You Did Exactly What You Needed to Do  Regret is doing exactly. What you needed to do to become the thing you needed to become. The future harvest that we experience is the sum total of the mistakes we've used in the past. And if you have no mistakes, you have no lessons. What if you could build a business in the modern world as big or as small as you want without having to compromise the things that were the most important to you in the very beginning? This is the Wealthy Consultant Talks podcast with Taylor Welch. And Mike Walker as they share with you today, their learning lessons from stories in their experiences over the past 10 to 15 years, and share with you right here, right now, let's get into it. Many of you know that the, the last six to 12 months for me, actually longer than that, the 12 to to 18 months for me has been a bit exhausting. There's businesses that have been reset and given away and new businesses this started, and partnerships that have gone away. And there's all of this stuff. And when you go through, when you go through times that challenge you, it's, it's usually not about how challenging the time is, as much as it is about how long that shit lasts. Mm-hmm. You know what I'm saying? Okay. Like when I got COVID. Because when COVID first came out, I was like, COVID iss fake. It's not real. And then I got COVID, which changed my mind a little bit about it. And it wasn't that I was like, um, you know, I felt like I was gonna die every day. It's that I had COVID for 35 days. You're not used to being sick for this long. Think about the last couple times you've been sick. It's usually like three days. You're kind of in and out. But man, by a day like 22, I was like, yo, do I have cancer or something? Like, what's going on? And my mind is just like losing it. This is what I'm saying. It's the principle. It's not necessarily about how hard it is, it's about how long it is. Does this make sense? Yeah. Solid. So I'm going through 18, 15, 18 months of just like, this is just one thing that after another, after another and after another, and I'm sitting in our sunroom with my wife Lindsay, and I say, I am just not in a great place. This is probably four months ago. I'm frustrated. And you know, there's, there's people that you can just complain to. They're gonna love you no matter what. You always have to find those people. They're like, Hey, it's gonna be okay. You can talk to me about it. And so, Lindsay's my wife. And so I'm like, this is, this is stupid. I'm tired of everything and I'm just complaining. I'm having a moment. I'm having a human moment. Okay. Stop judging me. Even right now, you're judging me. I'll get off my back for a second. I'm having a human. Moment, and I am like, this is, this is not what I signed up for. This is not what I want. And life is a bottomless pit. And it's like I'm just going off and off like picture of me, I'm a copywriter and, and that, that skillset deployed against my wife because I want her to un, I want her to feel sorry for me. And I said, I don't, I don't even see the point anymore. I'll, I'll explain later. I'll explain later what was happening at the time to cause me to believe this. Because there were very serious events that were taking place four months ago that I was like, I am exhausted. It's been taking too long. I said, I'm basically, my whole life is just like surviving through a concentration camp. And she looks at me and she goes, excuse me. What did you just say? You can laugh, but I know every single person on this call has had, has had a experience where they're like, I'm embarrassed that I said that. You know? But what it, what I did is I did not think, oh, I'm embarrassed for saying this. I said, my wife didn't hear what I said. That's why she said, excuse me. And so you have this opportunity. My wife is looking at me and it's like, you know, I could either, I could either recant what I just said or I could double down on what I just said because she doesn't understand. And I said, did you hear me? My life is like the Holocaust. Wow. And she just looks at me. And she's like, you know, maybe you should go study it and find out. And then she gets up and she walks out of the room and I'm left by myself and you know, thank God for a good wife. She's like, I'm not even gonna meet you. In the shit hole that you've created for yourself. Uh, you have fun. I'm leaving because I don't want your energy peace out. And so she, she leaves and I can see you guys all in the chat. You're like, oh, what an idiot. Yeah, true. Uh, I double down and I said, okay, well I'm gonna study it because I do feel this way and this is how I feel. And. There has never been anything more true or more untrue spoken in the history of, of words spoken than what I had said. And if you know people who have lived, uh, close proximity to this, like, you know, I feel like I owe the world's an apology. You ever say something so stupid, you're just like, I feel like I should apologize, and people don't even know that I said it, but I feel so, so silly. For saying something that is so untrue. Your words have power, by the way, and the things that you say matter a lot. They've done studies on this that the sounds never ends, it never dies. It just gets smaller and smaller in frequency. So through eternity, our words just bounce off of, they bounce off of houses and walls and trees and bricks and they reverberate through time. And so this is one of those lessons I had to learn of like, keep your damn mouth shut. But have you ever thought of something, have you ever thought of, uh, can, have you ever gone through something? Just, I want you to think about it right now, where you have, uh, you've gone through a situation, you thought it was killing you in the moment, but you realized in hindsight that it wasn't as bad as it felt right then, if we let ourselves. Spend time in this, then we will turn embarrassing, traumatic, exhausting, fatiguing circumstances. We always have the ability to turn them into lessons. So we're gonna dive in and I'm just gonna tell you guys a, a quick story. This particular piece is, is, um, it's about a, a man whose name was Eddie Ku. And when you study this, and I've studied a lot about World War ii. You realize that Germany had this, uh, freakish ability to silo different places of the country, and so news wasn't necessarily spread around the right way. Sometimes we look at history and we think you, how did, how did this happen? And people didn't lose their mind. Well, certain people did lose their mind. They went to Belgium or they went to France, or they escaped. But for most of, of the, the people in the middle, they just didn't know there was this thing called media. Media had things kind of spun out. This is where public relations comes from today. I don't mean to go crazy psycho on you for a second, but propaganda was a thing that was kind of perfected at the time in Nazi Germany, and we took that and we renamed it into public relations. And I, no offense against PR experts, it's just basically what it is, is propaganda and the outcome of that propaganda. Basically determines whether you're like good or evil. And so Germany is reeling from World War I. There's no money. There's like rapid and wild inflation. People can't afford anything. So Eddie is coming up in this environment with this family. They're Jews, but they're German citizens. And uh, it's so bad that he tells a story actually, that when he turned 13, his dad asked, what do you want for your 13th birthday? And he said, I would like six eggs. A loaf of white bread, which was hard to get because most of the bread in Germany at the time was rye bread and a pineapple because he had never seen a real pineapple. So this is a poor family. We can all agree that this is a poor family. Maybe they have enough food to eat, but they're not like doing great things. You know, they're still struggling through. And everyone at the time was like this and he was going to school to learn engineering. And one day he shows up to school and he was told that he can no longer attend school because he is a Jew. This is his first experience with, uh, with racism in the country. And, uh, he got home and told his dad, and his dad said, Hey, don't worry. You're gonna continue your studies. His dad was very well connected and so they were able to get Eddie false papers that got him into college. He was attending the epicenter of mechanical engineering classes. This is the, the, the holy Grail for mechanical engineering in the world. Everything was invented in Germany at this time, and he attended. He had to go. It was like a six hour trip away, and he attended on false papers, so nobody knew he was a Jew. He was a German citizen attending and he was doing very well. He had great friends that he had developed, and one day he decides that he's going to surprise his parents. Remember I told you that the country of Germany had silos in it and different news pieces didn't make it all the way? Well, he was living in a place and the city doesn't matter where the college was, that they did not have a lot of free flowing information coming into the district. And so. He didn't know what was happening. He didn't know about the regime, uh, you know, the final solution or, or, uh, the attempt to round up all of the Jews. So he, he just was thinking, it's a normal day. It's my parents' 20th wedding anniversary. And so he decided to go back home to visit his parents. So he got there. Nobody's home. He has no recollection of like why they weren't home. He just figured maybe they were out celebrating their anniversary, and so he falls asleep in the home that he grew up in. He's woken at 5:00 AM 10. Nazis come in. They beat him half to death and they drag him away to one of the first concentration camps. This is not Aus switch, but Eddie writes this down. He says that, that this was the worst mistake that he had ever made in his life. Because if he would not have gone home to visit his parents, he would've stayed in mechanical engineering school and more than likely, nobody would've even inquired about it because he would've been what you call economically indispensable. Mm-hmm. So he would've survived the whole thing. And you can imagine the mental turmoil he goes through because he's like, if I just would've stayed in college, and this happens to us all the time, by the way, this is a piece, a piece of architecture that we're gonna talk about in belief architecture is the idea of regret. He imagine, I wonder how many times he went through his head, like, what if I just would not have gone to visit my parents for the 20th anniversary? Who's thought that? I mean, like, what if I just would not have done this? I. There was really, really a a, a terrible situation I had to deal with in, in last year. And man, I thought about this every day for like six months. What if I wish I would've just not done it? And we look back with, with the beauty of hindsight, everything is 2020 when you're looking backwards and we penalized ourselves for something we never would've even known. When we do this and we look back at our past and we think, man, I wish I would've done that. I wish I would not have done this. Oh, it would've been so easy to just not have said that. It would've been so easy to just not. You gotta realize, uh, Mr. Ku here is going through the worst trauma of his life, and I. Every single day he's thinking through like, what if I would've just stayed there? But I wanna reframe something for you. And the thing I wanna reframe for you is, is regret. Because what we're really experiencing when we think, what if I would've not done this? Or what if I would've done this, is this idea of regret. I wish I could change it. And so write this down, write this down, and ponder it later. Here's the reframe for you. Regret is doing exactly what you needed to do. To become the thing you needed to become. It's doing exactly what you needed to do to become the person you needed to become. That's big right there. We gotta reframe it and we have to change the meaning because you think about this series we're having right now and the series we're gonna have next week and the week after that. And how many of you honestly would say like this, this already is positively impacting my life. Don't lie to me. Just be honest. If you really think that, then tell me that. And if you don't, then don't. But I can tell you my study of this man has changed the way I speak about the way I think about the way I process setbacks. Had this man stayed in his college, the books would not have been written. The speeches would not have been given, and the story would not have rippled through history. Mm-hmm. To meet us right here. So we have to get over this thing culturally where we just constantly live and regret. You did exactly what you needed to do to become exactly who you were supposed to become. And our mistakes, the, the, the future harvest that we experience is the sum total. Of the mistakes we've used in the past. And if you have no mistakes, you have no lessons. And so each morning they get to this concentration camp, and each morning the, uh, the Nazis do this, this experiment where they would open the gates. And remember, Eddie's just here for the first time. He is just like, doesn't have a clue what's going on. He, to him, he's a German citizen, he's very confused. And they would open up, they would let two to 300 people go. And once they had made it about 40 meters out of the gates, they would start the machine guns and they would shoot 'em all. And they would put these people in body bags with a note that said, your, your husband or son or daughter or whoever tried to escape and they died in the process. This is how the Nazis handled, uh, overpopulation. This is their form of population control and Eddie experiences. What Viktor Frankl later starts breaking down, which is the phases of trauma we'll get into next week, but one of the things that, that your personality does when you experience trauma. Is it begins to shut you down to protect you. So it, it systematically, systematically goes through and starts turning off emotions and turning off different senses because you can't survive in the middle of a traumatic season or situation if you feel everything, like you're actually probably doing this right now, actually, like when we talk about the fact that they had 300 people go out and shoot 'em in the back, your brain's just like, whoa, blockade like. That's, that's some rough, but let's just kind of like move on. And so it's, it's a natural instinctive thing when, when someone that you love deeply goes through tremendous pain or they die, is your, your personality regulates this feeling threshold to keep you alive. Your brain starts shutting different things off, but some people were impervious to this. There they would, they, they didn't have that glitch. Or they didn't have that, that kill switch in their, in their brain that that turned it off. And so they would continue to be bothered by this and it, and it wouldn't go away. And they would try to kill themselves in the camps and, and when they did try to kill themselves, the Germans would resuscitate and bandage them up and then punish them for trying to kill themselves. Because the, the point of the concentration camps was labor. And when you, when you committed suicide, you were removing the labor system from. The war machine. Eddie tells the story of a Dr. Cohen. Dr. Cohen was a dentist. He was beaten so badly by the Nazis that his, his stomach actually ruptured and he was dying every day, couldn't process food. And so he actually paid 50 marks, which is two weeks of wages to get a razor blade smuggled in. And he knew this 'cause he had been in the camps for a while. He knew that if he just tried to kill himself. They would bandage them up, beat 'em up, and then make 'em go back to work. So he timed everything. He created this elaborate plan in his head, and there weren't toilets in the camps. There were big ditches, and they would put wood planks over the ditches and people would just go out and they would do their business all at the same time. So Dr. Cohen figured if I actually want a shot at being able to end this, then I need to time it. So perfectly that I can get, get the things situated, cut whatever artery I need to cut, and then fall into the ditch and mix into the human waste so that the soldiers would be unwilling to go pull him out. And Eddie tells a story that Dr. Cohen was successful and. Was able to time everything perfectly, but can you imagine the situation that you must be in to time things so perfectly that you cut an artery right at the right time to fall over a pile in a pit filled with human waste so that the soldiers will not pull you out and bandage you up. And can you imagine the situation you have to be in, the trauma. You have to be going through the where that is actually superior. There you can see as I'm like studying, I'm sitting out back studying this, and I'm thinking like my wife was right and I cannot believe that I would compare myself or my life to something you, you go through these moments where you realize that the greatest force in the world is the human spirit, the greatest force in the world. Is the human spirit. It can survive almost anything. And Eddie is taking all of this in and he's processing this as he goes. And he tells a guard one day that he knows how to fix something and they find out that he's a, a mechanical engineer and he's able to fix medical devices and, and machines. And so they, they arranged for him to go off and, uh, serve the war efforts. They actually get his father to come pick him up from the camp. And so they had this actual term, it's called economic economically indispensable Jew. And so they, they weren't allowed to kill him at this point once they realized that he had utility. And so his dad actually comes to the camp and he picks him up. They're supposed to take him to a requisition station, but instead they, they turn around and they head for the border. One thing to add to this, um, uh, skills can save your life. And this is something that struck, stood out to me when I was studying this, and actually same with Viktor Frankl and actually any of the accounts that I've looked through. And I don't want to make something that seems like a brash point, but I do want to say this, that that the thing that you need to learn, you'll be put into positions. Where the only way out is the skillset you developed and the perspective that you developed before you were put into that position. So you actually never know when. When a skill can change the trajectory of your life, you will see this all over the place. People who get good at something and they study something and they work as something, you can alter the course of human history by getting talented. And talent has nothing to do with your natural abilities. Talent has everything to do with how, how hard you're willing to work. To learn something. So I, I do wanna just like point that out, like there are people right now who are living beneath their potential because they're lazy or they are unfocused, but you never know when, when the skill that you're supposed to be developing right now can save your life. Makes sense. Yeah, that's great. Um, so his, his father picks him up and instead of heading for the requisition station, they head to the border. They, they head for Belgium. And there are complications here, and I don't have time to go into it. And you can read the whole book, uh, later. We'll post the notes. I'll post all of my notes from the book for you as part of this, um, this series, and you can read the whole detail. But they, they end up getting into Belgium, and then Eddie is arrested again. But this time he is arrested for being a German. He's not arrested for being Jews arrested for being in German. 'cause the whole, all of the countries are in lockdown. And the, it's complicated because the, the power dynamics keep changing. So the Nazis took over everything around them. Like if you look back into the beginning of World War ii, the most powerful military in the world at the time, anybody know who it is? I wanna take a guess. Which country is it the most? Powerful country, powerful military. The greatest soldiers. The greatest technology. You had the equivalent of the United States from 20 to 25 years ago. Who is it? It's France. France is the greatest world power. Uh, at the, at the time, France, actually, France defended themselves for the entire World War I, and people have challenged me on this, and they're like, oh, what about Brit? No, it was France. France was basically the support backbone. Or the, the first World War. And so, you know, you think about, um, you think about like, um, I don't know, maybe Brazil, Brazil challenges the United States and the, the popular mantra of today would be like, why would they do that? Like it's the United States, right? But then picture, if, uh, if Brazil beats the United States completely and takes over the capitol in two weeks. That's basically what happened in World War ii. Do you guys know anybody ever watch Batman where he goes up against Spain? I didn't see it. Well, Mike, what are you doing with your life? I know I'm dropping the ball over here anyways. Um, okay. I'll just tell you guys since nobody watches movies, I guess. Um, so Batman, Batman's Batman, right? And he goes up and he is, he's gonna fight Bain. And do you remember how it felt when like it's Batman and Bain breaks his back and you're like, wait a minute, what the hell just happened? Because. Batman is the hero and the villain just, does he kill the Batman? Is Batman dead? Like this is basically the world stage in World War ii. 'cause France is Batman and Hitler beats him in 30 days. It is over. And so Eddie's, Eddie's family is out here. They're in Belgium, and they get arrested for being German in Belgium. But then the Nazis take over Belgium, and then they have to run, and then they're in France, and then France is taking over. And so the world powers keeps shifting and no matter where he goes, it's just like, oh, it's. The, the Germans have taken, taken over, and he talks about this though. He talks about, uh, the season he was living with his family and they didn't have anything to eat or anything to drink, and they're prisoners. And then he said, I cherish this time with my whole family together. He said, sometimes I look back and I think that this was the greatest season of my life. And you think I could even see Mike's face? Like, why, why would, um. Why would he cherish that? Lemme tell you why he would cherish that. And then I want, I want some things to pop in for us as we cherish that or as we think about this, why would somebody say living in prison with my family is the best time of my life? Because he gets rounded up his whole family. They get taken to Auschwitz for the first time. It's the first time Eddie sees the iconic sign over, says work, work sets you free above the camp. And they get off of the train. And, uh, there was a, a, a famous doctor named Dr. Joseph who's the. Angel of death. He was the one experimenting and really the behind the development of the torture chambers and the gas chambers and poison gas and all of those things. And so, uh, Dr. Joseph would basically, they'd walk off the train. He would say, you go to the left, you go to the right, and he's organizing people. And so Eddie and his father get off the train and his father was sent to the left and Eddie was sent to the right. And so they go a couple steps and Eddie is like, I want to be with my dad. I don't understand. So he sneaks out of line, he goes and catches up with his dad. But the problem is one of the soldiers that was with Dr. Joseph recognizes Eddie, right before he gets onto the train. He says, Hey, you were supposed to go, you were supposed to go to the right. And he asked the soldier, he said, why am why is my dad going this way? Like, why do I need to go that way? And he says, because your dad is is old and he's gonna ride, or you're just gonna walk. He is like, okay, that makes sense. He goes back to the, to the right side. Two days later he has a, an SS officer. He is basically like, where's my father? Like my father will split up and I cannot find him. And the guy takes him by the hand and they walk a couple of feet in between two buildings and the officer says, do you see that smoke over there? And, and he goes, yeah. And he said, that's where your father and your mother are, and this is the gas chambers. That's how Eddie found out that he was an orphan. It was the first time he found out about his dad. It makes sense in hindsight why he cherished the moments, the last moments he had in prison because of the people that were around him. This is, uh, important thing to lock in for just a second, that life, life is made beautiful, not because of. The houses or the places that we live or the things that we have, life has made beautiful because of the people that we get to live it with. And so this makes sense in hindsight, while he is writing. Like, that was the best time of my life because I got to live with the people that I loved. And so we can't ever take it for granted and we have to think through this perspective and we have to, this series is called How Low Can You Go, and I'm demonstrating that you can go a lot lower than you think you can. And so what if instead of complaining through all of it, what if we just realize how incredible it is that we get to do life with people that matter to us? There's a lot of other meat in here, and like I said, um, I'll, I'll share the notes. So just share two more stories and then we'll get into some lessons. Um, they had to sleep in Auschwitz. They had to sleep outside. They, they find out that he's a mechanical engineer again. And so, uh, once again, he's economically indispensable, which basically just means that all of his friends die. That's all that means is instead of him dying, all of his friends die because they can't kill. They can't kill him because he's indispensable, but they would sleep outside naked because if they didn't have clothes, they couldn't run away. This was the Nazi idea is like, they're not gonna run away. It's, it's 10 degrees below zero. And so what they would've to do is they would've to wake up on a predictable clock. If somebody went to go to the bathroom, they would've to come back and they would've to wake up the person on the outside and the person on the inside and have 'em change places because you would freeze to death. So they would rotate from the outside to the inside just to, just to survive the night. 10 to 20 people each night died because nobody went to the bathroom and woke them up, and so he just froze to death. He actually gets to a place where he escapes, but he's wearing prison clothes. And he's in Poland and he realizes that he didn't bring a coat and he has no food. And so he just escaped Auschwitz, but he has no way to survive. So he finds a Polish cabin, he knocks on the door and the guy shoots him. So he is like had this moment where he is like, I am basically a prisoner, and the Nazis hate me and the Polish hate me, and the only way he can survive is to sneak back into Auschwitz. So he sneaks back into the concentration camp just so that he doesn't die. Jesus freeze to death. This dude's life is crazy. Once a, uh, he gets into a fight with a, with a, a soldier, the soldier beats him up, but doesn't realize he's economically indispensable until he sees something that, that, uh, is, is on one of his tattoos. And so, um. He can't kill him. And so what he does instead to punish them for talking back, 'cause he puts him in a cage completely naked and he is in a cage, the tongue above the ground and it's in front of everyone. And for three days they make him stand in front of everyone who's passing in front of him. But the, the cage is lined with needles. So that he cannot actually lean over if he falls asleep. If he sits down and he would fall asleep and the needles would rip him up and he'd have to stand back up. So for three days he has to walk around all night and the only way he can sleep is by sitting his back against somebody else's back. He, he's so in so much pain, he can't even lay down. This guy's life was awful, awful. There is no comparison on anything. So I'm reading this and I'm just like, yeah, basically I'm a and I need to get my shit together. And Lindsay was right. I'm gonna give you some lessons from the end of, of, uh, one of Eddie's talks. I. This is where we start bringing the plane back up and so we can sort of breathe and we, you know, we can move on with our days. He says, happiness doesn't fall from the sky. It is in your own hands. Happiness comes from inside yourself and from the people you love. If you are healthy and happy, you are rich. How many times did we talk about this? It's not the size of the account. It's not it. Happiness comes from your ability to do what you want to do with the people that you want to do it. He says, with the simple act of kindness, you can save another person from despair and that might just save their life. The greatest miracle of all is to be kind to another person. This is like rich lessons. The greatest miracle of all is to be kind to a another person. This happens all of the time. If you want to have a predictable way for you to feel better, just be kind to a random person that can never piggyback, that you might not even ever see again, and you smile at them, you compliment them, or you pay for their meal. This has a way of res resparking, the human spirit. It's a miracle. A field is empty, he says, but if you put in the effort to grow something that you will have a garden, and life is just like that. What's this mean? You're gonna get exactly what you put into it. You're gonna get the things that you put into it. You're gonna reap a harvest That is an equivalent of the level of investment you put into your life, which happens with with clients, Mike, we talk to 'em all the time. People are like, I'm not happy with this. I'm not happy with that. It's like, well, well. What are you doing to fix the problem? Nothing. I just show up to a call. Well, that's not enough. Your life is, your life is like a field that is empty, but as you put something into it and an effort into growing something, you get a return. Life is the same way. Humans, he says, are creatures of comparison. So I've added my own notes to this. We feel poor or rich, we're successful or not successful, not by what we want, but by what other people have or don't have the greatest form of fulfillment. And write these two things down because we're gonna end and this will change your life. The greatest forms of fulfillment are, number one, knowing where you came from. Two, that because of that, you can survive anything. Nothing gonna take you down. Nothing's gonna ruin your purpose. There's not a force in this world that can actually ruin you. Knowing where you came from and because of that, that you can survive anything. Here's some homework. Number one, what good things? I'm just gonna type 'em out. What good things can I be supremely grateful for? That I'd be devastated if they went away tomorrow. Number two, who do I love and how often can I tell them how much I love them? Number three. Where can I demonstrate kindness to another human today? Someone who can never pay me back, but might need it more than I know.