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The Wheel of Misfortune: Tightfisted

And lastly, tightfisted. Now tightfistedness is near and dear to my heart because I am tightfisted. This has been the biggest area of the wheel that I've had to shift. And for me, my tightfistedness really came down to feeling like money was going to provide me the security that I craved. If I just held on to my money, then all of a sudden I'd be secure. Now I should tell you I am half Dutch, so I do know how to pinch a penny. (audience laughing) I feel like it is in my DNA, so I have been born to save money. Now when I was younger, my mom tells the story of how she couldn't find me. So she's going to the neighbors' houses, and at the neighbor's house am I in there playing with their dolls? Am I in the backyard building an epic sand castle? No, I'm in the garage studying the mother's couponing system. (audience laughing) Because that's a logical thing for an eight-year-old to do. It's in my DNA, right. But just because you were raised and have an ongoing resentment or because you were ...

taught not to have boundaries or it doesn't matter how far it goes back, even if it goes back generations in your blood. It doesn't matter, you can shift it. You now can know better and do better, and everyone before you was doing the best they could with the information that they had. It's why no part of this is blaming our parents or the people who raised us. Because they learned from their parents who learned from their parents. It simply is everybody doing the best with the information that they had at the time. And now you get new information. And now with that new information, you can do better, make new choices. So in tightfistedness, what we're really missing is the river. Money is like a river, and it's like a mighty rushing river. And in this country $4 trillion a day changes hands. So that river is, like, really flowing. But in tightfistedness what we do is instead of looking at the river and seeing, wow, look at all the stuff that I could create and how I could make all this money because there's all this money available. In tightfisted we see the river and we take off this little stream to our pond. And we pull this money into our pond and we say, okay, this is mine, now I'm safe. But we all know what happens to stagnant water. It becomes purified. And I'm holding on to this water hoping that it's gonna give me the security that I need. Hoping that if I just pinch my pennies that that will allow me to be safe. But of course it doesn't; it's all an illusion. Money can't bring you security. Money is just a tool; it's a currency. And instead of focusing on the river and what I could create, I get stuck focusing on pinching my pennies. I get stuck focusing, looking down at this stagnant pool of water in front of me instead of raising my eyes and seeing that the whole river is right outside my front door. That that river is there because if I create and provide value, if I create a product or service that provides value to people, I put that into the river and I can make more money. But when I'm tightfisted, I think that it's easier just to save money. It's easier just to keep my stagnant pool of water than to do the hard work opening myself up to the flow of the river. So how do we do this? In tightfisted, we think there is a limited amount. And this is scarcity at its finest. But here's the thing that I really want to make clear is that if you would've asked me 10 years ago I would've told you that I believed in abundance. I would've told you, oh, yeah, I believe in a big God. I believe in a God that can supply all my needs for sure. But what I was doing was protecting myself with my stagnant water. So in reality what I believed was that there wasn't enough. Don't touch my water. Don't touch my putrid water that has flies in it, it's mine! (audience laughing) That's what I was actually doing. And when we're stuck in tightfisted, we feel like there's not enough. I've already directed mine. I've already got this money and put it in my savings account. I've already made this money and it's secure, so don't spend it, don't take it. Don't use it to improve yourself. Don't use it to start that business. So much so that I started a business with a free camera. Just hold on to what I have. Because when we think that there's a limited amount, we don't know where more is gonna come from. And it's like the river is flowing right passed my front door, but I just don't wanna see it. And, in fact, I can't see it because I'm just looking at why there's not enough. I'm looking at how I am not gonna lose this. I gotta put up dams around it. I have to put up a levy. I have to build all these walls around it. And I keep looking down at it, when the river could lead me to so much more. And people who are wealthy, if you wanna get rich, if you wanna make more money, then you're going to have to figure out a way to put yourself out there. You're gonna have to figure out a way to make the decision and deal with the feelings so that you can provide a product or service that will bring money to you. And use that money as a tool. Now I'm all for savings, obviously. I still believe that you should have money in savings. But if you're focused on it at the expense of doing what it is that you need to do with your money, if you're focused on it to the expense of creating the product or service or business or doing the education that you need for a better job, then your stagnant water is never gonna turn into wealth. Now there's plenty of people, especially the last generation, that have worked very hard and saved money and had a good retirement. You can pinch your way to a savings, but you cannot make real wealth that way. And you're simply reinforcing that there's a limited amount and that there's not enough to go around. And if we can't shift this, we're not gonna get wealthy. The next one, not trying for expansion. And this is really the one in tightfistedness to me that is the most painful. It is the one to me that is the actual thing that blocks your money. Being focused on the limited amount, yes. But not trying for expansion, is the real thorn in the side for being tightfisted. Because we're not opening ourselves up. We're not spending our money for a return. And we're only focused on what we can see instead of what we can create. Things will go wrong. If I hold on to my stagnant pool of water, then nothing's gonna go wrong. If I put my money out there, a lot could go wrong. So I stay safe, and I hold tight to what I know. And I don't try for a better job, and I'm not gonna put money into a better marketing plan that could bring more clients because I might lose that money and get no clients. I'm not gonna go invest in myself or get the education that I need because what if it doesn't work out? What if I put in all this work and then I still end up in a crummy job? And lastly we just cannot enjoy money. We can't take a vacation; we can't use the money. And particularly if we're tightfisted we probably have money. It might be a stagnant pool of water, but we have it, but we can't enjoy it. We can't enjoy life because we have to have an excuse before we spend, and it better be a good one. So these are the ways in which we block our money. Let's all remember, awareness is progress. We've been through the eight, okay. These are the underlying issues of why we can't make and keep money. But I have been studying money for 15 years, all way back when it used to be books on tape. (audience laughing) Can we acknowledge before we go to break that 97% of the people, 3% of the people we talked to are green, and that tightfisted was the last slice we put in the wheel because I'd never heard of being tightfisted. And you were like, "Wait a minute, I'm not on the wheel?" And then we added it at the very last moment. But can we just add that 97% identified every other color? Yes, okay, so remember, if you're stuck in more than one, what we wanna look at is which one is causing the most pain. Remember like what we talked about at the beginning. Which one is causing the most pain? Because that one is the one that's going to be the domino that starts to knock down the rest of them. So if we're really stuck the most in guilt and shame, then we may be acting that out by not putting up our boundaries or by over-giving or by not receiving. But when we can work on the one that's causing us the most pain, then the rest begin to fall. So I don't want you to be overwhelmed thinking you're 98% of the wheel. Okay, I just want you to focus on the area that's causing you the most pain. Now, in all of my studying listening to books on tape and going to conferences and reading books and doing everything I could to understand money, I wanted to know why is it that some people are rich even if they weren't born rich. And why do some people stay poor? So I spent all of this time trying to learn about money. And there is one thing that is the biggest takeaway for me. No matter what I read, no matter what I learn, everything that has to do about money comes down to this one thing. It's not about the money. It's not about the money; it's about me. It's about what I'm doing; it's about my blocks. Because money is just a tool that currency is used to exchange goods. And certainly the more you have, the better goods you can exchange. But getting more money and keeping the money in the first place, isn't about the money. And ultimately at the end of the day, it's why I love talking about money. Because money is like this portal to look in and see what's really happening. Because your bank account doesn't lie. It's cold, hard numbers. You can look at your bank account and see what you're doing. And what you're doing is one of these eight things. So if we can get to the place where we can fix these eight things, then I promise you, you will make more money. Because it isn't the making of the money that's hard. It's changing us that's hard. Making money is easy because kids are making $5 million a year recording videos on YouTube. Don't tell me it's hard to make money. (audience laughing) Making money is not hard, changing us is hard. And what I want you to take away from this is that we are working today to be the person that can handle more money. Because until you're the type of person, until you've done the work on the eight blocks, until you become the person who has worked through this, you're never going to be able to make money and keep it. Making money is not hard; changing us is hard.