Money without a mission is merely materialism! What’s the one thing that can help you overcome virtually any obstacle? A strong sense of purpose!
In this episode, Chris Miles will be teaching some powerful questions to get more clear on your purpose. When you’re clear about that, money is no longer just about surviving. Instead, with a clear vision and purpose, you’ll live a more richer and deeper life of meaning.
Listen 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 that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
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The Power Of Purpose
I’m excited, we’ve got a wonderful show for you. As we get started here, I want to remind you to check out our website, www.MoneyRipples.com. Be sure to check us out for great blogs. We’ve got podcasts on there. We’re revamping the site and make it great and make it easier for you guys to be able to navigate and use, and get some great information and great value. Do not forget to check out our events too. We’re actually looking to go into cities.
In fact, what I would ask of you is if you would like to have us come to your city, have us be able to present events there, I would love to hear from you. Please shoot me an email, Chris@MoneyRipples.com or you can message me on Facebook as well on the Money Ripples site. I love to be able to know what cities we should be going to besides Salt Lake City. We love doing them here and this is where we’re going to have our main base and our main events. If we’ve made a following out there in other towns or other cities, I would love to be able to find out where you are, and how we can be able to add value to you out there too.
What I want to talk about is what the power of purpose. Why do we need purpose? We’ve talked already about things such as getting clear on what you want, having clarity because clarity creates confidence. You really have to know what you want, but just as important, you have to know why you want it. If you imagine, the what is the vehicle, but the why is the engine to that vehicle. It’s going to get you there.
You have to understand the purpose behind what you’re doing. Sometimes I think we get caught up a little bit. We get a little bit too focused on just the ‘what,’ “What are we going to do?” I’ll tell you though that if you don’t have a strong enough purpose and why, what we do won’t be much. We can accomplish so much, and it’s great to have a vision and you’ve got to have that, but that vision can happen so much faster if you’ve got that purpose and that why behind it.
This became really apparent to me about 2008. I know the company I was with previously, we started to hone in with a few of us about purpose. What’s that real purpose that we have? As I started looking at that for my own self and introspect and starting to do certain things to discover what that is, and I started to identify key strengths and passions and values and start identifying what I could do, how I could solve problems and serve people. How can I create value for people? It was amazing to see that my business was able to increase as that focus on purpose increased as well.
Sometimes I think we get caught up in the day-to-day. We get caught up on just trying to help people in what we do. Trust me, I do that as well. I love being able to tell people that I’ve been able to help people free up tens of millions of dollars cumulatively over the last five years, but I’ll tell you it’s not enough. It can’t just be that. It’s got to be something more. What are you really about? What do you stand for? What is it that you really truly stand for in your life? That’s where things get really fun and become meaningful. That’s when people want to connect with you.
I want you to consider some of these questions I’m going to ask you, some of these things that we have. First is why do you do what you do every day? Why are you doing what you do every day? If you’re in business, why do you do this business? What’s the purpose? I want you to write these answers down. I want you to restart journaling these and understand it, and get deep with it. Come from the heart as well as your head. Why do you do what you do?
You must get beyond survival. You can't just look at what you do as a way to provide a living. You got to figure out how to create a life with this. Click To TweetI would even ask this, what’s the cost if you’re not there? What’s the cost if you don’t do what you do? What could be the cost of other people’s lives? What blessings would be withheld if you don’t do the things that you know you should be doing? What would happen? What would happen in your own life and your family’s life? What would happen in other’s lives, the people that you serve? That was a huge question that I refer back to this question a lot, especially as I’m feeling discouraged at times, or sometimes when I feel like maybe I’m hitting my head against the wall. I’m sure none of us have ever felt that way. I’ve ever felt frustrated, especially in business.
Why do you do what you do? The reason I asked this is because you’ve got to get beyond survival. You can’t just look at what you do as being a way to provide a living. You’ve got to figure out how to create a life with this. What’s that life with meaning? What’s that life of purpose? For me personally, this became a very important subject because in 2006, many of you know that I was able to retire. I was able to work about three hours a week. I had more than enough money coming in to pay my bills.
The hard thing was that once I got there, I had spent so much time trying to focus on the what. I spent so much time trying get to the point where I could retire, that when I did it faster than I expected, because I shifted my perspective and I stopped believing the things I taught as a financial advisor. I started truly come from a place where wealth is really created. I started to realize pretty fast that I was already there. What I thought was supposed to be like retirement, where I could finally do what I wanted to do, when I got there faster, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
I actually believe that there are a lot of people that don’t or aren’t able to become financially free because they’re scared of knowing what to do if they weren’t in that situation. What would they do if they had all the time in the world? What would they do if they had all the money they could imagine that they would need? Many people don’t put their imagination to the test. A lot of times, it scares them and they go back to what’s comfortable, which sometimes is survival.
You have to ask yourself, and this is what I asked myself, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Now that I’m here, “What meaning or purposes are in my life? What can I do to be of more use?” I could sit around and work in three hours a week and doing even three hours a week that I love that didn’t feel like work. I could be doing that and just be happy with my family. For me, that was not enough.
I don’t believe that my life was meant to just serve my family and be financially free for me and my family. That’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. I believe that my family expanded well beyond my immediate family, including my wife and my five children. It goes beyond that. I believe that my family is the world, and that I have a responsibility and a duty. In fact, it really is that responsibility to be able to share what I know and help serve people, just like you that are reading right now.
It has to go beyond survival. You don’t have to retire like I did to start asking those questions. Start asking what is it beyond the money? What is it that you really truly want? When we transcend this survival mentality and we stop trying to worry about how we pay our bills, we start focusing on the bigger picture of what we’re about and what we stand for, and how we go about these things. It’s amazing how much easier it gets.
Ask yourself this question, “Besides paying my bills, what else do I want?” Or ask this question this way, “If I knew that all my bills were paid for, what would I want to do then?” Ponder on these questions. Here are some other questions to ask. I’m going to go with these rapid fire because these in and of themselves could be a radio show by themselves. They could be episodes all together.
The first one is what are your unique abilities? What are the unique strengths that you have? What are things that you can do uniquely? All of us have a unique combination of strengths that we have that no one else on this planet has. Even when we have people that have some similar strengths, no two of us are alike. We can all serve people in our own unique way, create value in a way that no one else can. How are we using these strengths? What are some of those strengths?
A lot of times, I’ll tell people there are some great tools out and tests. People use the DiSC profile. There’s the Kolbe A Index that I love. There’s the Myers-Briggs tests. There’s StrengthsFinder 2.0. There are all kinds of tests out there that you can take to try to discover some unique traits and strengths about you that you can use in the service of others. You’ve heard me say this before that dollars follow value. The value you provide for other people will create more dollars to follow that. People will want to give you money in exchange to have your strengths, because when you have great strengths, not just great strengths, but you have a genius that’s behind you, people want to compensate you for that.
What are those unique strengths? What are some of those unique passions? Even if somebody matched up perfectly on the strengths and nobody does, but say they did, the one thing that would set you apart then would be your passions. What are some of these unique passions you have? What gets you fired up? What gets you to get out of bed every morning? What gets you excited that you lose track of time and you’re actually awake in the middle of the night? For some of you, if you’re like my wife, middle of the night means after 10:00. She’s a morning glory versus me being the night owl, who tries to pretend to be a morning glory. Therefore, sometimes they get a lot of sleep and sometimes they don’t.
What would keep you up at night that you’re not tired of it? What are some things that you would absolutely love to do if money were no longer an issue in your life? That was a huge question for me, “If money were no longer an issue, what would I do with my time?” I remember that was a question that helped me think, “This is what I do, why not do it now?”
I remember the answer to that question back in 2006 before I retired was, “I would love to teach people. I love teaching people to live a higher life.: Money is a great thing that I can do there, but it was more than that. It was creating a quality of life, a lifestyle of happiness and joy and love. It was about that, and not just about the money.
When I realized that, I said, “I love being a teacher. I love helping people that way.” It was no wonder why within a year after I retired, I ended up doing something like this. That’s the thing, people go into retirement all the time, and they do things only for money. There’s no difference between that and a job. However, if you were to do the very thing you would love and the very thing you do in retirement, even if you do need the money, the question I would have you consider is, “In some ways, are you retired?”
People always go into retirement and do things only for money. There's no difference between that and a job. Click To TweetIf you’re doing what you love, regardless of the money, isn’t that what you would be doing even if you have the money? How is that not free? Granted, you probably need to pay some bills. Of course, I understand that. I’ll tell you, when you’re doing something like that where your work then becomes more play, your work becomes something that’s more fulfilling and more joyful, it’s easy to get caught up in it. That’s where passion has to come in.
Those in business know that if you don’t have a passion for your business, you won’t be in business much longer because you have to be crazy to do business. If you think about it, we’re absolutely insane when we decided to go into business for ourselves, to make all these decisions, to be creative and have to always have our brains on and be thinking about new ways to market and new ways to serve people in new and better ways. It’s not just a clock-in clock-out type of job, or someone tells you what to do and gives you training. You are that person. You are the one that has to be disciplined to do that.
It’s not fun if you’re only doing it for the money, because the thing is you’ll burn out. You’ll hate it. It will just be a job that now you own a job rather than owning a business. You don’t want to be in that place. What are those passions? I’ve had some people that say that they don’t know what they’re passionate about. They don’t know what they love. What fires you up? What gets you ticked off? How about those kind of passions? Are there things that get you rubbed the wrong way?
I remember I had one client who said, “I’m really not passionate about anything for us. I’m really not.” It was one of those guys that has emotions but he wasn’t like a guy that shows them well. I had asked him, “Do you ever get ticked off by things? Is there anything that ever fire up?” He said, “Yeah, when people threaten my family. I’m loyal to them. I want to defend them and protect them.” I said, “You’ve got a passion, not just about family, but you have a passion about loyalty. That’s almost a value, you’re loyal. You have a passionate about protecting those that you love. That’s a passion. Write it down.” He’s like, “I also don’t like government.” I was like, “Great, you’ve got a passion for politics.” I had to explain more on that. Next thing you know, we had all these kinds of passions that he didn’t realize he had. He said, “I guess I do have some passions.” That’s the point, we all do.
What are those passions that you have? The third thing is what problems would you love to solve? What kind of problems would you love to address? Right now, people need answers. People have problems coming up every day. What are those answers that you can provide? You may not have exactly what it is, but what would be something that you would want to provide answer for. Whether you know or not that you have the answer, what would be those problems that you’re passionate about, you’d love to find an answer for it? Write those down.
When you start to do this, you start to realize that your life is so much more than just the day-to-day. It’s more than just waking up, rolling out of bed, practically falling on the floor, getting a shower, brushing your teeth, maybe eating a little breakfast, and then going out and doing the mundane thing you do every day.
Maybe it’s something that you love too, but maybe you just need a little bit more intention on it. A little bit more power, a little bit more why. Especially those who are in business, you know that people don’t buy you just for what you do. They buy you for why you do it. The whole reason I created Money Ripples is because I want to get to play a bigger game.
At the last company I was with, we had a lot of fun. We did a lot of great things for a lot of people, but I knew that I was going to be stuck to a certain niche. I knew that if I was going to go worldwide, it was going to be up to me. It was going to be up to me to be able to do that. That’s why I wanted to create Money Ripples because I want to create that ripple effect of freedom and prosperity through people’s lives.
I’ve seen it with hundreds of others, watching those people’s lives transform. Seeing people that were so strict and tight with money, they would never allow themselves to have a little fun and enjoy it with their family. I watch their spouses cry right in front of me saying how grateful they were that they were able to finally get their husband to even buy himself like a four-wheeler, which they would go and play with the family and use. Not somebody to go to waste, but to create memories and invest in those memories and invest in their families, and have that time together and strengthen their marriages. Can you imagine the impact of that, not just in one person’s life, but in hundreds, if not thousands and tens of thousands of people’s lives, especially as it grows worldwide?
What would that do for your family to have it in your family? What would that do for your kids? When they start to have their own kids and grandkids of their own, when they train them, you create this brand-new life in a new world, all that prosperity. What would that do for your community and your friends, the people around you, and how would that influence them and allow them and give them permission to live a greater life, have a greater standard of living to raise the bar and to enjoy it, not just be in survival, but to thrive and love life, to truly have passion in their life?
What would that do, not only for your community, but what would that do across the country? What would that do across the world? How would that change the people and how would that change the government? How would that change people? How could that stop wars? Do you understand that what we’re doing is so big, so huge?
This is why I made a declaration the next three years. I truly am on fire and absolutely on purpose to get tens of thousands of people to free up in the next three years, $1 billion. That’s money, either you’re saving expenses and cashflow that way, or money earned and you made. Could you imagine what $1 billion do in the next three years? Let’s say it’s 20,000 people or 30,000 people’s lives. What would that do? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Wouldn’t that be incredible? That’s the kind of thing that fires me up and gets me out of bed every morning, even when I don’t want to, even when I have those bad days, which I have those bad days just like you do.
It’s all about being able to truly have that passion to get up, to be able to do what you know you’re called to do because it’s your destiny. You truly feel that something you’ve been called to do. I’ve talked to a lot of you, especially those of you that are in business. You feel that what you’re doing is not just a business, it’s a calling. It’s something that’s pulling you forward. You’re not pushing yourself. You’re being pulled. You’re being drawn to that passion, to that dream. That is what I want to see you guys live. That is what I want to spread. That is the ripple effect I want to create in your lives remember.
Ponder these questions, write them down, journal about them, and then take action on those things. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a wonderful prosperous week. Live out life of passion, live out life of mission. Remember, it’s all about that power, having that power in your life through purpose. Have a great week, everybody.