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Well, my friends, have you ever thought to yourself do people that are very wealthy and very successful ever have bad times? Does it ever sound like I sit up here and pontificate about how great life is all the time? And don’t you ever wonder do things not work for the wealthy people sometimes or for the people that seem to have these incredible lives?
The reality is is that rich people have just as many problems come up as poor people do. Successful people have just as many problems come up as unsuccessful people do. Every single one of us gets up every day and risks being killed on the street. Every single one of us gets up every day and risks having a thousand things go wrong—losing family members, you know, losing money, many different things—losing your job.
All of those things go on to all of us all of the time, and yet some of us bounce back, some of us walk right through that. And no matter how much it hurts and no matter how painful it is, it just runs off us like water off the back of a duck. It’s not that we don’t care; it’s that we realize that the world is what it is and nothing that we can do can change that.
Wasting Energy
When you allow yourself to become miserable because you’re not happy with where you’re at in life, and when you sit and pout about it and worry about it, complain about it, argue about it, you are expelling energy that could be used towards getting you something else in life that should be there. When something really shouldn’t be in your life and it just will not allow itself to go there, then you need to step back and realize that maybe this wasn’t wrong, maybe it was just the wrong direction to get there—maybe we went about it the wrong way.
It’s not that these things can’t be in your life; it’s that these things may not and should not have gotten into your life the way that you were going about it. Maybe this is just an education. Maybe this is the way you find out the right way to make things happen in your life. Maybe that’s what it’s all about. It’s an education. It’s a better map. But for some it’s a stopping point. It’s the point at which you say to yourself, “Hey, it wasn’t meant to be. I can’t have it. I can’t do it.” And once you take on that demeanor, once you believe that you can’t, then you can’t.
Programming
Ever since we were born people have been programming us to believe that we can’t. They’ve told us that if we run in the street we’re going to get killed. I asked parents all the time in my seminar a long time ago when I used to give a seminar about motivation about trying to raise your children—so why do you lie to your children? Why do you tell them they can’t? I don’t tell my daughter, “Don’t play in the street. You’ll get hit by a car,” that’s a lie.
I told my daughter the truth. I said there are big, loud, noisy cars out there that if they hit you they could kill you. And that if you play in the street, you need to be abundantly aware that they could be coming. Now, cars only come from two directions, so keep looking back and forth and checking out where you’re at. If you’re in front of a driveway, move away or continue to look in that direction also. If you come to a crossroads, look in all directions. Always be aware that there is imminent danger, but don’t ever be afraid of what could happen.
Because you see if you teach your kid not to play in the street—that is the perfect metaphor for life—because if you don’t go in the street, you can’t go anywhere in life. So don’t teach people not to play in the street, teach them to embrace the street. Teach them to embrace taking risks and challenges and move through them forward, learning, growing, and going further and further and further down that street reaching, stretching. But sometimes the reach exceeds the grasp.
Dealing With Adversity
And my Class A apartment deal today got blown out. Been working on it for three months. Had all my partners. Had everything going right. Went to retrade the deal, the seller got mad and the deal blew out. Hey, the reality was if it was meant to be, it would be. The retrade had to be to make the deal make sense. They didn’t want to do it; they blew the deal out of the water. That’s fine. That’s the way it works sometimes. I can’t get upset about that—and neither should you get upset about anything else. But what about those things out there that you say well, you might have made that mistake. You might have made that happen. What about those things I didn’t have anything to do with?
Well, we have a very close friend here at Lifestyles who just found out today at the doctor that her baby was dead. Wow. How’s that for a morning for you? Think about that. Lose a baby. Lose my baby—the multi, multi-million-dollar Class A deal. I’m sure you’re going to sit there and say well, those two aren’t even close. I understand. I’m not trying to make them close. I’m just trying to tell you that hey, all things will pass. All things will pass. That pain that I’m sure she’s going through right now and her family’s going through, that pain it too shall pass. And maybe there was a very, very good reason that this occurred. Whatever reason it is, whether you believe it came down from God or because of circumstance or whatever it is you believe in, the bottom line is this too will pass. I want to extend great grievances and sorrow and support to this young lady. And I’m not going to give out her name until we’ve OK’d to do that.
But I want you to understand that I found out just seconds ago. And I found out just an hour ago about my deal. And I’m sitting here right now thinking to myself, life is absolutely wonderful—even with all the negativity that comes out of it. Even with all the challenges that are thrown up against us, life is wonderful. And now that I’m out there in the street and I’ve gone further than I know how to get and it blew up in my face, I realize this: I’m still there.
