- Gratitude is the key.
In this educational episode,
I'm going to address how to break free from captivity
and enjoy a life of peace and abundance.
Get ready.
I'm going to give you a little bit different take
on the difference
between scarcity and abundance mindsets.
(lively music)
So I'm Doug Andrew and I've been helping individuals,
families, businesses, and institutions
in the empowerment of what I call their authentic wealth.
My wife, Sharee and I
have been married as of the recording of this episode
for 48.5 years.
We are blessed with six children
and now 20 grandchildren.
My wife and I also have devoted thousands
of hours mentoring troubled youth.
And I'm gonna show you that when we meet
with a lot of these youth
and some of them have done some really bad things.
For five years, we helped teenage boys
that were incarcerated.
They were gangsters, they were in lockdown facilities
because they'd been out attempting homicides
and what have you.
And also, I have sat on a board
for teenage suicide prevention.
Many of these youth are in physical captivity,
they're in jail.
I have also been a speaker many times
at adult prisons but I've found there's a common denominator
between those people who are in physical captivity
in sort of a prison environment,
and as a financial strategist
and retirement planning specialist
for nearly five decades,
there are a lot of people that I have met
that they are worth not only millions but billions
but they are in captivity too.
It's caused by their money.
So there's this common denominator
and sometimes the suicide rate
among these super mega wealthy people
is just as high as with some of these teenagers.
Sometimes these wealthy people,
they could spend 10,000 bucks an hour
for the rest of their life
and never put a dent in their net worth.
And they're some of the most miserable people I meet.
Okay?
So let me go through in this episode
and just show you why gratitude is really a key difference
but I'm going to explain the difference
between captivity, whether it's physical
or financial, spiritual, emotional, mental captivity,
and freedom type of a mindset.
And as I alluded to,
it's sometimes the difference between a scarcity mindset
and an abundance mindset.
So I'm gonna super simplify here.
I've noticed that we go through life
and oftentimes, we see ourselves as here.
Now, that's in the present moment
and we can't wait till we get there.
Whatever there is.
When we are young,
we can't until we get there into kindergarten
and when 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 of those school lunches
and we go what was that all about?
And then we can't wait
till we get to be the king of the school,
maybe fifth or sixth grade
and then we get there
and if you haven't noticed,
the school system sort of goes through these cycles
and you get demoted.
Now you're being made fun of
in a middle school or a junior high school
'cause you can't find your locker or whatever
and you can't wait till you're the kind of that school.
And when you get there, then you're demoted
and now you're a freshman or a sophomore in high school.
And then you can't wait till you graduate from high school.
Now, I've been honored to be a keynote speaker
at different high school graduations,
usually because some of these high school graduates
get scholarships for entrepreneurship.
And so I usually go and I will speak to them
and they might get just $1,000 scholarship
and I'll show them how to take that $1,000 scholarship
and turn it into a million bucks
in less than 10 years
instead of blowing it on consuming a motorcycle or whatever.
And how they can be an entrepreneur.
And I've helped many teenagers take just $2
and turn it into a million dollar enterprise
within 10 years
because they bought gas and oil for a lawnmower
or young ladies bought some ingredients,
made a pizza and sold it for six bucks.
And it's just compounding.
It's the parable of the talents in the New Testament, okay?
And so it's interesting
when these high school graduates throw their cap in the air
and they go, "We're there."
"We know it all."
Well, I guarantee you, about three months later,
they're on some college campus
and they're like this.
And they can't wait till they finally get there
and they graduate from college.
And they graduate from college
and then they can't till they get a job
and then a better job and then a car.
They turn in their clunker for a Tesla.
And then they want a home and a better home
and a boat and a motor home
and a cabin and a condo.
And somehow they're gonna be happy
when they get there.
Okay.
So this is sort of a captivity-scarcity mindset.
So I'm gonna simplify this.
I have discovered that the key is being grateful and happy
for wherever you are at in your life.
Okay?
And so when I mentor these troubled youth,
sometimes I'll put this triangle or pyramid on the screen,
and I do this with my audiences, adult audiences.
And I'll say let's say this represents humanity.
And just for the sake of ratios or numbers,
I'll say out of about 7.6 billion people
on planet Earth right now,
or let's say some estimate there's been
about 70 billion people live on planet Earth
since Adam and Eve let's say.
And so just for the sake of ratios,
I'll say you know what?
Out of all the people on planet Earth today
or who have ever lived on planet Earth,
do you know most people would look at you and me
and our lifestyles, our indoor plumbing,
our cars, our technology, our smartphones,
and they would say, "What do you have anything
to complain about?"
You're already there.
The Pharaohs of Egypt would have given their eye teeth
to have a flushed toilet, okay?
And so we're in the top 1/10 of 1% of humanity
when you look at what we have.
And yet I travel a lot
and I see responsible adults throw tantrums
'cause the Wi-Fi goes out on the plane for 10 minutes
and they freak out.
It's like (Doug grunting).
And give it a few seconds,
it still has to go to outer space and back.
I see kids throw tantrums
because they can't figure out how to open their second bag
of Cheetos 'cause their hands are too greasy
from their first bag of Cheetos.
I know a gentleman that had a 27,000 square foot mansion
with a huge room in it,
which is bigger than most families live in in Korea
where I lived a couple of years,
and that room is just for one of his kids' LEGO villages.
And that kid is never happy
and he has anything he wants.
And so my point is this,
happiness should not be contingent on some future result.
Is the drama in life more important
than being happy for wherever you are at?
So let me just go on a few side trips here
for a moment to help you understand what I'm talking about.
Would you agree we're happy because of what we are,
not because of what we have?
A lot of youth think that happiness comes
from owning things, okay?
They worship things.
Others worship people, movie stars, rock stars, athletes.
Others worship their thoughts,
and they think that they're dumb,
or somebody says, "How come you're so stupid?"
And so they think they're stupid
and so they wanna end their life
'cause they do not see a brighter future.
They are in a captivity mentally.
Happiness comes from producing values,
not consuming values.
When you're out in motion producing,
that's where happiness comes from,
not just from consuming
and having more and more things to consume.
Unfortunately, many people choose
to go deep into shallow things.
I'm gonna pick on social media.
It can be a benefit
but it can also be a huge hindrance.
It's where a lot of these kids get suicidal thoughts
because they're comparing themselves
to what's posted on Facebook.
And these people are always talking
about the great things that are going on,
and to them, their life in their vernacular sucks.
And so they go deep into these shallow things,
and it influences them,
and they get caught in this mindset of scarcity mindset
of what they don't have
instead of looking at what they do have.
Well, the reverse is also true.
Some people choose to go shallow
into the deep things, the eternal, life-changing principles
where you're the captain of your own soul.
And you can determine your own destiny.
You actually have a choice.
Whether you're happy or not is basically up to you.
But sometimes these youth,
they don't get that
and it even transfers into adults.
And so I have discovered in life,
you can choose to marinate in degrading things,
and a lot of these youth who are in trouble,
that's where they've been spending their time
is in very degrading things.
To be honest with you,
I've taught the 12-step program addicts
and when you talk about those who have addictions,
and I'm gonna simplify it here,
and it's really not simple,
but basically, when they are worshiping things
or other people or their thoughts,
and they're not getting relief
from the pain they're feeling,
they don't realize
that they could release endorphins naturally
out of the pituitary gland of their brain
to have them feel good, high as they would put it.
Instead, they choose to use external things
and they shoot up, it wears off.
They drink, sex, pornography,
shopping, sugar, eating.
Most addictions, you're trying to escape from the pain.
Now, what do they really want?
They want to feel loved, accepted, peaceful, okay.
When they're frustrated...
We all want that.
Okay?
The destination is correct.
They just get on the wrong train.
And so getting them on the right train
is the difficult part
because they get addicted to the drugs and alcohol
and what have you, and when it wears off,
they have to have more and more.
But oftentimes, they begin by marinating
and degrading things.
But you can choose to marinate in uplifting things.
So on this 3 Dimensional Wealth channel,
and I've written some books to talk
about how do you do that?
How do you teach those that you care about,
your children, your grandchildren,
your nieces and nephews or your students,
those that you care about to do this?
And so that's what this is all about.
So I'm gonna give you a little hint here.
What I like to do when I teach my kids and grandkids
and these troubled youth
is to realize, first of all, we're already there.
Especially in America, we're already blessed.
Some of these boys in prison,
when I get through talking about this,
they go back and they appreciate the flushed toilet
that they have that is theirs in their jail cell.
They never looked at it before.
They were always looking at what they don't have
instead of what they do have.
So it's all a mindset.
Once you understand that we're already blessed,
then there are four freedoms that we have
in America that most people on planet Earth
have never enjoyed.
And so I teach my kids and grandkids
not to take these freedoms lightly.
The first freedom is freedom of time.
To be able to spend time as you see fit.
A lot of people, they have spent their waking hours trying
to get rid of that pain down there.
We have freedom of time in this country.
The second freedom is that of money.
I'm gonna say money but it's really self-reliance.
It's the ability to go out
and create value, work,
you're rewarded, you take care of yourself.
You can be self-reliant.
You don't have to work 24/7
unless you want to work that long.
And you'll be rewarded accordingly.
But we have freedom to go out
and basically be self-reliant,
instead of government reliant or what have you.
The third freedom is freedom of purpose,
to determine your purpose every Monday morning,
every beginning of every week.
I love the freedom of determining my purpose.
A lot of people have never had that freedom.
And the last freedom is that of relationships.
To choose who you hang out with.
Now, there's a lot of people
that have lived on this Earth
that have not had that freedom.
They're stuck with who they're stuck with.
And unfortunately, they are surrounded
by a bunch of scarcity-minded people.
Well, we have the freedom to be able
to break free from that, and choose relationships.
These are the four sort of entrepreneurial freedoms
we have in this country.
And that's why I teach these at our family vacations
with a purpose, with our kids,
with our grandchildren at our annual grandpa's camp
because I want them to have gratitude.
It's the key to having tremendous freedom
and exercising these four freedoms,
and not taking them for granted.
So if this is resonating with you,
I would love to gift you a copy of this book.
Now, it's titled "Entitlement Abolition."
It's 200 pages.
And then I have like 18 hours of video
that talks about this but in this book,
I explain how you can shift those you care about
into this freedom, abundance mindset.
And I talk about gratitude
and there's an exercise in there to do that.
But you can claim your free copy
by going to entitlementabolitionbook.com.
Click on the link below.
You contribute a nominal amount towards the shipping
and handling, and I'll cover the rest of that cost.
I will pay for the book.
You don't have to pay 20 bucks for it on Amazon.
I'll fire out a hard copy to you.
There's also options in there
if you see some of my other books
that you wanna package together in a bundle.
If you'd like to listen and learn, watch and learn,
check it out.
We have a lot of educational webinars that we do
that are free.
But this is about you and your abundant future.
(lively music)