Lately, people who thought they were okay have found they are dipping into savings… and that is okay.
Do not shame yourself if you are in this position, that will only lead you to making more decisions that could hurt your pocketbook even more.
Scarcity is a huge danger to your bank account and financial success. In today’s episode, I am going to give you my top 3 tips to overcome doubt, insecurity, and scarcity in your life so you can be free.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and Fincial advisor.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Chris Miles was able to retire twice by the time he was 39 years old, but he’s not content to just enjoy his own financial freedom and peace of mind. Chris wants you to have your own ripple effect so you can live free today. He’s not the financial advisor you expected. He’s the non-financial advisor you deserve. He’s jumping behind the mic right now, ready to make waves. Here’s Chris Miles,
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Welcome to our show. That’s for you. Those of you that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. Why? Because you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. You want your money to actually work hard so that you can stop doing that and most importantly, so you can be with those of you love doing what you love. But I know it’s not just about getting rich, is it? It’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have the greater ability and greater resources to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you for tuning into our show and allowing me to create a ripple effect through you. As you guys have been binging, you’ve been sharing this with others and honestly guys, just hearing from you and even being able to talk with some of you lately, they’ve been following this podcast, some of you for years and really getting to the heart of the matter of what you really desire and hope for that inspires me to keep on going.
(01:27)
So thank you so much for tuning in. Please let me know how we can keep serving you today. As a reminder, speaking of serving you, if you haven’t done this already, go to our website, check out some great free resources that we have, including we’ve got an infinite banking type of course that’s there, like a video that actually talks about how to get your money to pay you twice with your investing. So if you have goals to be able to get out of the rat race sooner, why not see if it can shave off a few more years by doing it even more creatively that way? So go check out that video right now. Alright guys, so I’ve been thinking a lot lately and I’ve been trying to find the right, I dunno if it’s the right words, the right topic, but really want to talk about what does it take for you to overcome scarcity?
(02:06)
How can you choose abundance and overcome scarcity, especially when it gets harder and harder to choose abundance? And of course, took one of our clients, he knows who he is. I just told him that he inspired me to want to share this video, but he had reached out. He said, Chris, okay, here’s the deal. We’re out of the rat race. And then we started to realize that our expenses are maybe higher than we thought they were, and our passive income went down for a few months for a bit. And so now we’re seeing that we’re actually using up savings. He said, Chris, honestly, I just had to bite the bullet. I feel guilty about it. I feel horrible about it. And so here I am. What should I do? Should I start tracking my money again? And I said, well, yeah, you should. In fact, that’s what we should all be doing.
(02:50)
But here’s the thing that’s important. I told him, I said, stop feeling shame for this. You are just doing something that is natural for humans. The problem is this is that you guys got REIT Setti, you got Dave Ramsey, and you got all these people out there, and even Dave Ramsey’s little cronies, right? They’re all judging you. They’re putting tons of shame on you telling you’re an idiot and all this kind of stuff. And the truth is, is that you’re just as human as those idiots are. Yeah, I just said it. I know. I call them idiots. The truth is that they’re smart people. And so you, I actually really believe that humans are smarter than most people give credit for. You’re capable of so much more in your life and you know that for us to beat you over the head to say, Hey, you know what?
(03:31)
You just did it wrong. Well, welcome to the human club. No one person’s perfect. I’m not perfect either. And so for him to say, Hey, I feel bad. Maybe I should start using that cashflow optimizer and tracking my money again. I said, yeah, do it. In fact, that’s what I learned to do. And I told him, I said, I’m not coming from a place of judgment. I did the same thing you did because when money’s so abundant and it’s coming in, it’s like air, you don’t really count the number of breaths you take. Well, unless I mentioned this. Now you might start thinking about how many breaths you’re taking right now, but you really don’t worry about how many breaths you take because there’s so much air when you worry about your breaths and how much oxygen there is, when there’s not enough of it, right?
(04:09)
When there’s a scarcity of it or perceived scarcity of it, that is when you start to count your breaths. Same thing with money. And so when things are abundant and things are great, perfect time to get in the habit of always tracking your money. But sometimes it takes life to slap us in the face and remind us what we should be doing. And I told him, I said, you probably had other life circumstances coming in that took priority, took you out of that habit of doing that. He was doing it before. I said, just get back to it. Just start doing it again. In fact, who knows, maybe you’ll find an extra few thousand dollars a month or more to help stop the bleeding a little bit. And here’s the best part is that if we reframe this, instead of him saying, Ooh, I’m falling short a little bit and I’m starting to use my savings, reframe it and say, well, what if I were to get my expenses and my life under control again?
(04:56)
And then as my passive income does go back up, which it’s inevitably going to do for him anyways, as it swings back up again into this next season, he’s going to say, oh, wow, I was okay before, but now I’m really okay. Now I’ve got extra. Let’s keep reinvesting and keep building up that passive income more so that I’m now able to fight inflation with that income that’s coming in right now. That’s the way I would reframe it. And so I want to talk to you because you might be dealing with your own struggles right now, and I’ve had other clients, some of them coming in saying, Hey, this isn’t working for me fast enough. I wish it were faster. But if they were to really step back and look at the grand scheme of things, they’d realize they’re moving pretty darn fast. Just because you hyper focus.
(05:39)
It is like you’re trying to watch grass grow sometimes, especially when you’re trying to watch your money, your passive income, sometimes you’re just staring at it. You’re not going to see any progress. It takes you a moment to step back and really look at the situation to realize that you’re progressing probably much better than you realized. So just know that sometimes scarcity creeps in. Sometimes we worry, especially if you have the news on and everything else, or you’re listening to other people and their scarcity. Scarcity will breed scarcity. One of the best things you can do is to remove yourself from the situation that keeps breeding, scarcity. I would focus on three things, three things that you could do right now to help you get out of scarcity today. Number one is gratitude. Number two, predict a brighter future. And then number three is patience.
(06:22)
So let’s talk about first that gratitude. What does it really mean to have gratitude? Now, I first really, this kind of hit home for me. I remember going through some of the worst times, especially during the last recession, right? I was over a million dollars in debt. I was short 15,000 a month. I was sinking horribly, and I was supposed to be the financial guy that had it all figured out. Yet here I was a complete hypocrite, someone who’s broke, trying to help other people not be broke. And as I was going through that, I remember thinking, you know what? Let’s just do a prayer of gratitude. And so I pray to God each morning, and I’d usually do it after my workout’s done, especially when I’m all beat up from the workout and just I’m panting and breathing, then I’ll just do that. I’d start counting my blessings.
(07:03)
I would count all the things I’m grateful for, even if it seemed like a lack and even the things I’m grateful for that maybe haven’t happened yet, really being grateful for the doors that I knew God was opening up even if I couldn’t see them at that moment. So just being grateful, grateful for my own body and that could breathe. I remember reading Donald Trump’s book back then called Never Give Up, and that’s actually one of his better books that I like. He talks about some of his failures, but how he’s able to turn ’em around and he would talk about if there’s 20 negative things, he’d focus on the one positive, and I think that’s a great habit to develop, to focus on the good. There’s always so much negative. And the truth is, when you look at a situation, the truth is you don’t really know what truth is anyways.
(07:41)
Do you know what I mean? What I mean is this, is that you might look at a situation in your life and you’ll interpret it one way. So just think of my client where he said, oh, it’s horrible. Now we’re starting to dip into savings. Since I haven’t been tracking my money. I look at it as cool. You’re not tracking your money, start tracking it. Now, granted, I’m not as emotionally invested in that situation as he is. That’s why sometimes it’s good to have mentors or other people you could bounce these ideas off of to give you a different outside perspective versus one that where you’re emotionally tied in. This is why when I want to work on marriage stuff, I don’t just try to work on marriage stuff myself. I look for outside help. I look for somebody who can give me a different perspective.
(08:20)
I know some of you might be thinking, oh, I wish my spouse would get a different perspective. Hey, works both ways. And so getting that outside perspective sometimes helped because for me, I just said, well, what is you stop tracking, start tracking today. Why whine and moan about it, right? Why feel all this shame and guilt? It doesn’t do you any good? Just do it now and stop looking in the past of what you’ve done wrong and trust me, easier said than done because I’ve done this too. Okay? I’ll tell you one act of scarcity. I dunno if that’s a thing or not, but one scarcity moment I had was actually for the first time buying my house after the recession. This was in 2018 or 17 or 18 whenever it was. I had been renting homes up to that point. I destroyed my credit.
(09:06)
My credit went down to a 510 in 2010. That’s how bad my credit was. So getting a house was not easy, especially if you’re an entrepreneur and you have bad credit. Well, once it got past really that seven year period, give or take from really having some bad lates and things like that, we found a house that we wanted to buy and making the offer. I was excited, I was happy, I was feeling hopeful, and then all of a sudden midway into the financing process, I start to freak out. Why? Because the house that I was buying was almost the same exact price as the house that I lost in the last recession. It was over $600,000. That was the same price of house that I bought before the last recession, and I lost to foreclosure, and just a matter of moments I got kicked out of the house.
(09:52)
I had to go find a place to rent within two weeks while my fourth child was being born. So it was a stressful time, and so I started almost hyperventilating having anxiety about it all, and it took my wife to say, what are you freaking out about? I said, well, this is the same price, the house that I lost, and well, I mean, what if I can’t make the payments? What if something goes wrong? What if I can’t do that? I don’t know what I’m going to do. Because up to that point, I really hadn’t got much debt. I had to pay off all my debt, not get more debt. And so I’m like, what if I can’t make the payments? She said, well, what was your situation like back then? I said, well, I mean it was decent, but then I cut off a bunch of income streams to go start a new company.
(10:34)
Then that company was going under, there’s a lot of things wrong. I had some savings, but probably not enough. She said, well, do we have enough savings? I said, well, yeah, we’ve got a decent amount of savings now. Okay, Chris, pretty much this payment isn’t much more than what we’ve been paying to rent anyways, right? Yeah. And remember how you were panicking about paying over 2000 bucks a month of rent? You never paid that before in rent? Yeah. Well, we did that just fine, didn’t we? Yeah. So what are you worried about? And I said, well, good point. I guess it’s the same, but yeah, there’s more at stake because what if I lose my house? Well, then we lose it, go rent again. And so when she kind of took away all like, yeah, well, what if that happened? So what? Once she kind of took that away, my fear started to diminish.
(11:15)
Now I’m not telling you that it just went away and it never came back. There were still moments that try to peek its little scarcity monster head in there, but still from that purpose, from that point of view, all of a sudden it wasn’t as bad, and pretty soon it’s like that’s a dirt cheap payment. In fact, even the payment we have on a newer home, we’ve got a bigger home with a bigger yard and place. We can raise chickens and gardens, all that kind of stuff, and it’s got a bigger payment, but you know what? We’re doing just fine and we make sure we plan for that. Things that I didn’t do as well when I was in my twenties, I’m doing now in my mid forties, and that’s the thing, if you understand that you’re not the same person that you were whenever that failure happened in your life that you should have hopefully learned from it and that you’re a different person and that you’re now stronger and more equipped to handle a situation like that, you probably won’t repeat the same mistake twice we hope, right?
(12:09)
It’s possible. But if you really did learn from it became a part of you and you really know how to do something better as a result, you were able to do something differently as a result and think differently about it, well then what you’re so afraid of, just understand that definitely gratitude is big, being grateful for the things that you have and even being grateful for those opportunities that might be coming still. If you say, I don’t have that money for this yet, well be grateful for the money that has been coming in. If you’re not grateful for the little things, why would you be blessed with the bigger things? Because if you’re not going to be thank God or the universe or whatever for the small stuff, why would you get anything greater? So be thankful for whatever you have right now. Know that you can have more, but don’t be so hyper fixated on it that you don’t have something else.
(12:55)
This is why you don’t have to compare yourself to other people. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about you, and let’s be honest, guys, whatever store you make up in your mind, it probably isn’t true anyways. It’s true in your head. It’s valid for you, but your story, you’re going to interpret whatever you have through your own filters, your own past experiences and beliefs. You’re going to create a story out of it. That story may not even be truth. So if you have all this ability to create these kind of stories in your life, why not create something different? That leads me to that second point, predict a better future. Many people go into scarcity because when they look into their future, especially when they’re looking at the recent past, if they see something going declining or going downhill recently, then all of a sudden your mind will project that future.
(13:41)
Say for example, you have a savings account and you’re happy. You got 50,000 saved up in there. Then all of a sudden you have to start tapping into it. It’s now down to 30,000. Well, your mind will all of a sudden start creating, oh, it was 50, now it’s 30. Oh, it’s shrinking. This is a bad thing, right? That’s kind of what happened with my client where they said, oh, our passive income went down for a little bit because some prices changed. Okay, it went down for a little bit, but you already know it’s going to go back up, right? Yeah, but it went down, okay. It did go down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to go down next month or the month after that, and you already know with some of the other investments you have, it’s going to go skyrocketing up by next June or July anyways.
(14:19)
Yeah, I guess, yeah, so stop predicting a worse future, predict a better future. Look forward something better. Now, I get it. The hardest thing to do is when you’re seeing the trajectory going downhill, you have to create something different. But again, your mind, mind is an incredible thing. You’ll create whatever you want in your mind. So if you remember with Ray when we had him on the show, the guy, he gives you such a bigger perspective to have go from homeless to where he is. You’re going to naturally create an upward trajectory. Now, he could have said, Hey, at least I had a home in China, and now I don’t in the us. He could get himself stuck and just think he’s stuck there and that things will only get worse. But no, he didn’t. He actually was grateful for the opportunities that he had he never had in China, and then he saw those opportunities and he took advantage of it, and he started to create upward trajectory.
(15:08)
No matter his current circumstance, you can do the same thing. Your mind can create scenarios. Use that creativity, use that energy instead of on the negative, what could happen that hasn’t even happened yet that you’re afraid of. Use it to create something better and focus on that. I know that I said this in that interview. I said, whatever I can see in my mind, if I can really experience it in my mind and see it and I’m clear with it, I’ll create it. Whatever I can see in my mind, if I’m clear with it, I can create it. Same is true for you. Create that clarity. Journal it. Write it down. Write down what you want that feature to look like, that vision of your life. What do you want to look like? If you’re working overtime hours right now, you want to be working part-time, write that future down.
(15:49)
Create that story. If you’re going to create a story, might as well create a better one with a happy ending, not a worse ending, okay? Yes, there might be challenges along the way. There will be bumps and yes, but you’re going to overcome it every single time. You can overcome anything thrown your way. There is nothing too hard that’s being thrown at you that you cannot overcome yourself, so do that. So be grateful and use the power of that gratitude to predict a better future in your life. No matter what the current circumstances look like, you create a better future. Even when I was flat broke over a million dollars in debt and I knew reality, and I could still acknowledge the reality and say, this is what is right now, but you know what? I was grateful for? I was grateful for I could still live and survive.
(16:29)
I could still go out and work. I didn’t have money, but at least I could pay my bills in that moment. Even if I was behind on bills, I realized, you know what? In this very second, in this instant right now, I’m not having to pay a bill. I could pay it now. I need to pay it in 10 minutes, but I don’t have to pay it right now. I’m okay. I’m abundant. I have everything that I need. All the resources I have are at my disposal right now. I have everything I need. I just need to take advantage of it and do the third thing, which is patience. Impatience is probably the number one killer of dreams in my opinion. Impatience. Many people will give up too soon. Many people will try to force the results so much that they’ll create the opposite effect.
(17:10)
That happens a lot, right? For example, many times I get impatient with things around the house. My wife can definitely attest to this. If I’m feeling frustrated, you bang your knee or smash your hand or something in the process, oh my goodness, let’s just say that There’s words I say that you cannot even say. I’m not going to say on the air here, but I get pretty ticked. I’ll throw things. I’ll drop that box and just get so mad and yell or whatever. Let’s be honest, a lot of it usually comes back to me trying to force results rather than just trying to say, you know what? Take it easy. You know what? That screw, if I can’t get that screwing done, be a little patient, keep working it, but no, I got to do it right now. It’s got to happen right now for me, me, right?
(17:49)
Those are the kind of things that you might be saying in your own life. You might be saying that with business success, you might be saying it with your financial success. You might be saying that with trying to get your kids straightened out or whatever it might be, right? You want everything to be done yesterday, but the truth is, guys, that sometimes the best lessons, sometimes the best wealth you can create is in the journey. It’s in the journey, in the process, the things you’re learning along the way. Sometimes the most exciting game to watch is not the ending, not the final seconds. Sometimes the most exciting part is in the middle, but many people get impatient. They just want to fast forward to the end just to see the end result, and the truth is, you can already do that. Predict your own future.
(18:25)
You can already create the ending, but in between, be grateful and stop trying to force it to happen. It’s like I said before, it’s like watching grass grow. Sometimes the best thing you do is just step back and be patient. I’ve learned that the more patient I am, which is an abundant emotion, impatience is scarcity. When you’re in that hustle inpatient mode, things tend to take forever and they tend to get pushed away farther out than they need to be. I’ve noticed that whenever I try to force results, I usually create results that happen much longer in the future where if I’m a little bit more relaxed about it, I’m more open and I’m in a much better state of abundance and faith and gratitude. Those things come to me faster. In fact, if you ever want results come to you faster, focus on getting in this state of abundance as much as you possibly can.
(19:13)
The more you get in the state, the better it gets. I can promise you that so many of our clients that we work with, sometimes I’ll have to remind ’em, say, listen, stop trying to force results. Be patient. Know that anything can happen. Sometimes you get a raise at work and things you might just be steadily saving away, but all of a sudden a windfall of cash comes. Maybe all of a sudden something appreciates in value and you’re able to get extra cash there, or there’s so many abundant opportunities that can happen that could change your life that you don’t see right now. Stop sabotaging yourself by feeling like it’s not enough. Anytime you get to the point of not enough that you don’t have enough of time and not enough money, not enough opportunities, not enough love, not enough of anything in your life, you will tend to find that very thing when you start to realize you’ve got more than enough into spare and that opportunities are knocking down your door every day.
(20:01)
In fact, there’s an abundance of opportunities. You’ll never have a shortage of them, and on top of that, that things unexpected, unexpected little miracles and blessings will happen to you. They always have for your whole entire life. Why would they stop now? Focus on the good that you have there. Be patient, predict a better future and watch what will happen to your attitude. So I’ll just end with this, guys that I know. It’s hard to not be in scarcity. I know the world whether we like it or not. They’re going to be feeling more scarcity. There’s going to be more of a financial pinch happening. You don’t have to give into this. You know better if you’re listening to this show or watching this show, you already know better choose abundance over scarcity. Doesn’t mean that scarcity won’t happen. When scarcity comes in, find a way to flip that script, right?
(20:45)
You tend to flip it around to say, how can I make this more abundant? In fact, just asking that question, how can I make this more abundant versus why do we always have to fall into scarcity, right? When you say, why do I always have to fall into scarcity? Why does this always happen to me? You’re going to stay in scarcity a long time. You say, well, hey, what’s the good side of this? What can we do? What is the purpose of this? Maybe there’s a purpose behind this happening. In my life, 2008 and 2009, the only thing that really got me through to run on those fumes of faith was realizing, you know what? This must be happening to me for a reason. There’s got to be a purpose behind this. Whatever it is, I know that God wants it for me, and you know what?
(21:20)
I’m going to do the best I can to learn from it, and it was hard Some days, some days, especially when there’s collector calls coming left and right and I feel like a loser, and I had a wife at that time that was threatening to take the kids and move out into her sister’s house to see if I could figure out my crap. Yeah, all those things were happening all the time. Every day I was battling that scarcity, but at least every single morning I could wake up and do a prayer of gratitude after my workout or whatever, and I had a win. There was a win there. I was a winner at that point. I wasn’t a loser. I felt like some days I was a winner. You can choose the same thing you can make each day. Start it with a win. Start it with something good that allows you to be inspired to do something more and to enjoy the moment.
(22:01)
No matter what challenges are coming your way. Just understand that there’s got to be something here for you, and I can guarantee you these experiences are for you to develop into a better human being with greater skills, greater capacity to do something that you weren’t able to do before. In fact, who’s to say that the very thing you’ve been praying for, the very thing you’ve been wanting in your life, who’s to say that these challenges aren’t the thing that’s actually helping you develop the skills so you can finally get what you wanted in the first place? Have you ever thought of that? This might be the very thing you need to be able to do that, and you may not be able to see it at this time because you never can. You always see it. Hindsight looking back, right? It’s always hindsight 2020. Just know that everything happens to you for a reason.
(22:39)
You can be grateful. No matter what’s going on in your life, you can predict a better future. Use that power of creativity. If you’re going to create stories, you might as well create something that’s good and useful and be patient and watch how fast things will turn around. For you guys, I hope the best for you. I know we’re moving the holiday season, man. This is a time that made people feel scarcity. You can choose abundance, joy, have joy in this time. Enjoy it and watch how your life will change. I can teach you all, I can teach you about strategies all day long, but if you master this, not only will those strategies work better, but you’ll feel better even when the money’s coming in. That is my promise to you. Go and make a wonderful process week. See you.