Capturing the Affluence Vision for Your Life

Stop chasing wealth! Go after affluence instead…

So often, we equate affluence with opulence and material wealth, but in reality, that's only one small piece of the puzzle.

Instead, affluence is about creating a life that is meaningful and fulfilling from the inside out. It's about identifying the things that bring you joy and purpose and weaving them into the fabric of your daily existence.

Sure, there are some things we have to do in life that aren't particularly enjoyable, but when it comes to the things we choose to put into our lives, are they truly meaningful? Do they spark a feeling of joy that radiates from the inside out?

This is the crux of The Affluent Life Paradigm™, and in this episode, I’m going to break it down for you. I’ll be discussing the four key elements of an affluent life, and you might be surprised to learn that only one of them has to do with material wealth.

So sit back and get ready to take some notes. We're about to embark on a journey of self-discovery and intentional living that will lead you to the affluent life you deserve.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• The Affluent Life Paradigm™ framework
• Understanding the four key elements of an affluent life
• The need to prioritize meaningful experiences over material possessions
• How to sustain an affluent life over the long-term

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• How to Live A Fully Expressed Life With Rachel Luna  
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Transcript

Mel Abraham  0:00  
Here's the deal, hide thing, people are chasing the wrong thing when it comes to creating a life of financial freedom and building wealth. Now, don't get me wrong. Money is important. But I think what's more important is that you create an affluent life. And in this episode, the affluent Entrepreneur Show, I'm gonna dig down, because you've heard me talk about an affluent life and living in affluence, and it isn't about the money in your bank account. But to dig down deep, I'm gonna give you the four things that create an affluent life, a life that's fulfilling a life that's rich, and a life that's meaningful. I'll see in this episode, the Apple not partnership. This is the Affluent Entrepreneur Show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth. So you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect, so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life, while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

Mel Abraham 1:12 
Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show this one, we're digging in deep, we're going to talk about affluence. You know, here's the thing. Here's so many people, when they hear me talk about athletes, I speak all around the country all around the world. And they hear me talk about athletes, initially, they think that we're talking about opulence. And nothing could be further from the truth. Imagine for a moment that you spent all your time working, you spend all your efforts creating, you're building a business, you're building wealth, you're creating all these things, and you have all that energy going into it to accumulate stuff. Yet, when you get to that top of the hill, you're lonely, your health is in despair, your relationships are, are challenged at best, and you're not finding joy. See, too often were chasing the dollars, were chasing the money. Now don't get me wrong, I get it, we need the money to sustain ourselves. But that's about all we need is that when we understand that the money is a tool to get us to what we want, the more important thing is to be able to define what that affluent life is what that life looks like. So we can use the money to create it, and not just collect, a acquire, achieve, and then find ourselves empty. And so in this episode, I want to dig down I want to talk through what I call the affluent life paradigm, I want to break it down for you, what does it take to build an affluent life so you can feel fulfilled, so you can have the richness that you truly deserve. So you can make the impact that you want. And so we're going to break that down, we're going to talk about the tactics and the strategies and the things that come into play. And so I'm going to jump to my iPad, those of you that are, are listening on the podcast, we'll make sure that we hook it up all in the shownotes, you can get a chance to watch the YouTube video where you can see the framework, but I'm going to explain it to you enough that you're going to get. And so here's the deal. When we talk about this idea of living an affluent life, there are four elements of an absolute life that I see. And the funny thing is that too often people will think that affluence is about acquiring, it's about achieving, it's about accomplishing. It's about all the staff. It's not, you're gonna see that out of the four elements, there's only one thing that has to do with material stuff that has to do with money. In and of itself. The very first aspect of living an afterlife and having that afterlife is that you are creating a life that is meaningful, that you're creating something that is meaningful from the inside out is something that brings you joy. Think about it. If we truly aren't doing the things that bring us joy, why are we doing them? Now, there are some things we got to do in our life just because we have to do them in our life. Okay, and I get it. All right, some of my doctor's appointments, some of the tests, some of the things, I just got to do it, okay. They may not bring me joy, but they facilitate my ability to have the joy and I think we need to think about that. But when you start to look at the things you choose to put into your life, are they meaningful? Are they something that has a feeling of joy that comes from the inside out? That is, that is what you feel what you're experiencing, in in your day to day in your life in all the things I know that with my wife. When we first met, we started talking about our future. We started to have these conversations and we started to ask ourselves, what we create a meaningful life? What would bring us joy? In our relationship? What would bring us joy in our journey together? And how often do we not ask those questions of our partners? But more importantly, how often are we not even asking them ourselves? And so here's what I would urge you to start doing is sitting back and this whole episode is going to be something around journaling, thinking, reflecting and defining. Okay, so spending the time to say, what are the things that truly bring joy? What are the things that bring fulfillment? What are the things that they, at the end of the day you go at something if there's one thing that I learned, between my cancer journey that I had been on, and the loss of, of a good friend at a very young age, way too young 47 We need to be spending our days doing the things that mean something to us that matter to us. And because it's that experience, it's way we we experience life that creates the richest in life, not necessarily well, because wealth doesn't create the richness. It's how we experienced it, how we feel about life. So the first step, and we'll talk about how you get there in a moment, the first piece of living an affluent life is that it's a meaningful life that brings you joy from the inside out. This second piece of an athlete life is that it's an impactful life, here's the thing, if meaningful, is from the inside, impactful is from the outside, doing things that matter, doing things that make a difference, doing things that you know, that you are actually making a difference and something that people are better because you were there. I know that when I had the martial arts studio, we would I had it for 11 years, and every year, we would go and we would take all the kids, nothing about this, the martial arts studio on their T shirt, he was anonymous, but we would take all the kids and we would give gift baskets, and toys to the kids during the holidays. That were they were they were challenged, they were going through a rough time. But we wanted to make sure that they were taken care of. And we wanted to give them something. But you know, we did it anonymously. And when they asked where's this from we said from a friend who cares. And may it help you to pay it forward one day, that's all we ask. And we simply walked away. But the the joy, the impact the feeling that the children got when they did this, than the parents got when they did this to sit back and say I did something that made a difference in someone's life, I did something that was impactful in someone's life. And so if meaningful is on the inside, impactful is on the outside, that leads me to the third piece of creating an affluent life. And that third piece of creating an alpha life is the only piece that has to do with money. And that is, is it fruitful? Look, call a spade a spade. The fact of the matter is we got to earn the money, to be able to create the experiences, we got to earn the money to be able to make the difference, we got to earn the money to sustain the message, we got to earn the money to create the money machine to create an ongoing generational shift. So we need to have that in a way that allows us the comfort to be able to do the higher calling, without necessarily making sure that the higher calling pays us in fact, much of what I do, I get paid in a lot of different ways. But what that does is it gives me the flexibility. And it gives me the freedom to choose to give to things my time, my effort, my my money, whatever it is, in a way that I'm not worried about making money from it, that I get to donate and give because I want to give because all the other stuff is taken care of. So when we have meaningful we have impactful and we have fruitful, fruitful is going to give us some of the freedoms to be able to make some choices that we might not otherwise make. I have a a colleague, I'll call him because we're not we don't know each other that well. But I have a colleague that literally walked into a school supply store. And he looked at them and he says how much for everything on the shelves and they behold what you're talking about is or buy everything on the shelves. If you can't buy everything on the shelves, and he says, why not? Aren't you in the business of selling stuff? He says you have a we have like online orders, and we have to, we have to fulfill them. He says, Great. Put that aside, give me everything else. He says, Why are you doing this, he says, because there's three schools in the neighborhood that I grew up in, that I finally had the opportunity to give back. And I want to give the supplies to those schools so they can take care of the students in those schools. That's what fruitful gives you the option, the ability to do things that maybe you couldn't do otherwise. So that's fruitful, that leads me to the fourth aspect of an alpha life. And that is it is peaceful. Peaceful, I actually think that's actually what we're we're searching for, is to live in peace. And so when we have peace, it's really about making sure that we know that the people, the causes, the ones we love, are taken care of. 

Mel Abraham 11:12 
See, when I got diagnosed with cancer, one of the things I did is I spent some time I went literally two hours, hours after diagnosis wasn't really a happy moment for Stephanie, when I did this, because she felt I was planning for the end. And I guess I was I went to my attorney and I said, let's make sure that the trust is properly draft, let's see if there's any changes we need to make, I want to make sure that my wife is taken care of. And that she's clear, I want to make sure that my brother and my son and in my future grandchildren are all taken care of. Partly because I want to take care of them. But partly because I wanted to be able to fight the cancer battle in peace, that I was able to go forward and say all the things, all the people that matter are taken care of. And I can relax, no matter what happens. And now my focus was solely to fight the battle. And not how are we going to get through the battle? How are we going to navigate it financially? How are we going to how what would happen to my son, my wife, and everything if God forbid, it took a bad turn. And so when you start to build an afro light, you can see that it is really about these four aspects. How do you create something? That's mean? How do you create something that's impactful? How do you create something that is fruitful? And how do you find something that's peaceful? So how do you do this? I think there's some things in here that that come into play as we start to draw this out. And to have a meaningful life, you actually have to have what we call an athlete's plan, literally plan it out. In other words, be deliberate with the things you do. When I get involved in causes. When I get in involved, when I get asked to speak where every thing that I do in my life, especially after the cancer journey. Is is extremely intentional. It's by choice. Some, some people have asked me has the cancer change, which is kind of a crazy question, because the absolute answer is always going to be yes, yes, it changed me. But one of the things that allowed me to do is to be able to say, no easier. And they go, Well, what do you mean? Well, here's what I know. When you stare your mortality in the face, you start to realize that the money may or may not matter. And you start to realize that time is really the true currency of our lives. And you start to question how am I spending my time? When I say yes to something, it is giving a piece of my time away that I can't get back when you say yes to me, when you listen, when you watch when you attend my events. When you are sitting there, you're saying yes to me. And I don't take that lightly. Because now I understand that this is a moment you can't get back. This is a moment I can't get back. So I have to be prepared to give it everything I possibly can to make sure that that transaction make sense to you and be up with his make sense. So when we talk about meaningful, everything is built into a plan and affluence plan. So we are looking at and saying what is the plan which is really built on our values? You know, what are the values? What are our priorities, what are the things and these are? I'm asking these questions, but not rhetorically I want you to start writing down I want you to start out Spend yourself, what are my values? What are my priorities? What are the things that really create meaning? Because only then when you identify them? Can you build that rich life? Can you be intentional to make sure that you create a plan that is creating something that's meaningful? And so when you do that, now you have the ability to look at the next piece and say, Well, okay, I create an affluence plan that is going to be deliberate. Around my values, my priorities, and the choices I make. What do I need to do to to have an impact life and the impact alive, is built around what we call an athlete education. Okay. Now, this is one of the very first things that I do with with my students and people that come to work with me and in the athletes blueprint, is we spend the time defining what they want their life to look like. Not tomorrow, but down the road, 510 15 years, what are they trying to create? What is that grand life of impact that you want to have? What is the impact you want to create? Who do you want to impact? What causes what missions? What movements do you want to get by? And we take that vision. And now we look at and say, how do we take that vision, and now break it down to the price tag to achieve that vision, because one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people make is that they have this lofty vision, but they never figure out what it's going to take to get there. And their vision is built on a lot of wants. wants are soft, fuzzy goals, that you let yourself off the hook. If you don't make them think about New Year's resolutions anyone make New Year's resolutions? I've made them. How many times do they get, they get dunked put by the side within 45 days. And the reason for it, I truly believe is that it's easy to say I want this. It's far, far more difficult to say, I will make this happen because that's a declaration. That's a commitment. And I want your vision to be built. Not on once, but hold wills on declarations and commitments. Because when you do that your journey is going to be built towards that towards that vision. And so we build that affluence vision. Now, when we start talking about how do we make things fruitful, there is another piece of that and to make things fruitful, we do something all talking about building a money machine. Whether you're in business, or whether you're an employee, you have earnings that are coming in. But that is not your wealth. Even your business isn't your wealth, your earnings as a salary as an employee, or your earnings from your business. The cash flow from your business is the creator of your wealth, but not the wealth itself. And what it becomes important to create something that's fruitful to buy your time back, we have to create this thing that I call the money machine. It is a portfolio of assets, stocks, real estate, whatever you want to do, and we can talk about that. And we get specific with that in with our students but but the reality is that I want a machine separate apart from your effort. In other words, if you're an employee, you're getting paid for the hours you work for the work that you do. If you're in business, a lot of times we get in business, and we're getting compensated based on on our effort. And there's this relationship of one to one one unit of effort to get one unit of of compensation. Your freedom isn't sitting in that model, your freedom is sitting in a way where you can put in one unit of effort and get 100 units of compensation. Or you put in a fraction of the effort. And you get hundreds of units of compensation. Here's what I mean by that. By investing your dollars by creating a properly structured money machine, your money that you earn from your effort will start to create money for you without your effort. In other words, your money will work harder for you than you did for it. And at some point, that money machine will grow big enough that it funds your whole lifestyle and when it funds your whole lifestyle and your lifestyle vision That's where true freedom lies. And so the ultimate desire is to create a machine that's going to give you the income to fund your lifestyle. Because now you have the freedom to do the things that you want to do that are meaningful and impactful, every single day, every moment of the day. Okay, that leads me to the element that will bring peace. And so that this is something that we talk about in the work that we do. And it's called the Five incomes, it's a framework, but, but it really is the strategy in which we start to build the money machine. There are five different types of incomes that can come into play. And the idea is to realize that having multiple streams of income today is no longer a luxury, it's a requirement. And for you to have peace.

Mel Abraham 21:00 
I think it's important to have multiple streams of income, of which most of them are not tied to your effort. Now, that takes some time to build, it takes a strategy to build that it takes about, we can give that to you. But we got to get the concept across first is to sit back and say, Okay, I'm earning because of my efforts, but how do I build that money machine is through these five incomes, out of the five incomes, the bottom two, active and business are driven by your effort, the top three are less driven by ever now, I don't believe in passive income. Because I think that that your your income, your money is a relationship. And anytime you take a passive approach to to a relationship, that relationship will wither and die, I believe in leveraged income, in other words, that it's leveraging your time. In other words, it's not a one on one relationship. So those top three are assets residual, and portfolio. In other words, you're putting in a smaller unit of time to get a larger unit of compensation back value back. And our job or one of the things that we tell our students is I want minimum 80% of your lifestyle, to be able to be funded by the top three and not the bottom two. Why is this important? Well, let's just use me for an example. Okay, I get diagnosed with cancer, they find a tumor in my bladder that they thought was five centimeters, they tell me that it's seven and a half centimeters, when they go in, they tell me that there's a possibility of them taking the prostate out. They tell me that they might have to put a tube and a bag in for the kidney because of the year maybe blocked. They tell me that if it's bad, they might have to remove my bladder. So my whole life got turned upside down. My whole life got turned upside down. I had to fight the cancer, psychologically, medically, energetically, spiritually. I mean, it was it's, it was a battle. It's been four years. But what I didn't have to do is fight it financially. And why that is, is I understood the five incomes, it gave me peace, because all I had to do is tell my wealth at the bottom to my business and my active option now. Because that's going to take too much effort. And my effort now has to be fighting this cancer bill, my effort now has to be building my relationships, maybe you're in a situation that you've got to rebuild your relationship, you got to rebuild your health, and you got to be able to dedicate the time necessary to give it a good fight. And the thing that allowed me to do that was the fact that I had the five incomes, and I was able to turn on the switch on the top three and say, This will support me. The cash will allow me to continue to live at the same level that I was living before that my wife and I were living before without draining the assets without sit without selling anything without doing anything. Because we built the money machine. And we had the multiple streams of income. And so this is really where I think we need to play because now all of a sudden, if you got the money machine built on five, on the five incomes, you actually have the fruitful piece taken care of and you have the peaceful peace, take care. But watch what happens. When you have a meaningful life and an impactful life. You get to live intentionally. Because you have a plan and you have a vision. When you have an impactful life and a fruitful life meaning that you have that vision and you have a money machine. You get to create a long lasting, sustainable legacy. When you have a fruitful life In a peaceful life, you get to create a life that's pulling liberated a life that's full of choices. And when you have that peaceful life, and that meaningful life, you've built yourself a nest egg that allows you just carry on. And I think this is what affluence is about. Yeah. It has to do with money. That has to do with so much more. It has to do with life. And this show, and the work that I do, as much as we talk about money, it's truly about life. It's about how are you living? richly? How are you building complete freedom? How are you having a deeper impact? That's what affluence is. And that's how you capture it. I hope that you'll take the time to go back through this episode. To write down questions you should be asked to take the time to reflect, to take the time to plan to take the time to do the work because I promise you living an affluent life that's built on meaning impact. fruitfulness and peace is far far greater than living a materialistic life, built on acquisitions, acquiring, achieving, accomplishing and comparing yourself to what others have. And that's what I love for you, is to live that athlete life. I hope that this helps, I hope that you found this a value. I'd love to hear from you, what you think, where your struggles are, and how we can help and support you until we get a chance to see each other or talk on the road. Or in another episode. As I always say, keep striving to live a life that outlives you, and I'll see you soon. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me your host Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook now by going to melabraham.com/group and I'll see you there.