Rewiring Your Brain for Abundance | Lisa Nichols EP 531

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11I'm curious now because you didn't start out with a lot of money and with a lot of abundance mindset, did you? Right. It wasn't just not a lot of money. It's one thing to be fiscally broke. It's another thing to be emotionally broken. Two very different things. And I was broke and broken. and in 1994 I had to go get on government's assistance just to feed my newborn baby. I had to get on WIC, Women, Infant, and Children. And I still say it and you know I say it often. I'm interviewed, I was interviewed 155 times in five months for my previous book no matter what and it still hits me in the same place.

0:52I was ashamed to stand in line with all the other mothers, some fathers, to get free butter, free cheese, free milk, free pasta. But at the same time, I was grateful that there was such a service to help people like me that I knew this wasn't where I was going to stay. Right. But it was where I was in that moment. I wasn't committed to take up real estate there, but it was my current address and broke and broken. I felt like I hit the bottom. Sometimes you feel your back on the bottom. Like, I think that's the bottom, right? When I was getting food stamps, I thought I was at the bottom. And then, boom, boom, boom, right.

1:36I went to the ATM. I ran out of Pampers for my son Jelani, and I went to the ATM to get money to go buy Pampers. And it said, insufficient funds. And I had$11.42 in the bank. What's the minimum? You can take out$20 in the ATM? Exactly. You need$20 in to get$20 out. Wow. And I had$11.42. And so I went home and I had to wrap my son Jelani for two days in a series of different towels. That, that was my rock bottom. And that was because as a parent, all you want to do is provide. That's it. It's simple. I just want to provide safety and food for my baby. somebody else was providing my food and I didn't even have pampers and I remember on the second day of wrapping my son in the towel Louis I put my hand over his stomach and I said don't worry Jelani with tears streaming down my face I said don't worry son mommy will never ever be this broke again.

2:40And so you talk about having financial resources. I realized that I needed to first believe that I could do something different, that wherever my mindset was, my bank account was going to follow. So I needed to change my mental zip code. What was your mental zip code then? Scarcity, lack. I was born and raised in South Central LA. I grew up between the Harlem Crip 30s and the Roland 60s. I had three fights a week to get home from school. My highest grade in school was a c plus in 12 years of school my highest grade was a c plus everything in my life was about a hustle everything nothing was easy except the love for my family that was easy and effortless and graceful and bountiful and but everything else outside of that it was a hustle get or get god it was the environment i grew up in and i'm not saying that you have to grow up in that rough environment to have an amazing future people always say well lisa i didn't have it rough Could I have a listen?

3:33I would have traded my background in for anybody. Like, don't think I chose that so I can have this. And so I didn't know abundance. I didn't know abundance existed. I didn't know abundance could happen to people who look like me, a woman geographically from my neighborhood. I didn't know abundance can be that. I didn't see it around me. I didn't know abundance could be for someone that was in my culture. Everything was about survival and hustle. So, so many things. And spiritually, I didn't know that someone who loved God, who had a spiritual foundation, can also have prosperity without being perceived as greedy.

4:04I mean, everything in my environment said, not me, if I listen to the sound effects. Right. And sometimes you just got to turn the volume down and listen to your heart. So, what was the conversation you would tell yourself during this time when you're in this scarce zip code? Someone like me can't have it. Them over there. That guy right there. he comes from the right family that girl right there her skin color is the right complexion that I'm full figured a mocha skin full lips round hip kinky hair girl nah not me not now I get other things I get I get a bountiful family I get a I get great children if I want I get closeness to God but I don't get abundance and and I realized that so much of that conversation was embedded in me before I was five.

4:52I mean, it just comes with the territory. I would watch my grandmother make a dime going 20 different directions. And I never wondered about having 21 dimes. I just wanted to grow up and make my dime going 20 different directions to be like grandma. And so, so much is culturally inherited, gender inherited. As a gender, as a woman, you're not raised to make millions. You're raised to either get a good job or get a man with a good job. You know, especially in the 80s and 90s. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's how we were raised spiritually. You're taught, you know, in my background, my religious background.

5:26Now I'm spiritual. I'm not attached to a religion at all. But growing up in the Mount Tabor Missionary Baptist Church, it was, you know, money is the root of all evil. Well, who would want a lot of that? And that good, good, what's evil? Exactly. Who wants evil? And if that's what you say, then I learned that I don't need it. And Sister Brown, I watched Sister Brown, and Sister Brown was the most godly woman in the church. And she was always selling fish dinners and barbecue dinners to make sure she had enough money. And so unconsciously, I wanted to be like Sister Brown because that woman can pray the heavens down.

5:58And so then again, I'm looking at that. And then in my neighborhood, it was the moment you get a little extra, you give it away. Still to this day, I kid you not, one of my last opportunities, I don't call them challenges, opportunities, is I'm in the top 1 % earners in America. And I say that humbly. I'm grateful. And my job now is to learn how to keep it and grow it because I love to give it away. And I know it's a learned behavior. It's a learned behavior. And I give it away to good things. I just put$82 ,000 and revamped my grandmother's whole house because I knew she wasn't going to move.

6:30She's going to live. That's where she's going to rest in peace. She's going to stay right there. She's been at that house since 1968. She's not going anywhere. So I just redid the entire house, gutted out the entire house and spent close to$100 ,000 doing it. And I'll do that over and over and over and over again because I also was taught, give it away. So now I'm going to people who are more powerful in money in terms of I know how to make a lot. I know how to keep a lot. Now I learn how to grow a lot. Yeah.

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7:57Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.