What if I gave you a thousand dollars in cash right now, and asked you to spend it in sixty seconds? Could you do it?
What if I said you could ONLY spend it on yourself?
You may NOT give it to your kid, your mom, your spouse. You may NOT pay bills or debt with it. You have to spend it on YOU.
Could you do it?
Over the last five years I have witnessed hundreds of people being asked this very question. And observed that many people cannot do it. Not in sixty seconds. Most commonly they choose a bunch of smaller things, busily adding them up, fifty dollars here, two hundred dollars there, until time runs out and they haven’t hit the total.
In the exercise where this question takes place, we don’t stop at $1,000. Once that’s completed, the number doubles. Now you have sixty seconds to spend $2,000. Same rules apply: you must spend it on yourself. Next comes $4,000. Then $8,000. Then 16,000. All the way up into the millions of dollars.
This exercise is done in a real estate coaching program called BOLD. During BOLD we meet once per week for seven weeks and spend the day going through mindset exercises and real estate skills training. It’s both motivational and practical.
This exercise (called the check register) is designed to help participants gain an understand of their mindset regarding money. You see, if you don’t know what you’re going to spend the money on, you’re not likely to earn the money.
Most people earn just about enough to cover their lifestyle. Not more. Even in a commission-only sales business like real estate, we tend to hit a ceiling and produce the same amount, year after year after year.
What would you do if someone gave you $16,000 on the condition that you buy something for yourself and do so in the span of a minute? Could you do that?
How would you feel about it?
When I first did this exercise I was extremely uncomfortable with spending over $1,000 on myself. It conflicted with a voice in my head that told me it was selfish and irresponsible to spend that kind of money on fluff. My head used value-coded words like thrift (good!) and profligacy (bad!) and these numbers I was being asked to spend felt straight-up profligate.
And guess what? I spent many years earning roughly the same amount, over and over again. Always just enough to pay the bills and do the things that I had come to assume I could do (one vacation and one investment property.)
Dianna Kokoszka, author of the BOLD program, says that money is just energy. And that energy responds to our own energy.
Our income is largely a reflection of our mindset around money.
What is your income reflecting about your mindset?