Years ago, it became obvious to me that few people ever fully utilized the wealth- and business-building techniques from our seminars and publications. And not just on the subject of making money, but on every subject from weight loss to relationships. It seems that while a good deal of the information people hear and read gets into their heads, it rarely finds a way back out in the form of productive habits leading to desired results.
Why does one person retire a millionaire and another die broke and in debt? Why does one person become CEO of their own company and another seemingly always tread water? Why does one steadily move up while another just moves on, or worse?
Could it be that circumstances coincidentally kept aligning in a particular order to steer them consistently towards the right or wrong decisions? Maybe, it's just luck? Not hardly.
The following discovery is one of the most fascinating and enlightening truths that a person can uncover. Time after time, I have watched individuals swell with an immediate sense of empowerment after grasping this simple, yet profound truism. If you do not absolutely own this nugget of wisdom and cooperate with it, you will never experience sustained financial success.
Unfortunately, 90 percent of the people in this country today do not have the foggiest understanding of the principle of prioritized outcome, or they refuse to learn the lesson it is endeavoring to teach us. They mumble about their money shortages but the outside observer, who has gained this understanding, can quickly spot the true source of their financial failure. An individual's associates, spending habits, frequented establishments, and even everyday conversation, soon reveal a person who's priorities are turned upside down.
We absolutely must find out what makes us "tick." There are often subtle forces that influence each and every daily decision that we make. Our lives could be simply defined as a never-ending chain reaction of choices. And one choice does not only follow another, but often is the result of that choice that was just made.
That's not a very glamorous definition, but it is a very accurate one. Should I get up now or hit the “snooze?” What will I wear? Could I get away with casual dress today? Do I have important client meetings? I feel fat. Should I skip breakfast? Do I even have time for breakfast? What should I eat? And that's just to get the morning started. Each of these seemingly small decisions will have an impact not only on this day but perhaps for many days in the future.
If you were to ask, very few could spontaneously answer the most important question of all, "Why?" Most people can not explain the rationale that they use to make the simplest of daily decisions. It takes place at a subconscious level and is rarely understood, unless it is seriously challenged. When a person is forced to ponder the majority of his decisions, he comes to the realization that his external circumstances are not the result of "pot luck" or "karma."
At the same moment, it becomes painfully obvious just where his priorities have truly been focused as the acceleration down that path looms evident.
Sure, circumstances are determining the parade of choices we face. But before this parade, there passed a prior. It was the choices that we made on that day that largely dictated the choices from which we will be able to choose today. In examining today's entrees you may notice there are a few choices that seem unexplainable or untraceable.
Such choices are seldom, and it may be that we just lack the wisdom to accurately look back and see what brought them. The majority of today's decisions were determined by the results of yesterday's. There are some dreaded decisions that we will not have to make today, because we selected a previous choice that rendered it unnecessary, or satisfactorily solved it.
On today's menu there are other choices that we would like to be there, but they are not. They're not there now, because we didn't make the right choices over the last month, the last year, or the last ten years, to line up circumstances that breed such coveted choices. These choices are relative to each individual, but perhaps one may be a decision such as where to spend the summer. In your beach house in Florida or your mountain cottage in Colorado? A person who makes such decisions made some real good ones, starting a good while back.
"What about those who inherited it?", you may ask.
Perhaps their parents, made those good decisions which not only benefited themselves, but brought many of the same blessings to their children. The now-grown children will eventually lose those inherited choices if they do not continue the same, good decision-making process that their parents wisely embraced.
What to Change
Your life will never be the same once you grasp the understanding that you determine your external circumstances through your daily internal choices. So many people dream, pray and wish for things to get better financially, not realizing that they have control and are at that very moment making decisions that are guaranteeing there will be no changes for them except for the worse.
Many others have been taught that they really don't have control. Such a child will grow up blaming people, places and events for his own shortcomings, just as he was taught. He is doomed to a life of bondage. A prison built not of bars, but of illusive "dream stealers." "I could be somebody, if my father would have stuck around to help me," he might say. Or, "I too could become successful doing that if I didn't have this disability."
All of these circumstances are difficult. Everyone does not get to start on an equal keel, but everyone does have the raw ingredients to better himself. Those with more challenges to overcome will have to exert more effort and more resolve, but they are fully capable of achieving equally satisfying results. But they will never even try if they have been convinced that their life's outcome is not their responsibility. They have no control in such a case. How can they change anything? In their mind, it's not their fault.
When you understand that any final outcome is "your fault," you've recognized and properly assumed your power to alter or change that outcome. You didn't have control of your starting position, but you have a great deal of control over your finishing position.
Some educators are attempting to remove individual responsibility by removing the concept of "wrong" and "failure." In so doing they are removing individual freedom. Freedom is not free. Freedom has a price tag. And that price tag is individual responsibility. Accepting and embracing the one gives you clear title to the other!
From the losing "out of my hands" philosophy one must find a way to breakout of the prison created by this thinking and begin making new choices. The starting point is to first become aware. From there, it could be launched by something as simple as making the decision to pick up a financial self-help book instead of a shopping catalog. The information in the new book begins to create a new pattern of thinking that begins influencing other decisions.
The Fruits of Change
If this benevolent "mental virus" continues to grow in this person, over time he will find himself surrounded by a whole new set of choices—many, more pleasant choices.
His life is now more like the one he dreamed about. It's a new life and it all started when he realized that the majority of unwanted circumstances in his life were the result of a flawed decision-making process, learned from his parents, his teachers, friends, or all of them combined.
Although the initial reaction may be a gasp followed by a gnawing pit in the stomach area, afterward, there is a grand reward for discovering and courageously accepting that we are ultimately responsible for our surrounding circumstances rather than vice versa. That reward is the sense of control that we gain from understanding that "cause and effect" must work both ways. If wrong priorities led to a flawed decision-making process which then materialized as unwanted circumstances today, then by reorganizing our priorities now, we can change the circumstances for all of our tomorrows.
Introduction to Core Human Motives
To correctly evaluate our current set of priorities, we first must understand what the possible motives are. How many different reasons can there possibly be that motivate an individual in the millions of choices that person will make in an average lifetime? You may be able to come up with hundreds if you begin defining them as specific to each type of situation, but that type of specific breakdown isn't necessary.
There aren't two hundred answers to the question "Why?" Every motivation that drives you could be categorized under one of only four general motivating desires or needs shared by all men and women. Every single thing, big or small, that you do from the time you get up until the time you go to bed is due to one, or a combination of, the following motivating factors: profit, pleasure, protection and pride.
[Excerpted from How To Borrow Your Way To Wealth. The only way to use credit without it using you.]
Ted Wooley founded Horizons Unlimited Group in 1987. He has used his 20-year business experience to help equip thousands of individuals to achieve their personal dreams as an author, lecturer and a respected Internet and business consultant.
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