Me, my brother and my dad have a ritual.
Every Saturday evening, we sit in the center of our dining area, on our wooden chairs to have whiskey and discuss our lives.
My father fetches whiskey.
My mom prepares some snacks ahead of time and places them on our dining table.
While me and my brother just sit on our chairs and wait for whiskey.
My dad starts with pouring whiskey in his glass first.
He just drinks enough to relax his mind not to get drunk.
So he starts with the standard size, and then asks me.
Me: “Dad I would take just a standard one as well”
(I don’t prefer getting drunk in front of my dad, as I feel it is kind of disrespectful.)
Now my dad looks at my brother.
Brother: “Papa, I want a double”.
My brother is a complete opposite of me.
Mother drinks in only small quantity and so my dad gave her a pony silently.
In typical Indian families ladies don’t drink, (although things are changing quickly).
Me: “Mom, I know you drink, why you don’t stop pretending”
Mother: Pretending that she didn’t hear anything.
And then the evening starts..
After a few glasses of whiskey down our throat everybody starts talking.
With each glass our voice gets louder and louder until our mother has to intervene and calm us down.
(That’s a typical Saturday evening.)
So last Saturday evening everything started off as usual and after few glasses, my brother started a discussion about wealthy people.
He started telling a story about how a friend built a million dollar business within a span of few months.
Brother: “Anoop, did you hear about Ravi?”
Me: “Nope”
And I got back to eating.
Brother: “He made millions in just a span of few months”
Me: “Wow, he must have worked damn hard for it”
Brother: “Not really, his Father left him a small fortune before he died; Ravi just invested it in the right opportunity”.
He finishes his glass and puts back to the table.
Brother: “Papa, you haven’t even finished your first glass yet, you are going too slowly”.
We could see that he was enjoying the evening.
Me: “Honestly bro, I don’t even think people who become rich just because they were born in the right family are even worth discussing.”
“They just got lucky”.
“Wealth is more than money it is about the journey, isn’t it?
Brother: “You don’t understand, all that matters is money”
Finally my mother intervenes.
Mother: “Why don’t you stop caring about others and see what you can do for yourself”.
This got us a few minutes of silence.
Brother: All right everybody, I think it’s getting late I should get going”
And so we called it a night.
That’s a usual Saturday evening.
My brother is obsessed with wealth and wealthy people.
He works hard, loves his family and has high goals in life.
But the strange thing is:
He has been struggling with finances all his life.
So that night I went to bed while thinking about my brother and I was like:
“Wait a minute.”
“Aren’t you suppose to get what you focus on, that’s a principle that all self improvement guru agree on”?
“Bro has been focusing on wealth and wealthy people for at least 10 year now, so by now he should be a millionaire at least.”
But that was far from the truth.
It baffled me, how can be someone so obsessed with something and working hard to achieve it, can still be struggling with it.
He made the law of attraction look flawed…
It’s not that my brother was broke, it’s just money was always a struggle for him.
That night the thought didn’t leave me, I kept thinking about it and fell asleep.
So the next morning I called my brother up and offered him guidance on how to start an online business but he didn’t seem interested.
Then I thought maybe he just wants to focus on his current business so I gave him some insight on how he could increase sales in his current business.
(He owns a Gadget Shop.)
So we started talking and we came up with some cool strategies to increase sales for his store, he got excited but to my shock didn’t take any action on my advice.
I couldn’t understand he wanted to make money so bad, he knew what had to be done, but wouldn’t do anything about it.
It drove me mad.
And then suddenly…
It hit me like a lightning bolt.
I finally understood why all the hard work; setting high goals and focusing on wealth was not working for him.
I had finally found the missing piece of the puzzle.
I realized even though my brother always talked about how much he wanted to be wealthy deep down he believed he couldn’t become wealthy, why try.
See, he always told me stories about people who became wealthy because they had an unfair advantage.
The main character in his story almost always inherited wealth, married a millionaire’s daughter or something similar, that’s how the character became rich.
We come from a middle class family, my Dad is a good hardworking old man, but we certainly didn’t have any unfair advantage over others.
Do you see how the story my brother keeps telling, is holding him back?
See in his mind he is the main character of his life story, right?
And since he believes that a person can’t become rich until he has an unfair advantage over others.
It is true for him.
Anytime he consciously sets a goal to become wealthy, his subconscious is like “Nope you can’t do that because it’s impossible to build wealth without an unfair advantage”
He is playing that story in his mind subconsciously which is directing his actions and thoughts.
And until he changes his story regarding wealth and wealthy people his life won’t change.
I believe if all these years he was focusing and talking about wealthy people who became wealthy while starting from scratch; his life would have been much different.
What holds true for my brother holds true for all of us.
We all have disempowering stories in different areas of our lives that hold us back.
The point is if in some area, you are going through a hardship, figure out what’s the story you are playing in your mind, and that is the key to changing your life.
And once you know what the story is, create a new one.
Replace your old disempowering story with a new and empowering one.
As you change your story your life will change too.
