The $1 million reason Pat Mesiti wants to change your mind
"I'm a prosperity activist," says Pat Mesiti, author of The $1 Million Reason to Change Your Mind and co-creator of The Millionaire Makers' Series. "Prosperity is not about stuff – the cars and the watches – it's about what the person is on the inside. A lot of people do want to prosper but don't know how. Until you have a dream and a passion, you don't know how to take advantage of opportunities. I'm about creating prosperity in every area of life." And, yes, that includes the cars and the watches.
Pat Mesiti's passion is turning around the lives of people most in need. At a drug rehab centre he worked with in Sydney, he helped graduate 400 boys – an 80% success rate. These men don't spend the rest of their lives as ‘recovering addicts', instead they leave behind the drugs for good and live meaningful lives.
Mesiti self-published his early books, with titles like Attitudes and Altitudes, Dreamers Never Sleep, and Wake Up and Dream. Attitudes and Altitudes sold 100,000 copies. To understand how big that is, bestsellers in Australia are books that sell 10,000 copies or more and most books sell 90 copies.
Despite his succcess, the glue of his life lost its stickiness. "In 2001 my world fell apart," Mesiti told ThinkBIG. "I was suicidal and depressed; I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. The number one reason for suicide is no hope. You can live three to four days without water, you can live 40 days without food, but you can't live a minute without hope."
Mesiti realised he had to help himself before he could give to others. "I had to get my confidence back, get my momentum back. I had to get the head and the heart thinking together. See, you must have the head and the heart in agreement. You can't have two thoughts – one in the head and another in the heart – and get results."
He created a personal growth plan, reading books ("It got me exposed to great thinking when I wasn't thinking too well") and seminars. These days if you catch him without a book in his briefcase, he'll give you $1,000 in cash.
His changed mindset came from his dissatisfaction with his life.
"I think discontent prompts you to grow as a person. When you grow, you realise how much you don't know. It's about being content with where you are but being aware you're capable of something better. The person who thinks they've arrived never got there in the first place."
Another vital lesson he learned: "Choose your friends carefully. The friends around us become a self-fulfilling prophecy – they can see potential and push change. Our relationships drag us down to the level of our self-worth."
Mesiti review
The $1 Million Reason to Change Your Mind is ThinkBIG's Outstanding Book of 2009. Why? It delivers results when it comes to changing people's mindsets from poverty to prosperity. Many people are infected with mind viruses, including the Aussie battler idea and the thinking behind the phrase "Welcome to my humble home." Mesiti cures these viruses through getting you to increase your value before you seek to increase your financial worth. "You need to learn to think like this: who deserves nice things? I do! Who deserves a prosperous family? I do! Who deserves a nice home? I do! Who deserves to wear nice clothes? I do! Who deserves to have a life that is advancing with wealth and increase? I do! You deserve these things!"
After reading The $1 Million Reason, I raised the standards of what I expect for myself. Before, if I wanted something, I'd buy on the basis of price, often settling for less. Now I choose things I want – regardless of price – because I'm worth it. Do I always buy expensive? No. But I do get what I want. If you haven't yet created riches and think your mindset holds you back, this is the book to get. Protect yourself from (mind) viruses this winter (and for life) – get vaccinated today!
How can he teach you to be a millionaire
In 2009, Mesiti published The $1 Million Reason to Change Your Mind and The Millionaire Makers' Series (see the reviews with this article). Mesiti's book shows you how to change your mindset so you'll have a prosperity mindset, while the series gives practical paths to wealth. You can think of it like this: Be + Do = Have. Mesiti's book gives you the Be, and the series teaches you the Do. You end up with the Have.
"The purpose of the Millionaire Makers series is to bring together wealth creation experts to create wealth. Prosperity is not just money, my goal is to create millionaires from the inside out. I wanted [the authors] in The Millionaire Makers' Series to be people with similar values and belief systems to myself. I wanted it to be based on people with a similar heart to succeed."
In The $1 Million Reason, Mesiti tells the story from when he was in an airport. A father and his two girls were at the doughnut shop. The father said, "Girls, you can have any doughnut you want except for the ones on the top shelf." Those top-shelf doughnuts were 20 or 30 cents more expensive than the others. The girls were disappointed, so Mesiti discreetly took the man aside and handed him $20. Why? With a prosperity mindset, investing in memories is the best use for money.
"People need to come up a level. It's about the thinking behind it rather than the act itself. She was a gorgeous girl and why make her unhappy over 30 cents? With the tie" - another story in the book where one of Mesiti's friends challenges him to buy the tie he likes instead of settling for another just because it's cheaper – "the thing was addressing my thinking, which was that I was not worthy of wearing it. I'm not saying you have to buy expensive. It's about the heart behind it, because your income will shrink to your level of your thinking."
Mesiti lists the stages of prosperity, from the point of view of someone who knows they have to work on themselves before they can expect to have:
1. Earn an income. "You can't give what you don't have."
2. Give it away. "You've got to be a giver. Giving is a way to defeat greediness in your life. The moment you give, greed is defeated. Whatever you want more of, you've got to give it away."
3. Invest it. "There's no point earning money if you don't invest it."
4. Harvest it. "You've got to harvest. Harvesting is enjoying the fruits of your life of labour."
Mesiti's bounce back from the brink and success since shows that the most important investment you can make is in yourself. "If you're looking for outside stuff to make you happy on the inside, it will never happen. Be happy with yourself as a person."
