I was feeling poor nine months ago. I wasn't sure if I could pay my bills. What that motivated me to do was ask, "What do I really want out of money? What is the main thing I'm afraid of?"
I looked at it, "Well, okay, if I don't have any money, I won't be able to pay my bills."
What's wrong with not paying my bills?
"Well, if I don't pay my bills, I won't be able to feed my family."
There was my bottom line fear.
The problem is as long as you focus on the wealth accumulation, often the bottom line fear doesn't go anywhere. You still can feel poor even if you have lots of money, if the bottom line fear is not addressed.
The cheapest way to feel wealthy is to start by asking, "What do you really want out of feeling wealthy?"
This takes a little bit of courage to dig deep, go down to the bottom and see, "What is the end goal, what is the main fear you have out of being poor?"
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I'll show you the cheapest way to feel wealthy right now.
Look, here's the cheapest way to feel wealthy. This is the top of my kitchen. These are Quaker Oats and peanut butter, and this is enough food to feed my family for at least a month, if not several months.
Then, I've got beans.
I'll show you inside my closet here.
You might think, "What does having some peanut butter and some oats do for feeling wealthy?”
I've got all these cans of beans in here.
I choose beans because they're very healthy. They've got lots of vitamins in them, they've got lots of protein and I eat vegan. Beans are a very good thing for me to eat every day.
I've got spinach, vegetables and beans. I also have got whole grains and peanut butter.
That's enough to feed my family, my wife, me and my daughter.
That's enough to feed my family for at least a month, if not two or three months, just with what I've got in the kitchen and my closet.
You see that the peanut butter has a lot of calories in it.
There are 34 servings in this can of peanut butter of 190 calories. A human being only needs about 2,000 a day to have that plenty of calories. Therefore, I've got enough to feed my whole family for more than a day in just that one can.
So, each of these up here, that's at least a day and a half, especially when you combine it with the oats and the spinach. I've got enough to feed my family for at least a month, if not several months in the house.
Before this, when I was feeling broke, when I was feeling poor, when I was afraid of not having enough money, you see, I only needed to spend a couple hundred dollars to feel wealthy.
The trick is what you really want is to feel wealthy. You don't actually want to be wealthy because that's subjective.
There are some people who would say, "Look around your house, man. Look at this two-bedroom house you're renting."
I'm sure there are people who would say, "Look at this two-bedroom house you're in, man. You are broke. Clearly, you are broke. Look around in here. There's not one nice thing in here. Well, that's a nice TV."
You would have people look around my house and say this is clear proof I'm broke. There's nothing fancy or expensive in here outside of the equipment I use in my studio.
There are plenty of people in the world who would argue that clearly I'm broke, looking around my house. There are lots of other people, probably a lot more people in the world who'd say, "Wow, you have wealth beyond reason. Look at that. You've got a nice couch. You've got your own place to live. You have incredible wealth."
You see, wealth is subjective.
What one person thinks is just massive wealth, another person that's their idea of dead broke. I'm standing in the middle of someone's idea of having completely made it and I'm standing in the middle of someone's worst case scenario right now.
Yes, my life from some points of view is a worst case scenario.
The point is wealth is quite subjective.
My dog is just going crazy licking herself.
Would you take a break for the video?
You can go back to licking yourself for the rest of the day.
The point is what we want to do is feel wealthy.
We don't actually want to be wealthy.
We want to feel wealthy.
We want to feel like we have enough, like we are enough.
What I've learned is address those baseline fears.
One of those baseline fears is that, "I'm so poor, I can't feed my family."
While intellectually it might take me making thousands of dollars to feel a little bit more wealthy, my little peanut butter and oatmeal stash makes me feel way wealthy because this addresses my bottom line fears.
Each of these peanut butter thing was $6, and each of the oats was two for $6, that cost me an extra $200. The amount of wealthy I feel knowing that I've got enough food in my house to feed my family for several months is easily worth $10,000 or $20,000 in the bank.
I shared this with you because I'm going to bet, regardless of how broke you think you are, you've got enough money to go to the store and buy some more food and address those baseline fears.
Address those fears that are keeping you up working and worrying night and day, that are making you feel like you're not good enough.
It might seem too simple, too stupid and too easy.
It might be like, "Jerry, really? Spend $100 at the store to buy some extra food and I'm going to feel wealthy?"
Yes.
I bought the peanut butter and oatmeal because I'm vegan. Those things, if the power goes out, it doesn't matter. If there's little flood, it doesn't matter. Those food are extremely durable.
In other words, I didn't fill my freezer full of meat or anything, not just a vegan thing. But you see, if I'm so poor that I can't pay my electric bill, then all of a sudden, I can't keep food in the freezer either. I bought food that even if I can't pay the electric bill or the water bill, I can still eat it and that food will still be good.
You might think, "Oh, that's such a stupid trick."
It works.
If you're feeling broke, go buy some extra food. Just try it.
If you're feeling broke, spend some of the money you do have, buy some extra food so that you've got enough food to feed your family in the house for at least a month, if not two or three months.
Then what I've found, once I feel wealthy, the world will tend to give me more money.
There's this weird thing that happens. When you're broke, it's like no one wants to give you anything. It's stupid, I've had almost no money at all at a lot of points in my life, I have been living paycheck to paycheck. I used to risk my life for $9 or $10 an hour. I had a $395 a month apartment in the ghetto and I felt broke.
No one wanted to give me money either. It was so difficult to get a better job, to have any good opportunities come along financially. When you feel broke, it's hard to get any more wealth because other people feel like you being broke is contagious.
On some deep level, we know that feelings are contagious. What tends to happen is if you feel broke you tend to hang out with a lot of other people who feel broke because if you hang out with people who feel wealthy it often is uncomfortable.
To hang out with someone who feels like they are good enough, like they have enough often feels uncomfortable, because it forces you to take a look at, "Well what can I do about being broke? What can I do about that?"
I felt quite like I was just about to run out of money at the beginning of the year. My business was using up my life, and my bills were using up more money than I was getting in every month.
I'm grateful that I took action on what I could.
I couldn't just go get someone to give me money, but what I could do is address those bottom line fears, address those things that are behind in my desire to get money.
Now, it's amazing all of the actual money that's been given to me since I bought some peanut butter, oatmeal and spinach at the store. As soon as I started feeling wealthy the world has literally just heaped actual money on me.
Now, that is not going to happen in every single case, but if you take care of those baseline fears, spend the money you have, not to feel broke and to address those bottom line needs, you'll feel wealthy like I felt as soon as I brought all that peanut butter and oatmeal in the house.
I felt wealthy like, "Man I can feed my family no matter what," that's wealthy to know that you can feed your family no matter what, and you don't need money in the bank to do that, just some extra food in the house will cover that.
It's ridiculous and it works.
I'm grateful I've had the biggest single increase in my business ever over the next two or three months since I went to the store and bought that food because as soon as I bought all that, I felt wealthy.
As soon as I felt wealthy, the world began to reinforce that.
I hope this is helpful for you today, especially if you're in that same spot, you're feeling broke, you're not sure what you're going to do. The key thing is to be able to make a choice with what you do have.
Then, when you feel wealthy, the world will reinforce your feeling.
If you feel broke, I'm sure you know how much the world will reinforce your feeling of feeling broke.
Today, I'm grateful to be here with you and have this tip to share with you.
I hope it's helpful. Thank you for reading this post. I love you.
You're awesome and I hope to see you again soon!
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Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk from the transcript by GoTranscript.
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