Life just happens to you. And then I started realizing that it wasn't completely true and there was relationships that I had pushed away because I had thoughts about people and it turns out they weren't true. And that was me. That was me thinking about them and it defined my relationship before I even would get into those relationships with people. And you know, my career, I thought a certain way about what I had to do and the way I had to do it. And guess what? It defined who I was and I didn't like the results very much. And so I had to upgrade my thinking. Remember the book, is called think and grow rich. And there's a, there's a keyword there. Think! It's all about the way we think. And once I started to understand that it's all about thinking, it transformed my life.

And today, you know, this is a major part of who I am. It's a major part of my message that I share with people. You've got to upgrade your thoughts, you got to upgrade your thinking. That's why I do my podcast, the mind vitamins podcast, because we've got to put good nutrition into our mind. And I'm not talking about food nutrition, I'm talking about thought nutrition. Because if we have negative thoughts all around us, guess what? We're gonna have a really negative life. And if we have positive thoughts around us, we're gonna have a really positive life. And people like to make fun of it. They're like, oh, is that just the power of positive thinking? Yeah, it is. It's the power of being intentional about your thoughts. And so if you want a better life, you want a better quality of your life. Learn to embrace and to appreciate this.

Understanding your thoughts. Define who you are. If you think you can or if you think you can't, guess what? You're right. It's all about what's up here. It's all about what's in your mind and it's all about your mindset. So let me give you a little exercise that you can do to start upgrading your thinking. First of all, take every thought and put it on the chopping block and say, do I want to agree with this thought? There's a great book I read many years ago called the four agreements. And one of the agreements is to agree or not agree with a thought. So the agreement is this. I will not agree with the thought. I will not agree with a thought that I don't want to be true in my life and I want to encourage you to do that. If you say anything about your life, whatever it is, I'm broke, I'm poor, I'm fat, I'm ugly, whatever it is that you don't want to be true, stop agreeing with it because the moment you agree with that thought, guess what?

It's going to be true in your life. I've literally met people who have been been to the doctor and they say, you have cancer, you have this terminal disease, and they say, no, I refuse. I refuse to believe it. And I believe in many of those cases they were able to heal because they thought their way out of it. Now that sounds totally esoteric. It sounds really weird and that's why I say it took me seven or eight years to really understand and comprehend this, but it's true. As I look around my life, everything that I want in my life, everything I don't want, it ultimately comes down to my thinking and the thoughts that I agree with or that I disagree with. So first thought first thing for you to take away. First exercise. Don't agree with things that you don't want to be true in your life, even if it appears true in the moment, even if it appears true.

Say I rejected. I refuse to believe that I'm broke. I refuse to believe I'm poor. I refuse to believe in whatever it is that's coming against you. I refuse to believe that I can't be prepared for retirement. Whatever that thought is that comes and haunts you on a day to day basis. I had a recent coaching intervention with somebody and they said to me, they had to learn how to trade in order for them to be happy, and I said, no, no, no. You can't let that belief drive you. You can't have that thought and let it be, be something that you believe that you agree with because he was basing his happiness on whether or not he was a successful trader in the stock market. You cannot agree with those kinds of lies because once you do that, you're powerless against it. Once you start to agree with the lie, you cannot overcome it because you believe something that's not even true.

And that just starts to unravel everything. So you have to realize that your life, everything around you is ultimately in the root, the way that you think about yourself. So first exercise is this. Take every thought, put it on the chopping block, write it down. Say, what do I hate about my life? Write it down and say, I refuse to let that be true anymore. I'm not going to let that be true in my life. That's the first step. And then here's the next thing that you want to do. As you look at something and you say, you know, I wish this didn't keep coming up. For example, I deal with people who deal with depression a lot. Oh, I wish I was happier. I wish I wasn't so depressed. Well, why are you depressed? Well, because I don't have this, you know, it could be I don't have money or I don't have this, I don't have that.

And the first thing we have to say is, is it true? So you come up with a thought, whatever that thought is, I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm broke, I'm poor, whatever is it true? And the first reaction is almost always going to be yes, it's true. And then you have to dig a little bit deeper and you say, is it really true? And then the answer is yeah, it really is true, right? That's the moment that you are believing it. That's the moment you're agreeing with it and you go a little bit deeper. Can I absolutely, certainly know that it's true? Am I really broke? Am I really poor? Am I really impoverished? And you start to sit back and say, well, you know, it turns out that I live in America and it's a great country and you know, we're actually like the poorest people in America and like in the top 5% of the world's wealth.

So No, I'm probably not impoverished. It's just the standards that I'm living at right now. And if your belief is I'm going to always be poor, well, is that true? And the answer can be no, it's not true. I've chosen this life. You say, I didn't choose to be poor? Well, no, we did because we chose to agree with it. Right? So what if we stop agreeing with those false beliefs? What if we stop agreeing with that and we upgrade our thinking and we say, I'm not poor. I'm broke. I'm broke at the moment and money's on its way. I'm actually infinitely wealthy. I more money than I know what to do with. It's just not here right now. It hasn't shown up in my bank account yet, but it's on the way. And I know it's there. And you start believing. You start living like you have that money or you start believing in living.

Like you have the relationship that you want or you start believing in living like you're skinny and you say, you know what? I'm no longer going to believe that I'm meant to be fat. That's just not me. I'm not old anymore. No, I'm going to get out there and I'm going to exercise and I'm going to be, you know, part of my kid's ball team and all this stuff. And you start to take different actions and you start to take different beliefs and you start to realize that the way you think about yourself, in fact, the way you think about everything defines who you are. Once you capture this. And like I said, it took me a long, long time to really believe that it was powerful enough that I could actually think my, my thoughts and improve my thinking and improved my life.

But once you capture that, this is a breakthrough that will transform you. So here's my encouragement to you. Decide right now that you're going to take their thoughts, whatever your thoughts are, take, take those thoughts and say, I'm going to take that thought captive and I'm going to only agree with the thoughts that I want to be true and I'm going to flush out the rest of them. I'm going to get rid of the rest of them. Oh, I hate this president. Oh, I hate these politicians. Is it true? Well quit letting them into your life. Just turn the TV off. I don't have to deal with that anymore. Get out in nature. Why do you think I'm here? Because it's quiet. There's no news. There's no TV, there's no people telling me how bad the world is, right? And what can I do right here? I can get alone with my thoughts. Get along with, get alone with nature and with God, and you can just start to get to the root of who you were created to be. Go take the time to do that. Give yourself that gift. Take your thoughts. Take them captive. Put them on paper and say, I agree with these. I don't agree with these. And start to define the life you want by choosing to upgrade your thinking. That's my breakthrough for today.