The $585,000 Lesson in Life & Business | What is Prosperity?

Join us on the Prosperous Human Podcast as we explore the true meaning of prosperity. In our first episode, we explore a transformative journey from losing everything to discovering that real wealth lies in selflessness, not material possessions.

Through personal stories and insights, we’ll uncover how chasing superficial success can lead to your downfall and how serving others can create a fulfilling life. This episode is packed with lessons learned from hardship and the importance of viewing people as valuable beings rather than dollar signs. Tune in for an inspiring discussion that could change your perspective on prosperity forever.

⚡️ Get the guide + The Prosperity Fundamentals course for FREE in the pH community: https://www.skool.com/ph7/about

Transcript

Jim Johnson: 0:03

Hi, welcome to the prosperous human podcast. My name is Jim Johnson, your host, as we travel this journey called life in search of prosperity. And I think a lot of us would like to find prosperity, but I think we've been lied to about what prosperity is, which makes it that much harder to find. Uh, you see 20 years ago, I walked into the office of my 30 million construction company to find. That a bookkeeper had stolen 585, 000 from my company. That's my friend who I looked at like a little brother was going to go into business with her. That my partner who was like my best friend didn't want to be in partnership anymore after this, my life was falling apart around me. It was dragging me down to losing everything. And as I sat there on the front porch of my home, 5, 000 square foot log home that looked like a lodge, but the sports cars and the trucks and the ATVs fishing boats, 35 acres, everything that you could imagine having, feeling like I had nothing at all, that it was all taken away at the snap of a finger. And I broke down on those front steps and I asked why it was happening to me, why was all of this happening to me? And I didn't get an answer. And I finally broke down into prayer and said, God, what do I need to do? And it wasn't like I got spoken to, it was just a feeling came over to me that it was all over. On me that I had been chasing the wrong things that I was trying to prove everybody else wrong through things and not through people. And that day I decided to stop being selfish because that's why my friend who was like a little brother decided to go into business with a thief because I was worse than a thief, my partner. Didn't want to be in the partnership anymore because I was a bad partner to have. It was actually all laid at my feet because I thought I could handle it all on my own. And the reality was I couldn't, I looked at people as dollar signs, not as human beings, and that very day, my life changed and it started to go on a different trajectory to take away the selfishness. And start applying towards selflessness and to begin serving other people the best way I know how. And I started that day going into my office asking our front desk lady, how can I help her with her job? How could I make it easier? And I'll never forget the look on her face, that look of like I had grown horns out of my head. Like she didn't know the person that she was talking to, which told me everything I needed to know about how wrong I had been living my life before and how right I needed to live my life. And to be honest with you, people didn't trust me right away. They thought I was like playing a game, doing a ploy, doing something to dry and get something more out of them. But after six months of consistency, a few people started to believe and trust me, and a few more months, a few more people, the people that were attracted to that selfishness had left. And the people that wanted that selflessness to put them first, to help them achieve their potential. Wanted to stick around, but even after all of that and building my business back up, I still felt like there were things that were missing things. I just didn't, uh, have the ability to put my finger on while I felt much better about the direction I was headed. I still felt like there was more that I needed to learn. And so for the next decade, I went on this search. Of looking for the things or elements in my life or areas of my life where I could put my finger on it and realize where I might be lacking or maybe overindulging. And through that time, I was able to come up with seven areas of my life that was able to give me clarity when I feel like I'm off, when I feel like things aren't going right, when I feel like I am just not feeling as full or fulfilled as I need to be, or too overwhelmed or too bored or too Burnout. If I go and look at these seven things, I can identify where the problem is and then do something and take action to address it. It's allowed me to live the last 10 years of my life in a place of peace and freedom of not really having this burden to living to the world's expectation or other people's expectation of me, but simply to do right by others and also to do right by myself that allows me to live a life that's truly free. In our podcast, I want to help you guys kind of understand what that might look like. I want you to be able to see through the lies that the world and those people that are all out there telling you of what you should be chasing and ultimately achieving. The reality is we're not going to achieve anything on this planet that Truly fulfills us each thing that we fulfill or hit the bar on. It's going to be okay for a little while, maybe a week or two, maybe even three or four months. But there's going to still feel like there's something missing because we are human beings. We are wired to be in community with other human beings. And once you achieve certain things, you don't have anything to live for anymore if that's all you were after. So I want to show you how you can live after more. I can show you how to do it in a way that makes your life very fulfilling. And I'm going to learn right along with you. That's the goal of this podcast is to understand these seven elements, to bring on the world's foremost people in these elements and have them share with you in ways that make it simple to understand this way of finding What I like to call the sweet spot in life. We're never in full balance. Chasing this idea of a work life balance is almost impossible, if not truly impossible. At some points we are building something. So that takes a lot more of our time, causing us to sacrifice time in other areas. Sometimes we're maintaining things, which allows just a little bit of our time so we can pour more time into other areas. And sometimes we're in this season of enjoying. And realizing the benefit of the effort that we've made, but it only lasts for a short time. If we enjoy too much, it can all be taken away. And so I want to walk through this journey with you guys. I want to go further. I want to learn more. And I want to share that with you through this prosperous human podcast. We're going to focus on these seven elements of life. These seven elements that have allowed me to have some freedom that I never shared with anybody until about a year ago. My wife didn't know about it, my friends didn't know about it, my family didn't know about it, but I was invited to an event by the folks over at John Maxwell for High Capacity Leaders. I didn't even know they knew who I was and I felt a little out of place to be honest with you. Um, I'm just a coach for a bunch of contractors out there, but they invited me and I went and I was in a room with people that I felt a little bit like they were in a league above me and they could see it on my face. And they asked what was up and I said, well, I just don't feel like I'm. the right person that belongs here. And they said, you wouldn't be here if you didn't, which gave me a lot of encouragement to Participate, engage, learn, and to get inside of a circle of people that would push me and help fulfill me. And I noticed what was happening is that one of these seven elements that I had been off in started to get closer to that sweet spot. And so I want you to look at these seven elements as I share them with you, not as A zero like empty or a 10 like full, but I want you to think of them more as like a litmus test. If you've ever done a test on a swimming pool or a hot tub to find the pH balance so that you can add or remove the right things to find that balance, this concept is very similar. This idea that we have these seven elements in our lives that we can be too much in or too little in. We can be acidic. Eating away and tearing us down or alkaline hardening and building us up and taking us away from others. And so the goal here is to help all of us not only put a litmus test to our own life, but realize that we are in a constant litmus test whenever we are engaging with other people. And at the end of it, there's going to be a final litmus test. This test that's going to determine who you were, why you were on this planet. Because at some point we all go, what will others think of your life and your contribution and your value to them while you were here? Will you pass the litmus test? So these seven areas that I want you to think about, number one is work fulfillment. Do you actually feel fulfilled in your work? Is your work worthy? Does it have purpose? Do you feel either challenge, Or do you feel boredom? Do you feel like you were just going through the motions each day? That's the litmus test. Am I too obsessive over it? Or am I apathetic about it? Because if you're one way or the other, if you're obsessive, you're stealing time from other areas in your life that are important and you'll start to feel it. And if you're apathetic, you're going to feel a. Bit of lack of self worth and that it's not worth all the effort that we're putting in, which is why we have to find purpose in our work. That doesn't mean changing your job. That means having a different perspective on what it is that you're doing and how you go about doing it. We're going to dig deep into that. Next up, we have community and relationships. Do we have too many relationships feeling like we're being torn apart, trying to be everything to everyone, or do we feel alone? And then we don't have anybody. That's how I was feeling whenever I went to that high capacity deal. And I started to realize these people pouring into me, we're bringing me back closer to this sweet spot. Next we have time prioritization, how we prioritize our time. What do we do with each moment that we have? Because each moment is valuable. You never get it back. And are we greedy with our time that our time is all about us? Or are we too giving with our time and make it about everybody else? Because if we're too far to any of those extremes, we start to feel either torn down or hardened and unloving. We feel resentment towards whatever it is that we're after. Next we have physical wellbeing and performance. The way we feel has everything to do with the way we perform, not only physically but mentally. And so this idea of taking care of this vessel that, uh, is so near and dear to us, I went through an autoimmune situation that I thought was going to be the rest of my life. After a lot of time and energy and research, I was able to figure out a few things that allowed me to get past that. And that's not fully, but I'm 95 percent again, which I'm super grateful and thankful for, that I had the resources. And then I had the time to invest into learning what I needed to learn that goes counter to what everybody is telling us. I can't wait to share that with you. But because I was putting so much time and obsessing over the work side of things, I wasn't putting any time into me and my body finally rebelled. And I have a feeling that some of you out there might have some of this where your body is rebelling to the obsessiveness of one of the areas of your life, or you're feeling like I'm not doing enough. You're feeling like you're out of shape and brain fog and not able to do the things that you were able to do before because you're living in the extremes. The goal is to live in the sweet spot. The fifth element is leadership and social influence. It's this idea that, um, unless you live in a cave somewhere, you are leading somebody and at a minimum have influence on others that comes with a great responsibility and sometimes that responsibility can be too much on us. And there's more than we can handle based on our skills and capacity. And we start to break down. Or we're living over here where we're in this place of superiority. We think that we are God's gift to the world because we exist and we put ourselves on a pedestal and harden ourselves to everything else out there. Only to have that pedestal taken out from underneath us. Next we have mental strength and capability. So the strength of our minds and the capability of our minds has everything to do with the value that we're going to give to others and the value that we're going to give to ourselves. If we are not learning something, if we are not stretching and pressing our brains, that brain is dying. It's a muscle just like anything else. And it needs a workout. This is one of the things that helped me through my autoimmune situation is the brain work was able to keep my mental clarity so that my physical body could make a comeback. I want to help in this area. This is one of those ones we don't spend nearly enough time thinking and thinking the right way. Traditional thinking, I believe, is Something that has gone by the wayside. It takes too long today in the world of fast paced technology and information and everything else. If we think traditionally this idea of failing forward or gaining experience until we learn our way through it, to figure it out, it's going to take so much time that it's already been figured out by somebody else. The only time you should ever do that is if you're doing something completely new. And I want to introduce to you this concept of. Orbital thinking, thinking around the center of something that's driving you. And I want to challenge you that that center, that desire, this thing that you're after is a lifestyle, not a something. It's not a thing to be gathered, but a lifestyle to be lived. Finally, we have the one that started all of this. It was spiritual growth and development. This place of me submitting myself to my creator and saying, I cannot do this alone. I need help and I need guidance. And that guidance exists. For me, it's in the Christian world. For you, it may be somewhere else. But to think that we've got this all on our own. It's another one of those things of putting ourselves up on a pedestal. There's just so much more to this than, um, this go at alone thing. As a matter of fact, we are better together. And when we work together to pursue the spiritual growth and development, it's surprising the difference. My life is 180 degrees different than it was 20 years ago. The way people perceive me and the character values that I have are 180 degrees from what it was 20 years ago. I want to help people start to see through the lies of what this idea of prosperity as an achievement is. To realizing that it's not a noun. It's not a thing to get. It's not a way to prove yourself to somebody, but it's a verb. It's a way of life. It's this way of being that works with the others in our community. To help everybody prosper. So I hope you enjoy our show. We're going to talk about orbital thinking. We're going to talk about the seven elements. We're going to get deep into each one of those seven elements with some of the best experts out there. I thank you for checking us out. Put the subscribe button on this, like this, put it on your schedule to listen to because That's one of those things in our lives that's important. This idea of putting things into routine and if you find something valuable, put that thing into your life. If you find this valuable and you feel like something is poking at you, that you need something like this in your life, put it in your schedule. And anything else, we're going to talk about that in time prioritization as we dig deeper into it. Once again, I'm your host, Jim Johnson, here at Prosperous Human. My goal is to change the way that people perceive what prosperity is so they can live a life that prospers and feel the freedom that comes with living life as a prosperous human in the sweet spot.