America’s Leadership Expert : Thinking About Money
Clay: This is Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert with Tulsa Business Leadership with podcast number 29. It is a second session of the truth wall. In this podcast I want to talk about how the truth wall actually works. In the last section, in the last podcast, podcast number 28 we talked about how to build a truth wall. In this podcast we’re going to talk about how the truth wall works. Once again, as Clay Staires Tulsa Business Leadership, I get to spend a lot of time around entrepreneurs and business leaders and business managers, helping them expand their capacity, expand their ability to withstand the responsibilities that they have stepped into. One of the things that I have found so often as Tulsa Business Leadership in the hearts and in the minds of business leaders is they have poor pictures of themselves.
They picture themselves as weak. They picture themselves as afraid. They picture themselves as a failure. What they are doing on a constant basis is they are trying to overcome these negative pictures. Especially when they are under pressure. It is so common for business leaders to find themselves under pressure and beginning to entertain pictures of themselves and in these words that go on inside of their heads of you’re gonna fail, you’re not going to make it, you’re not going to make the money, you’re going to lose your house, you’re going to lose your family. Because of that, because of these pictures that we get under pressure, we are not able to see our purpose, our promise through the lens of destiny. America’s Leadership Expert But we see our purpose and promise through the lens of our capacity.
How this truth wall works, how we build the truth wall. With Tulsa Business Leadership as we build this truth wall, the number one thing that we need to do as we have identified what these truths are. We’ve gone to scripture, we’ve heard through dreams and visions, we’ve heard the prophetic voice, and we have heard from the lord this is what is true about you. This is how I have created you. This is who you are. When god looks at you, this is what he sees. What we do, number one, is we write those things down. You’ve got to write them down to just try to carry them in your head. It will not be strong enough to withstand the torrents of rushing storms that will come at you in the midst of adversity in running your company. America’s Leadership Expert You must write these words down. What I encourage my clients to do through Tulsa Business Leadership is I ask them to first of all, write them down on little post it notes. On each post it note you just have one, two, or three words. You don’t write an entire sentence.
It’s just one, two, or three words. Then you take that post it note with the one, two, or three words and you put it up on the wall some place where you are going to see it each day on a consistent basis. This is a first assignment for you to discover what the truth is. What is the capital T truth about you? Then we write it down. Write down the truth. Step number two. After you have written it down, it is so important for you to begin to speak that truth on a daily basis. Not just say it in your head but actually words and sounds coming out of your mouth as you speak these words of truth. This is who I am. This is the truth of my destiny. This is the promise for me. This is the purpose for me. To hear yourself say it, I don’t know how this works. I don’t know the psychology behind this but I know for me personally, I went down to when I first started my company my coach sent me down to Texas to a T. Harv Eker workshop.
It was all on money mindset. You guys, I had a jacked up thought. Just a jacked up way of thinking about money. I had grown up in a non profit. My family ran a non profit organization. I grew up in a town of about 300 people. It was tiny. There was all kinds of poverty going on. After that, I became a school teacher and I worked my buns of for 30 hours a day and got paid very little. I had a mentality of scarcity. I had a mindset of poverty. Here I was beginning to start my own company and my coach was telling me, Clay you’re going to be able to do really well. You’re going to be able to make over a hundred thousand dollars doing this. America’s Leadership Expert There was no way I could get my head around that because of the way that I saw myself, the picture that I had of myself. My coach sends me down T. Harv Eker, down in Dallas, Texas to a three day intensive workshop where it’s all about money mindsets and how you think about money.
Oh man. America’s Leadership Expert Snot all over the place. I’m crying. I’m weeping. This was intense because I began to realize for the first time how negative the picture was that I saw of myself every time I thought about financial success. I find this as Clay Staires Tulsa Business Leadership I find the very same thing to be true as I work with other business owners and entrepreneurs across the country. They have this picture of themselves as small. As never being able to achieve the goals that they actually desire. They want to but they don’t see themselves being able to do that. Something that T. Harv Eker did was he gave us these proclamations about money. I’m a money manager. Money is constantly coming my way. I am a millionaire. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? I’m saying these things and it just sounded ridiculous to me. The idea was to go home and say these every single day to stand up and proclaim these truths about who you are every single day.
At the beginning I thought it was ridiculous. I got up and I started saying it but what was coming out of my mouth and what was actually wired in my brain were two different things. I was saying that I was an excellent money manager but my brain had been wired for years to say, Clay you are terrible with money. You should fear money. Again, with Tulsa Business Leadership I find the same to be true with other business leaders and entrepreneurs is they feel the same way. They have come to believe the same pictures. When I first started saying it, I didn’t totally get it. There was a disconnect but I continued to do it. I continued, every single day to get up. There were 15 different phrases that we said. I stood up every single day on my back porch and would say these 15 phrases. After three months of saying them, I actually began to believe it.
I actually begin to walk and pace while I was saying these phrases. I wouldn’t just standing there with my eyes rolling but I began to pace as I begin to take ownership of this new picture that was growing inside of my mind and inside of my heart about who I was. Then as I continued to do that every single day not only was I pacing but now I began to point as I was saying it. Now it had turned from just me owning it to me actually begin to proclaim it. This is who I am. America’s Leadership Expert I am an excellent money manager. I am a person that money comes to me. I can handle money that comes to me. I am a millionaire. Again, I don’t know the science behind it. I don’t know all the psychology behind it but I know that it works. We have to speak the truth over ourselves. Number one, we are going to write it down. Number two, we have to begin to speak it. Then finally, the third piece is that we have to begin to visualize it.
We have to actually begin to get pictures. This is the most important piece is you have to change your pictures. If you don’t change your picture, you will not be able to achieve your dreams. If you don’t change your pictures of who you are and how you have been created and what the promises are for you, you will not be able to achieve the things that you know that you want to achieve, the things that you desire to achieve. As a trainer, as a coach through Tulsa Business Leadership, this is one of the things that I work on. It’s one of the most exciting things I do with business leaders is train them on how to visualize the capital T truth about them. I want to go through there’s four steps in this picture. There’s four steps in how we visualize, how we change our pictures. Again, I came across the … it came through my 20s.
My 20s were rugged. I mean, they beat the snot out of me. As a result, I came into my 30s with some really screwed up pictures on who I was, which set me up for a very difficult time in my 40s because I wasn’t changing the pictures. What I want to do is give you the four steps of how you visualize, how you use the capital T truth to visualize yourself to change these pictures. The first step that I do with business leaders as Tulsa business leadership is I asked them to get a picture of themselves under the pressure. The struggle, the pressure, the difficulty that they are experiencing. I want you to get a picture of yourself under that pressure. America’s Leadership Expert It’s usually at this point where there’s a lot of darkness, there’s a lot of them being alone, feeling abandoned. Usually they are either inside or outside but there’s nobody else around. The environment is usually cold but they get this picture of where they are.
A lot of times they’re at work and they’re at their desk and they have these mounds of papers around them. I take just a moment. I want this picture to be a third person. I don’t want them to take full ownership. It’s them looking at themselves. Then after that I asked them to let truth, capital T truth, enter into their picture. Many people associate truth with Jesus. I say, okay let Jesus come into this picture. Immediately as Jesus comes into the picture one hundred percent of the time people say the environment changes because what’s happened is truth has entered in. It’s no longer their feeling, America’s Leadership Expert their small T circumstantial truth but capital T truth has entered into the room. Then the third step is to actually transact. Would you be willing to give up your smaller case T for the bigger case T. Would you be willing to give it up? Almost a hundred percent of the time although it’s not all the time, people are saying, yes I want to give it up. I say, then take that circumstance, take that picture, take that fear, take that smallness that you feel and give it away.
Give it to the lord. Give it Jesus. Let him take it. Pay attention to what he does with it because it’s very common that Jesus does some funky stuff with the trash that people give to them. Again, this all aligns with scripture. When we give Jesus things, he always trades up. He is an excellent business man and he always trades up. If we give him ashes, he gives us beauty. If we give him mourning, he gives us … what is it? He gives us the oil of gladness. In Isaiah it talks about if you give me wood, I will give you stone. If you give me stone, I will give you iron. If you give me iron, I will give you silver. If you give me silver, I will give you gold. He always trades up. I ask my leaders to in that visualization to transact, to give up that smaller case T that they’d been holding onto so that they can receive the capital T truth of their promise and purpose. America’s Leadership Expert Then the final piece, the step number four is to actually embrace it, to own it.
To not reject it but to own it. Let that thing actually seep into them. As you begin to change this picture, as you begin to see yourself more and more in the embracing this capital T truth, then as the circumstantial truth, as difficulties and pressures and disappointments and frustrations happen throughout the day you will find as you practice this over and over you will find that the picture that you will be able to maintain, the picture that you will be able to hold onto is a picture of promise. America’s Leadership Expert It’s a picture of purpose rather than the picture of failure. Once again, this is Clay Staires with Tulsa Business Leadership in podcast number two about your truth wall; how it works.
