How to Attract Abundance: 3 Shifts That Took Me From Debt to My First Million

What if the reason you’re not attracting abundance into your life has nothing to do with how hard you’re working?

I learned this the hard way.

At 38 years old, I had a college degree, I worked hard, I had a beautiful wife and a family on the way, and on paper, I was doing everything “right.”

Yet the only things I seemed to have in abundance were debt and stress.

As far as I knew, I was doing everything I was “supposed” to do. But despite that, I was still struggling.

And I remember thinking:

“How did I get here?”

I was confused, and I had no clear way out.

Today, I realize I was asking the wrong question.

Because the question that eventually changed my life wasn’t…

“How did I get here?”

It was:

“What am I going to do from here?”

If you know my story, you know that about two years later, I made my first million dollars.

That didn’t happen because I discovered some secret investment or suddenly got lucky. And it certainly didn’t happen because I sat around imagining piles of money arriving in my life.

Something else changed first.

I did.

Looking back, I can identify three important shifts between the person struggling with debt and the person who eventually achieved the financial success I’d been looking for.

Today, we might call some of this developing an abundance mindset.

But I think that phrase needs a little explaining.

What Does It Really Mean to Attract Abundance?

When people talk about attracting abundance, it’s easy to imagine positive thinking, visualization, affirmations, or simply believing that something good is going to happen.

I certainly believe there’s enormous power in what we believe.

But I don’t believe thinking about abundance by itself creates abundance.

Your thinking becomes powerful when it changes what you do.

When you begin thinking differently, you make different decisions. Those decisions create different actions. Different actions expose you to different people, ideas, opportunities, and possibilities.

And eventually, those changes can produce very different results.

That’s what attracting abundance has come to mean to me.

It isn’t simply wishing for more.

It’s changing yourself in ways that create the possibility for more.

And for me, that began with something that wasn’t particularly comfortable.

Shift #1: I Stopped Asking Who Was Responsible

When something goes wrong, it’s natural to look for the cause.

And sometimes what happened genuinely wasn’t your fault.

That’s an important distinction because taking responsibility for your future doesn’t mean blaming yourself for everything that has happened in your past.

I certainly didn’t plan on getting fired twice when I desperately needed money.

But eventually I realized something that completely changed the way I approached my circumstances:

Something doesn’t have to be your fault to become your responsibility.

What happened may have involved somebody else’s decision.

What happened next involved mine.

That distinction changed everything.

As long as I remained focused on what someone else had done, I was allowing their actions to continue influencing my future.

So I stopped asking:

“Why did this happen to me?”

And began asking:

“What can I do about it?”

One question kept me looking backward.

The other forced me to look forward.

That doesn’t magically solve the problem. But it puts something incredibly valuable back into your hands:

The next move.

You may not control what happened yesterday.

You may not control the economy, another person’s decisions, or every circumstance surrounding you.

But there is almost always something you can do next.

And when you begin looking for that action instead of waiting for circumstances to change, you’ve already started changing your direction.

That was my first shift.

But there was a problem.

I could take complete ownership of my future and still spend every day doing the same things that had created my current results.

Something else had to change.

Shift #2: I Realized I Had to Change What I Was Doing

There’s a simple question worth asking yourself:

If I continue doing exactly what I’m doing today, where will it take me?

That question can be uncomfortable.

Because most of us aren’t doing nothing.

We’re busy.

We work hard. We handle responsibilities. We solve problems. We get through another day and then wake up and do it again.

That’s exactly why this can be difficult to see.

Working hard and moving forward aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I began realizing that if I wanted a different life, I couldn’t keep repeating the same routines, making the same choices, and taking the same actions while expecting dramatically different results.

Something had to expand.

Sometimes that meant doing something new.

Sometimes it meant doing something bigger than I had done before.

Sometimes it meant learning what I didn’t know or attempting something I had never attempted.

I had to start doing things capable of creating results I wasn’t already getting.

There’s a simple principle here that I still believe today:

If you want something you’ve never had, at some point you’re probably going to have to do something you’ve never done.

That’s where the idea of attracting abundance becomes much more practical.

You don’t merely think about the opportunity you want.

You put yourself in motion so you can encounter it.

You make the call.

You learn the skill.

You start the business.

You meet the person.

You try something that doesn’t work, learn from it, and try something better.

Action creates new possibilities.

And once I started looking at my days this way, my question changed again.

Instead of asking:

“What do I need to get through today?”

I began asking:

“What can I do today that could improve my future?”

Sometimes it only takes one meaningful action.

Do that consistently, and eventually your days stop merely repeating themselves.

They start building something.

But there was still one more shift.

And this may have changed my relationship with money more than anything else.

Shift #3: I Stopped Chasing Money and Started Helping More People

When you’re in debt, telling you to stop focusing on money probably sounds ridiculous.

I understand.

When bills are due, money matters.

But over time, I discovered that money itself isn’t a particularly useful thing to chase.

Value is.

More specifically:

People you can help.

When I started my business, I didn’t succeed because I discovered a clever way to convince people to give me money.

I succeeded because I figured out how to solve problems for them.

And eventually I began understanding the mathematics behind that idea.

Suppose you know how to create genuine value for one person.

Great.

How can you help ten?

Then how can you help 100?

How could you eventually help 1,000?

Assuming you have a business model where you’re fairly compensated for the value you provide, helping more people creates more opportunities to earn more money.

That changes the question from:

“How can I make more money?”

to:

“How can I help more people?”

I think that’s one of the most useful financial mindset shifts you can make.

If you own a business, find more people whose problems you can solve.

If you sell a product, get that product in front of more people who genuinely benefit from it.

If you have a valuable skill, find ways to use that skill for more people.

The money becomes a result of creating and distributing value, rather than the only thing you’re pursuing.

There’s another benefit to thinking this way.

Helping more people requires you to become better.

You have to improve what you offer. You have to communicate better. You have to build trust. You have to learn how to reach people you haven’t reached before.

In other words, the pursuit of abundance begins forcing you to grow into someone capable of creating it.

Abundance Is Bigger Than Money

It’s worth mentioning that abundance doesn’t have to mean having millions of dollars.

Financial freedom was enormously important to me because I knew what financial stress felt like.

But abundance can also mean having more freedom over your time, stronger relationships, meaningful experiences, greater knowledge, and opportunities you once didn’t have.

And interestingly, the same principle often applies.

Create value.

Be useful.

Help people.

Build relationships.

Learn.

Grow.

Put yourself in situations where new opportunities have a chance to find you.

The more value you create in the world, the more possibilities you create for value to return to you.

A 7-Day Abundance Challenge

So let’s make all of this practical.

For the next seven days, start each morning by answering three questions.

1. What Can I Control Today?

Don’t spend today’s energy trying to rewrite yesterday.

Look at where you are now and identify your next move.

What can you actually do?

Write it down.

2. What Can I Do Differently Today?

Look at what you want to change in your life.

Then ask whether your current activities are capable of creating that change.

If not, do something different.

It doesn’t need to be enormous.

Just do something that creates a possibility that didn’t exist yesterday.

3. Who Can I Help Today?

This is the one I especially want you to think about if your goal is financial abundance.

Find someone you can help.

Create value.

Solve a problem.

And then begin thinking bigger:

How could I do this for more people?

Do those three things for seven days and pay attention to what happens.

Not simply to your bank account.

Pay attention to your thinking.

Your decisions.

The conversations you’re having.

The opportunities you’re noticing.

Because sometimes abundance begins showing up long before we recognize it for what it is.

Abundance Doesn’t Always Look Like Abundance

This may be the most important thing I’ve learned from my own story.

At 38, getting fired didn’t feel like abundance.

Being in debt certainly didn’t feel like abundance.

Starting over didn’t feel like abundance.

But those circumstances forced me to question what I was doing.

They forced me to grow.

And they eventually pushed me toward decisions that changed the direction of my life.

Looking back, I can see something I couldn’t see then.

My circumstances didn’t change first.

I did.

Then my decisions changed.

My actions changed.

My opportunities changed.

And eventually…

My life changed.

So if you’re waiting for abundance to arrive before you start thinking or acting differently, try reversing the order.

Take ownership of where you go from here.

Do something different if you want a different result.

And instead of asking only how you can make more money, start asking:

“How can I help more people?”

Because attracting abundance isn’t simply about waiting for more to come into your life.

It’s about becoming someone capable of creating more, doing more, helping more, and recognizing the opportunities that begin appearing as a result.

And sometimes…

That’s where abundance begins.

Love,