Hey, welcome to our broadcast this morning on money, Christianity, business, and the financial aspects we talk about here. I’m on vacation, taking a little rest and relaxation, as you can probably see behind me. I’m over at the Pacific Ocean in California—Avila Beach, to be exact—where we typically come around the first of the year.
My wife and I take some time to come over here, relax, and I start working on my plans for the year, getting everything fine-tuned. I hope you’re doing the same, because without a plan, without a vision, as the Bible says, the people perish. A better translation of that is that people cast off restraint. They lose the discipline to keep moving forward.
One of the things I want to talk to you about today is this: we don’t know what challenges we’re going to face in the world, in our lives, or in whatever country we’re in. Every year brings challenges. I’ve referenced many times in my broadcasts Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking. One of the things he talks about is that if you change the way you think, you’ll change your world—your world.
Now, the world is the world, and you and I don’t have much control over what goes on in it. But we do control how it affects us. There are a couple of forces I’ve been talking about a lot lately, and those are controlling factors and contributing factors. We all deal with both. There are things that control us, and the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 4 to guard your heart, or your spirit man, because out of it flow the issues of life.
This lines up perfectly with what Norman Vincent Peale talks about. How I approach life determines how I experience life. What’s inside of me is a controlling factor in the business I run, the way I handle my money, and the various components that affect how my life operates. But there are also contributing factors, and most people lose sight of how little power contributing factors actually have.
Contributing factors are things we experience in life that we really have no control over—monetary policy, taxation, sickness and disease, flu bugs going around, things like that. We can’t change those things, but we can change how we react to them, and that will change our world. We have to learn to discern between controlling factors and contributing factors.
Throughout the course of this year, there will be outcomes we have to deal with. But the more powerful force is the controlling factor. What is it that limits me in what I can do? Back in the 1980s, when I was working for a company doing financial work during the Reagan administration, coming out of the Jimmy Carter years, there was a recession. My boss came in one day and said, “We’re not going to participate in the recession.”
I thought that was strange, because the recession was a contributing factor. But he said, “We’re going to make a decision. Someone out there still wants to borrow money, even though the economy isn’t ideal. We’re just going to find that person.” That shift in mindset changed the way we did business. Instead of watching the news and becoming pessimistic, we were actively looking for opportunities.
This is something you and I have to do constantly: evaluate where we are and what we want to achieve. Going back to vision—if we don’t know where we’re going, what our objectives are, what our metrics are, or what we’re trying to accomplish, we won’t know what to do today or where to put our focus.
It amazes me how many people, at least here in the United States, are negatively focused. They need help, but the truth is, you have the power to change your life. You have the power to make your life what you want it to be. But you have to get your focus right, and you have to place yourself in a position where no matter what contributing factor comes your way, you have the mindset, fortitude, and determination to overcome it and find an answer.
Many people don’t believe they have that power within themselves. They’re always looking for an external force or external help. But the way God designed this is that when we set our minds on something, when we focus, answers come. We have to keep ourselves positioned in a place of success, in a place where we believe we can accomplish things.
That puts responsibility back on you and me. Wherever you are right now—whether you’re doing very well financially or struggling—everything comes back to this question: how am I going to handle this? The answers are within us, and that’s an amazing thing.
Years ago, I began training myself to believe there’s an answer to everything. I used to be pessimistic, always focused on problems, always talking about what might go wrong. Then I remember reading a verse in the Bible that made it clear to me: there’s an answer to everything. I started telling myself multiple times a day, “There’s an answer to everything.”
You will never face a problem without an answer. Look for the answer, not the problem. I did this for weeks, then months, and eventually I retrained my thinking. Today, it genuinely bothers me when people only want to talk about problems, because there’s no solution in that. But when I focus on how to overcome the contributing factor I’m facing, it’s amazing how often the answer shows up.
Just last August, I had a situation where I needed a large amount of money. I focused on the question, “Where’s the answer?” After a few days, I realized there was money already set aside that I wasn’t even seeing. I shifted a few things around, took care of it, and moved on. Looking back now, five months later, I never even missed that money.
When you and I train ourselves to focus on the answer to the situation we’re facing, we will find it. That’s what I want to encourage you with as you head into 2026. Have a clear plan. Know what you want to accomplish. Set your mind on the fact that you will do it. Contributing factors may try to hinder you, but the answer is within you.
God has given us that power. The Bible even talks about having the mind of Christ. That’s a deeper subject, but within God’s design, He has enabled mankind to accomplish what we set our minds to. Many people have set their minds on failure—and they’re living it out.
Change the way you think, and you’ll change the world around you. I look forward to talking with you every week this year about contributing factors that help us become successful. Like, comment, subscribe—whatever helps the algorithm find us.
Most of all, I want to encourage you in 2026: you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to. I look forward to seeing you next week. Talk to you soon.
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