Hello again. In this episode, we are going to talk about how to be happy, no matter
what challenges you're facing. This is so simple and yet so many people go through
life and they think that happiness comes from the accumulation of things or they
have happiness living their lives through other people or it's with their thoughts.
So I'm going to give you insights here to make a transformation on how you
can be happy no matter what circumstances you are in, because
happiness comes from within not from external influences.
I'm Doug Andrew, and I'm passionate about helping you move from a scarcity mindset
to an abundance mindset, from what I call captivity to freedom.
Because unfortunately, many people are living their lives in captivity, not physical
captivity necessarily but sometimes the captivity caused by their money or things.
They think that happiness is from the accumulation of things and then they
begin to realize later that pretty soon when you own a lot of things, they start
to own you. So let me show you sort of how I bring this all together with my
kids and grandkids, those people I care about and I care about you. I've noticed
that we go through life in the present moment seeing ourselves as here and we
can't wait til we get there, whatever there is. For example, when we're young we
can't wait till we go to kindergarten, and then we finally get there we can't
wait till we go to a full day of school and get school lunch. We get there and we
have about three school lunches we go, "What was that all about?" And then we
can't wait till we're the king of the elementary school, we get there and then
we get demoted. We go through these cycles, we're now in a middle school or
junior high looking for our locker, being made fun of and we finally can't wait till
we're the king of that junior high school, we're there...then we get demoted again.
We're a freshman or sophomore in high school, and we can't wait till we
graduate and were there. You know, I was a keynote speaker last year to a group of
500 high school graduates that had earned entrepreneurial scholarships.
And I was invited to speak to them on how to take that thousand dollar scholarship
and don't blow it on some depreciating asset like a motorcycle or a car, but hello!?
This is for entrepreneurship, how to take that thousand dollar scholarship
and double it ten times to over a million dollars in ten years. I've helped
many teenagers do this. I share these stories and other episodes, how teenagers
have taken a 2 dollars and, and bought ingredients and
made pizzas and then sold the pizzas for three times what it cost to make the pizza.
Or they bought gas and oil for a lawnmower and they started mowing lawns.
And I would challenge them to double that as many times as they could. Many of
those teenagers that I started out with 2 dollars because I teach them the parable of
the talents out of the Bible. They turned that 2 dollars into a thousand, two thousand,
five thousand. Twenty years later, some of them come up and say, "You know Mr. Andrew,
do you remember me?" And now they're all grown up with a beard and I go, "No."
I was part of project share, because see when we would have them double their money
several times we would give it away to a charity and if they learn something then
they would turn that into a business. And one young man said, "You have heard of XYZ
Landscape and Lawn Care on the radio?" I go, "Yeah."
"That's my company now. Now, we have 50 crews and we bring in
5 million dollars a year and I give a half a million to the hospital
that we did." See? When you teach them how to fish, you'll
feed them for a lifetime. So this is how they learn how to multiply their talents.
But see, what happens is we don't realize that the key is being grateful and happy
for wherever you're at, whether you've got 2 dollars or 2 million dollars.
So, oftimes I will draw this pyramid or triangle, and in order to sort of get the
ratios that I'm going to talk about. I tell people you know out of seven point
six billion people, currently on the earth today. I'm Christian and so if you
believe literally from Adam and Eve until today. It's been estimated there's
been maybe about 70 billion people since Adam and Eve, so let's just use those
numbers. Do you know out of all the people on planet Earth today or that
have ever lived on planet Earth? Most of them would look at you and me,
our lifestyles, our smartphones, our indoor plumbing. I mean the Pharaohs of
Egypt, would have given their eyeteeth for a flush toilet. But they would look
at you and me and say, "You're in the top one-tenth of one percent of humanity.
What did you have anything to complain about?
You're already there!" Yeah, but I travel a lot and I see responsible adults going
550 miles an hour through the air and they throw tantrums when the Wi-Fi goes
out 10 minutes. And they're like, "Oh!...just give it a second it's going to outer
space and back still okay?" Kids throw tantrums, because they can't figure out
how to open their second bag of Cheetos. Because their hands are too greasy from
their first bag of Cheetos. Most kids on this planet have never had a bag of
Cheetos. I have an acquaintance that has a 27,000 square foot mansion with a 900
square foot room in it, just for one of its kid's Lego villages. That kid is
never happy and he has everything. We're already blessed, we're there.
Happiness should not be contingent on some future result. Is the drama in life more
important than being happy wherever you are at? We are happy because of what we
are, not because of what we have, would you agree? Happiness comes from producing
values, not consuming values. A lot of the troubled youth that I mentor...seek
happiness from consumption and they don't realize that it wears off and so
they have to constantly keep shooting up or getting happiness from external
influences they don't realize that it comes from within. So let me give you an
example. Unfortunately, many people choose to go deep into shallow things like
social media, Facebook, Twitter, other forms of social media. And they don't
want to make their own decisions, they have decidophobia I call it, fear of making
their own decisions. But they, their happiness is contingent upon living
their lives through some rock star, some movie star, some professional athlete.
Even adults are guilty of doing this. They don't want to make their own
decisions, they want Oprah Winfrey to be President this time, see what she can do.
They want Rush Limbaugh to change Congress but they don't want to
get involved. But also, many people choose to go shallow into deep things, the
life-changing principles that make a difference. "Oh! we don't want to go there
no let's just stay shallow here." And so in another episode, I would recommend you
watch and see how these marketing companies use algorithms to market stuff
to us based upon four different quadrants that we place ourselves into
if we get on social media and are always tweeting or posting this that and the
other. But the key is to understand that happiness comes from producing values
not from external things where we consume thinking the more that we can
consume that we'll be happy if we do that. And it's amazing how many people
take years to understand that, that it's really every day getting on a win streak
and focusing on what's going right, because when I teach the twelve steps to
people who have addictions. And I'm not just talking about drugs and alcohol, it
can be sex and pornography, it could be shopping, sugar eating.
But see? An addiction is a disease of isolation. Those people who have those
addictions, they're just trying to ease the pain, they're trying to feel accepted
and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be accepted and belonging.
The destination is right, they just got on the wrong train. The challenge I have
found is getting them on the right train. But what they don't realize is sometimes
in the pituitary gland of all of our brains, we have the ability to release
chemicals, endorphins they're called. That will actually have you or any of us
feeling sort of high on life, better than the external things that wear off.
You can do that automatically and life is wonderful and you can be happy naturally
instead of artificially. And so these types of concepts...
I am very passionate about and so I explained these and many others in my
book "Entitlement Abolition." And there are four chapters in this book that talk
about the problem of how people get into these scarcity mindsets and they don't
recognize moments that matter and they look for happiness through the
accumulation of things or they worship people or thoughts. And it's really how
to rethink your thinking. There's eight chapters in this book that talked about
how to have an abundance mindset. I would love for you to have a free copy of this,
it's 200 pages. I also have a masterclass that you can go really deep for about 18
hours where I spend an hour hour and a half in each chapter. It's free, you go to
entitlementabolitionbook.com, you pay a nominal shipping and handling fee and
I'll fire one out to you absolutely free and I want you to become empowered on
how you can yourself and those you care about go from a me, me, me, poor
little me, maybe victim mentality to a hero because together we're better.
We're all in this life together and that's what I want for you is true happiness.