Episode #51 – The REAL Meaning Of Wealth

 

Wealth is about a lot more than money. Tune in for a really great exercise you can do at home to measure where you are, holistically, and then set your sights on what is next!

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The REAL Meaning Of Wealth

Harmonic Wealth Wheel

I’m excited to be with you. I’m fresh off a three-day leadership conference. I’m excited about some of the takeaways that I’m going to be able to share with you on this show. I did this training for one of my sales organizations. I thought to myself when I was done, “This would make a good episode for you.” I’m going to teach you one of my favorite ways to look at wealth. I get a lot of requests to do this particular training over the years.

This is all about what I call the harmonic wealth wheel. It’s got so many different names that I’ve heard over the years. Some people call it the wheel of whole-life success or the wheel of wealth, but this was introduced to me many years ago. It was cool. It opened my eyes in terms of how we view the word wealth. What comes to your mind when I say the word wealth?

When I ask this question to my sales team, the responses were, “Living well, an abundance of something, freedom, money, the best life you can live, hard work stability, happiness, and not having to worry about bills for sure.” If I ask this question to most Americans, I pretty confidently can say they are going to say money, but the original meaning of the word is well-being.

When I interviewed one of my mentors who taught me this concept, James Ray, I had him on my show on Episode 30. It’s the one that’s titled Debt from $20 million and Darkness, the James Ray turnaround story. When I hear the word wealth, I don’t necessarily go to the word well-being, but the original intention of wealth is a whole-rounded approach to your life. How are you doing holistically?

The original intention of wealth is a whole rounded approach to your life. Click To Tweet

Another word I think of is holistic wealth. I’m going to give you an exercise to do along with this. If you’re at the gym, I would encourage you. You’re going to be 100% focused but I know we’re all achievers, multitaskers, and all of that. If you can do this exercise at the same time, that will be effective. If you want to go through it but then do the exercise later, don’t skip doing the exercise.

When I read a book and they give me an exercise, rarely do I do them in all honesty. I’m like, “I’ll get to that later,” but this is one thing that I promise you that you don’t want to miss because it gives you a snapshot of where you’re at. It’s like a self-test or a self-scoring system. You can start to figure out, “What is it that I need to focus on to create holistic wealth or whole-life success wealth in my life?”

When we think of the term wealth, “I have to make more money. I need to keep it and then grow it,” type of thing, that’s only 20% of the general concept of what having true wealth is. I was at the seminar. It was called the Power to Win by James Ray. It was one of the first seminars that I had ever gone to. It was mind-blowing. He introduced concepts and ideas about what you think and focus on and how you think about your overall wealth in your life. This was way back in 1997.

I was a sophomore in college. I was just getting started in the business. I did not have that much money at that time. When you think of college students, you don’t think of wealth. You think generally, “They’re broke.” I wasn’t but a shade above broke right at that time. The pitch was put on me by the leadership in my business to go to this seminar. It was a two-day event in Chicago. The ticket at that time was very reasonable at $300. In addition, you’ve got the hotel costs. You have to buy your food.

I already had a meal pass that my parents bought me for college. You’ve got the transportation and all of that. I was looking at $700 to $800 to go to this thing or maybe more. I’m a sophomore in college. It’s not like I had that much money but I am so glad that I formed the philosophy at a young age, I was probably twenty at that time, to invest back into myself and invest back into my mindset, which ultimately is going to grow your earning power as you have heard me say many times before 10X or 100X more than any other type of investment.

It’s hard to quantify those types of investments. In terms of quantifying, when you buy a piece of real estate, I know pretty close to the return that I’m going to get. That gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling, “I can quantify this. I know exactly what my return is going to be.” I know what I invest in crypto. I don’t know what the return is going to be at all but I know that I could potentially double, triple it, or 10X my money. I have that type of possibility of those types of returns. I could see that on the actual numbers.

Five Areas Of Wealth

The real difficult part about investing in yourself is that it does take trust, faith, and vision. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to grab a blank sheet of paper, an 8×11, or whatever you have and grab a pen. This can’t be done on your phone. You’re going to draw a big circle. What you do is put a dot right in the very middle. Don’t freak out. It doesn’t need to be a perfect circle.

Draw one quickly and put a dot in the middle. You’re going to put five spokes from the center circle to the outer ring like the spokes on a wheel. At the outer spoke where the line meets the outer circle, you’re going to write these five words, physical, financial, spiritual, relationships, and then mental/intellectual. These five areas signify the five true areas of wealth in your life.

Physical Health

This is where you give it some thought but don’t overthink it. Don’t overanalyze it. You don’t have to get this perfect. We’re trying to get a snapshot of where you’re ranking yourself in these five areas of your life. Don’t do it quite yet. I want to set the stage up. If we think about physical wealth, we think about people that lose their health. They’re a millionaire or a multimillionaire. They lose their health. How much of their money would they give to get it back? All of it.

Having health, fitness, vitality, a good physical aesthetic, a good appearance, energy, and all of that are very important to us. To say that it’s not, we would be lying to ourselves if we did. Not only that but there are studies that show that people who are physically fit and healthy and have energy make 50% more than people that are out of shape. I get it. That’s a staggering number but these are studies that have been done. We can like it or not. We can agree or disagree but those are the facts. This is what the studies show. That’s the way the world works.

Studies show that people who are physically fit and healthy make 50% more than people that are out of shape. Click To Tweet

There are two parts to this. One part of it is that when you have physical fitness and energy, you’re able to perform at a higher level. Surely, we all know that. If you’re feeling good and if you’re energetically fit, you’re going to feel better, be able to do more production and activities, move more, be able to work longer hours with more focus and more productivity within those hours, run circles around people that are out of shape productivity-wise, be able to produce more, have clear thinking, and be able to have the ability to make better decisions.

What’s important to note about all five of these is that each of them affects all of them. None of these five areas of wealth live in a vacuum. A vacuum would be where each one is isolated from the others. They all work together and affect each other. When one of these areas drops low, I don’t think it’s possible to drop all the way to zero. I also don’t think it’s possible for any of these to go all the way to a perfect ten because there’s always room for improvement.

You’ve never truly hit rock bottom at 0 but if you’re down low or if you’re ranking at 1, 2, or 3 in certain areas, what that’s doing is dragging down the other four. If your physical fitness isn’t good, then that certainly is dragging down the other areas. It could be dragging down the financial part of your life. Back in 2008, we moved into a new home. We had a new baby. Our firstborn son, John, was on the way. We bought our house right before the market crashed in 2008. How did I not see that one coming? I didn’t have a crystal ball.

It should have been incredible. I should have been living my absolute best life. We had hit the top diamond level in our direct sales company. We had a new baby boy. I wanted to make sure I had a son to carry on the family name. He’s the fifth John in a row in our family. I had to have a boy to carry on the name. A lot of people don’t understand that my legal name is John even though I go by Jack. It’s common for people that have the name Jack but their legal name or real name is John.

Maybe it’s not so common anymore. A lot of babies are named Jack. It’s a very popular name. In the generation ahead of me, that’s the way it was. You learn something new about me right there. I wanted to pass it on. I was super excited about having a boy. I had all these visions about all the state high school basketball championships he was going to win and all the things that we were going to do together.

I crashed hard and figured this out by getting a functional health practitioner. I enrolled. I was exposed to a highly toxic mold situation in that house. I’m pretty sure that it was in the attic right above or next to the office. I work from home all day long. John, my son, was also super exposed as well. He was on breathing treatment. We thought he had asthma. We were confident that he was exposed to the same breathing in that same toxic mold as I was.

That caused an incredible health crash. I was pretty knocked out energetically wise. My endocrine system and immunity were all out of whack. I was getting sick all the time with depression and fatigue. My energy was super low. I can tell you when you don’t have physical health or fitness how taxing that is on your ability to have a great relationship. I know that my relationship with my wife suffered at that time because I was energetically in a state of terribleness.

I know that I wasn’t able to work as I was able to work before. My productivity suffered. Luckily, I had created some streams of passive income but I wasn’t able to do and produce as I was before. I wasn’t able to make good investment decisions at that time because I was drained and didn’t have clear thinking. I can tell you from firsthand experience that you can drag down all the other areas of your life when one area of your life crashes.

Think about your finances. Studies show that the majority of marriages end in divorce because of money and finance. That’s what the statistics show. We can’t argue with that. If your finances aren’t good, then you don’t have the money to maybe do the books, the courses, and the seminars and get the coaching that you need on the mental and intellectual side.

That can drag the mental and intellectual wheel of your wealth down. Your relationships could get dragged down. Your physical life could get dragged down a bit because if your finances are not as good, maybe you don’t have the ability to get the right foods, supplements, fitness instruction, gym, or whatever that is. You don’t have the ability as much to put the resources in to prioritize your physical well-being and health.

Generally speaking, you don’t want to use that as an excuse, “My finances are out. My health and fitness are going to suffer.” There are plenty of things where it’s mind over matter. You can do some great things on a lean budget and get that physical health and well-being up but there are more resources that you have available to you to be able to streamline your physical fitness.

Rate Yourself

Why don’t you start rating yourself here on the wheel? You’re going to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in each of these areas. If you’re a ten, you’re going to put a dot right on the outer edge where the line meets the outer edge. You’re not going to be a 0 or a 10 but let’s say you’re a 1. It’s going to be close to the actual center of the wheel. If you’re a five, it’s going to go right in the middle.

I’m going to rate myself a two on the physical. On the spiritual, I’m plugged into a place that spiritually nourishes me every week. I’m generously giving to that church financially. I’m plugged into the community there. Maybe I’m serving and volunteering at that particular spiritual nourishing place. I’m reading something scripturally or from the Bible. It spiritually nourishes me. Let’s say I’m up at a nine on that.

Mentally or intellectually, let’s be honest with me. I’ve been watching a ton of Netflix. I’m not doing a whole lot of podcasting. I’m watching the news and stuff that isn’t all that great for me. I have to give myself a four on the mental and intellectual side. In finance, let’s say I am spending more money than I have each month. We’re going into debt further. I have high credit card balances. I only have one stream of income coming in. It could go away at any time.

Financially, I don’t have any investments or savings. I’m at a three on that. On the fifth one, I’ve got my relationships. My relationships are on point. My wife and I are connected. I’ve got lots of friends and people that I get along with. I can count on them to be there for me. I’ve plugged into a team. I’ve got a tribe. I’ve got lots of support. My relationships are great. I’m going to give myself a nine there.

What you’re going to do then is you’re going to connect the dots and see. Do you have a wheel inside the wheel? This is your wheel inside. Once you’ve connected all these dots together, can it roll? In this case, looking at mine, that’s a pretty lopsided wheel. That is not going to roll. What do I need to focus on? I need to focus on my physical well-being. I have to get that going. Mentally and intellectually, I need to be focused on feeding myself better content and giving myself better input.

There’s probably too much garbage coming in. Maybe garbage is showing up in these other areas of my life. On the finance side, I need to plug into Indestructible Wealth because this guy knows this shit. He’s going to help me to get my finance up closer to a ten. When you look at this, it can give you an idea of what you need to focus on in terms of your personal development and your holistic wheel of wealth that you can plug into to help you to grow.

Financial Freedom

I’ll dive in a little bit on the financial side. What would a ten be? In my opinion, on the financial side, you’re ten when you’re financially free. The definition of financial freedom is when the money that comes off of your assets or all the things that you’ve invested into pays for all of your expenses every single month to the point where you never have to work again because the money keeps replenishing each month automatically. That’s a 10 out of 10.

Here’s my personal opinion. For example, you have a business. It creates a single stream of income that comes in every month. That pays for all your monthly expenses. I don’t count that as financially free because that’s just one stream of income. You need multiple streams of income to have that level of 9.5. You’re never a 10 out of 10 on the financial freedom level.

I want to put that reality check out there but we all have to start where we’re at. We’re going to get better and grow. The whole point of this is not so much to be tough on ourselves and where we’re at. It’s to evaluate so we can get better. You can say, “I need to grow in this area.” There is nothing right or wrong. You’re not right or wrong. There is no reason to beat yourself up. You’re human. You’re going to have times in your life when some of these areas are going to drop down. Things are going to happen.

Evaluate yourself not to be tough on yourself but so that you can get better. Click To Tweet

Living the life of a human being is complex. It’s not helping you or anyone around you to beat yourself up and feel bad about looking at your wheel and being like, “This is a shitty wheel,” but it’s also not good to have your head in the clouds and say, “Everything is fine.” When your relationship with your spouse is at a three, everything is not fine. You need to be dialed in, “Reality check, I need to dive into that because that’s going to put a drag on all these other areas of wealth.”

There’s never a time when you’re going to be completely balanced. Everything is going to be at a nine all the way around. That’s a fantasy world. This is something that will never happen. Balance is bogus. What we want is harmony. Harmony means, “For the physical, maybe I need to dial into that and pull that one up. Maybe another area of my life drops a little bit. I focused and brought my physical wealth up. I need to focus on this other area.” It’s in harmony. Everything is working together to give you and help you to live your best life.

Spiritual Side & Relationships

The spiritual side is a tough one to quantify. I’m not qualified to talk a whole lot on this one. Overall, that’s going to be the connection that you have to your creator. To me, it’s not just that connection but it’s the practice of that connection too. I don’t know what else honestly to tell you beyond that. That’s up to you to be able to determine where you’re at in that realm. Intuitively, if you’re being honest with yourself and truthful with yourself, you probably know where you’re at in that in that area.

In relationships, 85% of all your happiness in life comes from your relationships with other human beings. That means if we look at everything in life, it has polarity. What do I mean by polarity? There’s good and bad. There’s tall and short. There’s success and failure. There’s hot and cold. Everything in life has polarity. There’s good and evil. If 85% of your happiness comes from your relationships with other human beings, that means 85% of your misery comes from your relationships with other human beings.

If you’ve ever had an argument with your spouse, I can promise you that you’re not very happy at that time at all. I was at this leadership conference. A couple of friends of mine said that their college football team won and beat the other one. The spouse didn’t talk to him for two days. We were laughing. I’m like, “That had to be a miserable two days.” He said, “It was freaking awful.” That’s taking it a little bit too far but that’s a super competitive household. I respect it as well because that’s a little crazy. I have an amazing spouse. We have an incredible relationship. At the same time, when there’s a rift in that relationship, that 85% happiness quickly flip-flops to 85% misery.

Mental & Intellectual

For the mental and intellectual, how are you engaged in increasing your knowledge through books, podcasts, taking courses, and going to seminars? How much are you feeding positivity into your mind? What’s going to detract from this is what you do in the evening time, especially right before bed. I’ve had to take a look at this and snap out of it because my wife and I were watching a show that was super negative. It was a great show. It was dark but it was pretty negative.

I was having nightmares. I had one that was so bad that I spoke to my pastor about it and said, “What is going on?” We traced it back. He’s like, “What are you doing right before you go to bed?” I’m like, “I’m watching this show with my wife. It’s called The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s good but it’s super dark.” He’s like, “That’s working on you throughout the time that you’re sleeping.” I already knew that but I neglected it.

We’re not immune to this. Work on breathing something positive into your mind before bed because it goes into your subconscious mind and then sits there all night. Don’t pay your bills before you go to bed. It’s a terrible time to pay your bills because then, you’re going to think about it and worry about it, “I don’t have money. I’m short on money. This is going to drain my account. That’s terrible.”

Don’t watch the news before you go to bed. It’s probably the worst thing you can do because it’s all negativity. Watch and guard your mind. If you’re putting garbage in, you’re getting garbage out. If you put good stuff in the garden of your mind, then you’re going to get a great harvest. This gives you a real idea about how to think of these five areas and rate yourself. Go ahead, rank yourself, and write yours out if you haven’t already done it.

Personal Development

Ideally, we want our wheel to roll. If the wheel cannot spin around and roll, then you’ve got some mega unbalances that you want to look at. Lots of people ask me this question, “What should I do for personal development?” A lot of times, people ask me, “What should I do in this area of my finance?” The answer always is it depends. When you look at your wheel, then I would super hyper-focus your areas of personal development on those areas that you ranked yourself flow.

If you’re low in relationships and the spiritual realm, I would be looking at the personal development that can hyper-focus on these two things because they are draining the resources and the ability for you to be good and strong in those other areas. Somebody says, “Spiritually, I’m down at a 2 or 3. I’m dragging. I’m low. This is where I was at. Spiritually, I was pretty low multiple years ago. We work hard on re-engaging and finding a place where I could go to get spiritually nourished that I was excited and inspired to go to.”

If you haven’t read episode number 30, it’s an incredible interview with one of my former mentors, James Ray. This guy was one of the fastest-growing privately-held businesses in America. He was on Oprah Winfrey. If you’ve ever seen the movie, The Secret, he was the main presenter in that. That was a worldwide phenomenon. That was a huge bestselling book and movie. He was on Oprah 2 or 3 times. He would sell out his seminars.

I remember processing credit cards form at the back of the room. I volunteered. I was swiping $10,000 to $20,000 for his seminars. I got the rare opportunity to interview him. He’s the one who taught me about the harmonic wheel of wealth. It would be great for you to go and listen to what he has to say about this subject as well. I hope this provides incredible value for you and helps you to look at wealth in a different way. Wealth is more than money.

I know that on the show, I’m primarily talking about money. It’s a show about finance, investing, making, keeping, and growing your wealth but I always want to make sure that we’re not missing sight of the bigger picture on my platform, which is what your holistic well-being and wealth look like. If you got a lot of value out of this episode, please share it with others.

Don’t hesitate to give me a five-star rating and a review. You can only do that on Apple Podcasts but please take a few minutes. That means so much. I read all of the reviews. I’ve read them all multiple times. Whenever I’m feeling down, particularly in getting a startup off the ground in a business like this where I’m putting a ton in and not getting a lot back out, those words help fuel me and keep me going. If I’m giving you value, that is one very simple thing that you could do to reciprocate some value back. I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate all of you reading.

At the leadership conference that I was at, I had so many people that came up and said, “I’m listening to your podcast. I’m loving it.” I appreciate those words so much. Thank you for plugging in, reading, and putting into action some of the things that I’m talking about here. That makes me super fulfilled and excited. It helps me to keep this whole platform and train moving. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

 

Important Links

• James Ray – Previous Episode
• Apple Podcasts – Indestructible Wealth with Jack Gibson