E241: The 3 Pillars of A Fulfilling Life

LIVING WEALTH PODCAST

DOLLARS AND NONSENSE: EPISODE 241 TRANSCRIPTION

[00:00] Nate Scott: 

In this episode, I discuss the three pillars of a fulfilling life and how you can apply those three pillars to your finances to dramatically increase your wealth building potential. I’m Nate. I make sense out of money. This is Dollars and Nonsense. If you follow the herd, you will be slaughtered.

Over the past year or two, especially since our mentor and the founder of Living Wealth, Ray Poteet passed away, I’ve been on a journey on truly how to get more fulfillment out of life. And I think death can oftentimes, you know, death of someone who was so important to you as Ray was to me. Death can create a situation that is like an incubator for making changes and drawing more out of life and really getting focused on things.

So I’ve been focused less on some vanity things and more on fulfillment. And what I’ve come to find is that I believe that there are three things, three pillars that you can add into your life that would produce a far more fulfilling life, without these three things, I think it’s really hard to truly be fulfilled in life.

[01:07] Nate Scott: 

You can try, but I think that if you dumb it down to these three, and you can check those boxes on these three things, then you’ll live a very fulfilling life. And I believe that the same three things apply to your finances, maybe on a small scale compared to a large scale.

So that’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to cover these three things. And then we’re going to go talk about how they apply to your finances, how you can involve these three pillars as well there. So the three pillars are faith, community, and purpose. Faith, community, and purpose.

And so these are the three pillars of a fulfilling life. And we’re going to start off in the world of faith, of course, which of course, I’m a believer. I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. I believe he is the son of God. He is the savior of the world. And not everyone listening to this show would agree with that.

[01:57] Nate Scott: 

And that’s fine. I just don’t understand how it’s possible to truly live a fulfilling life apart from an ultimate reality, apart from something where faith is such a key component of it, where you’re kind of on your own out here. To me, there’s some of you who may have no faith and you’re kind of wondering why things feel like, everything feels like vanity.

There’s not a lot of purpose to various things. And my opinion is truly when you find God, you find life. This has been kind of a dark season overall, trying to run the business apart from Ray and learning so many different things. We had a great partnership together, and there’s been just one rock solid thing that has been with me the whole time, and that is, of course, God.

[02:50] Nate Scott: 

That he is there. There has been a fulfilling leaning and reliance on him that really shines whenever you enter a dark place. And so without faith, I don’t know how it’s truly possible to live a fulfilling life. And so if you don’t have much faith, you could say there may be some people who really don’t have much faith in life.

They don’t really believe in any sort of spiritual reality, everything is a materialistic world. And I say, that’s great. Maybe I’m not strong enough to do that, right? And I’ve drunk way too much of the Kool Aid. I’ve seen too much of God’s goodness to ever doubt the reality of who he is and that he exists, of course, that he’s very faithful.

And so I believe that without faith and leaning into your faith, which we’re going to talk about more when we get into the financial aspects, but without leaning into your faith. Why even show up at a money show like this is it, right? This is the whole reality. This is the whole reason to be alive.

[03:49] Nate Scott: 

So the first pillar of a fulfilling life is if you are going through a dark season, if you are stressed and anxious, unfulfilled, oftentimes it stems from a lack of faith that your spiritual walk, your walk with God is going through a dark season. And the first place you need to turn is to get right with the Lord, to focus on Him and seek His will for your life. That’s number one. So without faith, it’s very hard to live a fulfilling life. 

The second one is community. I believe that you really can’t find a fulfilling life, you can’t create a fulfilling life in isolation. That we are here to be in community. And there’s many people, especially me this past year. I think that was the biggest thing I missed from having Ray with me was the community aspect, and the collaborative aspect of it. That it’s created– where I realize now that the reason that it’s been a bit of a difficult road is because I haven’t sought community.

[04:48] Nate Scott: 

I was trying to do it on my own, apart from collaboration and apart from other people. And it’s a breeding ground for stress and anxiety whenever you don’t have somebody to lock arms with, to lean on each other and support each other. And so there’s so many people in the world today who have no real community.

They’re doing things oftentimes in isolation or even their community is very surface level. If it exists at all, you don’t have any ride or die friends. You don’t have any ride or die mentors that will pour into you. It’s very hard to live a fulfilling life in isolation.

I’ll paint this picture too, like last year I had the best year I’ve ever had in business success-wise, income-wise that I’ve ever had, but I felt the most unfulfilled about it. I felt it didn’t produce any sort of true fulfillment. And I think it was really because of the lack of community. I realized that was all vanity.

[05:51] Nate Scott: 

It was all in vain because if it wasn’t done with other people, then what was the point? So you can’t live a fulfilling life in isolation because of that. Before you try to invest in things that produce high rates of return before you try to seek out a new job or a new career, understand that maybe what you’re missing is a community and that once you feel safe in a community together of people that care about you, you care about them and you’re trying to go someplace together.

Then things start to become less about you. You feel less isolated and we’ll talk about that too when we get to the financial piece, but you end up winning as a team, which is way more than just winning by yourself. So the second one was community. 

[06:38] Nate Scott: 

The third one I wanted to talk about was purpose. So faith, community, and purpose, the three pillars to a fulfilling life. I’ll use my wife as an example here. She’s an amazing woman. And you know, my wife has felt that her purpose was to be a mom from the day she was a teenager.

She knew from when she was 12 or 13 that she wanted to be a mom. And that was her life’s purpose. And so she’s able to be a stay-at-home mom with her kids and every day she’s living her dream. Being able to be a stay-at-home mom, being able to spend all of her time and energy and focus on her children, that is her purpose in life. And it creates a fulfillment for her. 

And here’s what I do know on the flip side though, I know other women, other moms who love their children just as much as my wife loves our children and they may feel pressured into either going out into the workplace cause they need to earn a second income to provide for the family, which is honorable, or they may feel pressured to stay-at-home cause that’s what moms are supposed to do or whatever it is.

[07:55] Nate Scott: 

When they actually, they love spending time with their kids. They love being around their kids all the time, but maybe they don’t love being around their kids all the time. And they wouldn’t mind being around adults, making an income, producing value, you know, being a part of another community apart from that.

And so I know so many women who struggle with that, where there is this strong desire to be at home with their kids and a strong desire to go be someplace in the workforce. And there’s a conflict there without purpose, without essentially taking the time to detail out your purpose, it can be very difficult.

So essentially, if there’s like a cognitive dissonance in the picture, and cognitive dissonance is I want to do this and I want to do this and I can’t reconcile these two places. My thoughts are purposefully, you have to be able to reconcile what you’re going to do. So if you’re going to work, then be confident that I’m working to give a good life to my family and make that exciting.

[08:55] Nate Scott: 

Or if I’m not going to work, I’m going to stay at home. You need to be able to make sure that you understand the purpose of that. And here’s the other thing too, is that you can’t, you can’t show up well for your kids if you’re actually a worse version of yourself. So I’m just going to say that out there.

You can’t be there, be the best dad or the best mom if you are bored, if you’re unfulfilled, if you feel purposeless, if you feel like you’re just stuck in the grind all the time. Then spending time with them can actually be a negative thing. And this was certainly true. And this is one of the reasons why I don’t love the financial freedom movement where people they’re in a job they don’t like.

[09:44] Nate Scott: 

And so they want to leave that job so that they can spend more time with their family. But then when they actually get to spend time with their family, it’s awesome, everyone loves their family, but they realize they’re bored and they’re kind of unfulfilled. And this financial independence, this financial freedom that they were hoping to achieve, that they left their active income to go only focus on passive income.

And they realize they’re more stressed out and anxious than they’ve ever been, kind of. And, and I think it’s based on a lack of purpose and a lack of fulfillment that, yeah, you can get your passive income to be greater than your lifestyle. You can get cash flow to provide for your needs. And that’s wonderful.

That can serve as a backstop. But if you don’t have a purpose that makes you excited, then you can’t show up very well for your children. You can’t show up very well for your family. And this has kind of been an issue for me too. So I think most people’s purpose, especially men, their purpose for work, their purpose as part of the family.

[10:48] Nate Scott: 

That’s what they set out to do. So we’re like, I remember being a young man getting married. I got married young. I got into business young. You know, I’m only 31 years old now. I’ve been doing this for 12 years. So I got really started, I’m almost 32, so I got started right around when I was 20. 

And I was young. I was getting married. We had kids young. I’ve got four kids by age 31. And I guess what I’m trying to say is, at the beginning, my purpose I felt was to be a provider. So I go out and I work and I provide and there was a sense of fulfillment from just doing a good job being a provider for the family.

But that can actually only go so far. That can only take you to a certain extent. And so as far as my story goes, it can be like a hell on earth to say like, hey, my only purpose is to provide for my family. That can start to feel kind of demoralizing. So you end up needing to level yourself up.

[11:50] Nate Scott: 

And I feel like that’s what I’m in the process of doing, transitioning, which you’ll see down the pike in these next few months of other initiatives I’d like to prepare for and build where they’re more purpose-driven as opposed to income-driven. So here’s essentially what’s happening: it’s produced an existential crisis in my life because it used to be that my purpose for work was to provide for my family. 

[12:44] Nate Scott: 

Well, here I am at age 31. I’ve been more successful in business and in ways that, you know, God has been so good to me that I technically don’t need to work for income and I’m only 31 years old. I don’t need to, I’ve got, you know, if you’re around this podcast for much, you of course know we love the Infinite Banking concept. I’ve been paying huge premiums into my policies for a long time, for 12 years.

I’ve been dumping as much money as I possibly could in there. I’ve then leveraged those policies to make investments that produce income. And the policies are at the stage where this year I think my, it’s like 60 or 70 grand of cash value growth above the premiums this year in my policies. Like, my policies are growing extremely well, I’ve leveraged those to make investments that are doing well, and I’ve got a business that’s doing well on top of that, where essentially what I’m trying to bring up is my purpose needs to level up.

It no longer needs to be providing for my family, it needs to be something far more deep. And that’s the transition you’re going to see, I think, as I go through this and you guys get to listen to it is this idea of going from, hey, what can I do, what can I talk about to make more income, and more into what can I do to create an impact in people’s lives for the better.

[14:01] Nate Scott: 

And that’s going to be a much broader thing than just simply teaching infinite banking, per se. Though, of course, that’s still going to be a passion of mine, always will be. But it can produce an existential crisis if you’re only working, if you feel like your only purpose is to provide an income, you need at some point, after you’ve been in a career for a period of time, I just happen to hit it soon, because I got started so soon and so I’m hitting my midlife crisis earlier than I should.

But at some point you need to level up your life. Don’t just stay the same. You’ll drag yourself crazy. So those are the three things, faith, community, and purpose. I believe that those same three pillars apply to your financial life, as opposed to just simply being something that applies to your life in general.

[14:53] Nate Scott: 

It’s kind of like when I look at scripture, to use that as an example, You can see meta themes play out, overarching themes play out throughout, from Genesis through Revelation, you can see these big themes getting played out. If you zoom out, you can see them, but then if you zoom in to individual stories inside of Scripture, you also realize that these same things are getting played out, in a microcosm, on a smaller scale.

And the reality is I believe that to live a fulfilling life financially, you need faith, community, and purpose. Just like you do for your larger life, at large, inside your financial life, you need those same things. You can see those things in a zoomed in way. So let’s start, let’s dive in faith on the financial front.

There is so much freedom, and purpose, and fulfillment in trusting God to provide for you financially. There is an immense amount of freedom and fulfillment whenever it is no longer all about you and what you can conjure up from the world and it starts to become how you can partner with God to live this life.

[16:01] Nate Scott: 

So, you know, I’ve been a tither, I’ve been a giver. My dad’s a pastor and I’ve been a firm believer that God, that you reap what you sow, that God sees faith and sacrifice, and he loves to reward those who are faithful to him. And I’ve seen this play out in my life more times than I can ever imagine.

And I’m not sitting here saying that if you start to give money to God, he’s going to make you  independently rich, like some sort of weird prosperity gospel thing. Here’s what I am saying though, that the more you exercise faith in your financial life, the more at peace you will be. 

When you stop worrying about all the ways things could go wrong and you start to take steps, oftentimes it’s giving confidently to the Lord, cheerfully to the Lord, and start trusting God for good things to take place. As opposed to worrying about what are all the bad things that could take place. So, just live by faith. It’s a far more fulfilling way to live life. And so whenever I give, there’s a faith transaction.

[17:09] Nate Scott: 

You can give with faith and you can give without faith. Like you can be charitable and generous with faith and you can be charitable and generous without faith. And if you don’t mix it with faith, it falls on the ground and is worthless. So in other words, I think some people, especially if you grew up in the church, you grew up as a Christian, you just kind of give methodically just to give because you feel like that’s what you’re supposed to do out of obligation.

Well, God loves a cheerful giver. You need to mix it with faith, how you mix faith and finances is starting to transition the outcomes to God. And you do that by giving, you say, Lord, my future is in your hands, not in mine. And I’m going to give this money as a way of saying, Lord, I’m trusting you, not myself.

[17:54] Nate Scott: 

And you can feel a relief from that, a fulfillment from that where now it’s: the Lord blessed me. The Lord did this for me. God stepped in and helped me in my business. God stepped in and helped me in my family and in my relationships. 

And a lot of times money is a big piece of that. Your financial picture is a big piece of that. And so living by faith there can make your financial life feel more fulfilling where you can sit here and thank God for blessing you, as opposed to really kind of feeling, Oh, I did that. That was me. 

Number two, community. I read a book from a colleague of mine called Who Not How, which has really transformed how I see the world. And that book is all about how most of your problems in life can be solved through collaboration, where most often we think to ourselves, how can I solve this problem? Instead of thinking, who can I collaborate with to go build something together? And financially, if you want to level up, start investing with other people in collaboration, where it’s not just you.

[19:04] Nate Scott: 

Winning as a team is far more fulfilling than winning personally. If you win personally, it can feel kind of like vanity, whereas when you win as a team, it can feel like excitement. An exciting world together where you’re helping them, they’re helping you, we’re winning as a team. It no longer feels like vanity because you’re not the only benefactor.

That was why I started a land flipping company last year and brought in a team to really be the operators for it, where I was going to bring the capital, they were going to bring the work. I was going to bring some mentorship in it. And the idea was this, I don’t want to do this on my own, nor could I, I’m running this other business, but I know that it would benefit them and it would benefit me if this thing worked. 

So we’ll get the team together and we’ll go build something where we can win together, each fulfilling our function. And so whenever we have a good month or we sell a piece of land for a large profit, it’s far more exciting to me to share that with them.

[20:03] Nate Scott: 

It feels more fulfilling than it would be if I was just trying to do it on my own a lot of times. So if you want to level up in life, adopt a Who Not How framework. The other thing about being financially in a community is there’s some accountability there too, whenever you’re going together as a group to achieve something where you can kind of propel each other forward, as opposed to doing it in isolation, you can propel each other forward.

Most of the time, if you have a partner, if you wanted to get into real estate and you found a partner to run with you, who is just as excited as you are to go get into it. Then you together are going to, as partners, create a world in which you’re far more likely to succeed really, as opposed to just doing it on your own.

It can be once again, an isolation. It’s hard to find fulfillment and purpose in isolation. Now I should make a caveat here too, of course, when you get into investing with other people, partnerships, there’s some legal issues, there’s some future– everyone in business has had partners kind of dip out on them or something like that.

[21:03] Nate Scott: 

So I understand that there’s some downsides to it, but there’s also some tremendous upsides. Especially when you’re looking for fulfillment as opposed to just pure profit, when you’re looking for enjoyment, going in together can bring a lot more enjoyment. And the last thing I want to talk about is purpose. Financial purpose. 

Purpose produces action. That’s what’s so wonderful about purpose. If you feel very purposeful about something, you will act. And most people are passive financially because they have no purpose. So they’re doing the best they can with what they know, which is a completely purposeless and passive financial world where they go to work, they’re not thinking too much about it. 

They set money aside and mutual funds and retirement programs and brokerage accounts. In fact, most of the world, like the big players in the financial world, want you to be passive with your money. Because that requires you to leave money with them and that’s how they earn their money is through fees and stuff like that.

[22:06] Nate Scott: 

And so that’s what they’re hoping that you do. But purpose produces action. Most people are passive financially because they have no purpose. One of the reasons I like infinite banking is because it acts like an incubator for action. I call it an action incubator. And that’s just looking at my own life.

I think that if I had happened to get into the financial world as a conventional financial planner, just selling mutual funds and helping people retire, you know, the conventional world, that’d be fun, I guess, not really, I’m joking. But what I’m trying to say is I’m sure I would be very passive.

You just set money aside and you don’t really get involved with your money. But when you practice infinite banking, it starts to become a purpose incubator where you’re paying premiums and you’re building cash value. And that is liquid capital that you can use to achieve something in life.

[23:04] Nate Scott: 

And so it sets out a totally different perspective on what money is supposed to do for you, where you start to add purpose, start to take action on things. You start to invest in things that you probably never would have invested in had you not shifted away from the conventional path into the IBC path. 

And I’ve seen that time and time again, I mean, I’ve seen it in my own life, starting businesses, making investments, but I’ve seen it in clients lives where really IBC was the gateway drug to alternative investing and ending up in financial freedom. It happens all the time. 

It’s the pathway out because it works as such a good operating system, the infinite banking concept and whole life insurance policies work as such a good operating system for somebody who’s going to start adding more purpose to their life. So if your main purpose financially is just to save money and let it sit and never touch it and retire one day, it’s not a very compelling purpose, which means it’s likely that you’re going to not achieve your full potential.

[24:04] Nate Scott: 

If you were to transition out of that purpose and really get serious about what your purpose is financially. then you can start to achieve your full potential and receive far greater significance and success because you’ve taken action. So purpose always produces action. Stop being so passive with money.

It’s very rare to passively become successful at anything. If you want to get better financially, just pay more premiums. That’s the solution. Do infinite banking, pay more premiums, start adding purpose, and watch as your life changes dramatically. 

So guys, thank you so much for being here. It’s been great to have you on the show. Remember, fulfillment is more important than rate of return. Fulfillment is more important than earning a high income. Do not seek after vanity metrics. Seek after things that bring you peace, joy, happiness, and fulfillment. And you will never regret that. 

[24:59] Nate Scott: 

This has been Dollars and Nonsense. If you follow the herd, you will be slaughtered. 

Also, if you have been interested in Infinite Banking for a long period of time, maybe you’re practicing it, but it’s not pretty good, I don’t know what this situation has, but I do know that here at Living Wealth, we have myself and other people that would be happy to meet with you and discuss Infinite Banking on a more personal level and see if it makes sense for you.

We’ll be happy to service you both now and into the future. So you can go to https://livingwealth.com/ and schedule a consultation there. If you’d like to meet with one of us, we hope to see you on the other side.