Revelation of Wealth (eBook)

Chapter 2

Room 1: The Walls the World Puts Up

We’ve got a lot of walls around us. If you were just trapped in a single room, you probably would have found your way out the door by now. Instead, this place you’re in feels twisted. You might find the courage and strength to get up and peak around a corner, but if all you find waiting for you are more walls, more halls, more dark passages that don’t seem to lead anywhere, you’d probably get discouraged and sit back down in your corner.

To really gain a picture of the walls around us, and how to navigate our way through them, we need to break them up into sections—or rooms—so they feel more tamable. So, let’s start with that first room and make our way from there.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the first four walls. These are the walls that the world has put up around you. If you’ve done any living at all, you’ve probably encountered these walls. These walls come gratis with almost every life. Because they’re so fundamental to every life, they’re really the innermost room in the house, the heart of the obstacles that have kept us from discovering our 12 Streams of Income and Fulfillment.

Our first goal, then, is to get to know these walls and to discover the strength they have provided us. Then, we’ll be able to get up and make more progress in getting out.

Wall 1: Facing Your Adversity

It would be nice if life were easy, wouldn’t it? Ideally, every time we set a goal, things would just align around us and push us to success. If that were the case, we’d all already be rich and feel completely fulfilled in our chosen work.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t tend to make things that easy for us. Instead, as soon as we try to do anything of significance in our lives (and sometimes when we’re just trying to get by), all of a sudden, we’re caught in quicksand. Not only are we not making progress, we’re sinking down. Progress feels impossible, and soon, just staying afloat seems like more than we can handle.

I know what I’m talking about with adversity. I was dropped into my grandmother’s arms when I was two weeks old because my mother wasn’t able to care for me. Her mother told her that she couldn’t bring another child into the house. On a Friday evening, when my grandmother was preparing to go out and have a nice time at a cabaret, my mother knocked on the door, and said, “I can’t keep him. I want you to raise him.”

My grandmother didn’t hesitate. She took me in immediately. When my grandfather came home and asked how they were going to take care of me, she told him, “I don’t know, but we’re going to do it.”

My grandmother saved me—the first but not the last woman to do so—and gave me a chance at life. But the consequences of that moment still left me facing a lot of obstacles. I still faced a childhood in the inner city, one full of violence, drugs, and limited chances. So, adversity isn’t just a word to me; it’s a whole section of my biography.

I’m not bragging. We’ve all been tested and struggled in life. Those times were tough for me, and your struggles were tough for you. It isn’t a competition. Our adversity, whatever it is, is always incredibly difficult. Those struggles calcify and make this first wall in our room. It’s about as tough and solid and strong as structures come.

Looking along this wall, you’ll see all the scars of constantly running into it. There are scratch marks and cracks where you pounded on this wall. It never budged.

But you know what? This tough and solid and strong structure has made us tough and solid and strong as well. I want you to look at this wall—at your history of adversity—and stop seeing it as an impediment to your success. Instead, I want you to see it for what it is: the key ingredient to what made you as strong as you are today. Tough times made you stronger, and that strength is what is going to get you up now, so you can get going and succeed.

Most of us chronically underestimate ourselves and how strong we are. We see this first wall in front of us, and we see failure in the face of tough odds. Instead, we should see increasing strength and resilience. You’ve been strong enough to keep going against all your adversities. You’ve pulled yourself out of quicksand over and over again. Though you’ve yet to get across the pit to where your dreams reside, every time you’ve tested yourself in that quicksand, you’ve become a stronger swimmer.

In fact, just reading this book is a sign of your strength. You’re strong enough to try again and to try a new way forward.

This strength is leading somewhere. There’s something inside you. There’s a purpose that is seeking expression.

You have this power and purpose, but you may not know what it is yet. That’s okay. We’re working toward it. What’s important to know here is that you have this strength within you, even if you don’t see it yet.

Wall 2: Losing Your Support

Wasn’t there supposed to be a bench on this wall? There was supposed to be a bed or a couch over here. There was supposed to be something to lean on, to rest on, and to rely on when things got tough. Yet, when you needed that help, after facing your adversity, you found it empty.

Maybe that’s not the case for you; maybe there’s a comfortable seat right there on the wall waiting for you, but you just don’t want to take the seat. You feel like that’s a sign you aren’t strong enough, like it proves you’re too weak to stand on your own two feet. So, you just stand there, exhausted, stumbling, half-fainting, while you refuse to take advantage of what is right in front of you.

I’ve got news for you, tough guy: times come along in every life when you have to lean on something or somebody. No one is tough enough to conquer life alone. We’re going to get beaten up by adversity. We’re going to make mistakes (plenty of them in the next couple rooms). We’re going to get tired and discouraged. In those times, you have to lean on something to catch your breath.

What does that support look like? It’s different for each person. For some, it’s a close friend. Others rely on parents or mentors. You may rely on your spouse in tough times, or you may rely on your children to inspire strength in you. When all else fails, there is someone you can always lean on: God Himself.

Whatever your source of support, you’ve got to become comfortable relying on it in the moments you need it. That requires a lot of honesty with yourself and with others. You have to learn how to ask for help and how to take it.

When I was a young man, I found myself in a difficult position. I had two daughters, and I was involved in some very bad business. I’d been selling drugs for a while as a quick way to prosperity, and that choice was taking its toll. After taking that wrong turn early in life, I was nearing a dead end at that point. I needed to restart my life and get on the right track.

But I couldn’t do that on my own. It was too much for one man to do, whoever that man may be. To do it, I needed God, and I needed my daughters. I often tell my second daughter that she saved my life because it was after her birth that I found the strength to quit the world of drugs, which had been so prominent in my life until then. It was because of that choice that I found my way into real estate.

Again, I couldn’t have done it alone. I needed her to inspire and strengthen me, and I needed God to guide me. I needed God to tell me, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Sometimes, you’ve got to lean on this wall of support when things are going rough. If you’ve tried to handle it all on your own without support, you’ve already learned this lesson well. At the same time, sometimes, you also need this wall when things are going a little too well. It’s easy to get a big head when you finally have a pocket full of money. The support in your life is there not just to keep you from falling when things are bad; it’s to keep your feet on the ground when things are good.

What do you do, though, when that support seems to abandon you? There are times we all go through when this wall feels like it’s a false wall, ready to crumble if you put any weight on it. Suddenly, after a particularly tough moment of adversity, you begin to question if you have any true friends and if your family really cares. You begin to think people only cared about you because you looked strong and successful.

As I related earlier, in one of the toughest moments of my life, I once had a friend tell me to my face, “I can’t be friends with you anymore because you are beginning to fail.”

When I needed that friend the most, he turned his back on me. I went to lean in, and he let me fall.

What I learned from that, though, was that we really have to recognize what kind of friends we have in our lives. Some of our friends are there for a reason, some for a season, and some are there for life. Learning the difference allows us to know who we can lean on in those tough moments.

At the same time as that friend abandoned me, my pastor was there to help me. My family was there to help me. Other friends stood by me even as things got...