 So, why do you want to make a lot of money? I think this is an important question to reflect on, and we'll spend this video doing that. The types of reflection we're going to be doing is maybe a little different than what you might have done for yourself. Before I get into it, I'm going to share a couple of personal things, so you can fast forward this video about, I guess, two and a half minutes if you want to skip the personal stuff, but I'm experimenting with talking about some personal things in the front of my videos to see if it works, and I'm still experimenting, so please do let me know if it is working for me to chit chat a little bit, talk about personal things before I get into the topic of the video, and I guess you can skip forward two and a half minutes if you want to. So, a couple of things. I wanted to show you what's on my shelf. First of all, kind of a funny thing is my favorite candidate for 2020 right now is Andrew Yang, so I got a t-shirt and let's put it there. And then my wife said, this is my background for most of, I'm in the living room, by the way, and this is where I usually do my videos with my clients. And my wife said, hey, won't your clients be uncomfortable with a political message? And then she said, well, she's thought about it for me. She's like, actually, won't I be uncomfortable? Because she's supporting, instead, Marianne Williamson, so she put together a funny piece of paper. She literally just wrote Marianne 2020 and put it there next to mine. Let's see, the other thing I wanted to share was, is my current favorite spiritual book, The Purpose of Life. I can't reach it right now. I highly recommend checking it out. This is the book, Purpose of Life, as revealed by Newt that experiences around the world, David Sunfellow. I read the previous version, I think this one is even better, so really good. And then shout out to my client, Diane Allen. She has a thing called Better Questions, Better Life Cards is there. And then one of my old favorite books, The Tao of Leadership. Yeah, it's made a difference for me. Well, I think it has made a difference for my leadership over the years. So anyway, let's see what else can I tell you about my setup here. There you go, a little painting I found years ago. It's a little dog on the skateboard. I think it's really cute. It looks a little bit like my dog. And then there's dog toys and stuff right next to me. I was trying to figure out a way to point to it while I'm looking at the screen. Anyway, a little too much pointing. Okay, all right, so two and a half minutes. Let's talk about the actual topic. So why do you want to make a lot of money? I'm bringing up this topic because over the years I have been doing business and marketing coaching now since 2009, so in my 11th year now. And a lot of people have come to me and said, George, help me make a lot of money. And sometimes, I mean, I ask them why do you want to make a lot of money? But sometimes it doesn't feel appropriate to ask the why. So we just go into, well, let's talk about how to do it in an ethical, authentic way. And if you're interested in that, that was what I talked about in one of my previous videos in blog posts, how to make lots of money authentically. So you might want to look that up. I have a blog post on that. But today, since I'm not talking to any individual here, I'm talking to the lots of individuals who have asked me this question over the years, I want to explore publicly, why do people want to make lots of money? And if you don't explore and reflect on this thoughtfully, you will end up spending your life chasing the wrong thing, in my opinion. Okay? So first of all, I think people want to make a lot of money because they have a friend who has made a lot of money. Or they know somebody, family member, friend, colleague who has made a lot of money and who is making a lot of money. And they think, well, if she's making a lot of money, why can't I? I mean, I'm at least as talented as her and hardworking as her. And look, I mean, she can do lots of good in the world. She can travel. She can have all these fun experiences. She can donate to lots of causes. I want to have that power too. I want to have that freedom too, right? I want to have that sense of security as well and the pride of supporting my family. I want lots of money. I want to be able to make lots of money. I want to make a million dollars a year working just a few hours a week so that I can travel. I have spiritual experiences, spiritual retreats, pay people lots of money to do spiritual counseling and and you know, relationship coaching or whatever it is that maybe I can't afford right now. And you know, and go to all these best festivals and you know, and then be able to donate, you know, lots of my money to causes that I believe in. And that all sounds noble and wonderful, right? The problem with that is there is no guarantee that even if you work hard and even if you work smart and hard, that you will end up at some point making lots of money. And I know that this sounds like a limiting belief, George, limiting belief, but it's reality. I'm not talking about limiting belief or not. How many people do you know? How many people do you think have existed on this earth who have been smart and hard-working and did the very best to try to make lots of money and couldn't do it? I mean, let's have a real conversation. And they probably didn't have any limiting beliefs. I don't know if they did or not. Again, I'm not a fan of limiting beliefs. I don't believe that's, I don't believe limiting beliefs are actually limiting people. I think limiting structures are limiting people. It's not limiting beliefs, it's limiting structures. And the structures could include societal structures partly. It could include our genetic structure, but it is, of course, what's in our control is our habitual structures are the way we spend our energy and our time and our thought, thought, but the thought trains we allow ourselves to go on. Those structures, and you might say, well, George, that's a limiting belief right there, isn't it? Are you talking about limiting beliefs? No, no, no. I'm not talking about what you choose to do with your time primarily and with your energy. That's primarily what's in your control, but what's not in your control, that is like 90% of your destiny. I mean, I really have seen that. I think, because again, like I said, I've seen so many smart and hard-working people try to make lots of money who have not been able to do it. So what's the reasoning? It's not their fault. It's everything else in society and their genetics and their family needs from them and whatever it is that is not allowing them to make a lot of money. And that may or may not be true. You may have some limiting structures in your life that will prevent you from making lots of money. I don't know. So let's be realistic and not have this fantasy thing that, oh, just because I want to and I'm going to work hard and work smart that everyone can make lots of money. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's not true either. The point is that we don't know if you're going to make a lot of money or not. But if you focus your mind and attention on making lots of money, getting to the million dollars a year, like if you think about that every single week, what's happening? What's happening? What's happening is every single week or every single day, every single hour, every single month, however frequently you think about it, you're always falling short. And that is not good for your business to have the energetic experience of continually falling short. Do you see what I mean? Versus, here's what I do. This is counterintuitive. I have, I set extremely modest financial goals. And then I have the constant experience of surpassing them. It's very different from how most people think it. Law of attraction. Imagine yourself making a million dollars a year. Success literature tells us we're supposed to imagine and visualize ourselves making a million dollars a year and then we'll get there. Yeah. How many people have read those books and have, and worked hard and worked smart and not gotten there. That's my point, right? It's, it's, it's not guaranteed. And secondly, it's a terrible journey. It's just not fun to be able to constantly, I'm not there. I'm not there. I'm not there. Versus the alternative strategy, the counterintuitive strategy I'm telling you is you make more modest financial goals than you think you can reach. And then you're constantly surpassing it. And then you can make the next modest financial goal and you surpass that. You see what I mean? So, oh, I don't know how much you're making right now. Let's say you're making, like you could like, okay, I definitely can make $2,000 a month. I don't know what your financial situation is. But let's say that you feel confident you can make $2,000 a month. Like, yeah, that I can, I can do that for sure. For sure I can do that. Then set that goal, set that goal, make $2,000, make $2,000 this month and next month. And you've done that twice or three times in a row now, three months in a row, you've made $2,000, you surpassed your financial goal. Fine. The fourth month set a goal for 2,500 or 3,000, whatever you feel confident to reach. Got it? You surpass that goal, 3,000, month four or five and six. And by the way, during those months, you may, the month you set $2,000 a month, you may be reaching 2,500 or 3,000 or 4,000, whatever. There is no such thing as limiting yourself. Oh, I set a goal for 2,000, so therefore somehow magically I'm only able to make 2,000. That is BS. Whoever told you that is giving you a limiting belief. Okay, if there is such a thing. No, beliefs don't, this is important. Beliefs do not equal results. I have to break that stupid law of attraction. Law of attraction is your biggest limiting belief. Let me tell you that. The law of attraction, your biggest limiting belief, your beliefs do not equal your results. How often have you disproven that from yourself? No, your structures determine your results. Like I said, there are societal structures, there's familial structures, there's genetic structures. What you can control is your time structures and your habit structures. That determines your results. I constantly have low beliefs about what I can achieve and I constantly surpass them. How do you explain that? And not just me, but lots of other people too. How do you explain that? It's the opposite of the law of attraction, but it happens all the time, every day, all around the world. It's because we have good structures. And by the way, structures can include privilege too. However you believe in that. For me, I have maybe male privilege. I have living in San Francisco Western society privilege. I have growing up in a rich family privilege. So you might say, oh George, you have positive limiting beliefs or you have positive beliefs from your upbringing. Maybe, maybe that's true. I don't know. I grew up with a rich family. And then of course, not of course, my dad, when I was in college, she had a huge business downturn and he never recovered from that. So we've been middle class at best for 20 years, when I started, starting when I was in college. But before college, we were making millions a year. My dad was making millions a year. So I grew up rich. I grew up in a gated rich community thinking that, oh yeah, money, money is no problem. And maybe that's, it partly explains my success. I don't know. Again, that's a, that's a, that's a structure that you grew up with or not. But I don't believe you can change your beliefs based on law of attraction, affirmation crap, because it hasn't worked for most people that I know. But I know what you can do is you can change your structures in terms of how you manage your time and how do you manage your energy and how you manage the people around you. Now you can change those things. And yes, they might eventually change your subconscious beliefs. I don't know. I, I'm an, I am, I'm an atheist about limiting beliefs, maybe an agnostic. Anyway, let me get back to why do you want to make lots of money because you've been brainwashed by somebody around you and you've been brainwashed by the success teachers I've been following. Thinking that if you're not making a million dollars a year, you're not successful. Bogus, like I said, let's be counterintuitive, set the goal for $2,000 a month, surpass that. So you're constantly experiencing success or whatever the modest goal is for you. It might be $500 a month right now. I don't know. It might be $10,000 a month. I don't know. But what is modest and totally, totally reachable? You set that goal, you surpass it every single month and you set, you set the next modest higher goal and surpass that. And you keep going until you're making lots of money if you want to. But the other thing I want to talk about real quick before, before we go, I got a request to keep my videos to about 15 minutes. So I'm trying to do that, but I'm going to work on that. So I have a whole blog post about the why that I think you should read, which I will put the link to it about an hour after, after I make this live video. But it is also really important to look at the spiritual aspects of this question. Why do you want to make a lot of money? When the truth about studying the great spiritual traditions of the world is that every great spiritual tradition is very suspicious about money and wealth. Seriously, right? Jesus, the Buddha, you know, Hinduism, I don't know about Judaism. Judaism, Old Testament has a lot of stuff about God blessing people with wealth. But it also has a lot about being, you know, God helping the poor. I don't know. I'm not clear about the Judaism part. So if someone please chime in with that. But I know for sure, Christianity, New Testament, what Buddha taught, I believe what Hinduism taught and any other religion, I have a link in my blog to an interesting website that studies what the world teaches, what the world's religions teach about money and wealth. So you might want to take a look at that. But what I have seen, at least let's just take Jesus and Buddha, the two very credible spiritual figures. Jesus said, I mean, look at Jesus. Did he make a lot of money? No. Did his disciples make a lot of money? No. What did Jesus say? Don't worry about money. Jesus didn't say you must be poor. He said, poor in spirit. Not necessarily poor in bank account. But Jesus said, you've got to be poor in spirit. And it's not about the money is what Jesus said. Jesus said, hey, don't worry about the money. Don't think so much about making a million dollars a year and, you know, having an easy life working a few hours. We don't think about that stuff. Let God take care of that. What you should focus on is the kingdom of God and his righteousness, right? Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the stuff that you need will be given to you as well. The stuff that you need that God knows you need, not what you think you need. You might think you need a million dollars and working 10 hours a week. But God says, no, no, I have better plans for you than that. You're a child in your ambitions. Your ambitions are like a teenage ambitions, right? You want to play video games all day, like a parent might see a kid says, I want to play video games all day and eat cookies all day. That's the best possible life for me. That's what I aspire to. And the parent says, God, you have no idea the richness of life that you are throwing away and what the parent wants, the wise parent wants, is for the kid to do things that grow their intelligence and their character and their courage and their creativity and their ability to influence and communicate with other people. That parent wants that for the kid. The kid doesn't want that. The kid just wants to have instant pleasure and easy life all day, right? So these teenage ambitions of making lots of money and focusing on that law of attraction, stupid crap is teenage ambitions. And I think what God says is listen, I have a much better life for you. What I want for you is to have challenges that test and build your love, your ability to be wise, your ability to be courageous and to be humble and to be creative. Like that is what's much more important to get out of this life than lots of money able to donate a lot to charities because that's actually the ego speaking. The ego says, hey, I want the power to be able to give money to charities that need me, they need me. And I'm able to direct the world in a certain direction. That's the ego speaking. Again, teenage ambitions, right? It's not what this world spiritual and what did Buddha say? Did Buddha say, ah, yes, you need to make lots of money so that you can have an easy life, work 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, whatever easy means to you, to have lots of people praise you, to have a big following of people and to be able to donate lots of money to people. That's not what the Buddha said. The Buddha said, what did the Buddha say? The eightfold noble path, right view, to have a right perspective about life, the right resolve, to have the right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, not lots of money livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness. I'm not a Buddhist scholar. So there's a lot of depth here that can go into this, but he didn't say, right possessions, right amount of wealth, right amount of power. No, I think Buddha would, Buddha also grew up rich and Buddha would have said, it's not, it's not that I want you to be poor. It's not that I want to be rich either. It's the money, you got to detach success with money. That's the main, main point here. You've got to detach success with money. They've got to be separated. Success is about character. Success is not about how many hours you're working, how much money you're making, how much you can donate to charity. Success is about character. Now character may mean, and you end up working 60 hours a week, but you're so joyful doing it because you're helping so many people, or you may end up working 10 hours or five hours a week or no hours a week. I don't know. The success is about character here. Okay. And if you pursue character and a life of character, then everything else will be given to you. Everything else you truly need will be given to you. Okay. I think I've gone long enough here, 20 minutes. I hope this has been helpful. Apologize my, my preachiness. I think in part for this topic that I'm so passionate about, but also in part because I'm trying to keep it to 15 minutes, which I failed miserably out today. So let me, let me read for some of the comments here. Thanks for those who are joining me live. Thanks, Alejandra. Thanks, Miriam, for your comment. What is modest and reachable? Lovely. Yeah. And, and then we keep increasing that as we want to. If we want to, you could eventually, what's modest for you might be 20,000 a month. It's like, oh, yeah, I, I, I got $25,000 a month last year. So 20,000 a month is very reachable this year on next. So it's not about an exact number, but it's just about focusing on the service and the character building and every, the business is going to work. If we focus on service and character building and joyful productivity, making sure we, we have a lot of self care in there. That's what I'm aiming for, right? You know, like joyful productivity, authentic marketing, which really is about service and character building and creativity. And then everything else is added to us, right? Yeah. Yeah. Alejandra says, you know, that these messages, if you have the right to be rich, you have to raise the bar and many other messages, making lots of money can actually be an inhibitor of real growth. Greed runs deep in our society. Yeah. It's that's exactly right. It's like, if we, if we focus on the money, if we put any kind of, the key is this, when I say focus on the money, again, modest goals, I think are very, very reasonable and, and, and good. But when we, when we have fantasy goals, if you're making $50,000 a year right now and you want to make $500,000 a year next year or even whatever years, I don't care. That is what I'm talking about. That is the, the, the wrong aim. Okay. That's the wrong aim. You might end up making $500,000 a year next year. I don't know. But to focus on that number, when it's so far from your current reality, you end up having to sacrifice a lot of people along the way, including yourself. You, you'll sacrifice your spirituality along the way, because you're so focused on that number and that timeline for that number. Okay. Detach money number and detach timeline from success and then include, and then add in character, service and your for productivity and you'll be good. Right. Essentially. And let's see here. Yeah. Tucker says, do I have everything I need in this moment? Beautiful question. Do I have everything I need in this moment? That's a profound question. That's a profound question. That's, that's like a co-on, right? A co-on meaning a question that is not meant to have the right answer, but it's a question that can be danced with. And yeah. Do I have everything I need in this moment? No, that's a great question. So thank you for that, Tucker. Yeah. It's a question to self and fear about money. You know, that's the other thing. It's, there's a miracle called the fact that you are still here. No matter how much we've been afraid about our security in our life, we are still here. You still have the ability to be watching this video right now. And compared to many people in the world, that is, that is wealth. That is wealthy. Right. You are still here and you will keep being here and being taken care of as long as your mission on earth is not yet finished. That's the beauty of it. And so let's pursue our mission rather than, and I don't think our mission on earth is a certain amount of money in a certain timeframe. It's working a certain hours a week. I think our mission is something different than that. Right. So let's pursue our mission knowing that the needs will always be taken care of. So anyway, enough preaching. I hope this is helpful. And until the next video, I wish you a joyful sense of success all the time because you have goals that you're continually surpassing. So blessings. Be well.