize the abundance you have. Don’t ignore what’s going on around you, but have faith in principles. Have faith that when you are abundant, abundant results will follow that. You will start to see those things happening in your life. You’ll start to see more abundance. You will have it. People will start to say, “What’s going on with you?” Even if there are people that say, “I’m looking at your situation, it doesn’t look very abundant to me,” ignore them. Don’t try to disprove them. Just focus on what you want. The thing is whatever you fear will tend to come into your life more.
In high school, when I fear dropping football passes, I would drop them like crazy, even though I practice with thousands of passes and I could catch them. When I feared something, I wouldn’t have that’s when it would happen. It was then, and only then that my fears became reality. When I stopped worrying about whether or not I could pay bills, that’s when I started making money. There are times that I started to worry about, “Can I even pay my bills? What if I can’t? That anxiety and worry, that comes in when you start to dwell upon and put energy towards, that’s exactly what you’ll get.
Even in my last year, I’ve started to reframe things and how my reality is and what I thought was reality. I didn’t realize how much scarcity I still let creep in. Even though I was teaching this stuff, I still had it. I still have it now, but the thing is now I’m starting to see new things and new possibilities. I’m creating a new reality. The thing is I’m totally going against almost all conventional wisdom or advice from so-called experts because I’m still able to do great things and I don’t have to kill myself.
I love that I work. I have more than enough money to provide for me, my family, and then some. I work less than I ever have. I don’t have to work long hours. The thing is those are all beliefs. When you start to change your beliefs and change that reality, you start to look at it from a state of abundance. Those things happen. I can attest to that, and I want that for you too. Everybody, make it a great and prosperous week. We’ll talk to you later.