David Meltzer is a world-renowned speaker, author, and entrepreneur whose life mission is to empower over one billion people to be happy. He’s been named a Top 100 Business Coach who regularly speaks at the world’s biggest business, sports, tech, and motivational events. In this episode, David talks about accumulating – and losing – massive wealth, what that experience taught him, how he maximizes every second of his calendar, and how he lives in gratitude each day.
Why David had such an unhealthy relationship with money:
“At a very young age I grew up in a scarce world of ‘not enough’ as a victim of finance. And so, I was programmed that if I could be rich, if I could buy my mom a house and a car, then everything in my life would be okay because I had this unconditional love for my mom, and my siblings, and my family, and my community because my mom was so extraordinary.”
How bad his obsession with money got:
“My identity was so closely tied to my bank account that I’m embarrassed to tell you that when I was worth over $100 million, if my bank account went up $100, I would feel good. But if it went down $100, I would feel bad about myself.
How making – and losing – so much money has changed David:
“I still, to this day, practice humility. I practice reminding, remembering, and recollecting that there is something bigger than me that protects me, promotes me, and loves me. … I always had wisdom. I’m a money-making machine – always have been – but I didn’t have the faith.”
How important is it to have a rock-solid internal foundation:
“There’s a gap that you’re talking about and it’s especially critical for the youth today. And it’s this amplified gap from social media where the awareness and exposure between ‘I am’ and ‘This is what I want people to think I am.’ And the distance of resistance that’s created between these two things is extremely interfering with your potential, your intelligence, your intuition, but especially your inspiration.”
How he gets the most out of each day:
“One of my (core) practices is sleep. I have seven hours a day (through a sleep coach) that I am one of the world’s greatest sleepers. I recover better than most people and I access information from a higher source to utilize the next day. And I have an unwinding routine at night – I always say, ‘My tomorrow starts today at 9:00pm when I unwind to make sure that I’m plateauing and growing at 4:00am when I wake up every day by reverse engineering those seven hours.”
David’s goal in life and how he’s working towards it every day:
“My meaning is to expand my self-image in divine time and divine direction to live my life productively, excessively, and graciously. And these daily practices are simple. They are: know my what, know my who, know my how, and now I know my now. Prioritization is the antidote to procrastination and feeling overwhelmed; so instead of searching for my why, I apply my why every day to who I am, not who I want people to think I am.”
David thoroughly studies his calendar:
“I study my calendar. Studying means to me that I pay attention to – and I align – my intention. Which is: is what I ‘m doing, saying, thinking, feeling, and believing aligned with where I want to be or better? So, I break it down to negotiable time and non-negotiable time. So, sleep is non-negotiable, and so are family, faith, and finance. Then, the (rest of the day) is negotiable time, which I break down into planned activities and unplanned activities. So, I’ll actually study where my free time is.”