EP 257: Why you should take responsibility for everything

[00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for joining us today on The Gentle Art of Crushing It Show, where we focus on learning and sharing with our listeners all there is to know about how to create success in our lives. This show stands on the shoulders of giants. Our mission is to empower and inspire our listeners to create the life of their dreams whilst having a blast in the process. Let's celebrate life together. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:29] Hello, thank you so much for joining me on another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. This episode we're going to talk about taking ownership of your life, taking responsibility, extreme ownership. And so I'm going to go ahead and start this off by saying one of my favorite phrases which I learned from Brian Tracy, which is, if it's to be, it's up to me. So look, we're all responsible for where we're at in life. And you know, that's, that's a pro and that's a con.

[00:00:59] And personally, for me, I believe it's more so just good news because I believe the sooner that we accept responsibility and ownership for where we are at in life, the sooner we can take an honest inventory of our lives. And then, you know, we can begin to decide what sort of adjustments we need to make, right? So the sooner that we again, take an honest inventory of our lives of where we're at right now, the sooner that we can begin to create the life of our dreams if we choose to do them.

[00:01:29] So, you know, with that being said, I also believe that it's hard to set goals and build the life of our dreams, you know, but it's also hard not to. So if we were to go ahead and just take a, you know, a job, any job, the first job that comes our way, plug ourselves into that, you know, for the next 30 years of our life, don't really think much about, you know, what could have been or what we could have created with our lives.

[00:01:55] That, to me, is incredibly difficult, way more difficult than taking any risk there is, you know, within, you know, with a certain safety net, not putting my family in harm's way, but any risk necessary to create the life of our dreams. So I do want to honestly believe that I was born to succeed in the face of multiple adversities, right? Some adversities real and some imagined. Remember, false evidence appearing real.

[00:02:23] Our imagination can be our worst enemy and I don't even like the word fear anymore. I just like imagination. I just like to say, hey, my imagination got the best of me there, right? So, but with that being said, I want you to know that you have to know that you can make your dream life a reality. There are probably honestly plenty of examples of people who had it worse than you and yet they broke through and made their dreams happen.

[00:02:49] Again, I love the story personally of Les Brown because all of his, you know, adversities that he overcame, you know, you have to, you have to look into and understand and know his full life story. It takes away a lot of excuses. It took away all of mine and then some. I don't have any excuses when I compare my life to what Les Brown has been able to do.

[00:03:14] He's an amazing human being, right? So look into his life story. It's just one example of many who have overcome extreme difficulties to make their dreams come true. I don't believe personally, again, that we were born to be average, adequate or blah. I don't believe we were put here on this planet Earth to be boring and to be a subpar version of ourselves.

[00:03:40] I believe we're all incredibly fortunate to be born and if we want to live an amazing life, we all have the opportunity to do so. So, of course, you know, there are some who are literally, you know, slaves right now. Very unfortunate and that's horrible. And other people that are just not able to make their dreams happen because for one reason or another. It could be an extreme mental handicap. You know, it could be, you know, who knows.

[00:04:04] But for the most part, you know, most of you are able to do this in your life. That is just a fact. So we need to remember that we deserve to live the life of our dreams and we also deserve to give it our best. We should never settle for less. So I encourage you to discover who you are and figure out what you want out of life and then set to accomplishment. So with that being said, I want to ask you a couple questions.

[00:04:33] I want you to spend some time answering this. Who are you? What are your core beliefs? What do you love to do? You know, what do you want to do? What do you want to bring to this life? You know, what if you could not fail? You know, what would you want out of life? What would you make, you know, with this life? What would you make happen? Do you deserve to be an overcomer? Remember, it's just a decision to make.

[00:04:59] Listen to this list of people who overcame their circumstances and made their dreams come true. And then I, you know, ask you to commit to adding your list to the millions that have done it before you. You heard me right. Millions. So before I go into the list, I'm going to give you some statistics. So today there are about 56 million millionaires globally.

[00:05:22] Around 70 to 80 percent of them are self-made, meaning 39 to 45 million self-made millionaires are alive today. Of those self-made millionaires, studies like the ones from The Millionaire Next Door, WealthX, Credit Suisse, Swiss, you know, suggest a significant majority started from modest means and a meaningful chunk started from outright poverty.

[00:05:48] So let's be conservative and say at least 25 to 30 percent of those self-made millionaires grew up in poverty. That's roughly 10 to 14 million people alive today who went from poverty status to millionaire status in one lifetime. Now, if you consider people from past generations, Carnegie, Rockefeller, you know, Ford, Walton and millions of lesser and unwealthy individuals who've existed since money became a thing.

[00:06:13] You know, the fact that many historical records of wealth are incomplete, especially before modern banking and tax systems. If you take that into consideration, it's reasonable to estimate that throughout history, tens of millions, likely somewhere between 20 to 50 million people have gone from poverty status to millionaire status.

[00:06:34] Okay, so that's a 20 to 50 million millionaires that came from poverty, came out of nothing and turned themselves into millionaires. So, you know, that's that is incredible. That is awesome. And here's the fun part. That number is growing faster now than it ever has before. Wealth creation opportunities have exploded in the last 150 years with capitalism, global markets, tech, entrepreneurship, you know, online courses, the Internet.

[00:07:03] We can learn so much for free. You can learn a lifetime, multiple lifetimes of, you know, success principles and how to implement those in your life for free online. So here is a short list of some of whom you may be familiar with. Some of the people that actually, you know, came from poverty status and became multimillionaire. And actually, I think all of these are billionaires right here. So Oprah Winfrey, she was born into poverty.

[00:07:31] She was born into poverty in Mississippi. She overcame abuse and hardship, built a media empire and became one of the world's most influential women. Andrew Carnegie. Actually, take a step back. Oprah Winfrey's net worth is 2.8 billion with a B. Andrew Carnegie's net worth, you know, adjusted from death numbers, which about 400 million at death to 310 billion. It would be today's dollars.

[00:07:55] Andrew Carnegie was, you know, he immigrated from Scotland, worked low wage jobs, invested wisely in steel and became one of history's richest men and most generous philanthropists. Damon, Damon John. His net worth is 350 million. So he started, you know, selling homemade hats from his mother's house, built FUBU for us, buy us into a $6 billion fashion brand and became a Shark Tank investor in a motivational speaker. Speaker J.K.

[00:08:25] Rowling. You know, her net worth is $1 billion. She wrote Harry Potter while living on welfare, facing repeated rejections, living with, you know, depression. And she turned it into a billion dollar franchise, spanning books, movies, and theme parks. Howard Schultz. His net worth is 4.5 billion. He grew up in public housing. He started in sales, bought Starbucks and transformed it from a small coffee chain into a global brand.

[00:08:54] Shahid Khan. Shahid's net worth is 12.5 billion. Shahid came to the U.S. with $500, washed dishes for $1.20 an hour. Would you want to wash dishes for $1.20 an hour? Come on. So he bought an auto parts store company and bought an auto parts company and expanded it into a multi-billion dollar business empire, including NFL and soccer teams.

[00:09:18] I'm assuming that he, not sure how it includes NFL and soccer teams, but maybe he, you know, does advertising on their jerseys. I don't really know. That's interesting. Alf Lauren. Net worth of $8.2 billion. Born to poor immigrants in the Bronx, started designing ties, founded Polo Ralph Lauren, and turned it into a globally recognized luxury brand. Ursula Burns. Did I say Ralph Lauren's net worth is $8.2 billion with a B?

[00:09:49] Ursula Burns. Net worth $1.8 billion. Grew up in a housing project in New York City. Worked her way up at Xerox from intern to CEO. Becoming the first black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Sam Walton. Net worth at death was $8.6 billion in 1992. Now, the Walmart family net worth today is $250 billion.

[00:10:14] Now, he started with one five and dime store, built Walmart into the world's largest real retailer through low prices and relentless innovation. Chris Gardner. Net worth $70 million. Born into poverty. Faced homelessness as a single father while pursuing a career in finance. His story inspired The Pursuit of Happiness. The movie. If you haven't seen it, please do yourself a favor and watch that movie. It's great.

[00:10:42] Gardner eventually founded his own brokerage firm and then became a motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist. Life has all kinds of challenges. You know, this particular episode is fraught with multiple me having challenges speaking properly and clearly. You know, I'm just the only reason why I'm saying that is I'm going to air it as is.

[00:11:06] And I want you all to, you know, just take a few moments and give yourself this exercise, which is, again, ask yourself if you deserve to live the life of your dreams. If your answer is yes, take an inventory on your life. Where are you at now? If you are, you know, working at McDonald's and you're barely scraping by and, you know, you have this dream of to create whatever, you know, then let's get started on that.

[00:11:36] Okay? But it does start with, you know, believing that you deserve it, believing it's possible, and then let's go get in gear and make this happen. And I believe in you, and I'm over here working to create the life of my dreams. I'm not going to quit. And it will happen. And I'm going to keep you all, you know, up to speed, updated with my life. And you'll learn more over time, you know, through from me.

[00:12:03] But with that being said, I want you to be inspired by your own dreams. I want you to be inspired by you. Okay? And knowing that you can do it because you can. And so with that being said, I hope your day is awesome. Make this life magnificent. You deserve it. And thanks for listening to or watching another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:12:30] Another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. It was an amazing episode. We know we sure learned a lot, and we hope you did as well. We want to take a second and thank you so much for viewing or listening to this episode. And please just know that we only ask for one favor, and that is to make this life magnificent. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.