Prosperity Principle #4: New Teacher. New Paradigm.  

How does a corporate executive who grew up in a traditional educational system learn how to prosper from a meat and seafood salesman hawking frozen food door-to-door?  

That’s cognitive dissonance at play.  

What should happen, what’s logical, is this. I BUY meat and seafood from a door-to-door salesman. If I know the man, trust him and he sells awesome steaks I can’t live without, I’m a customer. And maybe a friend if we exchange goods for cash on a regular basis.  

But learn principles of prosperity from him? That doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical.  

What can a door-to-door salesman teach me that I didn’t learn after 16 years of public schooling, college, and a decade in corporate America that would then change how I think and therefore what I do?  

Turns out … a lot!  

Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. 

Using “weekend words,” that’s when what your brain thinks and what your body experiences don’t jive. There’s no logic to what is happening based on what you would expect should happen. 

Let’s take a step back and I’ll unwind this mystery for you.  

Let’s start with you.  You’re here reading my Principles of Prosperity series and hanging with me because something is telling you, there’s something to learn. Mary Lou has figured some things out. Maybe I should find out her secrets. 

 You’re here with me because something in your life is out of synch.  

Here’s you.  

You are going about your 9-5 (or today, more like 8-6) job, working hard for someone else, fighting the good fight, skimping, and saving to make your paycheck — which is not growing — cover what it costs to live today, when everything you need to survive costs a lot more than it did a year ago.  

Your heart, soul and very being knows there’s a better way to live. Your subconscious mind is confused. You don’t see the better you in the mirror. And that’s confusing.  

What you WANT to be thinking about and doing is in complete opposition to what you’re experiencing. I’m telling you, if you knew how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought again. Seriously. Think about that.  

You’ve got this constant nagging push and pull, Ying and Yang, going on in your life because life isn’t what you thought it could be.  

The you that you are bursting to become isn’t the person making the decision to get up and go to work to just make ends meet. No.  

The you, you know you are supposed to be is being held back, strapped down and being kept just one step behind because you haven’t been taught yet how to unleash the better you.  

I have news for you. I’m not just talking about you here. I’m also talking about me.  

That was me 25 years ago.  

I was experiencing cognitive dissonance before I ever heard the words, before I had any idea what it meant or how it was holding me back.  

Like you, something drew me into a different circle of friends. It felt a little odd, but it was a place where truth is spoken. A place where sometimes that truth hurts to hear. People who truly want you to succeed and love you unconditionally will tell you the truth. I needed to hear the truth from outside my normal circles.  

However, I would leave these mind-melding conversations saying to myself, “what just happened, and why has no one ever told me this before?”  

I would hang up from conference calls these successful leaders hosted and had to take a walk outside because my mind was blown by the profound nature of the conversation and the concepts they talked about.   I read their books and manuals, and bought tapes and courses, that decoded how the wealthy got that way and learned how I could access the same thing.  

The only way to do that is to rewire your brain. Which is hard to do. If you’re like me, you’ve got several decades of unwinding to do. I needed to get my thoughts, beliefs and attitudes reset to that of a prosperity mindset.   

The only way to change what you do is to first change how you think. 

P.S. That’s not always easy! Because our thoughts and self-talk are often self-defeating. Truth.  

I grew up in a working-class household. At one point we had 4 full-time incomes coming in (my parents, me and one of my brothers) and STILL had trouble getting the mortgage and property taxes paid in the house I grew up in.  

Granted, I live in New Jersey, which is one of the expensive places in the United States to live, and we lived in an 18-room house built in the early 1900’s with about 3/4 acres of property.  

Still. Think about that – we had FOUR incomes, and still struggled. And one of us – me – had 2 jobs! That I began to realize in the late 1990’s (after we had to sell that beautiful home that my dad literally put much sweat equity into) was this – we are never going to have financial freedom and peace of mind if we keep doing what we’re doing. And none of us is getting any younger.  

I also learned around that time, that for me to live the lifestyle I had at the time, get this.

I was going to need $1.5 Million in my retirement, if I lived to be 80 years old.  

I was barely 30 years old then, and I was going to need $1.5 Million in 30 years? And that was JUST to have the lifestyle I had then? Not the one I dreamed of having? 

Is my company pension plan or retirement savings going to ever get anywhere near that when we’re having trouble as a FAMILY paying the mortgage and property taxes alone? Probably not.  

So, I started looking in other directions to replace traditional “work for pay” concepts and instead began to feed my brain different information.  Here’s who and what I began to study: 

• “Think and Grow Rich” – Napoleon Hill 
• “Disciplines of Doership” – Joe Schroeder, (my prosperity coach and teacher) 
• “Conversations with Millionaires” – Robert Allen 
• “Succeed and Grow Rich” – Napoleon Hill 
• “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” – Robert Kiyosaki 
• “How to Win Friends and Influence People” – Dale Carnegie 
• “Jesus CEO” – Laurie Beck Jones 
• “The Success System that Never Fails” – W. Clement Stone 

That “Master Mind” community changed my life. See Prosperity Principle #6 for more on the magic of mastermind communities. I was living and working in the 9-5 rat race while I was studying and learning about how to get out of it! Talk about dissonance.

I learned THE way to have walk-away income and how we are all customers of that system every day. If you ever said yes to a free trial, and now pay monthly for what that trial was for, you have experienced this system. I also learned the idea of multiple income streams.

Funny, for more than 10 years of my life when I started a day job in corporate America, I had a part-time job in a bridal store. Why? I wanted nice things. I wanted to travel. I wanted to put more money away in a savings account – this was pre-401K days, folks. I had multiple streams of income even before I really understood the concept.

I thought about starting a home network marketing business in the early 2000’s to earn residual income — a new concept to me. Several factors in my life changed, and I redirected my attention to building my corporate career, setting my new marriage on the right track, making our new home what we wanted it to be, and dealing with too many family losses to mention.

What I didn’t do, though, is forget the principles of prosperity I studied. The concepts new teachers taught me gave me a new paradigm, new ways of thinking, which I applied to my work and life. I applied what I learned in the environment I chose. And my career and life changed.

• I retired 2 years earlier than I had planned because I could afford to.
• Our assets far exceed that $1.5 million they said I’d need in retirement.
• My husband and I live mortgage free, in a desirable neighborhood in NJ.
• We have ZERO debt. We own our vehicles, including a 1965 Classic Ford Thunderbird convertible.
• We have a charitable trust to give back to our community, and we volunteer at church and for other organizations we love to support.
• I have the freedom to work or not, travel at will, do what I desire.
• I go to sleep each night with peace of mind.

I say all this NOT to boast or make you jealous. Not at all. On the contrary, I share this because I overcame the cognitive dissonance in my life. I sought out new teachers, redirected how I think, which redirected my behaviors and actions toward where I knew I should be, not where I was.

Through a new teacher, I learned a new paradigm.

What’s interesting is this. At age 19, I had subscriptions to Town and Country, Conde Nast Traveler and Architectural Digest magazine. No one my age subscribes to magazines like that. I did. Because I was interested in seeing how wealthy people lived, traveled, dressed and what they talked about and read. I was filling my mind with ideas, thoughts and a vision – so important – of what I wanted out of life.

• Grand piano? Check.
• Convertible sports car? Check.
• Beautiful home? Check.
• Handsome, loving husband? Check.
• Healthy? Check.
• Wealthy? Check.
• Successful career? Check.
• Free to choose what I do every day. Check.
• Trust funds for the next generation? Check.
• Donor advised fund to give back to our community. Check.

I didn’t know it then, but I was filling my mind with aspirations of a much better life than the one I was living at 29. Who does that? People with a prosperity mindset.

Start changing what you read and study, who you associate with, and who you learn from, so you can begin your journey toward prosperity. I’m here to help.

To your prosperity!

For more information, join my Facebook community and connect with me LinkedIn (4) Mary Lou Panzano | LinkedIn.