How prosperity thinking affects your financial success

Ellen Rogin:

We all have attitudes and beliefs that inform how we deal with money and finances. Dr. Bruce Lipton, who’s a cellular biologist, says we develop our subconscious beliefs between conception and age seven, including our money beliefs. So you have formed beliefs about how you think money works and the world works from when you are a really little kid and they’re operating in the background. It’s like chatter back here that most of us aren’t even aware of. And we’ve been taught that, oh, if you just know how to budget and if you know how to allocate your portfolio, you’ll all be fine, which is ridiculous, because if we think about the fact that how many people are in debt in the world. And if all it took was spending less and earning more or being a savvy investor, then that wouldn’t happen with anybody. We know that’s not true. And this is where scarcity lives too, in these tapes that play over and over. So maybe, it may have been things you heard growing up or saw.

So I’ll just give you a quick example in my family. We were in a position where my dad was off at work and my mom stayed home with me and my brothers. My brothers are significantly older than me. So I remember being a little girl at home with my mom, seeing daddy go off to work, so he could, as my mom would say … I’d say, “Dad, why are you going off to work?” And they would say, “To buy Ellen toys.” So to do stuff for me, that was my dad’s job. So fast forward, I’m in my late twenties, I start my own business and I start to explore my own money beliefs. And I realised I was operating with this tape playing in the background that it was my husband’s job to make money because that was my dad’s job. And further, I might not even be able to do it.

Now here’s the thing about beliefs, just because we believe them doesn’t mean they’re true. At that point I had lots of letters after my name. I had an MBA, a CPA after my name. It didn’t make any logical sense. And I think back, if I hadn’t unpacked that and said, oh, that’s a stupid belief, that doesn’t serve me, I don’t know if I would’ve been as successful in my career because it might have just been like that’s Steven’s job and I probably can’t even do it. So we all are operating under these money is hard, it’s scary. Or maybe you had really good beliefs like, always save for tomorrow. It’s just knowing that these are operating there and we don’t even realize that they’re running the show.

Ellen Rogin:

I’m so excited to be here. Thank you.

Ellen Rogin:

It happened very early in my career, actually as a financial advisor. I became fascinated by how people make decisions and how some people could have so much and still be worried all the time or not be worried. And people with maybe more modest means might be super content or not. And I realised it wasn’t about the money and for my entire career was fascinated with that.

Ellen Rogin:

What I love about the word is that it can mean so many different things to so many different people. Most of the time people go right in and think of money or financial prosperity, which that can certainly be. The actual dictionary definition is a condition of success or thriving. And when I talk to people about this at workshops and ask them, what does it mean to you, it very quickly gets into a discussion about having love in my life or flexibility or good health, so many different things. And to me that’s really what the whole package is about, because you could have tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of financial resources and be miserable, come home at night and kick your dog and fight with your partner. And so what good is that? But it’s really having more of an expansive view around what money and prosperity can really do for you.

Ellen Rogin:

Well, money flows through so much of pretty much everything that we do. It’s a lot of conversations. Our work usually revolves around that for most people, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or an executive. Often we’ve been taught that our worth is based either on how much we’re earning or how much we’ve accumulated. Whether that’s true or not, a lot of people really believe that. So the way I look at it is we do live in a material world and money is important. And we also live in more of an ethereal world where having a bigger picture about what true success means to you or happiness or prosperity as we’re calling it, are both important. But since we’re very little, I think we start to be ingrained with the thoughts that money’s important and a measure.

Ellen Rogin:

Yep. That’s what I’ve seen as well. And maybe it’s 100,000 Australian and 75,000, I don’t know what the exact conversion is. I’ve heard 70,000, 75,000. The concept behind that is once you get to that level, you’ve had most of your basic needs met and the incremental amount of money you make doesn’t make you that much happier. However, there was a subsequent study that found it doesn’t make you happier unless you’re using that money to help other people and then it actually boosts your happiness level.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. I think sometimes people have heard about abundance thinking and scarcity thinking and it might be helpful to define that a little bit for people. Scarcity thinking is how most of the world operates. It’s this thought of, for me to win, you have to lose. There’s only so much to go around. It’s aggressive competition. And people may be able to relate to this on a personal level like, if something good has happened to someone you know in your life, sometimes there’s that little bit of envy or jealousy or judgement on it that can happen like, oh, well they didn’t really try that hard. Or if it’s, say someone buys some big fancy car, they’re so materialistic. It’s this little judgey thing that we can have happen versus being so excited for them that they got this awesome job or this beautiful car or house or whatever it is.

The other extreme of that, this abundance thinking is that there’s more than enough to go around. It’s about collaboration. It’s about giving a standing ovation when something really good happens to someone that you know. And I believe that a lot of the world’s problems come from this scarcity thinking like, why can’t we all do well. But it’s this, no, I have to do better, that viewpoint.

And what I found over the years is there’s almost something magical that happens when you can move to this more abundance mindset, all of a sudden things start to flow more easily for you. Or if there’s things that come up, because it always happens for us, there might be something that’s a bump in the road, the resilience level is much greater for people that have an abundance mindset than people that have more of a scarcity viewpoint on things.

Ellen Rogin:

The prosperity version of that could be how do we best serve our clients to the highest good and that the people that we can serve best are attracted to us and we do our best for our employees and the community or whatever your goals are for the business. I think it’s just looking at things from a different viewpoint. I don’t know why you still can’t grow your business and do phenomenally well without having this feeling of crushing the competition. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. You don’t have to crush someone for you to do well. If you focus on doing your best work for the people that you’re most meant to serve and serving your employees well, I don’t know why that means somebody else has to do bad in the process.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. And putting your attention on-

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. And some people might not feel comfortable saying you could go to them. When I was a financial advisor, I certainly did because there’s lots of business to go around and I knew someone that was going to be comfortable with me wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable with somebody else, or the other way around. If you’re in a larger business, again, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily escorting people over to the other people. Although if they’re better suited there, then why not? No one wants customers that are miserable and unhappy with you. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be really putting all your attention on how we do our best for our people. And we can grow more people if we’re doing our best, but it doesn’t mean that someone else has to be crushed in the process.

Ellen Rogin:

Yep.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah, no, I think that’s absolutely correct. And if you think about it, I get that. I mean, it certainly happened to me, but it doesn’t make me more successful to spend my energy being pissed off that someone else is doing well. And often when I’ve really been frustrated, like why is that person doing well, my ideas are better, and after I really get quiet, I look at the fact they’re often doing something that I felt I should be doing. And it’s really a defensive mechanism that I have a higher standard for myself that I haven’t been stepping up to and that’s just a way to defend against that for my ego to defend against that. But it doesn’t move me forward to be focusing on whether they should be successful or not. I mean, sometimes there’s nasty people in the world that become financially successful. It doesn’t do me well to spend my energy focusing on that.

Ellen Rogin:

We live in a material world, right? So if you’re starting out in business, hopefully you have had some plan to cover some expenses before you jumped off and said, I’m in business by myself with absolutely no resources. And just to be practical, and I’ll get to your question, maybe you get a side job while you’re doing this so you can pay your bills because here’s the problem. When your back is up against the wall and you are freaked out about money, you cannot make good decisions. There was a book called Scarcity and the researchers found that when that happened, when people were really in a dire financial situation, their IQ actually dropped. So you can’t make good decisions when you’re in that situation and sometimes you just have to be really practical about it. And there can be blind optimism on that. I mean, I can skew a little bit that way, I’m highly optimistic.

Ellen Rogin:

And it can be annoying for people in our lives, if I’m always like everything’s going to be fine, because I have a pretty low tolerance also for whining about things. But there is some realism that’s a good balance there. Optimists tend to make more money, they tend to be better at sales. And there’s times when we just want to be realistic and have a plan and have a financial plan. So to get a little practical on that. And it can take a lot of the pressure off when you’re dealing with things on a practical level as well.

Sometimes entrepreneurs who maybe are more creative, they push off the money side of things, just like, it’ll work out. You make sure you have a really good accountant or people on your team that can really look at the numbers. It was shocking to me when I started to talk to people, they’d be like, well, I don’t really know what the numbers are in my business. It’s like, how could you not know? Because it was so easy for me, that was my background, even though I loved the creative side of things.

So to have some practicality around this, there are some basic things that need to happen. I have talked to people in the past that are so constantly sure things are going to work out and maybe they’re not and it’s time to move on to something else. And maybe that’s when you need a consultant or a coach or an accountant or someone in your life that can deliver realistic, but not dragging you down kind of information.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. I’m all for being positive, but there’s the action steps that need to happen. I mean, sitting on your meditation pillow, chanting om, waiting for the universe to provide without taking any real action usually doesn’t work for people. I mean, maybe once in a while. And you were telling those stories about people that … I used to have this magnet on my refrigerator that said jump and the net will appear. Well, that’s not always such good advice. What if it doesn’t? And you don’t hear those stories or people that totally got flattened by doing that.

Ellen Rogin:

Yes. I want to get to that and give a metaphor for that. I also just want to mention here for the people that are starting out or might feel like they’re struggling, there’s often this thought of, if I just had more money, everything would be okay and money is rarely the solution. Yes, if you don’t have money to pay medical bills or if you’re below that level, then of course, but it’s usually not the solution. And people without a lot of wealth may say, oh my God, how could that person have any problems? They have millions and millions of dollars. There’s different problems and people with a lot of wealth worry about their money as much as people without money, they’re just different worries. So I just want to say that.

One of the metaphors that I’ve been working with that has been very helpful for people is this thought about flowing with the current or against the current. And I like to think with the current is prosperity thinking and against the current is more scarcity thinking. And when you’re flowing with the current, things flow more easily. There’s a lot less stress. There’s less worry around it. Things happen with more ease. Sometimes things seem like they happen magically like, oh my God, I just got this new client, I don’t even know how that happened. But there’s things that people put into place energetically and then also with their actions to make that happen. And flowing against the current, if you can just imagine trying to swim against the current, how hard that is. And this scarcity thinking …

So we take this executive that’s doing really, really well and maybe they’ve been saving, there might be stress like, oh my God, what if I lose my job? I have this big lifestyle. What if my family isn’t okay? There’s all those kinds of clinging to what they have and thinking about their lifestyle and their current situation, and if that were to go away, feeling like they wouldn’t be okay at all, that’s more on the going against the flow. Going with the current is yes, having a good plan, being responsible, saving, but also creating time for true prosperity. So you tend to be with your family. You haven’t missed your kids totally growing up because you’ve been working so hard or whatever your values are.

And you can actually feel into it, when you’re going with the current, there’s a more relaxed, open kind of feeling and against the current it’s really restrictive. So that may be helpful for knowing if somebody’s like, where are you on that scale? And we flow back and forth, right? Something can happen like a global pandemic and all of a sudden, a bunch of people start feeling like they’re going against the current because they’ve never had to deal with this before. But within several months, depending if you were in an occupation that was still viable, most people kind of settled into a new way of flowing with things.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. I hadn’t thought about this until very recently, because money we think of as out here for us, it’s a material thing. I think we can feel that, if you slow down and check in. Are you sleeping at night? Are you up in the middle of the night, worrying about things? Is this constant feeling of dread or anxiety there? Those are signs that maybe you’re flowing against the current and that maybe there’s things you can do to shift things a little bit. And same thing when you’re going with the current, things just feel easier and there’s a lightness to it.

Ellen Rogin:

It can start with the vision of what you have going forward. So I like to think about this process of creating prosperity is being aware, which is noticing am I going with the flow or not, what are some of my beliefs about money? Being clear, which is where do you want to go, what is the vision for the business. And that can be an amazing driver to help you know where you want to go.

For larger businesses, they have strategic plans. If you’re a smaller entrepreneur, you might just be going along and without a real clear vision like, what is it that you want to create for yourself, but also for others. Because what I’ve seen over and over is when you have a goal that serves other people besides yourself, it happens much more easily and more quickly, and there’s more kind of oomph and drive behind it when you’re not just serving your own needs. Not that you don’t want that, but they’re not mutually exclusive. You can do well for your clients and your family and the community or whatever you value.

So those are the first two parts: being aware, being clear, taking care. So this is where we were talking about, you got to know the numbers, and if you’re not the numbers person, have people in there, have a personal financial plan and a business plan for yourself. And then care, which we can talk about, which is about how do you draw more in by sharing with others?

Ellen Rogin:

We all have attitudes and beliefs that inform how we deal with money and finances. Dr. Bruce Lipton, who’s a cellular biologist, says we develop our subconscious beliefs between conception and age seven, including our money beliefs. So you have formed beliefs about how you think money works and the world works from when you are a really little kid and they’re operating in the background. It’s like chatter back here that most of us aren’t even aware of. And we’ve been taught that, oh, if you just know how to budget and if you know how to allocate your portfolio, you’ll all be fine, which is ridiculous, because if we think about the fact that how many people are in debt in the world. And if all it took was spending less and earning more or being a savvy investor, then that wouldn’t happen with anybody. We know that’s not true. And this is where scarcity lives too, in these tapes that play over and over. So maybe, it may have been things you heard growing up or saw.

So I’ll just give you a quick example in my family. We were in a position where my dad was off at work and my mom stayed home with me and my brothers. My brothers are significantly older than me. So I remember being a little girl at home with my mom, seeing daddy go off to work, so he could, as my mom would say … I’d say, “Dad, why are you going off to work?” And they would say, “To buy Ellen toys.” So to do stuff for me, that was my dad’s job. So fast forward, I’m in my late twenties, I start my own business and I start to explore my own money beliefs. And I realised I was operating with this tape playing in the background that it was my husband’s job to make money because that was my dad’s job. And further, I might not even be able to do it.

Now here’s the thing about beliefs, just because we believe them doesn’t mean they’re true. At that point I had lots of letters after my name. I had an MBA, a CPA after my name. It didn’t make any logical sense. And I think back if I hadn’t unpacked that and said, oh, that’s a stupid belief, that doesn’t serve me, I don’t know if I would’ve been as successful in my career because it might have just been like that’s Steven’s job and I probably can’t even do it. So we all are operating under this money is hard, it’s scary. Or maybe you had really good beliefs like, always save for tomorrow. It’s just knowing that these are operating there and we don’t even realize that they’re running the show.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah, a couple ways. Well, first of all, 100% being aware. I have studied mindfulness and emotional intelligence and one of the best things about that is it takes us from autopilot to awareness the more you can do that to start to hear what you’re saying to yourself. I also think it’s an excellent exercize to go through and think about what was money like growing up for you. Was it talked about, was it not? Did your parents fight about it? Did you think you had a lot and didn’t, or think you didn’t have anything and had tonnes of money? Was it used to control?

And just notice that and not be angry about it, but just know that that’s affecting you now. And to start to be aware of things you say, oh my God, what if we go into another 2008 and everything implodes? And you go down this death spiral of worry that we can catch ourselves in. And to know that they’re just thoughts. That’s what’s so hard is to not believe everything that we say to ourselves, because it’s so easy to get carried away, but 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, most of them aren’t positive and there’s no way they’re all true.

Ellen Rogin:

I think that’s a great way to be aware of them. So I’ve noticed that if all of a sudden I start to feel anxiety, there’s some thought I had right before that, that caused it. It was replaying something that happened in my past and all of a sudden I’m living in it again. We tell or we’re making up stories, disasterizing what can happen. And I like to think, well, if you’re going to make up a story, make up a good one. Why does it have to be this scary, horrible one? Just make up a better one that can happen.

But I agree with you, Alex, that I think it’s those ones that have that charge because otherwise we’re not getting caught in them. It’s like if there was a train that went by, you can notice the train going by or you can get on it and be taken to the next station. And it’s those thoughts that carry us away and lead to these compounding ones that I think can really be a detriment.

Ellen Rogin:

Okay. So a couple we’ve already talked about. Knowing that they’re there and examining like, okay, that’s stupid, I don’t have to have that belief. One of my favourite strategies when you catch yourself saying something you really don’t want to have happen is to say, cancel, clear. Cancel that thought, clear it away and replace it with something else instead. We’ve taught our kids this since they were little. If someone says, I don’t even know. I’ll give you an example. When I used to go to group fitness classes and the teacher would go, this is a killer and (would) always say out loud, I don’t want anyone in this class dying from doing too much cardio, okay? So it can be when you catch yourself, cancel, clear and then replace it with something that you want instead. And you can do this with people in your life so you can catch each other because we don’t always notice that.

Sometimes it’s taking really clear actions and knowing what’s going on. If you’re worried, you’re not going to be okay financially then do a plan. You can hire a financial advisor, there’s lots of calculators online, but you have to know what you own and owe in your business and in your personal lives, your assets and your liabilities. I’m not a believer in budgets, which might sound weird for a financial advisor. And it’s not so much that I don’t think you should know where you’re spending your money on, I absolutely do, most people are unconscious with that. But when I say the word budget, it feels like that against the flow thing, right? It’s like my co-author Lisa says, it’s like eating celery at a pizza party.

Ellen Rogin:

Right. It’s diet. It’s awful. Okay. In all the years I’ve talked to people about their money, once I’ve heard someone actually say, oh, when I spend too much on clothes, I spend less on food this month. I mean, no one does that. But what I recommend instead is a values-based spending plan. So this is where you look at everything that’s going out and you decide if it’s really important to you. And I really like that better than saying these are my fixed expenses or my variable expenses.

Just a quick story about that. There was a woman who was at one of my workshops a while ago and she was in her fifties and she’d never looked at what she’d spent before. And she went through and created a values-based spending plan. And so with each category she decided, is it an A, B or C priority for her. And her house, she realised … Most people think, oh, I have to keep that because that’s where I live, she’s like, that’s like a C priority. She was divorced, she had this big house, it was filled with junk. She still had a big mortgage. She’s like, I don’t even like living there anymore.

She decided to sell her house, pay off her mortgage, pay off her debts, buy a little condo on Lake Michigan, which is outside of Chicago where I live, beautiful. And she also had been working in a family business that she hated for years, a well known in this area business. And she cut her expenses so much she could leave this business she hated. So all from going through this process instead of just going along and doing what she’d always done.

Alex Cleanthous:

I’m just looking around my office right now thinking like … No, but-

Alex Cleanthous:

No, but I agree with that because I’m of the same opinion. I’m just used to keeping stuff organised. If you can’t keep your things organised, how’s anything else going to be organised in life?

Alex Cleanthous:

Everyone wishes they had bought Bitcoin except for the four tech geeks out there that bought it in 2010, ’11 and ’12.

Alex Cleanthous:

Just from the clutter perspective, it’s obviously the environment, which is important, but I like what you said about the financial clutter. And I’d like to take that into the area of, you know there’s things which you need to get solved and sorted and they’re on the back of your mind, and if they’re not … Like maybe your car needs to get fixed and the registration’s about to get done and there’s a bill, which you need to pay, but you haven’t because it’s a bit too busy. And it just starts to all just start to weigh on you. And so I’m hearing that by cleaning that stuff up, that you’re opening up space just for your mind to become a bit more prosperity thinking based. Is that a correct statement?

Alex Cleanthous:

I’m sure everyone was thinking of something, right? But that’s part of the challenge.

Alex Cleanthous:

And so it sounds like these first two parts is really about really kind of clearing the slate and just being financially prepared I guess and just to get those parts sorted, because it sounds like, if you don’t have those two things sorted, it’s really hard to start to be creative because the mind’s so full, or there’s stressors there. And to your point at the beginning, when we were talking about entrepreneurs, if you just jump into a business and there’s no money and there’s no clear plan of how you make money, it’s really hard to think well. And so starting with that will just create the foundation to start to think well. Is that a fair way of thinking about it?

Alex Cleanthous:

And that’s such a big point. I’m not quite sure on what the stat is, but it’s some very large percentage of people who live week to week on their salary and that must just be very stressful, very stressful for people. And it would be really hard to have that in your face and then to be positive and have a prosperity vision and to be abundant when you need that next paycheck to come in to be able to do that. So I think it’s a fantastic point about having a cushion because it just relaxes you so you can start thinking a bit longer into the future.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. Our minds are really cool. Most people, not everyone, but most people think in pictures. And when it comes to dealing with money, financial advisors, the financial services industry just goes at people with numbers and it doesn’t always land for people. Even graphs, people don’t really understand. And so, one of the things that I encourage people to do is to create a visual financial plan, we call it a prosperity picture. Some of you may be familiar with a vision board where you take images of things that are important to you and put it on a board. This is similar in some ways to that, but there’s a little bit more structure to it. So you’d come up with images that are for goals that are important to you, but the board has quadrants based on timeframe, like when you want it to happen sooner, five years or less, later, things that require money and things that don’t.

So things that require money might be, I want to take a trip around the world once things open up. And so it might be an image of a aeroplane on there. And maybe that’s something you want to do later. On my board for a long time, when I had my practice and a little bit less flexible schedule, it was to take a year off and travel the world. And that was on my upper right hand quadrant where later, I required money. And since I’ve moved away from that business, and now I’m doing speaking and consulting and other things with more flexibility, I’ve actually moved it to sooner and down a little bit because I’m like, oh, maybe someone will pay me to fly all over the world and speak.

Ellen Rogin:

And it changed. Yeah. Just so you know, I have a big goal for Australia. I’ll just put that out there.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. Actually, I’ll show you. I’m going to show you my prosperity picture. This is the latest one I’ve done. So I think I want to live in Australia, but I’ve never actually been there because I love summer and I thought, oh, I could be in Chicago in our summer and there in your summer and I could have summer all year long. So this is part of my prosperity picture.

Ellen Rogin:

And you’ll see Australia and New Zealand up here because that’s part of the goal to get there.

Ellen Rogin:

Sooner.

Ellen Rogin:

Some of it is I also didn’t have room down here [crosstalk 00:45:31]-

Ellen Rogin:

… because I’m writing another book and there’s some other goals here.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. But maybe I should. You know what? Now that you’re saying that, Alex, I’m going to move it down because it’s been a little elusive for me. I’m going to do that.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. And the fun thing about doing this is that it brings up goals that people don’t always think about. As a financial advisor, we were taught to help people figure out, when do you want to retire, in the US because college is so expensive, where do you want to send your kids to school. And it doesn’t go after these parts of our brain that really are a little bit more creative and maybe are more about your desires.

So when I did a prosperity picture with my husband for the first time, we had some images in our book and he pulled out the sailboat image and I said, “Oh, tell me about that.” And he said, “Oh, that’s when we take a trip. That’s where I want to go on a trip with friends in a sailboat for two weeks.” Now I had been married for 28 or 29 years at that point, I never knew that was his goal. We talk about travel a lot. I was secretly thinking, I hope he means his friends because I do not want to go on a sailboat for two weeks. I get sea sick.

And then my co-author Lisa, did this with her husband and there’s a picture of food. And he said, “Oh, that’s when we have friends over at our apartment in LA.” Now Lisa and her husband live in Chicago. She’s like, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “Oh, I would love to have an apartment in LA.” He’s a musician and Lisa, when things were open, was travelling like 80% of the time. They ended up, because of that discussion, downsizing their home in Chicago, so that when she travels could potentially rent an Airbnb for a couple months in LA and it brought up a goal they had never even talked about before.

So I just think this process is so great. And it’s not just like if I put Australia and New Zealand on my board and never do anything about it, that’s that wishing, that no action but abundance thinking, I don’t think it’s going to happen. But what happens with this, just a little of our mental process, I mean, it’s well established that mental rehearsal is a powerful tool. Athletes know this. Olympic athletes will do the mental visualisation before all their competitions, picturing exactly how they want things to go, if something happens, how they’ll deal with it, all the way through to probably a gold medal around their neck. But it happens for other goals as well, like any goal that you have, you have the big meeting up, you can mentally rehearse how you want it to go.

And part of the reason this works is we have something in our brain called the reticular activating system. And it’s about the size of your pinky and it’s at the base of your skull and it helps filter information. It helps you know what’s important to pay attention to. So that’s why if you’re in a large group and someone says, Alex, you turn, because that’s your name and you’ve been told it was important. Any moms out there know that if you’re at the mall and some kid says, mom, even if your child’s hundreds of miles away, you’re turning around, because you’ve been told that was important.

So with my Australia and New Zealand example, when I hear someone with an Australian accent, I make a beeline like, hey, this is my goal, where would I want to live? And I start asking questions about it. I start noticing things in a different way.

Ellen Rogin:

And it can be part of their top of your board is your visual financial plan. Okay, how do I start planning for this if it’s really important? And what is interesting is in workshops, people realize I have so much in my lower left hand quadrant, it doesn’t cost anything. I thought everything I needed was dependent on money. And the thing that I find fascinating about this is it works with … I’ve done this activity with kids in Ghana or some of the scholarship students I’ve worked with who have not much, different images. And I’ve done this activity with one of the most wealthy men in Europe and his son, different images.

And it just is effective to have people start to envision what they most want. And then if you put it somewhere where you can see it and spend some time with it and focus on these goals and how you will feel if you accomplish them, things start to happen. And it’s not just kind of that magic again, but you start to listen differently and look for opportunities and take action in ways that maybe you wouldn’t have, if these goals weren’t in front of you.

Ellen Rogin:

So I know that you had Janet Attwood on your show before and one of the things she says that I love is intention like, what is it you want, attention, and then no tension. So that action feels to me like the tension and the no tension. There’s a certain amount of action you want to take that you are moving towards your goals, right? If you and your co-founder just pictured this account and never went out and sold or hired people or whatever else you’ve got to do to build your business, it would not have happened I suspect. And I also a suspect, I want to ask you more about this, what else were you picturing because I bet there was more than just that number? It might have been the feeling you’d have.

Ellen Rogin:

Or how you were going to make a difference. Because I think that a lot of times people just focus on the number and nothing else. For me, when I had my practice, and the financial services industry for advisors had people focused on this a lot, like the number of assets under management or your revenues, if I had nothing else behind that, I never hit those goals and it was elusive, it didn’t feel right. What felt better was when I was figuring out how I was really serving people and how my purpose was behind it. Then I blew past those number goals.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah, please.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. I love that because I knew there was more. It’s not just the number, it really is that feeling is a part of the secret sauce to it. And so this action, sometimes there’s action that feels like you’re doing the right steps, they feel great. And then there’s sometimes action that’s grasping at things.

So to give an example where you could be in scarcity, but taking action is if someone is checking the value of their stock accounts on a regular basis, like multiple times a day. Now, if you’re doing day trading, I guess maybe there’s some reason to do that, but for everybody else, there is absolutely no reason to check it that often. And that’s like a grasping, maybe you think, oh, I’m being careful because I’m checking. But they found that people that do that too often or actually listen to too much financial news do worse, because they feel like they have to do something all the time.

So there is this balance and that’s where you might feel into it too. If there’s a huge amount of stress behind it and you’re not getting the results, it’s often helpful to just take a break from that. And I don’t know if that’s where you were going with the right amount of action, but some of that is just experience. If you’re just starting in business, you might not have figured that out or it might require a whole lot more action than it might five years down the road.

Ellen Rogin:

I’m a believer in getting support, getting a good coach, getting in a programme to have somebody support you in that because it’s not always easy to know. And someone who’s been through that path before is probably going to help you to guide you through that.

Ellen Rogin:

I’ve either had an individual coach or I’ve been in group mentoring coaching programmes to learn. I like learning from people that have made the mistakes ahead of me.

Ellen Rogin:

I don’t want to do it all on my own. I’d rather pay someone. I’m not a DIY person.

Ellen Rogin:

So that may be helpful for people. They also do a check-in.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah. And I would maybe make one tweak to what you said.

Ellen Rogin:

I usually don’t talk about giving back. I talk about giving forward because-

Ellen Rogin:

… I think there’s this tendency to think, oh, when I get to this point, then I’ll give. And I’m talking about financial giving here. We can talk about doing kind acts, which is hugely important as well. But just visually, if you’re hanging on so tightly to what you have, that energy of scarcity, like I’m not going to be okay. I remember in the several recessions that I was dealing with people on their personal finances, I remember I had one woman I was talking to who wasn’t uber wealthy, but she had two homes and she was freaking out. I’m like, I didn’t say these words, but honey, you are so far from not okay, you’ve got two houses. But at that moment, I didn’t say that because she was feeling freaked out.

So when you’re hanging on so tightly to what you have, you can’t possibly receive. Now there’s people that are out there that don’t feel good about receiving either, they’re always giving, giving, giving, there’s something that doesn’t feel right from their beliefs or whatever about having money or there’s guilt or embarrassment. That doesn’t work either. They’re both important.

And what I’ve seen over and over is when people are generous, more flows back to them. And there’s actually studies on this. More generous people have higher incomes. Countries that are more generous, have higher GDPs. And there’s something called subjective wealth, which is this way that our brain works that when you donate, like if you were to donate $500 to charity, somehow you equate that in your brain and say, oh, I must be wealthy to be able to do that. And it feels as good as getting a $10,000 raise.

So there’s that idea when we were talking about ways to feel less scared about things, finding somebody that could really use your support and helping them is amazing. Even hearing about how other people do that makes us feel great. This is a very privileged conversation you and I are having. We’re talking to people who have wealth and are above that level. There are so many people in this world that are not there. And could they still be positive and happy and loving? Yes. And could our resources support them in other ways? 100%.

And that’s where, we alluded to this at the beginning, that your happiness level does increase when you’re helping other people. Certainly doing kind acts. They’ve found that kids that have generative behaviour, wanting to make things better for others as teenagers are more successful as adults, they have less depression. It’s really an important thing. People that volunteer have longer longevity, their health is better. There’s so many benefits of kind acts and also financial giving.

Ellen Rogin:

Well, I think you’re boosting your abundance and creating prosperity. It’s like a prosperity practice that you can do. And I think back, I was thinking about being on the subway in New York. And there was a homeless person walking around, asking for money, and most people were ignoring him. And then there was a guy on the train who did not look like he had much money and went in his pocket and pulled out change. And so this was not a wealthy person, I don’t think giving money. And I thought, oh, that’s so beautiful. And this idea of even little bits make a difference. People who run big charities say that the $50 contributions, if they didn’t have those, they’d be in big trouble. There’s not a lot of $100 million contributions that they receive. And I just think it loosens something up in us that creates more of that flow.

Ellen Rogin:

Oh, there are two different things. So take action, go out and do something good for someone else and give some money away. That would be the action I would say.

Ellen Rogin:

Yeah.

Ellen Rogin:

Generosity precedes prosperity. Yeah, so anything. Do something nice for somebody else. And if you want to connect, you can go to Ellenrogin.com. There’s lots of resources there. I have prosperity tips that go out on a regular basis. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to be in touch. Yeah, and I’d love to help you increase your relationship, just to have a better relationship with your money.

Ellen Rogin:

I see that as how we’re going to change the world.

Ellen Rogin:

Thank you.

Ellen Rogin:

Oh my honour. Thank you.