The Path: Accelerating Your Journey to Financial Freedom

By Peter Mallouk with Tony Robbins

Part I

The Journey Ahead

The Path to Freedom

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” - FDR

• Economic “winters” are actually some of the best wealth building opportunities. If you can discipline your fear and manage your emotions, major market pullbacks can present the opportunity of a lifetime.
• Execution trumps knowledge every day of the week.
• Frighteningly, 60% of Americans don’t have even $1,000 saved for retirement. And less than 40% could handle a $500 emergency.
• We are a nation of consumers, but if we are to collectively prosper, we must make the shift to becoming owners.
• Being a great investor involves embracing uncertainty…Remember courage doesn’t mean you don’t experience fear. It means consistently taking action and moving forward in spite of the fear.

The World Is Better Than You Think

• Not only is our view of history mistakenly labeled a “golden age”; our view of the future is mistakenly pessimistic.
• Media are businesses, and businesses exist to make a profit. The primary purpose of media is not to inform; it’s to make money. More viewers = higher prices for advertising = larger profit = happier shareholders.
• “Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket…it’s part ownership of a business.” - Peter Lynch
• The stock price is simply a reflection fo a company’s earning power. Everything else is noise.
• The bottom line is this: all of the other factors in the economy matter only because people buying and selling stocks are trying to determine how the changes in various “indicators” - unemployment, interest rates, and so on - will ultimately affect a company’s anticipated earnings.
• Throughout history, no mater how bad things have appeared, the top US companies (the S&P 500) have ultimately found a way to not only make money, but to make more money than they did before. Every single time. And, as always, the stock market continues to follow the earnings.

The Driving Force Behind Every Decision

• 6 human needs
  • Certainty: Although certainty is healthy in the right “dosage,” letting this need for it to take over is a quick path to paralysis because only one thing is for certain: life is uncertain.
  • Variety/Uncertainty: If you have an overwhelming need for variety, where this becomes the core driver of your daily life, you could find yourself untethered to anything and/or anyone meaningful.
  • Significance: Make no mistake: temporal and dysfunctional approaches to feeling significant are a fool’s errand - an unquenchable thirst. Like all other needs, when they are met in unhealthy ways, they become a prison. Unchecked, the need for significance can transform a person into a full-blown ego-maniac, blind with pride and too selfish for the self-sacrifice required for lasting relationships.
  • Love and Connection: Love is what we crave the most, and we often go about getting it in the most interesting of ways. Some people are afraid of being truly known and loved and will often settle for a counterfeit, like “friends” on social media or intimacy with a relative stranger.