Why You Won’t Become a Millionaire

What's up you guys? It's Graham here! Now, we've all heard the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." The tools are out there right now for you to crush it and make millions of dollars in whatever you want to do. But the reality is that unless you implement these few things, it's almost inevitable that you will fail.

I've learned these five practices firsthand. I am the type where I learn from what other people are doing around me. I figure out why they are successful, and I choose which bits and pieces to emulate in my own life. I noticed once I started practicing these few simple tricks and subtle shifts, my personal life and my business life really began to take off.

This topic is so much deeper than just the surface level aspects of increasing your income, saving money, and investing, because none of that works without this solid foundation. So, with that said, watch the video all the way through. Take notes if you have to, rewatch it later. This is one of those few videos where I really put it all on the line. So, let's just get right into it.

The first thing that I have noticed almost every single highly successful person do is that they consciously reframe everything as a positive. They start to trick and rewire their brain into thinking, "This is the best thing that could have happened to me and will lead to something even better." This is because any time you're out there making money or starting a business, you will fail, and you will encounter setbacks.

This really becomes just as much of a mental game as it does a strategic game. With that, if you encounter any type of failure or setback—which is 100% inevitable—it's not met with self-pity. It's not met with you thinking, "Why me?" It's not met with anything unproductive. Instead, you're gonna reframe that as, "What lessons did I learn from this, and what steps can I take in the future to make sure I get a better outcome?"

And I get it though, because sometimes really, really tough things happen. We're on a floating rock flying throughout space, and things happen to us that are totally outside of our control. We don't control our upbringing; we don't control what other people do to us; we don't control if you're driving down the street and someone comes crashing into you unexpectedly. I totally get that.

Most people don't deserve the terrible things that may have happened in their lives. But you do actively have a choice each and every day to make one of two decisions: 1, are you going to be the victim of circumstance and let that dictate your life; or 2, are you gonna make an effort to take control over the areas that actually will make a difference in your life? This is really all just a shift in perspective, no matter how big or how small it might be.

For instance, yesterday I was driving down a packed street looking for a parking spot. I found a parking spot, I was reversing my car into the spot, and a car came up behind me and stole it from me. So, I get out of my car to cuss them out. They get out of their car and say, "You know what? Not moving! I live right here; you got to find another spot."

Listen, I've had little situations like this happen in the past that I have dwelled on. Something so mundane has impacted the very few limited hours we all have on this planet, and I am here concerned about a lost parking space. I've learned to just reframe all of this as a positive and, oddly enough, I kept driving and I found an even better parking space that was right out in front of where I was going, and it all just worked out.

And all of that was really just for nothing. Or when I first started in real estate, I was about a year into the business, and I had another agent actively steal my client from me right in front of me. I took them to a showing. The agent literally told the client in front of me that she can do a better job than me, that she knew the area better than I did, that she was doing this longer than I did, and that the client should work with her instead and that she would just give me a referral.

Believe it or not, the client actually went for it. I felt so betrayed. I felt so embarrassed. I felt so devastated and ashamed that my clients would actually just up and leave. I didn't have the knowledge or the confidence to stick up for myself at that moment. I remember thinking to myself, "Maybe I don't have what it takes, and I don't even want to be in a business that's this shady where people actively try to steal their clients in front of one another."

This was not a business that I wanted to be in. But instead, I chose this to be an experience to learn how to be more assertive, to learn how to be more confident, to know the market even better so that I would never have to put myself in a situation where this ever happened again.

Sure enough, it has never happened again, and never will happen again—at least for me. I don't think I could look back at anything that's happened in my life and feel any sort of regret or misfortune because everything that's happened has led me to where I am today. Everything has led to something better; every failure has led to something that was a success.

This is something I have noticed just about every single highly successful person do, and it's not even just a myth, but it's proven that optimistic thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for better results. You may have heard this one before, but there have been studies done where they separate two groups of people: one that thinks optimistically and one that thinks pessimistically.

They were each given the same challenge that was to look through a magazine and determine how many pictures were in there. The pessimistic people generally took a few minutes to identify all of the pictures in the magazine and come up with their answer. But the optimistic people found their answer usually within a few seconds.

So how are the optimistic people able to get the answer so much faster? In a matter of seconds. That is because on the second page, it said, "In a picture, there are 83 pictures in this magazine; stop looking now." So, why was this? Because the optimists were more focused on finding opportunities than they were avoiding failure.

As we all know, you get what you focus on. The pessimistic people were focused so much on not failing that they missed the opportunity right in front of them because their focus was on not failing. So, step one is to reframe everything as a positive. Every experience can lead to something better. Every experience that happens, you can learn from and become a better person in the future. Focus more on opportunities and not avoiding failure, and with this is really what comes financial success.

The second thing is to let go of whatever limiting beliefs you have. Whatever grudges you have, whatever negative thoughts are bringing you down, let go of it. Your business partners screwed you over and you haven't gotten over it in years? Let go of it. Your girlfriend lied to you and you broke up? Let go of it. Your parents didn't give you a good upbringing? Let go of it.

For your own sanity, you have to accept situations for what they are and let go of them. The most highly successful people I know don't have the time to dwell on these situations, and they don't have the time to let any of these negative thoughts creep into their head. Like you know when you're doing something and you're just in the zone? When you're doing something and everything else around you just melts away? All of your problems are gone because you're so focused on doing what you're doing.

That is how a lot of highly successful people think and work. If they allowed their mental energy to be drained by things that they can't control, by things that they can't learn from, by things that they can't use to better themselves in the future—they would be drained. I've met too many people that are just like a pitbull holding on to things that have happened years ago, and they just can't let go of it.

I have seen so many people that have ruined their lives because they can't mentally let go of what may have happened to them, and they choose to be a victim of circumstance and let that bring them down. I bet if you're really honest with yourself, most of us can relate to this in some way or another. I almost guarantee that there's something in your life that you've been hanging on to that doesn't do you any good that you can let go of that's been bringing you down.

It's so important that you find out what this is, accept it for what it is, figure out how you can learn from this to become a better person so that that never happens to you again, and how you can grow and just become a better human being. The most successful people I know are always looking forward and never backward.

Now, third, speaking of forward, it's always so important to focus on the end game or end result that you want. If you don't know what the end result is, how do you expect to ever get there? Like anytime I'm going in my car, I type the end destination in my GPS so I know exactly how to get there. I don't just go and get in my car and randomly drive around hoping to show up somewhere that I'm not really sure even exists.

So how do you expect to get what you want if you haven't even thought that far in advance? If you want to be one of the few people that really becomes exceptional, you have to focus and have to know what the endgame is. You have to know what the end result will be; you really have to know exactly what that's going to be and why you even want it in the first place.

If you don't know what this is, then that should be the first thing that you focus on. You should really figure out what do you want in your life. Why is that so important to you? From there, you can figure out how you're going to actually get there. Don't beat yourself up if you don't know exactly what you want to be doing 20 or 30 years from now.

Instead, focus on the next five years; focus on the next year—whatever it might be. Like, for instance, when I first started working as a real estate agent, my goal at the time was to be a top agent in Los Angeles. I wanted to open up my own brokerage by the time I was 25, and then I wanted to manage a giant top-producing sales team. When I had that goal, I worked towards it really, really hard. That was all I wanted.

But then I slowly realized, "Wait a second, I don't want the responsibility; I don't want the overhead; I don't want all the time that takes." Instead, I wanted something a lot more passive. So instead, I'm going to use all my energy and start moving it over to investing in real estate. I worked really, really hard to set up passive income streams by investing in real estate.

Then after that, I realized, "Wait a second, this is passive and I don't really get that creative outlet." So instead, I'm going to make YouTube videos because I've always wanted to do that, and then I start making YouTube videos. I realized, "Wait a second, this is so much beyond me that I'm able to have a worldwide impact for people that I can actually help."

From there, I'm thinking, "Well, what's after YouTube? I can't just be making YouTube videos forever." Eventually, I think I want to get into public speaking, and I'm sure eventually I'm going to work on that, get into public speaking, and then there's gonna be something even better beyond that point.

I have no idea where I'm gonna be 10, 15, or 20 years from now, but at the very least, I have a goal of where I can see myself in the next few years, regardless of whether or not that comes to fruition or whether that changes. Because people change, and things do change, but at least I have an end goal of different accomplishments that I want to hit and make. You can do the absolute same thing. You don't need to think 50 years from now. Think a year from now; think six months from now. Think of the next thing that you really want to work towards, and then work towards achieving it.

I promise you, you will get whatever you choose to focus on, so it's so important that you focus on something that you believe you can do because you will end up hitting that. Now, the fourth thing I noticed highly successful people doing, and this ties into the third, is that you have to feel deserving of it. If you don't feel like you deserve something, I promise you, you will self-sabotage yourself so that you prove yourself right because you didn’t feel like you deserved it in the first place.

This saying is so true: you attract what you are. You get what you believe in. If you don’t believe something to be possible or deserving for you, like I said, I promise you're not going to get it. If you don't feel deserving of something, even if you end up getting it, almost always you will lose it. You will self-consciously act in ways to self-sabotage yourself so that you end up with what you feel you are worth and deserve.

In order to get anything that you thought you couldn't achieve or to get something that you feel is impossible to reach, you need to first feel deserving of that. The sad truth, like I had mentioned earlier, is that most people just don't feel deserving of it. They think, "Why me? What makes me so special? There are 7 billion people out on the planet. Not everyone could be a millionaire. Why do I deserve this over anyone else? So many people are better than me, are more talented than me; they deserve it more than I do."

But what they're really saying to themselves is, "I don't deserve this. I don't want to disappoint myself." Because of that, they're gonna play it safe and not even try in the first place. That way, they don't fail. Again, their focus goes back on avoiding failure rather than seeking opportunity, and bam! All of a sudden, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and they prove themselves right—that they didn't deserve it.

Our mind always proves ourselves right. If you think you suck at everything, your brain will look at every single moment in your life where you have sucked, and it will cement that thought in your head that you suck. On the other hand, if you believe you are the best of mankind, your brain will look through every single moment in your life where you have been the best of mankind, and that will further cement the belief that you are, in fact, the best of all mankind.

What you really gotta understand is that you're just as deserving as everybody else. You deserve all the money in the world. You deserve the lifestyle you want. You deserve the house you want. You deserve the income you want. You deserve everything if you feel like you deserve it.

And finally, number five—and this is something I am working on as well—but you have to actively feel grateful for everything that's happened. You have to look at everything as a blessing and really feel like you're grateful for everything you have around you, no matter how big it is or how small it is. Gratitude is something that's very difficult for me to do just because I'm constantly seeking more. I'm constantly on the next thing; I'm constantly looking for something bigger and better.

But at the same time, it's so important to realize that I can't just be on this treadmill of what's the next thing, what's the next goal, what's the next objective, without looking back and realizing that there's a great view right where I'm at. It's so important just to take the time to realize that, like, holy [ __ ] I have it really good. I have such a great life.

It doesn't matter what everything else is; I'm just grateful just to be here in the first place. So just take a moment right now and be grateful that you even have the free time to sit here and watch an improvement video on YouTube. There's a lot of the planet that doesn't have that opportunity afforded to them—that they don't have iPads or computers or iPhones or Galaxy S's or whatever you're watching this on. They don't have that option. They don't have the free time to go and enjoy videos like this. They don't even have the free time to smash that like button if you haven't done that already.

So chances are already you've got it pretty good in your life, so take a moment just to appreciate that and be grateful for it. Those five things are really the things that I've noticed from every single financially successful person out there who is also emotionally a happy, fulfilled person. This has really meant to be just the foundation from which you can build a financially successful empire.

You can't build a massive stack of wealth by believing a victim mentality, by believing that everything bad happens to you, by believing you don't deserve something. It's like hitting your head against a wall, expecting something different to happen when instead it just gives you a headache. The truth is, if you're not satisfied with where you are right now, then it's proven that what you've been doing is not working, and it's very important that you will need to change your ways and change your thinking if you expect a different result.

These are really the five things that you should be focusing on that have made a tremendous difference in my life and what I have observed from other people around me that I look up to. So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really deeply appreciate it. If you haven't subscribed already, make sure to hit and smash that subscribe button, smash that notification bell so YouTube also notifies you anytime I post a video.

Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram. I post pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. I have a private Facebook group in the description; check that out as well. Lastly, let me know what you think of videos like this. Comment down below if you enjoy more of like the self-help videos. I mean ideally, maybe like 10 years in the future I would like to do a lot more of these because I'm super interested in psychology and what people believe and just everything involving that. So I probably would like to do more of these, like do you like two or three a month? So let me know what you think of this. Comment down below. That's it. Thanks for watching. Until next time!