How To Reprogram Your Mind For Abundance & Wealth

0:00We just confirmed that Andrew Huberman is coming to the Summit of Greatness along with some other amazing speakers. We've got Dr. Tara Sward, Brendan Burchard, Gabby Bernstein, Amy Purdy, and some huge entertainers and performers. Make sure to get your tickets right now. Summit of Greatness is happening September 12th and 13th here in Hollywood. I can't wait to see you there. My friend, welcome back to the School of Greatness. If this is your first time here, then welcome. And I hope you stick around because we are always trying to level up each and every week with the greatest guests, the most inspiring stories, research, science, and really tools to help you improve the quality of your life.

0:43We've been doing this for over 12 years, every single week for over 12 years. And today you're in for a treat. And if you've been here for a while, then you know what you're about to experience because we have my good friend, Brendan Richard, in the house, who is a high performance coach of the high performance coaches. He's an author of many number one New York Times bestselling books. And this is all about how to break free from a limited mindset and create true abundance in your life. So if you feel blocked, if you feel stuck somewhere, if you feel like you're doing good, but you're not expanding to where you want to be, this is all about how to break free from the survival mindset that keeps so many of us stuck.

1:25Brandon shares part of his journey from being broke to becoming a world-renowned success coach who works with billionaires and high achievers. And he shares it in a way that is so vulnerable and visceral that I've never heard it before that is extremely powerful. We did this live at my Make Money Easy book tour in San Francisco, and that's where he was broke, struggling, trying to make it a few blocks away from where we recorded this live on the book tour. And it was powerful. He's going to be talking about how small daily victories of integrity can transform your self-worth more effectively than positive thinking alone.

2:04That and so much more. I cannot wait for you to dive into this episode. If this is your first time here, please click the follow button over on Apple or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode. Make sure to share with a few friends because when you share helpful resources and positive, inspiring stories to others, you're making a difference on their life as well. So copy and paste the link to this episode, put it on social media or text a few friends and say, hey, I was thinking about you and I think you might enjoy hearing this story. And without further ado, let's dive into this with my man, Brendan Bouchard.

2:41I'm curious, from your experience, I want to understand more about abundance and wealth. From working with some of the biggest leaders in the world, from your experience, does wealth tend to come with more negative emotions or positive emotions for the people that you interact with? I don't think wealth comes from emotions. I think emotions happen to us and you know in in the science of emotions they're automatic they're physical they're impulsive they're a reaction like an emotion comes up inside of you right and science shows they kind of dispel maybe in 90 seconds maybe three minutes if they're really severe but they kind of come in you didn't know they were coming in emotions kind of happen feelings are different feelings are the meanings you give to emotions and stories and so you get an ongoing feelings and i think wealth is a lot attached to ongoing feelings it's like my ongoing feeling about myself not just the emotion i had because scarcity isn't an emotion scarcity is a feeling that you create i feel scarce you i feel scarce because you know when i was a kid and then you have the story like you share.

3:54And a lot of people had stories like you and I had too. You know, I grew up broke. You know, my parents raising four of us had no money working full time. My dad was retired military. Shout out to all the Marines and service people in the Marine theater tonight. My mom, immigrant to the country, they barely made it between the two of them. I have no idea. They were always fighting and struggling. It was difficult for them too. And the challenge that I grew up with, and maybe you did too, is I grew up with a survival mindset. If you can just get enough, like, you know, just get enough, just enough to pay the bills, just enough to pay rent.

4:41If I could just get enough. So what you're always trying to do is fill a void, not build abundance. if you're only ever trying to pay the bills you're always filling a void not building abundance it takes a while to figure that out and a lot of wealthy people I work with they kind of figure that at some point they're like I wanted to go beyond survival because I wanted to do something different and what that different is is different for everybody right I wanted to give I wanted to serve like you like it was give it was service it was build other people it was like, you know what? I didn't want to be like them.

5:16I wanted to change. I want to be that different person, that one person in the generation that turned it around. But at some point along the way, they understood their feelings about money. When then were you able to break free from that survival mindset around money into thriving financially and creating more abundance? guys it happened like uh three miles from here three miles from here um i went broke in the mission district okay so this is a true story uh i had a good job and i quit it because i want to become a writer like lewis i want to write a book i wrote about the same age too um And I wrote that book.

6:04I quickly put it out. And I did what most writers do. I went really broke. Like, you're already not doing great where I was living at the time. But then I went really broke. And there was probably two or three years I was faking being a writer. I was looking in San Francisco at all the famous places the writers went, all the cafes in this town, the big name writers. And I would go there. And I'd order a croissant. and I'd get a green tea and I'd sit where the famous people sat in those cafes and I'd look around and everyone has laptops and they're all typing and drinking their coffee and I was like, I'm here, I'm doing it.

6:43And then I'd just kind of ADD myself throughout the day, week after week. I'm not motivated so I'd walk around, I'd go to Fort Mason, I'd go to the Golden Gate. I'm looking for inspiration. I'm going to find inspiration in San Francisco and I'm going to write this book. This goes on week after week, month after month. I can no longer afford my rent. So now I go and live on some friends' couches, then on some friends' floors. And then I have to make the decision, do I go back to where I'm from, from Montana, and go live with my parents? Or do I move in with my then-girlfriend? And somehow she had so much grace, she let me move in.

7:26She was paying for all the groceries. she would go and work so hard every day and knowing that I was at home writing this book this great book I'm going to write I'm going to make it with this book and you weren't making any money at the time no money no money and I had a laptop that I borrowed and I had my mom's fold-out little stool where I was writing and I was writing next to the bed because the apartment was tiny. She was in the marina. So tinier apartment, but she's doing, she's in the marina, you know, she's doing much better than I was paying for the groceries. And so I'm riding next to the bed and all of my journals, my books, my vision boards, my research, my papers, my bills are on the bed.

8:15And she'd go to work, she'd come home and usually I'd, you know, get everything organized, clean it up. And then one day she comes home and I was kind of working a line so I'm still typing and we have dinner I come back I'm typing she comes in to go to bed that night and I hadn't cleared off the bed so she goes and goes to crawl under the bed this covers and I was writing and I just happened to look over and she had got under the covers and section of her bed and that's where my bills were And she didn't know I was going into bankruptcy. And I get emotional because I'm thinking, it's like miles from here.

9:00So I look over and I see the woman I love sleeping under the weight of my bills. Literally, she's sleeping under my bills. And it was like, it like, you know, it snapped something. none of us want to be the cause of financial insecurity for someone we love and i've been faking it for several weeks pretending to write not getting much done and that night seeing that it just it hurts so much i was like you know what i gotta get this done so i wrote and i wrote and i wrote and the next day she went to work and i was still writing The next day, I'm writing, I'm writing, I'm writing, I'm writing. 18 days later, boom, book is done.

9:4818 days later, bam, number one on Amazon. Write another, write another, bam, bam, bam, bam. Six books, number one on every list imaginable. Millions of copies, you know, build this huge empire of courses and memberships and eight big seminars a year all around the country for 15 years straight. And here's why. You need to find someone to fight for. if you're broke you're fighting for survival if you're gonna break through you're fighting for somebody else wow you need to find somebody or something to fight for that is beyond you and when you find that when you find that that's when the breakthrough happens that's when the real breakthroughs happen i love his show because he asked that question to everybody you know at the end about greatness and everybody basically says in some way some type of pursuit of their potential and developing themselves but in pursuit of that for others and so at some point you go from i need to just survive to i need to be in service of something bigger that will demand something of me and if you don't like the language of you need something to fight for somebody to fight for then just replace it with love you need to love somebody or love something beyond yourself otherwise you'll only be in survival mode.

11:13How do you not go back into self-doubt when, okay, you get excited to fight for someone or something greater and you're living in that space but then something doesn't work out or then it doesn't hit number one or people continue to laugh at you or the money's not coming. You should have seen how he looked at me. People continue to laugh at you. How do you not fall back into survival or self-doubt or insecurity or self-judgment? Just stop pretending those are going to go away. Doubt's not the problem. Stopping is. A lot of people have doubt, but they keep going. If doubt becomes a signal to stop, you'll always fail.

12:03if doubt is a signal to learn and to try again now you're in the scientific method and you win so doubt should be a signal to learn and to try something new but even doubt's not the problem catastrophizing is a problem what does that mean catastrophizing is where a lot of learned helplessness comes from it's where you worry about ruin in your life which is one of the great fears we have as humans. If I do this, I'll be ruined. I'll be ruined. Everything will go away, and they'll reject me, and I won't be able to handle it. So I'll be inadequate too. And so here's what, write this down. If you ever want to understand your negative thinking, write this acronym I'm going to give you down.

12:48ZAPS. Z-A-P-S. You guys will be having success, and then you'll zap yourself. And when you zap yourself, you'll stop. ZAP. Z-A-P-S. The Z stands for zoom in. Problem happens, you zoom in on it. Difficulty, you zoom in on it. You failed, you zoom in on it. They made fun of you, you zoom in on it. Then the A is you attach self. You attach identity to the problem. You attach identity to the ruin. The failure. Yes, I am the failure. Now it's not just a bad thing happened. I am impacted by it. I am. You zoom in on what's wrong, you got to stop that. You got to zoom in on what's possible. You got to zoom in on blessings.

13:32You got to zoom in on grace. You got to open up that perspective. You got to open up that aperture. So you zoom in on what's wrong. You attach personality or identity to the problem. Then P is, then you punish yourself. Oh man. I used to do that all the time. Yeah. You punish yourself. You shut yourself down. You speak terribly to yourself. procrastination is punishment drugs alcohol drugs alcohol abuse whatever neglect all of these things you punish yourself you neglect and you don't just punish yourself with the bad you neglect yourself from the good you rob yourself of blessings yeah because you don't believe you're deserving of those things that's right yeah and then s is now you shame yourself or you shrink the size of your visions.

14:23And so one problem happened and you zapped into it so much that now you're playing small. And the problem is this is just a mental pattern. This is not like esoteric what we're talking about. It's a mental pattern. It's a pattern of negative thinking, but it's very specific. It is catastrophizing where you feel like you'll be ruined or rejected so much in the future that there's no point in proceeding today. And I will tell you, and this is a lesson I had learn, I actively coach four billionaires. And so these are people I talk to every week. It's a million dollars a year. I had to work up to that.

15:03I was the broke kid three miles from here. We'll tell that story. But the one thing that I learned from them that it's actually maybe everyone knew it, but I didn't. Their number one trait is assertiveness. Assertiveness? Yeah. They assert themselves into situations because they believe they'll figure it out. So they'll believe before they see. Yeah. Oh, I was checking. Confidence. Yeah, exactly what you said. Maybe not today I'll figure it out. Maybe not tomorrow, but one day I'll figure it out. That's confidence. Confidence is I believe in my ability to figure things out. Confidence is not perfection.

15:40It is I'll get in motion, I'll figure it out. And so if you want to change the world, you have to assert yourself into the world. You can't be a passive person. You have to have high agency. You need main character energy. Like most problems I would look at and I'm like, oh, God. They're like, I guess we have to do it. Jeff Bezos says that what made Amazon so successful was that they made decisions with only 60 % of the information. You're never going to have it. We have enough? Go and then learn and find it out. it's that most people they think they need to have 100 % before they go and we've been all wronged in our industry for a long time we had a lot of people in our industry selling certainty right?

16:27you need to be certain and that's been wrong because people who are certain tend to be stubborn and people who are certain stop being curious you need to be flexible adaptive and curious

16:41if you are truly flexible, adaptive and curious you actually go into problems more easily. Because you're like, let's see how this, you're curious, let's see how this is going to turn out. And a failure isn't meaning they're a failure. Yeah, they're not attaching to identity. Yeah. And that's what Wayne Dyer was talking about, his reference is that if you put whatever you attach I am to, be very careful, right? I am a loser. I am not as smart. I am a bad dancer. I am a bad dancer. It's a belief. It's a belief. I do have, can I interrupt you? If I can dance, you can dance. I want to show in a minute.

17:19Don't pull it yet, guys. He doesn't know I'm going to do this. The first time Lewis and I were on stage together, you remember he said he judged me? Because I was so happy in my content, people don't believe it's real. They're like, he can't actually be that happy. I'm like, no, actually the wealth of my life is I learned to be happy, not make money. I learned to be happy. That's the greatest teaching of my life. Your whole tagline is bring the joy. Bring the joy. Bring the joy. I want to ask you a question about thinking, because I think thinking is very important in how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive the world.

17:54What's more important to our success or our abundance? Is it thinking more positive thoughts or thinking less negative thoughts? Success will always be way more about your behaviors than your thoughts. Because a lot of the thoughts I have suck during the day, but I still get what is necessary done. daily prioritized action versus daily good feeling is often the thing we don't crack till later now we do have to have thought by the way i don't want i'm going to come back and reverse but if you achieve the results yeah you have to have good thoughts and you don't we think yeah yeah if you achieve it but you still don't accept yourself are you going to feel good yeah let me share this instead of thinking let's use a different word alignment the goal is to get in alignment with your higher energies and your higher form of being the goal is to be in alignment with who you are and what you're really meant to do the path you are uniquely supposed to be on and when you take the steps and it is steps a lot of those steps you're going to have doubts your thoughts are actually going to suck they just are they're really going to suck and you're going to be unsure for a long time but when you're unsure for a long time you need to be aligning and if you will make the game about aligning ever more closely to your higher state of being ever more closely to your higher state of consciousness ever so closely to your true nature ever so closely to the proper path that is unique and primary and important for you every nudge and alignment it's going to improve the thoughts because you're going to have a sense of integrity and character now and it is in aligning to the actions and the path that is unique and true to your human nature and your real powers that the thoughts start getting better they start clearing it's actions of integrity that start making the mind come into alignment with greater strength and so i tell people all the time, achievement isn't your problem.

19:58Lots of people can do things. And thinking isn't necessarily a problem. Because a lot of people overthink. And they've got plenty of thoughts. And they're very positive. I mean, I know a lot of people in our industry, they're the most positive thinkers of all time. They are law of attraction gurus. And I'm like, do something! Just do! But do the thing that is in alignment. If you can get, listen, if you get in alignment, you are granted a bigger assignment and when you get greater alignment greater assignment is given to you and then greater abundance is the result you don't start with abundance no you start with alignment and abundance is an outcome and once that switches in your head then it's like wait I can do that because I don't know if we want to go over here but you know I in college had a girl who broke up with me.

20:56I've shared on your podcast before, but it sent me into suicidal ideation and I became depressed. And sometimes you can't think yourself out of depression. You have to have small daily victories of integrity and it helps decrease that feeling. It doesn't fix it. It doesn't resolve it. Just like doubt doesn't go away. Sometimes negative feelings aren't going to go away. I do like the idea that we can think these negative things less. But the reason we think them less isn't because we do a mind warp on ourselves and we go, I'm thinking less of this awful thing I really do feel about myself. It's, you know what?

21:37I did some good today. I said I was going to shower and I showered. I said I was going to go to the gym and I went to the gym. I said I was going to call my mom. I called my mom. I said I was going to write the first page and I wrote the first page. And it's these small acts of integrity that improves our thoughts more than wishing our thoughts were different thoughts and could be better thoughts and could be replaced thoughts. And so I think alignment in, now I'm going to come back and reverse myself, in alignment in our thoughts and our behaviors. But sometimes shifting behavior can be a little easier to start cleaning up the thoughts.

22:10Yeah. It's being our word to ourself over and over again. Yeah. Yeah, that sense of integrity. Doing what I say I'm going to do for myself every day. Yeah. And that will help to create more belief because you're now in alignment with what you say and do. It's matching. And I think you're in alignment. Like I said, there's alignment you have to get to because you have an assignment. And you can't see the assignment. Lewis, I've known him a long time. A decade ago, if we were talking, you wouldn't see this as the assignment yet. Right? he had to go through things and discover things and keep Lewis has become more of his best self and I've watched it and I really honor it because just so you know I'm not geeking on I just told him this in the green room today it's been awesome to watch as a friend thanks brother what you have become appreciate it, thank you he aligned himself and I want to let you show I know he shares it on the podcast but sometimes it's different when someone says it he aligned himself by getting counseling and therapy and help and going to seminars and listening to the people he interviews.

23:18He actually is present and he listens to them. And because he realigned himself in the universe, God assigned him Martha. Yeah. Thank God. It's beautiful. And now he has the abundance of love. You see that happen? He aligned, then he was assigned. And now he has the abundance of love. And it's so interesting. thanks for the acknowledgement I receive so interesting because we never know like the the moment before I met Martha I didn't know four years ago I'd be where I'm at today isn't that crazy? it was like literally one moment and everything changed and I didn't know in that moment when I met her this is what was going to happen but it was like literally I'd been doing so much deep healing work before I met her that I kind of was just like, I don't need to be in a relationship.

24:17And I wasn't even trying to be in a relationship. I was like most of the people in this room single not wanting a relationship. But I was just like, I am so good with me, whatever happens. And if a relationship comes or the right person comes, I'm ready. And if not, I'm happy to be single. But it was like, I never had this feeling because I always had butterflies when I met certain people that I was getting into relationships with. And this may not sound romantic, but I didn't have butterflies with her. And it doesn't mean I wasn't attracted to her or there wasn't some connection. But it was almost like my nervous system was in alignment where I just could see a healthy human being in front of me as opposed to one where I was like unsure of or anxious around.

25:04I was just like, cool, if we vibe, awesome. If we don't, I wish you the best. And I wish me the best. and I want us both to win. It wasn't like a need you to like me or anything like that. It was just like, this is who I am and let me get to know you. And I felt so peaceful inside throughout the whole kind of dating phase of the relationship. And I was just like, I'm going to be 100 % me. And if she accepts me, great. If not, I wish her the best. But never again will I allow myself to get out of alignment to please one person in life and then resent myself for shifting my value to try to make one person happy.

25:50I'm at peace whether this works out or not. And I truly want her to find someone who is the right alignment for her. And if we're in the right alignment, great. And if we're not, then I wish you the best. And that created this richness in me that I never felt, but it wasn't until I started shifting my beliefs and my behaviors and being more in alignment with myself on, on sticking up for me when I needed to creating those boundaries, being fully transparent and honest and being okay if she couldn't receive it and just being like, well, this is me and it's okay. Yeah. And it was, it was an amazing experience that I didn't have the belief for many years that it was possible until I started to heal.

26:38Then I was like, oh, I believe it's possible with the right timing. And it happened quick. I was not wanting it or expecting it in that moment. But I also didn't say, this is interesting because Martha, um, after like a month of us hanging out, we were spending a lot of quality time together. And also we, we didn't have any sexual intimacy by my choice. I said, I'm not jumping into this, creating chemical confusion. I just want to get to know you. Where previously the women I would date wanted to get to know me in other ways. But I made a decision. I said, this is not happening. She goes, yeah, I know I'm not letting it happen, but I go, no, but I'm not going to try.

27:22She was like, okay, cool. So we were both in alignment on that. And there was something she said to me later because after like a month of us hanging out and she had done a lot of like her own healing journey as well but maybe a month or two of us hanging out she was did a session with her therapist she was an individual therapy as well as I was which I think was beautiful because we were both on our healing journey and she said I met this amazing guy that something feels different it. But I feel like I'm supposed to wait longer maybe because that's what, you know, people say you should wait and do this.

28:01And the therapist said, you're an actress, right? And if you did a movie in your first few years of acting, and for whatever reason, your movie was up for an Academy Award and they chose you to win that award, but you said, no, I'm not ready for it. Would you not take the Oscar? Great coach. If the award was presented to you, what you wanted was right in front of you. Would you say, ah, I don't know. Would you block that opportunity of abundance to you? That vision? Yeah. She goes, no, I won it. I would take the award and she said then go lean in this relationship it doesn't mean it's going to work out it doesn't mean right maybe he's crazy whatever i don't it doesn't mean it will work out uh but leaning into this one day you will create that relationship it's beautiful and uh yeah so it was really all about alignment and being okay if it didn't work out yeah and that's when it just like it just felt peaceful.

29:07I'll break it down like psychologically. Coach it up. On that coaching, like this is important and he said it. He didn't need and he didn't try to control and he didn't try to get. It's weird because, I mean, we're at this money conversation tonight, but think about how often we need, we try to control and we try to get. And that's our mode of operation that we've learned with money and relationships. And it's why we have this terrible route of poor performance in those in our culture. Because if it's need all the time, I mean, you can't be fulfilled. It's like the oldest metaphor I used to teach in college kids back in the day.

29:54It's like, oh, if you have a relationship of two incomplete and broken people, they can't really ever quite connect. And that's why each person has to really work on their wholeness, because then you lock in. But if you're needy, you're always trying to grab somebody's parts. You're trying to grab. And then, you know, at some point that doesn't feel good, so they pull away. The harder you grab at them to fill your incompleteness, the more they want to pull that part back of themselves so neediness is never working control never works which we all know but we still try to do it on people and then you're trying to get to get and you're like actually i'm trying i'm not trying to get any from you marta you know it's like okay yeah that's a powerful reframe and so i think it's what you shared is so powerful because it's about relationships and money but alignment i want to really hammer that home it's like achievement is not your problem alignment is so many people are busy they have busy work but it's not their life's work and until they move in more of the direction of the path of what is truly aligned why is it that every spiritual text and everything we know from ancient traditions why is it always this why is it always that why is there always a centering because it's ancient.

31:20We know it as human beings, right? When we're out of alignment, that's where our ego grows. And we're in pain. We're in separation. We're in pain. Like all that, like, so it's just about ever so more for you. And I don't know what the answer is. And Lewis doesn't know what the answer is, but you have a path and you have a way of being and you have a nature and you got to have those daily acts of courage to scoot yourself towards that because then you have that self-respect at the end of the day and go, I scoot myself a little bit. All right. And a few more days of doing those actions that are good for you in alignment with you, it's just a game changer.

32:00And as weird as it sounds, most of the wealthy people I work with, which I never imagined I would, I mean, imagine all my clients are wealthier than I am. All of them. So why do they need me? I ask them this all the time. Don't tell them.