The Journey to the 1% Life – Recap with Matt Cross

Hey everybody, welcome to episode two of How to Be a One Percenter. It's a podcast where we're redefining what it means to be a one percenter, not just focused obsessively on one kind of success, but that one percent of people that truly has the life that we all want to live and live the life that we genuinely want to.

In this podcast, I'm going to do a little recap of our first opening podcast with Matt Cross. It was an awesome podcast interview with Matt. He was amazing. If you haven't seen that, please go back and watch it. And what I'm going to do in between these interviews, in these podcasts is fill in with some insights and from some of the things I do with people in my work to help them to get these kinds of results, so that you can benefit from that as well and get onto your journey of your one percent life.

A little bit difficult in this first one because Matt just talked about so many things that were full of gold. They were just so many great topics that he brought up as he shared his journey and some of the topics that he brought up and the things that have helped him to achieve the amazing results that he has.

Two come to mind to me that we're going to cover today. And the first one is he started off by talking about identity. So, when I asked him what he'd want to share about his journey today, which we've worked together for eight years, he said, learning that his work wasn't his identity. And this is something that is so important because, you know, as we talked about on the podcast, Matt, and I, how many people when you meet someone, the first question you have is, what do you do? Instead of saying, you know, who are you? And it's what do you do? And whether we know it or not, we've learned to define people potentially by their careers.

But are we that? Are we, our jobs? Or is that just what we do? And we're far more complex beings than just a job that we do or just a business that we have. And that's really true. So that was such an important part.

And what I'll cover today is just how can you start? If you first of all thinks about that, that would be my first recommendation is to just kind of get present. A lot of my work is about just stopping and sitting in a quiet moment to reflect and consider things so we can have these aha moments.  

So, if you were to do that and to say just how much of myself and my identity do I put into what I do for a living? So, for example, if that's not going well, do I feel that it means something about me? You know, like I have in the past, if there's a challenge going on in the business, for example, in my business, I might feel like I'm going to be a failure if it doesn't work out. And I'll feel all this extra stress.

And I know from the people that I work with, often quite highly successful ones, I'm not the only one that goes through that. Most of us are identified, or at least many of us are identified with what we do. So, take a moment to reflect on just how much your identity and sense of self is reliant upon what you do for a living and how good you are at it or not at it. And if it's the case, also look at how much strife is actually caused by that.  

And if like me, you decide, hey, I don't want that stress. And I actually don't want to be defined by what I do. I want to be free and have what I do for a living just be one of the things that I do. And I'm identified by more of who I really am. If you'd like to do that, one of the processes that I use is different types of inquiry. So, I'm going to generally say it today, just inquire. So, what you might be able to do, for example, is to say, well, what do I believe?

So, for example, one of the things I believed for a long time is if my business failed, I failed. And so, I really inquired that. But I didn't just inquire based on what other people have told me or what I've picked up from other people. I took some really quiet moments to deeply reflect on the truth of that when I found out how ridiculous is that. Like, how many things do I do? I'm married. I have relationship. I do a lot of things in my relationship. I have hobbies that I enjoy doing. I love certain kinds of music. I have plenty of that. I have dogs at home. I mean, I do lots of things. I go for walks. I exercise. Why am I defining myself by this one thing?

But what I did was I just took some quiet moments, and I really just said, well, is that actually so? Am I really in my business? Am I really my career? And if you do that and allow yourself to really just get present, you'll see how not true or possibly the word I used for myself was insane it was to think that, to define myself in that way.

So really take a moment, if you'd like to, to inquire. How much do you identify yourself with what you do and deeply get present to. Is that actually so? And if not, actually, let me back up. The second part you can do is say, well, what happens to me when I believe that it is? What does that cause? Does it cause stress? Does it cause me to work too many hours? What happens? And then say, well, if I wasn't doing that, if I realized that my work was just something I did, how would I be different? And actually, take the time to write that on a piece of paper. You may be surprised at the difference that can make in your life.

And look, I might often do one, but I can't let the other one go with Matt because he talked about money. And he said he didn't quite understand how it worked. And what he was talking about was one of the teachings I work with is how to become more wealthy and financially free. And it's a system. It's a system by where it's a way that we view money and what we do with it. And it's not anything too out there or outrageous. It's just simple changes that we make. But it works. And one of the things I talk about is that as we're doing that, we start seeing that more money will start coming to us.

And I found that to be true. Matts found that to be true. And many people that have done the program and the process find it to be true. In fact, everyone that does it finds it to be true. But the tricky thing is, how does it happen? You wake up and you go, I'm just doing this. And all of a sudden, I'm making more money or more opportunities are coming to me. How does that work? And that's what Matt was speaking about. It is a very deep conversation into the how. It is something that I've dedicated myself to learning and understanding for about 25 to 30 years now. There is an explanation, but it's not appropriate. The level of conversation isn't appropriate for this introductory level. But what I will say is, what I can say about it is, there's a focus element to it.

It's like if you think about anything in your life, if you focus on something, it will grow, it will magnify. In fact, I often talk about this childhood experiment, where you take a magnifying glass, and on a sunny day, you hold the magnifying glass up to a piece of paper or a leaf or something. And if you hold it just in the right way, it focuses, refracts, or focuses that light onto the object, and it actually heats up and starts to smoke and on one occasion, mine even started to flame up on a hot day. Well, that describes the power of focus.  

If you think about it, the sun and the paper are always there, but the paper doesn't burn up. So, money's always there. Opportunities are always there. But for whatever reason, we're not getting them or we're not seeing them. But when we put our focus onto something, and it's in the way that we think about money and what we do with it, we start increasing the focus to it. And when the focus grows, or when we put the focus to it, it heats up and builds momentum. And then in that space, other opportunities will come. I've just seen this work for such a long time. I've been working in that financial arena for close to 20 years, and everyone just says it works, right? And a lot of people say what Matt did.

How does it work? So maybe in a future podcast, I'll go deeper into that. But the explanation of that is its focus. Whatever we focus in our life we build momentum, and you will notice that life responds. Where we're focused, we get opportunities. Where we grow things, they tend to grow farther. So, I hope that makes sense. But what you can take out of that is if it's financial wealth that you want to grow, whatever you want to grow, start putting real focus on it. Start managing that area really effectively and watch what happens. You'll just start to see it grow. And some of those ways that it happens might just surprise you.

So massive stuff that came out of that first podcast. I'm really inspired and enthused about this. We're going to have another great guest on the next one. We're going to keep going into all of the different things that you need to know to get onto your 1% pathway. That's the life that you're really here to live, having everything that you want and living the greatest version of the life you have. So, thanks for watching, and I look forward to seeing you next time. 00:00