The Conscious Investor
Chasing after Financial Freedom often bankrupts other parts of life.
That’s why the Conscious Investor Podcast goes beyond Financial Freedom and helps investors cultivate Personal Freedom by featuring experts in the core areas of health, mindset, and investing.
If you’re looking to grow financially, if you long to unleash your full potential, and build a life of meaning without bankrupting the most important parts of life then this show is for you!
The Conscious Investor
Ep498 My Rant About Success
What if success isn't about academic accolades or the size of your bank account? This episode of the Conscious Investor Podcast questions society’s conventional markers of success and explores the profound idea that fulfillment and personal growth might be equally, if not more, significant. Reflecting on personal experiences and societal observations, we challenge the relentless pursuit of wealth and highlight the impermanence of generational riches. Inspired by the wisdom found in "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying," we open up a conversation on what truly contributes to a meaningful and successful life.
Through heartfelt stories and reflections, we redefine success by emphasizing love, commitment, and alignment with personal values and faith. We dive deep into the strength found in enduring life's challenges with a partner and the importance of evolving together in a marriage. Join us as we underscore the value of unconditional love, dynamic growth within relationships, and the richness that comes from connecting with others. This episode encourages you to engage in reflective dialogues and rethink the essence of what it means to live a fulfilling and successful life.
If you're interested in how highly successful investors overcome limitations and become unstoppable forces of success, you're in the right place. The Conscious Investor Podcast features weekly conversations with real estate investing experts and delivers a Monday mindset episode to help launch your week with intention. If you believe success is for everyone willing to think, then do. These conversations will be your weekly rocket fuel. Welcome back, or welcome to the Conscious Investor Podcast. I'm so happy to spend this Monday with you, conscious Investor. I like these days where we can just have these conversations and it's you and I. I love Thursdays when we have guests on the show. But there's something special about these episodes and you often let me know this when you leave comments and such over on Apple Podcasts and I just want you to know, absolutely fills my heart and, based off of last week's episode, just to follow up, it is so encouraging to me and I need your encouragement. I'm not going to lie, conscious Investor. I love knowing that the podcast is serving you, that it's supporting you and that, um, it's sparking great conversations in your life. So don't be a stranger, it's free. It's a free way to support the show, but if you're a first time listener, I'm not asking you to leave a rating and review. Yet let's give it some time. I want to thank Teddy. He left this, um, he left a rating and review and he says amazing podcast five stars, highly recommend great content, honest communication, 10 out of 10. Teddy, I'm grateful for you and I'm also grateful that you are a future guest, that we've already recorded a podcast episode and I cannot wait to release that to the Conscious Investor. You are going to love the conversation. I am fully certain of that Conscious Investor. You are going to love the conversation. I am fully certain of that Conscious Investor.
Speaker 1:Right now, we want to talk about success. What is success? That really is what this is, and I don't have very many rants, but today can we all just give me permission to have a little rant? Notice, if you're watching over on YouTube, I am smiling. So it's kind of funny to say that I'm going to have a rant and yet I'm smiling, and I don't know if that's some internal passive, aggressive coping mechanism of some sort, but here's the reality.
Speaker 1:Recently, I've been thinking a lot about success and what success looks like and the reason I've been thinking about this. There are multiple facets as to why I've been thinking about success so much I've been thinking about success because, as I've mentioned in some past mindset episodes, I've seen some marriages dissolve after decades and it just kind of leaves you wondering. I've seen people that have a massive net worth but they seem to have an insatiable appetite for more money, and I see people struggling because they just want to get to the next run, because for them, that is success, and I think that we're overdue on this conversation as to what is success. It could be if you're a student, what grades do you have to have to be successful? I mean, the world says A's are successful, but is that actually success? I would actually suggest no, it's not success, and we can have success at every single grade, which sounds crazy for a former public school teacher to say that. I'm sure, but ultimately I'm going to say that this conversation was sparked because I am blessed and privileged to be around a lot of people. I love the fact that I'm around so many amazing people. I love the fact that I'm around so many amazing people and recently I was around someone who was filled with name dropping and concept dropping, and when I'm around people like that, I actually just like to sit back, because anytime I tried to enter the conversation.
Speaker 1:There was just no point and I was listening to the direction of this conversation over time and this conversation was very much filled on more, more, more more. It seemed like an insatiable amount of more and I ended up asking this person at one point. We were in a group and I wanted to be mindful. I really I am a challenger and if you've we've met in person, you know I will ask tough, real, honest questions. But I always like to make sure that when I'm asking those questions it's coming from a sincere, genuine position of curiosity, of wonder, of support. I don't want to do it from antagonism or judgmentalism or I want to make sure that I'm coming from a good position, what I would consider a good position. And I had to wait a little bit before I actually responded to this person. But at some point the conversation was just going on for hours and it was very focused on other people and money and these things, and I actually asked. I said hey, so what is success? Like, where is the end? Is there a finish line? Like, do you like what is your concept of success? We're going to run ourself ragged for FOPO, fear of people's opinions. Thank you, michael Gervais, for that acronym. I love it. And if you haven't read First Rule of Mastery, please pick up a copy. It's an amazing book.
Speaker 1:We have to think about. Why are we actually going for this? And in our conversations, why are we trying to posture? Why are you trying to flex? What do we? What is it we have to prove?
Speaker 1:Over the years, I've realized, like I don't have anything to prove to anybody. I get to live a very quiet life I mean, I know, not quiet compared to some people's standards, but I find myself postured. For me, you know, my faith is central to my life. And so, for me, I can just simply say like, am I aligned with vertical alignment with the sovereign? If I am, I feel like I'm succeeding, I feel like I'm winning. So my faith is central. Because I was thinking about, well, how would I define success? And I actually suggested this. I said well, you know, success for me isn't measured by dollars and cents. Dollars and cents come and go, but at some point we're all going to be dead, we're going to be gone, we're going to be relocated, and at that point none of this stuff matters. And for those of us who I'm not one of them.
Speaker 1:I guess for those those I don't think that you're on this bandwagon either, conscious of that, sir but for those who think they're going to pass along legacy or generational wealth, the reality is that 90% of that is lost by the third generation. So I think it's 40% is lost. So let's just say you and I, we transfer our wealth to our kids. Well, 40% of our kids are going to lose the wealth, and then the other 50% is lost when they pass it down to their kids. So only 10% of wealth is actually passed like goes through legacy wealth. There's a lot of care and consideration when it comes to actually building generational legacy wealth, as I think many of us conceptualize it. So it's like okay, how much money do we really need? Is that the end all? Is that how we're going to measure success?
Speaker 1:For me, that's not my measurement for success. I am looking at my alignment with my faith. I look at my marriage. I've obviously brought that up many times on the podcast, especially recently about marriages dissolving, and there's no judgment or criticism in that. You know, you've been listening, conscious investor. You know that I have a previous marriage in my past, so I'm not judging anyone, but I've come to this new position in life, and maybe this is just because of the years that I've been blessed to live and experiences that super rad Steve and I have had, where, you know, our marriage could have dissolved and failed it. Technically it did fail, it did fail, but we stuck it out, we stuck together and there's a blessing and a reward that we've gained from that and I can see that now it's almost like doing the reps, it's like just putting in that time and standing strong for each other. And we're at such a really neat spot now in life. We're positioned so well.
Speaker 1:I think about what does that look like when we are 60, 70, 80, 90, like however many years we're blessed to live together and share this life together. What would that look like? So for me, successes am I? Am I building him up? Am I supporting him? Am I helping him? And I don't always do a great job of that. I can be a naggy wife, I can do all of those things. You know like. We're all growing and learning. So I just want to be clear. I'm not coming from this like, well, I've got this whole thing figured out. No, I haven't. But that's part of the fun is, I don't have it all figured out, but I'm trying to figure it out and he's trying to figure it out, and together we're building this thing called life. So for me, I started looking at what is it that I value and how do I define success? And no amount of money can buy love.
Speaker 1:I think Patrick Dempsey proved that in the movie in the eighties right, can't buy me love, it's true, can't buy me love Like, and there's something sweet and powerful and beautiful about somebody who is willing to share life with you, even when you're an super ugly mess. Now, I'm not talking about physically ugly mess, I'm talking about like internally catastrophic you might. I mean like at some point you're going to go through some toxic moments where you're the toxic one, and I just can't think of a person who doesn't go through those moments at some point in life. And so it's like to know that somebody loves you enough to stick with you, to not let you go, to hold on to you, and that you in turn do the same. It feels extremely successful to me, very, very successful. And in fact, one of the reasons I'm probably inclined to find all of this especially valuable is because Super Red Steve and I recently celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary and that's two decades together, total in a committed relationship, and really, truly, that type of love, that love that weaves life together, it's really been taking my breath away as I've reflected on that. It's a beautiful gift. It's a beautiful gift and I also think just on a side note for a moment Conscious Investor is that sometimes we think, well, the grass is greener on the other side, or, you know, you just wait a few years, you're going to have an entirely new person in front of you, and isn't that funny.
Speaker 1:When Super Red Steve and I were first dating, we made a commitment we wanted to be dynamic people, not static people. We made a commitment we wanted to be dynamic people, not static people. We wanted to be people that were growing and developing and in in over years, over our lifetime, instead of just simply being this is who I am, this is who you married. Get over it, that type of thing. And for the most part, we have been very, very dynamic people, which means that we've both been married to different people over the years. I'm not talking about different people, which means that we've both been married to different people over the years. I'm not talking about different people, different people I'm talking about. I'm not the same person that he married when we got married in our twenties and he is not the same person that he was when we got married in our twenties. We've grown, we've evolved, we've expanded and it's such a beautiful thing when you can go through those growth spurts with people.
Speaker 1:Now we suffer through that with our kids, right, we love our kids no matter what. But when we choose that, when we choose to suffer for our spouse, we choose to suffer for our spouse, for our significant other. It's an entirely different type of love. It's crazy. The unconditional love we can have for our kids, it's massive. I don't think that most kids really understand that and yet we oftentimes don't apply that same love towards our spouses. To me, that feels like success. It feels like success when your faith is intact, when you have a marriage that is moving and dynamic. It's its own life, it has its own heartbeat. It's pretty, pretty rad. It feels pretty successful when you can not erupt at your kids Still trying to figure that one out.
Speaker 1:I'm just being honest. But having a family and having that family time and setting time aside to be as a family, whatever that looks like, I'm not one to want to sit around and watch TV, but I like hanging out with my family and I like laughing with them. So, yeah, I'm going to do that. It feels successful when I apply myself to learning and growing within my business and I have the success that comes with that and that might look like a monetary reward. It might look like I just connected two people and they're going to go do something powerful in the world. It might look like a lot of different things, but really, at the end of the day, money's just money and it's really fun. Having money is really fun and it opens a lot of doors of opportunity and it's a powerful tool. So I'm not dismissing that at all and I'm not dismissing going out and having fun with people that you don't really know, but that's really at the lowest end of the totem pole for for me when it comes to success, I think it's really important.
Speaker 1:We're going to find ourselves empty if we're short-sighted on this and if we don't contemplate what our first principles are for success. Like what would that look like? And have you thought about that conscious semester? Have you thought about what success actually means to you? Have you developed? This is my protocol. This is my hierarchy, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Well, what's your hierarchy of success? What does that look like? I'd love to know what yours is, and guess what? It could be very different than mine, and the cool thing about this is that we're not graded on it. We all have the opportunity and the blessing and gift of the life that we've been created to lead, and so you might have some of yours in different orders. You might not have all the same things. I'd be really curious to learn what your success hierarchy of needs would look like, or your success hierarchy. It'd be very interesting and we could learn a lot from each other if we had that type of conversation, don't you think so? I'd love for you to reach on out and let me know. What does success look like to you If you had to choose like? What does success look like to you If you had to choose like top five areas where this is what success is? This is how I define success. If these areas in my life looked like X, y, z, if I had it together in these areas, what would it look like I was? I think it's Ronnie shoot. I think it's Ronnie shoot.
Speaker 1:She wrote the Regrets of the Dying. I think I'm butchering the title right now, but I highly recommend that you look into that Conscious Investor because she goes through things that she did not hear people say as they were passing away and she was a hospice nurse. So look into that as you are evaluating what is coming up on your success and actually I'm going to do a solid and I'm going to I'm going to read the top five off. Uh, top five regrets of the dying. One I wish I had the courage to live a life. Isn't that crazy To live a life? Two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Three, I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. Four, I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. And five, I wish I had let myself be happier. Let's just think in really powerful, conscious investor.
Speaker 1:You are amazing and you are a gift in my life and I appreciate that we get to spend Mondays together, that we can dive into some of these topics that you know. You might not have these type of conversations on a regular basis and maybe this is spurring you on Super rad. Steve and I have probably some of the most bizarre conversations because we're talking about a lot of these things all the time. Sometimes I wish that we could just have a camera just recording our conversations, because they get very, very interesting. If you don't have someone like that that you can talk to connect up with me on social media, I love connecting with you, conscious investor, and these types of conversations are important to have and there'll be a blessing in your life and to the world around you. If you haven't already shared the episode or a episode, this, one, another one, whatever it is, it's free. It's a powerful way that you can support the efforts of the conscious investor. I appreciate you so much, conscious investor. Until next time, thank you.
