RPF0614-End-of-The-Year_Encouragement
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00:00:25.440 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:28.640 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:33.120 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:36.720 | Today, as I record this show, it is the Friday before Christmas 2018.
00:00:42.360 | Specifically, it is Friday, December 1, 2018.
00:00:46.840 | It's 2.20 p.m. as I begin recording this show, in case you need a time stamp.
00:00:56.120 | As we close out this week, I didn't quite know what I wanted to say to you.
00:01:00.160 | I knew I wanted to record a show, and I had a bunch of topics.
00:01:02.760 | I've got all kinds of topics going, series going.
00:01:07.480 | I have no shortage of ideas.
00:01:08.720 | I have outlines prepared.
00:01:09.720 | I have shows already recorded that I could release to you, and yet it didn't feel right,
00:01:15.640 | most of those things.
00:01:16.640 | I thought I was going to do a show today on the deficit and do a, of course, very cheery
00:01:20.880 | end of the year show on the trillion dollar deficit in the United States of America this
00:01:25.160 | year.
00:01:26.160 | That would be cheery right before the end of the year, but I thought, "This is good.
00:01:29.440 | This is useful."
00:01:30.440 | It just didn't feel right.
00:01:33.040 | I just want to turn on the microphone, just share a few simple thoughts with you to hopefully
00:01:37.760 | encourage you.
00:01:39.280 | Perhaps you're on an airplane, going to see family.
00:01:42.400 | Perhaps you're all alone, sitting in your apartment.
00:01:45.620 | Perhaps you're working at your desk over the weekend, feeling sorry for yourself.
00:01:49.800 | Perhaps you're driving along with your children, sleeping in the backseat.
00:01:53.400 | I just thought I wanted to share one simple thought with you.
00:01:58.880 | It's this.
00:02:02.160 | The biggest problems that you and I think about sometimes and worry about have never
00:02:10.600 | been more insoluble.
00:02:16.440 | They've never been more intractable.
00:02:20.720 | They've never been bigger.
00:02:25.680 | And yet, the real problems that you and I face have never been as soluble, as fixable.
00:02:39.240 | There's never been so much hope, so many opportunities, so many resources available to solve the things
00:02:45.160 | that are in front of us.
00:02:47.840 | But in order to experience success in solving those things, we have to turn our attention
00:02:54.460 | away from the macro problems that we can't solve and we can't affect to the things that
00:03:00.640 | we can.
00:03:01.640 | Now, I'm not expressing anything new.
00:03:04.160 | This concept is well-rooted by and well-talked about, well-preached about by many people.
00:03:11.080 | Focus on your circle of influence, not on your circle of concern.
00:03:14.120 | Absolutely.
00:03:15.120 | I'm not saying anything new.
00:03:17.040 | Just struck me in a new way today.
00:03:20.760 | I've long struggled with an addiction to the news.
00:03:25.720 | Perhaps like you, it's something that I have a hard time figuring out what the right way
00:03:32.000 | to handle it is.
00:03:33.000 | Some people say, well, don't ever pay any attention to it.
00:03:34.600 | Some people say, well, it's really important.
00:03:35.760 | And it seems to be a mixture of it.
00:03:37.880 | But oftentimes I've been sucked in by goings on and things like that.
00:03:41.520 | But thankfully, over past months, I've been free of those grips.
00:03:46.400 | I've not paid any attention.
00:03:48.120 | I don't, I've stopped reading news on the internet.
00:03:51.520 | I don't use social media.
00:03:53.400 | I don't have a TV.
00:03:55.240 | So very little has made it under my rock and it's been great.
00:03:59.920 | I felt good.
00:04:00.920 | I've been productive.
00:04:01.920 | It's been wonderful to be freed of that.
00:04:04.280 | Now I had to be a little hardcore to be freed of all that stuff, but it's been great.
00:04:13.520 | And so this afternoon when I wasn't quite sure what to do a show on, I just stopped
00:04:18.400 | for a moment and the place where I'm working right now has a TV.
00:04:21.240 | So I went and turned on the cable news and it was just insane to look at the news of
00:04:29.320 | the day again, Friday before Christmas and talking about war in Syria and secretary of
00:04:36.560 | defense, James Mattis resigning and government shutdown and people arguing and flipped around
00:04:43.000 | the cable news channels.
00:04:44.000 | And it was just insane, insane.
00:04:48.600 | And of course I had prepared this show outline for today to talk about trillion dollar deficits
00:04:52.760 | and deficits.
00:04:53.760 | And I thought, why don't we actually talk about this instead of, you know, a silly shutdown
00:04:58.360 | or a border wall or whatever the news du jour is.
00:05:01.360 | Like, why don't we talk about something that matters, this trillion dollar deficit.
00:05:04.160 | This is unprecedented, unprecedented for the US government to run a trillion dollar deficit
00:05:11.480 | in without there being a war or an economic recession or a crisis of any kind, unprecedented.
00:05:20.600 | And yet we're going to argue about other things.
00:05:26.440 | Now I understand that that's more important to me because of finances.
00:05:28.960 | I'm not saying other things aren't important, but there's the important stuff is, it's just
00:05:33.000 | hardly ever talked about.
00:05:35.000 | And I, anyway, I shut it off and I just, it made me depressed.
00:05:38.240 | And I thought, how do you, how do you get through this?
00:05:45.000 | So here's my observation.
00:05:48.280 | We live in an age of paradox.
00:05:51.800 | The paradox is this, in some ways, things have never been worse.
00:06:01.960 | In some ways, things have never been better.
00:06:04.480 | Example, I'm very concerned about much erosion of liberty and freedom, very concerning to
00:06:13.360 | me.
00:06:14.360 | So in some ways, things have never been worse.
00:06:17.760 | But on the other hand, in the history of mankind, it has never been easier for you and I to
00:06:22.760 | live freely.
00:06:23.760 | And it is right now.
00:06:26.360 | What a paradox where there's simultaneously good and bad extremes.
00:06:35.880 | In some ways, things have never been tougher.
00:06:41.080 | Wealth inequality has never been bigger.
00:06:42.920 | And yet in some ways, things have never been better.
00:06:46.160 | There's never been less poverty than there is right now.
00:06:49.720 | What a funny paradox.
00:06:53.860 | In some ways, you have never been more powerless than you are today.
00:07:04.600 | It's never mattered less whether you opened your mouth and said something.
00:07:08.920 | There's never mattered less if you cast a vote at a ballot box.
00:07:13.120 | And yet in other ways, an individual human has never had more individual power than you
00:07:21.920 | have today.
00:07:25.720 | What a paradox.
00:07:31.320 | And yet what keeps us from making progress in those things that we can control is worry
00:07:36.560 | and concern over things we can't control.
00:07:39.360 | The big problems have never been bigger than they are now, never been more insoluble than
00:07:46.160 | they are now.
00:07:48.080 | And yet you and I have tremendous power to fix the problems in our life.
00:07:56.320 | I want to be a source of solutions.
00:07:57.320 | I want to be a source of encouragement, of insight, of education, just like I tell you
00:08:01.440 | every single day when I start the show.
00:08:05.120 | But I want to focus on things that you can do.
00:08:07.000 | It doesn't mean I want to stay away from big picture things.
00:08:11.720 | You need to be aware of the problems, but I want to always focus on things that are
00:08:15.360 | within reach because there's so much that's within reach that will make a big difference
00:08:20.960 | if you do it and I do it.
00:08:24.080 | And things are simple many times.
00:08:27.560 | Now once again, not all the time.
00:08:31.200 | There's a story that has always struck me and for context, there are a number of trends
00:08:37.280 | that I watch carefully that I'm very concerned about.
00:08:40.360 | And one of the trends that really concerns me is the trend towards suicide in the United
00:08:45.480 | States of America.
00:08:46.680 | It's deeply concerning towards me.
00:08:47.960 | It's an epidemic and it's a tough one because of course, as with any difficult thing, there
00:08:56.640 | are many, many influences for it.
00:08:59.520 | I was just thinking about suicide and preparing.
00:09:03.400 | I want to do this show for you, kind of the state of America, the things I've learned
00:09:07.480 | from traveling around the country for the last five or six months.
00:09:11.280 | And suicide is, of course, there are many factors involved, right?
00:09:18.200 | It's complex and yet in some ways it's simple.
00:09:22.800 | There's a story that's always haunted me.
00:09:24.560 | I guess two stories, but there was a famous story about a suicide note, about somebody
00:09:31.360 | who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.
00:09:32.800 | And a man wrote, when they went and found the suicide note at home, he wrote this.
00:09:38.360 | He says, "I'm walking to the bridge.
00:09:42.200 | If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump."
00:09:47.000 | That was years ago that that happened.
00:09:52.560 | But imagine somebody walking to the Golden Gate Bridge, they wrote a note, said, "I'm
00:09:56.240 | walking to the Golden Gate Bridge.
00:09:58.840 | If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump."
00:10:04.320 | Now that man today is dead.
00:10:11.920 | You figure out why.
00:10:14.120 | There's another story.
00:10:17.720 | There's a man named Kevin Hines who is one of the only, I think, if this is correct,
00:10:23.080 | anyway, one of only a couple of people who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and lived
00:10:27.640 | to tell about it.
00:10:29.480 | And when he tells this story, he jumped off the bridge and he was actually held up by
00:10:35.760 | a sea lion in the water until he was eventually rescued because he was severely injured.
00:10:41.240 | But when he tells this story about wanting to commit suicide, he went to the bridge and
00:10:47.040 | he stood there on the bridge staring at the railing for about 40 minutes or so, trying
00:10:54.400 | to decide whether he was going to jump.
00:10:57.280 | And people would walk by him and ignore him.
00:11:01.320 | And when he tells the story, he says, "You know, if someone had smiled and stopped and
00:11:04.640 | said, 'Are you okay?'
00:11:06.520 | All he wanted to do was to beg them for help and tell them what was going on and ask for
00:11:10.760 | help and he wouldn't have jumped."
00:11:13.680 | But he didn't feel like he had the courage to just ask for help himself.
00:11:20.200 | And you know, somebody did come by and ask him for help, but they asked him to take a
00:11:24.120 | picture for them.
00:11:25.120 | And they just walked away and he thought, "You know, nobody cares about me."
00:11:29.520 | And then he jumped off the bridge.
00:11:33.240 | While he was on his way down, he said, "Wait a second, this is crazy.
00:11:36.840 | I want to live."
00:11:37.840 | But of course, he was hurtling through the air.
00:11:40.960 | And he was significantly injured.
00:11:42.280 | Today he's a public speaker and he speaks about suicide.
00:11:46.520 | But those stories, do they not haunt you?
00:11:50.280 | You think, could a life be saved by something as simple as a smile?
00:11:59.240 | In some cases, yes.
00:12:04.040 | And of course, in many cases, no.
00:12:05.680 | It's far more complex.
00:12:08.040 | The evil goes far deeper.
00:12:10.240 | The suicidal tendency has a far greater grip on somebody's life.
00:12:15.640 | So solutions are not super simple, but many of them are simple.
00:12:25.880 | I guess in summary, what I want to say is, in the next year, I want to continue to give
00:12:31.960 | you the most useful, actionable advice that I can that will help you.
00:12:39.300 | With the real challenge of building financial freedom in your life.
00:12:43.640 | And if you'll put that advice into practice, and if I'll put my own advice into practice,
00:12:49.880 | then I think you can build up a significantly easier path through the problems that we're
00:12:58.600 | going to face in the next year, the next decade, the next 40, 50 years.
00:13:04.800 | Those problems are going to be immense.
00:13:08.080 | And there are no easy solutions to the big problems, at least that I can find.
00:13:18.040 | They probably would have been put in place already.
00:13:20.020 | People are not stupid.
00:13:23.080 | But there are solutions for you.
00:13:29.460 | There are things that you can do.
00:13:34.320 | So as you go into the Christmas holidays, or you enjoy the time for the new year, don't
00:13:40.520 | miss the opportunities that are in front of you to smile at somebody, to give somebody
00:13:48.120 | a hug, to love somebody, to encourage somebody.
00:13:52.440 | Don't miss the opportunities that are in front of you to pay off your debts, or pay off the
00:13:57.660 | debt of another person.
00:14:01.000 | Clean up your own mess, fix your income, cut your expenses.
00:14:05.700 | Don't miss the opportunities that are in front of you to invest wisely, avoid catastrophe,
00:14:13.200 | buy insurance.
00:14:16.920 | Those things are doable.
00:14:18.400 | They're simple, but they're doable.
00:14:22.360 | So don't ignore those things.
00:14:25.120 | Don't miss the fact that you can reach out to your neighbor, you can reach out to your
00:14:30.240 | brother, to your sister.
00:14:32.560 | You can build community where you live so that as the community across the United States
00:14:38.080 | continues to fracture, segment, balkanize, continues to be torn asunder, your own community
00:14:47.980 | can be brought together.
00:14:51.240 | Don't miss the simple things.
00:14:54.500 | Take action on those, and then as the big problems develop, I think you can be well
00:15:02.680 | protected from those things.
00:15:07.960 | As I considered the emotions of this afternoon, just the things I was thinking about, I often
00:15:12.240 | think in terms of songs.
00:15:16.440 | The song that came to me was the song called "Just One Voice."
00:15:21.520 | The lyrics say, "Just one voice, singing in the darkness.
00:15:26.080 | All it takes is one voice, singing so they hear what's on your mind.
00:15:30.240 | When you look around, you'll find there's more than one voice.
00:15:34.160 | Singing in the darkness, joining with your one voice.
00:15:37.640 | Each and every note another octave, hands are joined and fear is unlocked.
00:15:41.800 | If only one voice would start it on its own, we need just one voice facing the unknown.
00:15:48.800 | And that one voice would never be alone."
00:15:51.440 | I was thinking about that song and I was reflecting on Christmas and it's a very important holiday
00:15:58.200 | for billions of people all around the world.
00:16:02.780 | For many reasons, it's especially an important holiday for Christians.
00:16:06.960 | And I just was thinking about that song and I was thinking about it in light of the Christian
00:16:12.400 | holiday.
00:16:13.400 | If you ever think about the story of Christianity, it's one of the most improbable stories of
00:16:20.400 | all time.
00:16:23.160 | It's vanishingly improbable what the world looks like today.
00:16:31.440 | If you were to go back about 4,000 years and you were to look at a group of people who
00:16:39.040 | come from one relatively small family, a man named Abraham, who had a son named Isaac,
00:16:50.280 | who had a son named Jacob, who married two women and had 12 sons, one of whom was sold
00:16:59.480 | as a slave because his brothers didn't like him.
00:17:03.800 | Then that son was taken to Egypt.
00:17:07.520 | He became a servant and then he was accused of sexual assault, falsely accused of sexual
00:17:11.200 | assault.
00:17:12.200 | He was tossed into prison.
00:17:13.200 | He was in prison, what was it, 12 years, something like that, 12 years.
00:17:19.760 | And then the pharaoh of Egypt has a dream in the night that really bothers him, two
00:17:27.360 | dreams about some fat cows and some skinny cows and a dream about, what was it, the wheat
00:17:37.160 | and corn.
00:17:38.160 | I have to go back and look at those dreams.
00:17:39.960 | But he has a dream in the night and nobody can interpret his dreams for him.
00:17:46.080 | So then a dude who had his dreams previously interpreted for him says, "Hey, guess what?
00:17:52.840 | I knew this guy in prison who interpreted one of my dreams when the cupbearer and I
00:17:57.960 | were there and both of the interpretations, the interpretation for the cupbearer and the
00:18:03.160 | interpretation for the steward, both of those interpretations are right.
00:18:06.080 | We're dealing with weird stuff, dreams, interpretations."
00:18:09.200 | So then Pharaoh goes down, sends for this dude in the prison, brings him out, tells
00:18:13.280 | him the dream and the dude interprets the dream.
00:18:17.200 | Pharaoh takes this guy and makes him second in command over all of Egypt, thus saving
00:18:25.720 | the Egyptian people from a time of seven years of starvation.
00:18:31.200 | And then this dude, his family shows up and he goes and gets his family and brings them
00:18:34.760 | all to Egypt, thus saving his family.
00:18:38.040 | Improbable enough yet?
00:18:41.640 | Now at this point in time, the people start to grow.
00:18:46.960 | And I don't know about you, but one of the things that we often have a hard time understanding
00:18:51.160 | is what that ancient Egyptian culture was like.
00:18:56.800 | When I went to Egypt years ago, it totally rocked my world.
00:19:00.680 | We have this modern concept that there were primitive civilizations in the past.
00:19:10.440 | And this is based upon the evolutionary mind frame that basically controls almost all historical
00:19:15.240 | interpretation in today's world, that the people of old days were primitive and today
00:19:19.020 | were very modern and advanced.
00:19:20.640 | Well certainly, that's true in some cases, but it's not true in all cases.
00:19:24.640 | And we have this concept that past civilizations were just primitive, living in the cave after
00:19:31.440 | all.
00:19:32.440 | And we don't have any context of how incredibly sophisticated many past civilizations were.
00:19:38.800 | If you want to be disabused of that idea of primitivism, go to Egypt, stand in the temples,
00:19:45.400 | study the society, it's incredible.
00:19:47.400 | Anyway, so here's this guy, Joseph, and then you have a time where these people, all his
00:19:56.520 | siblings are protected and raised up for a while, and then they become slaves for what
00:20:01.800 | was it, 400 years, I think.
00:20:05.360 | So for 400 years, the descendants of Jacob and Abraham and Isaac, they're slaves, they're
00:20:14.520 | destroyed, they're beat on, they're slaves.
00:20:16.600 | And for 400 years, God says nothing, God does nothing, God is completely silent.
00:20:24.560 | Until all of a sudden, this guy named Moses comes along, who as a baby was going to be
00:20:31.240 | killed until he was found by the princess.
00:20:36.160 | And so he comes along and he leads the people, this weak people, out of slavery without fighting.
00:20:46.560 | Fighting a battle themselves.
00:20:48.640 | And they go from poverty to wealth because the Egyptians are so eager to get rid of them
00:20:55.320 | that when they're asked them for their gold, the Egyptians give it to them.
00:20:58.960 | That's very interesting.
00:21:00.520 | If you study the debate, the historical debate around the Exodus and the archaeological evidence
00:21:07.200 | for the Exodus and the lack of evidence for the Exodus, really interesting debate.
00:21:11.000 | I'll skip that for now.
00:21:12.000 | But one of the things that is one of the clues that has to be looked into is that particular
00:21:16.240 | fact that you have a bunch of people that go from slaves to having all kinds of wealth
00:21:21.560 | because their slave masters were so eager to get rid of them.
00:21:26.760 | Then you have all of this history from about 1500 BC, you have the growth of the empire,
00:21:31.760 | you have all the prophets, you have the growth of the Jewish empire, King David about 1000
00:21:37.800 | BC.
00:21:38.800 | Then you start to have all of these prophets, then you have these people then become slaves
00:21:42.240 | again, go into exile.
00:21:47.120 | And then fast forward through all the prophets, through all the exile, then you have another
00:21:51.140 | time when nothing, nothing, God doesn't do anything for 400 years.
00:22:00.880 | Doesn't speak, doesn't move, there are no recorded miracles.
00:22:06.200 | Just a group of people who are worshiping a God who is silent.
00:22:18.560 | And then in one little place, a tiny little country called Israel, there's a boy born
00:22:31.480 | to a teenage girl and a very ordinary middle class or lower class, I don't know, peasant,
00:22:40.920 | guy named Joseph and Mary.
00:22:43.400 | And you have all of these incredible ideas of angelic visitations coming to Joseph and
00:22:50.400 | Mary and all of a sudden this guy is born, his name is Jesus.
00:22:55.280 | And for 30 years the man does nothing out of the ordinary.
00:23:03.160 | Works in his father's carpentry shop, lives an ordinary life for 30 years.
00:23:13.720 | And then for about three and a half years, three to four years, something like that,
00:23:18.520 | goes on a ministry in one small little area and pursues a ministry of exorcism and healings
00:23:25.480 | and preaching.
00:23:28.480 | Spent the vast majority of his time with 12 men.
00:23:35.840 | In today's world we would call them boys, teenagers, with 12 teenage guys, perhaps one,
00:23:43.800 | perhaps Peter was almost 20 or somewhere around 20 or so.
00:23:47.360 | But he spends three years with 12 teenagers and then dies.
00:23:56.800 | Is put to death as a criminal on a garbage heap between a thief and a murderer.
00:24:05.760 | Is put to death under false pretenses because of spouting religious heresy against the government
00:24:13.520 | control of that time.
00:24:17.920 | His entire people are in shambles.
00:24:20.920 | Not even his own family believes in him, his blood brothers, his mom.
00:24:27.000 | And then three days later something happens.
00:24:30.960 | And those 12 men who were utterly devastated by the death of the person they thought was
00:24:38.480 | going to save them from all of the oppression and the slavery that they were under, everything
00:24:46.280 | changed.
00:24:48.720 | You know the story from there.
00:24:51.680 | So then fast forward to today, you look back over the last two millennia of time and the
00:24:58.000 | world has been on fire since then over the claims and the life and the existence of that
00:25:08.720 | one man, Jesus.
00:25:14.040 | You cannot trace the arc of history without reckoning with him.
00:25:23.720 | And yet can you think of a more improbable event?
00:25:27.480 | Can you think of a more unlikely circumstance?
00:25:31.400 | Now there've been a lot of unlikely things that have happened in human history, but for
00:25:35.160 | the entire world to be set on fire over the life, the birth, the death, the resurrection
00:25:47.640 | of one man from two millennia ago.
00:25:52.760 | And today the debates rage, the scholarship rages, the wars rage, the violence rages,
00:26:00.240 | the love goes and rages, peace, war, everything around the world.
00:26:08.480 | The most influential one, that one man.
00:26:12.260 | And then today, of course, Christmas, people remember his birth, one of the most improbable
00:26:17.520 | events recorded in history due to the circumstances of that birth, all coalescing around something
00:26:29.360 | that I'm convinced nobody really knew about during his life.
00:26:33.440 | Today, you know, the circumstances of the birth of Christ are well known and well documented,
00:26:38.800 | well discussed all around the world.
00:26:40.240 | I'm personally persuaded that very few of the disciples knew anything about the circumstances
00:26:47.040 | of the birth of Jesus.
00:26:50.240 | Really the only place that all of the circumstances that today are so well known is recorded in
00:26:54.760 | the book of Luke.
00:26:56.000 | And the book of Luke, of course, was written by someone who never personally knew Jesus,
00:27:03.520 | was not one of the 12 disciples, was not even a Jew, but was a Syrian.
00:27:09.880 | How's that word?
00:27:10.880 | How's that for today with the US troops pulling out of Syria?
00:27:13.840 | Was a Syrian physician, a Syrian medical doctor who later came and researched all of the details
00:27:23.520 | surrounding the birth of Jesus, spoke to his mother, spoke to his family members, and then
00:27:31.440 | recorded all those things and created, as he says, even in the beginning of the book
00:27:35.000 | of Luke, an orderly history of the account of the life of Christ, which is where today
00:27:39.260 | we get all that information from.
00:27:40.720 | I don't think any, it's my own opinion.
00:27:42.520 | I don't think anybody knew about the birth of Jesus during his lifetime in the sense
00:27:50.000 | of they didn't know about the details that today are so commonly referred to as the Christmas
00:27:54.680 | story.
00:27:55.680 | Now, of course, we do have some of the information recorded in the book of Matthew, so perhaps
00:28:00.320 | I'm wrong about that.
00:28:02.240 | But regardless, the point is, fast forward 2,000 years and in a few days, the majority
00:28:10.360 | of the world's population will observe a day, a holiday, recording the birth of one man
00:28:19.200 | a couple thousand years ago, and that's not even the day that was the actual birth, which
00:28:24.080 | is its own unique history.
00:28:27.160 | The most likely day of the actual birth day of Jesus, of course, being late September,
00:28:31.880 | early October.
00:28:32.960 | So to bring that to that, my point in all that, forgive me if I went on too long, the
00:28:37.720 | point of all that is to say one man.
00:28:40.960 | Now, of course, I would say not to diminish the deity of Christ, which I would happily
00:28:47.880 | and easily talk about, one God, but one man.
00:28:52.160 | And if you look back in the story, you could see again and again, one man, one man, one
00:28:56.720 | man, one woman, one man, one person.
00:29:02.600 | And the actions of one person having an effect through human history.
00:29:08.960 | Now, most of the time, those individual people are never recorded.
00:29:16.160 | They never show up in a history book, and yet one person can make an impact, can make
00:29:21.560 | an effect.
00:29:22.760 | So I went long there.
00:29:25.800 | It's just such a fascinating story to me.
00:29:29.480 | And I think about it a lot at Christmas, just thinking about the impact of one man.
00:29:37.040 | And at one tiny point in history, one tiny nation out of a tiny, endlessly persecuted
00:29:46.200 | group of people, and yet look at the world today.
00:29:50.480 | Now, to be clear, I'm not Jesus and you're not either.
00:29:55.880 | So I don't want anything to do with that kind of idea.
00:30:01.640 | Just simply that one voice matters, yours.
00:30:07.160 | Here's my commitment to you.
00:30:08.160 | This next year, I will work very diligently to give you everything I can to help you make
00:30:13.640 | an impact where you are.
00:30:16.560 | And I'll do my best to make an impact where I am.
00:30:18.800 | I'm not going to worry about the big problems, except to be aware of them and then try to
00:30:22.280 | help you know what you could do for yourself.
00:30:24.680 | But if you do that and I do that, and your brother, your sister, your neighbor, your
00:30:30.640 | dad, your mom, your children do that, in time, things can change.
00:30:36.840 | Things in the short term never change as much as we want them to, but in the long term,
00:30:41.840 | things can change far more than we would like.
00:30:45.840 | So I'll close with, I'll play you that song.
00:30:49.000 | I'll close simply with that song.
00:30:50.400 | I hope you'll enjoy it.
00:30:51.400 | Merry Christmas to you.
00:30:52.400 | I'll be back with you on Monday, January 7th for an exciting new year of Radical Personal
00:30:58.060 | Finance.
00:31:02.060 | Just one voice singing in the darkness.
00:31:13.180 | All it takes is one voice singing so they hear what's on your mind.
00:31:22.720 | And when you look around, you'll find there's more than one voice singing in the darkness.
00:31:31.600 | Singing in the darkness, joining with your one voice.
00:31:43.560 | Each and every note, another octave, hands are joined and fears unlocked.
00:31:49.600 | If only one voice would start out on its own, we need just one voice.
00:32:00.040 | Facing the unknown and then that one voice would never be alone.
00:32:07.920 | It takes that one, one voice.
00:32:15.680 | Just one voice singing in the darkness.
00:32:26.440 | All it takes is one voice.
00:32:31.120 | Shout it out and let it ring.
00:32:39.280 | Just one voice.
00:32:43.840 | It takes that one voice and everyone will see.
00:33:05.920 | Once I stood in the light with my head bowed low.
00:33:30.720 | I looked in the darkness as black as could be.
00:33:58.560 | Hold my hand all the way.
00:34:05.560 | Every hour, every day.
00:34:10.560 | From here to the great unknown.
00:34:21.560 | Take my hand.
00:34:28.560 | Let me stand where no one stands alone.
00:34:43.560 | Like a king, I may live in a palace so tall.
00:34:52.560 | With great riches to call on my own.
00:35:02.560 | But I don't know a thing in this whole wide world.
00:35:13.560 | That's worse than being alone.
00:35:22.560 | Hold my hand all the way.
00:35:27.560 | Every hour, every day.
00:35:32.560 | From here to the great unknown.
00:35:43.560 | Take my hand.
00:35:48.560 | Let me stand where no one stands alone.
00:36:03.560 | Take my hand.
00:36:08.560 | Let me stand where no one stands alone.
00:36:34.560 | [APPLAUSE]
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