September 15, 2025 • 50 mins
Right Thinking with Steve Coplon.
This week's show is called "Having Something in Your Back Pocket." Tune in and hear Steve talk about how having something to fall back on will help you keep the good fight going.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
This week's show is called "Having Something in Your Back Pocket." Tune in and hear Steve talk about how having something to fall back on will help you keep the good fight going.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
There must be lies burning brighter somewhere. Got to be
birds lie higher in the sky or blue. Good morning,
Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm your host,
Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in. Let's have
(00:37):
a great day. Good morning everybody. I hope that you're
having a wonderful day, and when you listen to this,
I pray that I'm having a wonderful day too, and
I know that I will be. It's a little bit
of a time warp for me because I recorded this
(00:59):
show back in July, on July the fifteenth, actually pre
recorded it. I usually don't pre record, but as you
hear this today live, I will be in Baker City, Oregon,
with returning citizens in Powder River Correctional Facility, delivering the
(01:27):
message of right thinking, foundation of love, encouragement, hope, and
providing tools. And I've been preparing for that presentation with
the tools and the printouts that I'm going to take
with me, trying to give something to the men that
will help them as they're released. And so I just
(01:49):
say thank you for all of you that have listened
to me, been listening to me, and given me this
opportunity to go out and serve and to try to
help other people. So thank you, thank you very much.
Last week we had Dave richards on that he followed
up on the show that I had done on choices,
(02:09):
and it was in my mind it was a very
very wonderful conversation. Further in the conversational choices and in fact,
you know, Dave says Steve, that's really your sweet spot,
because choices is really what makes or breaks people's lives
to be successful or not experienced levels of a better
life that we're all trying to reach a certain kind
(02:32):
of enjoyment of life, and so forth, we all suffer through,
we all persevere. Sometimes people feel like giving up and quitting,
but right thinking foundation is here for all of us,
myself and all of you that are going through hardships
and people that want to be there to help those
(02:54):
that are going through hardships. And so today I've chosen
a theme for today's show that it is called having
something in your back pocket, and I've got some stories
to share with you today. I've got some experiences that
I've gone through that I hope will motivate you to
(03:14):
do as much as you can so that you can
have something to fall back on and keep the good
fight going. So with that said, let's just go into
today's biblical theme that I want to present to you.
It comes from Matthew twenty five, verse twenty three. His
Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.
(03:36):
You have been faithful over a few things. I will
make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy
of your lord. That is absolutely beautiful scripture. And where
it's coming from, and Matthew there it's that the wealthy landowner,
the Master they called him when you read this on
(03:58):
different levels. The Master's I obviously Jesus Christ, but in
the parable it's a wealthy landover and he's going to
take a journey. And so he brings his three servants
to him, and he gives the first servant five talents,
which is a very large unit of money. I've researched it,
(04:19):
and some people say a talent could be like close to,
you know, millions of dollars in today's economy. This is
a couple thousand years ago. But he gave him five talents.
He gave the second two talents, and he gave the
third one talent. And the point here is that the
scripture has a lot to do with the fact that
we all have different abilities and gifts, and the Master
(04:43):
gave each of them a certain amount that was based
on their abilities, and it's not value in anyone it's
just entrusting them with something that they should be capable
of within their own abilities. Well, he came back. The
servant that he had given the five talents to reported
(05:05):
back to him and he said, Master, I have invested
the money and I've doubled it now and we have
ten talents. And the Master said to him what I
just quoted. You know, you have been well done, good
and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things.
I will make you ruler over many things. So he
did well. And then the man that he gave only
two talents to, he doubled it. He also came back
(05:28):
with two more than what he was given, and the
Master said the same exact thing to him. But the
third that he gave the one talent to, he buried
the talent because he was fearful of the Master, because
he felt that the Master was a harsh master. He
was afraid of him, and the last thing in the
(05:49):
world that he wanted to do was risk anything and
have it lose and have to face the Master. After
he lost the talent that he was given, he thought
that he was doing well with his talent. He buried it,
he kept it in safe keeping, and when the Master
came back, he said, here's the talent that you told
me to hold on to for you. Here it is well.
(06:11):
The Master was very very irate about this, and and
he basically chastised him royally and sent him down his way.
He said, he called him, you know, an unproductive servant
because he took no risk, because he he didn't use
his talents. I've said in other episodes, we can't be
just lukewarm. We have to either be you know, all
(06:32):
in or just say no. But but these are some
of the lessons that we're trying to work toward. This
particular parable though, it's very very important because it goes
deeper into other things. The gifts that we have from
the Lord, they're not just money there. They are things
such as our skills, our abilities, connections, social positions, education experiences.
(06:55):
Someone who uses their gift to teach a preschool and
a church preschool program, for example, is using their gifts.
The Lord wants us each to use our gifts. And
so that's my lead in for today's show is to
it's okay to take a little bit of risk, it's
okay to move forward. And it ties into all the
(07:16):
other messages that we've been giving as far as trust
in the Lord. When you really trust the Lord and
you're being obedient and you're getting it right with the Lord,
and you're becoming a more and more of a righteous person,
then you can just move forth in faith. And right
before it came on the air today, I was telling Chuck,
that's the producer, that it's really neat about this time
(07:38):
warp that I'm in because here I am on Saturday,
July the fifteenth, and in a couple of weeks July
the thirty first, on a Monday, I'll be at an
Oregon And I have to tell you, for all of
you that have ever thought about doing something, going after
something big, going after something big, dreaming big, I'm telling
(07:59):
you fifty years in the making for me to be
able to go all the way across the United States
from Norfolk, Virginia, all the way to Oregon. One of
my favorite songs my whole life was Otis Redding. He's saying,
sitting on the dock of the bay died the year
that I graduated high school in nineteen sixty nine, and
it's three thousand miles I've roamed. Well, this journey for
(08:20):
me is eight thousand miles. I've roamed just to make
this dock my home. What I'm trying to say to
you is that it's emotional for me to know that
I have persevered. I have tried. I've tried to develop
my skills and my abilities. I've tried to associate with
the right people. I've tried to do it all with
integrity and honor my good name the things that I
(08:42):
try to try to teach. And I see myself right now,
I'm leaving in four days to go on the trip.
It's almost like a dream to see myself all the
way out there standing in front of another group in
prison that I've done hundreds of times in sharing my
love and encouragement to the men I'm going to meet.
And it's a blessing for me to be able to
(09:02):
do that. And I thank each and every one of
you that are paying attention to the work of Right
Thinking Foundation for the love and the support and the
encouragement that you give to me, But keep going after
that dream that you have and you'll get it. And
what I said that Chuck was, this is really interesting.
This is kind of like faith. The people that I'll
be talking to in the future for all these broadcasts,
(09:25):
I don't know who they are. I just know that
they're there, that they're going to be there, and that
I'm putting putting my messages out for a future people
that will stumble onto or find out about this broadcast
that y'all are listening to right now. So for that, again,
I say thank you. What I want to talk about today,
(09:45):
what I want to talk about today is the importance
of financial stability and living in a way that you
discipline yourself so that you can not do things that
are just totally wasteful without purpose, so that you will
(10:06):
be in a better position to deal with life when
some of the some of the curve balls come at you,
when some of the hardships come your way, when some
of the unexpected things that you have no control come
at you, the job layoff, the health problem, the accident,
the divorce, whatever it may be. And I'm not just
(10:28):
focused in my life on the hardships. There is so
much beauty in this life. I embrace this life. I
love living in this life. But we need to prepare
for that rainy day. And a person who's just living
day by day hand and mouth will not be able
(10:50):
to face the pressures of something very very difficult tragic
that comes along, and they'll put them into a a
panic mode. It'll put them into just reaching for straws,
grabbing for a solution, looking for a quick answer. And
in all the years that I've been doing personal financial counseling,
it's not just the five and a half years I've
(11:11):
been in prisons. I've been doing it. I've been doing
it since I was eighteen nineteen years old working on
a personal budgets with people. And then I became an
accountant graduate at VCU and nineteen seventy I had to
think I dropped out of college twice. But my point
is that I have developed counseling and the financial area
(11:36):
that will help people to be able to better handle
their financial life in order to be able to move
forward in life and have a better life. And today's show,
I'm going to tell you a story in a minute
that's just a profound story that was shared with me.
(11:56):
But we want to be all to acquire things called assets,
things of value. An asset doesn't have to be money.
It could be it could be something that you've got.
A good reputation. A good reputation, a good name is
probably the best asset you could ever have, because if
(12:19):
you need help sometimes and you've got good credit, that's
a good asset. Credit is a powerful asset, and credit
sims from honoring your commitments. I've taught that in my
seminars on credit. But if you have good credit and
something happens to you and you're in a bind, in
(12:40):
a tough place, there will be people out there. It
could be family, friends, associates, employers, banks, whatever, that will
be there to help you if they trust that you
will honor your commitment. But right now, it's to not
(13:00):
have to rely on credit. If you have accumulated enough
stability in your life to have your own things of
value that you can use when you need to. And
I've got I've got a family that I want to
tell you a little story about that just came up today,
(13:21):
and I won't use any names. It's confidential when you
share things with me. But there's a family and the
son goes through a lot of financial difficulty and is
a wonderful father, a loving husband, has kids, and his
finances though are always very very difficult, no savings, not
(13:46):
good credit works hard has a lot of personal situations
in the family that he's as much of a man
as anybody that I know for dealing with his situation
family health crisises and so forth that he just deals with.
There was a there was a truck repossessed and there
(14:09):
was no money to get it back. So it's a
family trauma. It goes into all sorts of relationships that
are involved in within this family. And so the point
is is that there was no resources. There were no
i'll say war was I'm not sure the grammar. There
(14:30):
aren't any resources available within this person's own possessions, bank
accounts or money under a pillow or whatever to go
get his car back struck back. So other family members,
you know, are getting involved. But so here's what I
wanted to tell you my life coming from what they
(14:52):
call a broken home. And what's what's kind of tragic
is is that nineteen fifty eight, when when my parents
went through when I was seven years old, there weren't
as many that we know of broken homes. All the
neighbors loved me and took care of me, had me
over for a lot of meals and things because I
(15:12):
was a latch key kid. But in today's world, I
think that there are more families that are not in
a good solid family unit. It's more the norm to
not have two parents living at home raising kids. I
think there's more single parent families in America than there
(15:33):
are two parent families. We can do a fact check.
If somebody wants to check that out, let me know
the answer, please. But what I'm getting at is from
seven years old, I was a latch key kid, which
meant that my mother was a sales girl at Lerner's
department store. She caught a bus and went down to
the department store every day to work, and she worked saturdays.
(15:56):
And we were very poor and relied on alimony, and
she got a little child support and I underlined little,
And there were many many days that she didn't have
bus fare. And I had a little bit of money
from allowance that my dad might give that he did
(16:17):
get me, not might. I say might, because sometimes I
rejected receiving the allowance because if I didn't write a
letter once every two weeks to my father out of state.
He withheld my allowance for that period, so it was
kind of like I got disciplined to write a letter
so that I could get an allowance. And I got
older and decided that he needed the money more than me.
(16:38):
And I've told my testimony about my dad on earlier shows.
He's going to be ninety four on August the fourth
in a couple of days, and I sent him a
jar of I got one from my birthday from my
daughter in Oregon, dark chocolate. It's a gourmet kind of thing.
It's dark. It's a sauce for ice cream. It's dark
chocolate with sea salt caramel, and it's incredible. My dad's
(17:04):
got a sweet tooth like me. So I sent it
to him and he called me this morning to thank me.
So I love my dad and we've gone through years
and years of relationship building, which it takes sometimes. But
since I was a little boy, I've always had to
fend for myself, and I wore hand me down clothes.
I had a cousin that was a year older, and
he gave me, gave me his clothes for years and years,
(17:25):
and my mother was a sales girl, like I said,
and she didn't have bus fare, and sometimes I had
a little money laying around and she would borrow it
from me. But my mother would come home after work
every day and she kept a change pers so she'd
always have bus fare. And when I was eight years old,
I got interested in coin collecting, and today's story, my
(17:48):
first story is about my coin collection and how that
coin collection literally saved my life on numerous occasions because
I've fought to survive financially and different things, unexpected surgeries
where I had no money and whatever. And I created
(18:11):
an asset for myself at a young age that had
a good monetary value and I was able to leverage,
which means use that put it up for collateral or
whatever in my whole life. And so at eight years old,
I got for a birthday present a subscription to a
(18:31):
newspaper that came out weekly for two years called coin World,
and it also covered paper money as well, but it
was a thick, thick newspaper about the size of the
Wall Street Journal, and it was all about numismatics as
a name for coin collecting. Also it was all about
money coins and what I really loved about it. One
(18:55):
of the main reasons I got into it was all
countries have their own currency for the most part, some share,
but money is usually stamped or printed with a famous
historical person within that country. And you can learn a
lot of history. And I love history and I love
(19:15):
to travel. You can learn a lot if you study coins.
Whenever I go on a vacation somewhere to a foreign country,
I'll keep a little bit of money from that country
and just a baggy or something and throw it into
my collection so that my grandkids someday. That's one of
the disappointments in life, though it seems like sometimes what
(19:37):
I think is going to be valuable to the next generation.
As far as comic books and coins and things. They
may they may not have any interest, but I hope
they do. There'll always be, I believe someone to come
along that wants to know more about history. It's going
to love those coins. It's gonna love those old baseball cards.
But anyway, I started going through my mother's coins because
(20:01):
I was reading Coin World and collecting coins and and
and really studying it. I would work jobs all the time,
cutting grass, weeding gardens, doing whatever. And then I became
a paper boy. But the bottom line is is I
started collecting coins, and every night I went through my
mother's change purse to look for coins that I needed
(20:22):
to put into the coin book albums that I was collecting. Well,
my favorite coins are the standing Liberty and the winged Mercury.
On the mercury dime, it's probably foreign everybody listening, but
the dime that we have, it's the Roosevelt dime. President
(20:43):
Roosevelt is on the dime. But the mercury dime is
the uh, the Roman mythology, uh, winged mercury, mercury, And
I'm not gonna tell you what mercury is, the mythology,
mythological god of Go see Wonder Woman. You'll learn more
of that kind of stuff. One of my favorite movies ever, phenomenal.
(21:04):
But in studying coins, Lady Liberty, though, is my favorite
favorite coin, and she's appeared on many, many different coin issues,
but my favorite one is on the half dollar, the
fifty cent piece. And wow, I went through my mother's
(21:26):
change perse in nineteen fifty nine sixty right in those years,
and she had a half dollar in there. That was
a nineteen twenty one d half dollar. And if you
study coins. A coin is valued if you try to
sell it. Let me say this, I don't believe that
you ever get money out of a coin collection when
(21:48):
you try to sell it much because the collectors they're
not going to pay you a very good amount, and
so it's a it's really a misleading type of a value.
But it's always worth its face value in America because
the government guarantees the solvereignty of our money. So if
you got a fifty cent piece, it's going to be
worth fifty cent in America. It will always be I
(22:08):
have faith in America. But that coin, they only had
two hundred and thirty two thousand of them, meant it.
And just to put it in perspective, many times there's
millions of coins mint in a certain coin, and it
was the most valuable one, and according to the books
where you get value, it could have been worth as
much as one hundred and twenty five dollars. Well, I
(22:30):
told my mother that I didn't steal the coin from
my mother. She just said, well, just give me fifty cent.
She said, you can't have it unless you replace it
because it's my bus fare. So I gave her fifty
cent and to this day. That's my most valuable coin
that I have in my collection. It's my most treasured coin.
But that coin collection that I diligently kept, it got
to where my father started giving me gifts on my
(22:52):
birthdays of proof sets that are minute coins in a
special way that have never been touched and they're enclosed
in a certain kind of a cellophene sealed. And when
I was in high school, probably fourteen or fifteen years old,
my coin collection was valued at the time, probably never
get it out if I tried to sell it, but
(23:13):
it was valued at about twenty five hundred to three
thousand dollars. And here's the lesson that I'm trying to
give you. That was my first real asset that I
ever acquired in my life, outside of my own personality
and things of that nature. My first monetary asset of value.
And there were times when I was struggling, struggling a
(23:38):
whole lot, especially in my college years when I had
dropped out of college a few times and was kind
of searching. But however bad things got for me. I
always knew that if I have to, I can sell
somebody my coin collection. Because I knew a lot of
people that knew I had a coin collection, and they
(23:59):
always made me some offers. They were nobody was gonna
give me a real value for it, but some of
ere give me a whole lot more than what the
face value was. And I could have easily got a
thousand or fifteen hundre dollars from my coin collection when
I was in those early years. But here's what it
did for me. When your backs against the wall and
you're losing hope that you're going to be able to
(24:20):
get through whatever crisis you're going through, and if if
a lot of you that are listening, well, let me
say it different. I believe that I believe that many
of you that are listening can relate to what I'm
trying to tell you. I have been out there without
a job, having medical issues where I'd have to have
a surgery or something, had my motorcycle where I couldn't
(24:42):
get it out of the shop because I didn't have
the money to pay for it. Whatever, struggling, struggling, you know,
and a lot of people think this is what we
all really go through. But there are some people that
they don't let this happen to them. They plan better
next week. We're gonna have a guest. His name's Willy Butler,
(25:02):
and he is a financial planner consultant, and he has
a podcast, a streaming podcast on the internet, and he
understands what I'm talking about now, because what his show
is going to be about, I'll put in the announcement
right now for that. He is gonna talk with me
about trying to help you build a solid financial future
(25:25):
when you feel like it might be next to impossible
to get through your crisis. So tune in next week
for Willy Butler. You're gonna love Willie. But what I
want to get back to is, have you ever been
in a position where you feel like nobody's there to
help you, where you don't have any more options, where
it's just never gonna happen, and you're pretty much just
(25:46):
accepting that and giving up and turning to the proverbial
bottle or something else just to kind of give you
some kind of of a boost so that you don't
have to deal with your crisis. Well, let me tell
you right thinking foundation is don't quit, plan ahead, it
will get better. That's my life motto here, And I'm
(26:07):
telling you that when you have something in your back pocket,
that's of value. It's yours. It's not having asked anybody else.
You want something that is your very own, that has
a value, because that will give you confidence to keep
the good fight going and not give up. And I
want to tell you that coin collection, at least fifteen
(26:28):
times to the course of my life, I have known
that I may have to use that coin collection to
sell it, or to borrow against it, or use it
as collateral. Itch means put something up like at a
pawn shop. Stay away from pawnshops. They're incredibly expensive and
it's a game you're not going to win. If you
can't get it out, they're not going to give you
anything close to value for what you let them hold.
(26:50):
Because if you're that desperate where you got to get
money from a pawnshop and you think, well, I'm gonna
come pick up my wife's diamond ring in two weeks
when I get this deal finished, you don't get the
deal finished where they got your diamond ring for one
hundred and fifty dollars loan. So don't do this. But
what I'm getting at is you need assets in your life.
You need to spend your money in a way that
(27:12):
is productive. Working for you. Like in the parable the
Lord rewarded those that were resourceful, that took a little risk.
He wants you to do that. It's good to work
and invest your money wisely. So what I'm saying to
you right now, though, is if you have something that
you can fall back on, it will give you a
(27:34):
confidence that I'm not destitute. I'm still standing, I'm on
my feet, i can still keep trying. And so I
have a very good friend, and his name is Jim
Gilday and his wife Ann, and these are two of
the loveliest people that I've ever known. They celebrated their
fiftieth anniversary a couple months ago. I've known Jim through
(27:57):
business business. He worked for the City of Norfolk and
uh the Planning Department, and and I was down there
a lot doing development deals back in the eighties, in
the nineties decades, I guess, but uh I did. I
did a lot of things with the City of Norfolk,
and Jim Gilday was one of the people that worked
(28:17):
in the Planning department and I got to know him.
Another gentleman. There was my main point of contact. But
I knew Jim and I've always liked Jim, and we've
had lots of good conversations and and right when he retired,
he started coming to YMCA all the time. And then
we really started getting to know each other better. And
we started going on walks every now and then, and
(28:39):
we went for this one walk in my neighborhood one day,
and uh, he's a really really good person. And I
told him the story about my coin collection. And the
last the last part about the coin collection, I'm moving
to the story that Jim told me that I'm going
to share with you that's so profound is recently. Is
a year ago I needed money, very very badly, and
(29:04):
my father, who helped me, encouraged me and helped me,
gave me proofsets and things. I didn't want to take
money from my father he offered, but he did say, well,
how about if I loan you money and if you
can't pay me back, I'll take the coin collection or
different parts of it. So I had a couple thousand
dollars of the state quarters they put out a series
(29:26):
ten fifteen years ago of every three months they put
out a commemorative quarter with a state and the state
motto on the back of each quarter. And so I
bought rolls and rolls of those as an investment, with
with the thinking that hey, I'm just going to put
these in my collection and someday I'll give them to
my grandkids. Another thing, I apologize, Hey, I'm going to
introduce the story with Jim Gildat, but let me tell
(29:48):
you this because I think it's really going deeper for me.
My grandmother, her name was Bubby. She died in about
nineteen sixty five. Every year we had a family reunion
and she gave out silver dollars to all the grandkids.
And they were about at the time they were like
I had like fifty six first cousins and second cousins,
(30:09):
so there were many of us. But my grandmother, the
gift that we got was a silver dollar, and at
one time I had about had about fifteen or twenty
of her silver dollars. I got them from other people
sometimes too, and they went all the way back to
(30:29):
dates like eighteen seventy six and eighteen eighty seven and whatever.
They were wonderful. Well, I want to tell you, I
toll you I made a lot of mistakes in my life.
One of my mistakes was when I was eleven twelve
thirteen years old. In summertime, we played a lot of baseball.
My buddies would come over and wake me up and say,
let's go bowling. And I didn't have money to go bowling.
(30:52):
So I took my silver dollars and spend a lot
of them. And I look back now and go, man,
I wish i'd still have those silver dollars. So I
spent a lot of my coins that I used to
have on frivolous things, bowling and different things. But you
know what, hey, I was working hard as a kid.
I went bowling, I had a good time. I learned
how to handle my money. Might have been a bad decision,
(31:13):
but having something of your own is wonderful. Okay. So
let me tell you, though, a story that I want
to share with you that on that walk with Jim Gilday,
This story about having something in your back pocket that
you can have that is yours, that gives you hope
(31:33):
to carry on. And I called Jim up a couple
days ago and he was he was going on a
family reunion I think it is for five or six
days with his wife. I would have had him on
the show today for this show, this particular theme I'd
already scheduled, and that's why I called him. I said, hey, Jim,
will you give me five or ten minutes and tell
(31:55):
me that story again, because that was an incredibly powerful story.
And he said yeah, So on the phone a couple
of nights ago, we talked for an hour. But he
is such a wonderful person. He took notes on this,
and he wanted me to have his notes, and instead
of just telling me the story so that I could
kind of give you the guts of the story, he
(32:18):
gave me some notes. And I'm going to share this
with you now without any editing or any further conversation
until after I've read it. But so please just let
me give it to you. His notes are approximately twelve
points in each of us paragraph. So here's the story.
(32:40):
And Jim's retired and he's in his early to mid
seventies right now. And he said that he had a
friend that was about when he was about fourteen years old,
and they were Explorer scouts, boy scout kind of thing,
and they were both in school between the eighth grade
and when they become freshman in high school. The year
(33:02):
was nineteen fifty six or so, is what he says
in his notes, twelve boys from Norfolk, Virginia were able
to sign up for a two week hiking trip at
the Philmont Scout Ranch in Northern New Mexico nineteen fifty six.
Northern New Mexico from Virginia. That's a long way. I'm
(33:25):
going to stop and stick to the script here and
come back afterwards, because I could elaborate on this every paragraph.
It was a put together group of boys. Each knew
only one to four of the other boys. There were
fourteen of them that he said were in this group. However,
the adult leader had most likely volunteered to the local
Scouting council and volunteered for this assignment. My friend was
(33:50):
not an explorer post. He was not in an explorer post,
but he was led to this man that I'm going
to tell you about. When I say aye, I'm talking
about Jim. And when he says my friend, that's his
friend that went on this trip with him. Lieutenant Colonel
John M. Wright was the leader. There were several breaking
(34:12):
the ice overnights that they had hiking in the Shenandoor
National Park along the Appalachian Trail and other park trails
that were there. Colonel Wright, for whatever reason, was basically
a quote here and noun leader with his troop and
his group of men here young men. However, it turned
(34:35):
out that fourteen years earlier, so we're talking about nineteen
forty two, Colonel Wright had been captured by the Japanese
and the Philippines, and he had survived the extended Baton
death March two, and he became a prisoner of war
with the Japanese and was put into a war camp. Subsequently,
(35:00):
the prisoners of war were loaded and basically heard it,
into the whole of a cargo ship to be transported
to prisoner of war camps in Japan. Colonel Wright spoke
little of that experience that he had survived, or the
or the rest of the war. However, at least once
(35:23):
during these two Philmont weeks, when they were in New
Mexico hiking, he spoke of the strategy and the survival
pack that he and a paired up prisoner made with
each other. They were handed one canteen of water to
share over the transit to Japan for what was a
(35:46):
trip of unknown duration. Colonel Wright shared with his group
the part that he shared with his fellow pow. They
would not begin to drink the war from their canteen,
no matter how thirsty they would get during the voyage.
(36:08):
Others consumed their water until there was none left and
no more was distributed. My friend remembers as clear as
a bill Colonel Right's comment that some significant portion of
the prisoners did not survive the journey once they had
(36:31):
consumed their water and lost all hope. The phrase, he
remembers Colonel Rights saying softly, they went mad. The lesson
was clear, take priority steps to assure hope, whatever the situation,
(36:56):
and you will be more promising with a chance of success,
no matter how challenging it may be. The year nineteen
fifty six was approximately one halfway through Colonel Wright's career.
My friend eventually lost track of Colonel Right, but remembers
(37:20):
reading that a General John M. Wright commanded the first
Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam about nineteen seventy. How many
people other than my friend did Colonel Wright so strongly
influenced during his career, and aside at least in the
(37:43):
mid fifties, the slogan for Philmont Ranch was come as
a boy, leave as a man with fifty Let me
get this last part done here. I okay, I got
(38:03):
the note now, and this is the last paragraph of
my friend Jim's notes that he gave me. This was
very important. The colonel took them on hikes when they're
trying to make these young boys become men, and what
he said to them was walk for fifty minutes, do
not stop, do not stop, do not give in. Do
(38:25):
not give in for fifty minutes, and we will take
a ten minute rest. Colonel Wright taught Jim and the
others at this camp as young men, had to discipline
themselves and had to keep moving forward, and how to
survive basically, and that's why the expression he was instrumental.
And they came to camp as boys and they left
(38:47):
as men. Okay, it was hard for me, and I
apologize not making any comments while I was reading that story,
but I'll make a few now. My friend Jim has
carried this story with him for sixty years. And when
we walk that day around my neighborhood and I shared,
(39:08):
I shared the concept of having assets, something to fall
back in your back pocket. How the coin collection has
always been something that made me feel like I had
achieved something, that I had some success, that I had
something that I could fall back on, because sometimes the
world you cannot identify who is there. That's one of
the things about the world. It's very difficult. Sometimes you
(39:32):
just don't see or believe that there's anybody out there
that cares about you, that wants to help you and
all of you that I'm speaking to when you move
forward in your life and get through hardships, or when
you're trying to teach your children lessons. A lot of
people that listen to my show are not going through
specific hardships right now. They are mentoring other people that
(39:52):
are going through hardships, and I thank them for listening
to my show and giving me some of their comments
and insights that helped me get new things that I
I can share with people. I just want to be
there to help people find better ways to move on
with their lives and stabilize. But the theme here is
if you've got something in your back pocket, it will
give you hope and encouragement, self reliance. It'll give you
(40:14):
this confidence that I'm still standing, I'm not gone yet,
I'm still fighting. Yeah. You know. One of the things
that I'm a karate master and I developed a wounded
animal philosophy. One of the most dangerous animals in the
world is a lion that's wounded in a cave, with
(40:37):
its back up against the wall, with its pride around him.
You do not want to try to pet a lion
that's been wounded in a cave. Yeah, So the thing
is you learn to honk her down and learn to
go into your deeper inner self. And a little comment
that I'm going to give you is, but don't stay
(40:57):
inside yourself, go straight up to the world, and then
he will give you that strength that you're looking for.
With that said, I want to thank Jim for inspiring
me with the story that he gave me these notes
on that I had not expected he would do that.
So I just want to speak directly to Jim for
a second. Jim, you are just a fine, fine man,
(41:22):
and what you've shared through me today with our listeners,
I believe will inspire many many people for years to come.
Just like you said to me, you can't add up
the number of people that Colonel Wright might have talked
to in all the different camps that he led and
all the different associations he had with men under his command.
(41:43):
But what I'm trying to say here is thank you, Jim,
thank you, and I look forward to seeing you when
you get back from your trip and I get back
from mine. Listeners, I do a lot of shows with
different people that I bring on to try to help
encourage you and motivate you. And I've done a couple
(42:05):
shows with Don Green, the executive director of the Napoleon
Hill Foundation, a nonprofit whose purpose is to help make
the world a better place in which to live. And
we did a whole show that I would encourage you
to go back to and listen to on the Mastermind Group.
Don Green, executive director of Napoleon Hill Foundation, speaking on
(42:25):
the Mastermind Group. And one of the things that I
always say is that you know, Right Thinking Foundation, even
though it's a final education, a financial education program, it's
not just about money. In fact, it's only twenty five percent,
give or take about money. It's really seventy five percent
about persevering, not quitting, surrounding yourself with the right people,
(42:49):
making good decisions. Our associations in life will make or
break us who we choose to hang out with. And
so I gave a whole show with Dave Richards on
the concept of quality and relationships and what is quality
and our parents want us to become a quality person
and have quality friends. All of the shows on Right
(43:11):
Thinking are all geared with the same type of messages
that I'm trying to communicate to you. And so today
we've covered a little scripture, I've told you a couple
of stories, and so let me let me do some
more with you. I just want to tell you that
(43:32):
if you learn how to handle your finances in ways
that are geared toward thinking about the future, thinking about
having some reserves, thinking about having something for a rainy day,
if you live like that, you won't be in a
(43:55):
crisis mode as much. And that's the whole point of
Thinking Foundation. The program is based on the premise that
if a person is under financial stress, he or she
will make bad decisions. A person that has been incarcerated
and is making bad decisions has a very high chance
that he or she will recidivate. The program teaches an
(44:17):
overall awareness of how money works in a person's life
and provides tools that assist them as they learn to
think and plan ahead, making right decisions, reducing the amount
of stress in their lives, and not reverting back to
the old ways of thinking that resulted in their incarceration.
Let me share something with you. There's a national statistic
(44:42):
that I learned five years ago. If a person has
been incarcerated and they come out and they're not working,
they don't have a job, they're really trying to re
establish themselves, reacclimate into society, come back into society. If
they go out on job interviews, the average is seven
(45:06):
rejections over a two month period. They will go back
to their old ways that they know that might have
been illegal, committed crime. Because there's a fact of life.
That fact of life is if you have a baby
that's hungry, you're going to find a way to feed
(45:26):
that baby because you're not gonna watch your baby starve.
I will, you will, We all will. So why don't
we do it the right way? Why don't we take
the time to really think about how to do things?
And one of the one of the things I want
to share with you that I'll bring this up over
and over again until you finally take me up on
(45:49):
it and start doing it. If you know your purpose,
if you know what you really want, I've say it
over and over again. Napoleon Hill, The Secrets to success
are very simple. It's only two things. Know your desire
and never quit. When I was reading Jim's notes here
when he got to the part about the men that
(46:13):
wouldn't drink their water so that they would have something,
and Victor Frankel that I've spoken a lot about on
my first show in Choices in particular. In other shows,
it's the same thing. It's just the will, the purpose
to survive. These stories that you hear about people that
(46:35):
have survived and persevered, they're real, they're true, they're uplifting,
they're motivating. Become that person, but have a clear focus
on what you want. Let me just share this with
you right now. I've trained many people and had to
budget their money, and I teach a discipline. I teach
(46:56):
you to say, from every paycheck, put a little bit aside,
pay yourself first. Things of that nature. I know people
that are such good people and they want to survive.
They want to be stable, they want to be there
for their family, they want to be somebody that can
(47:19):
help other people. But they just have been beaten down
so much through their circumstances. And then when they start
finally getting on their feet, and I teach them the
importance of savings so that you can have a little reserve,
a little nest egg to fall back on, so that
you won't be dependent upon other people, just in case
there's no one else that will come to your aid.
(47:42):
And they save twenty five to fifty dollars whatever the
amount is that they can afford out of every paycheck,
and they put it in the cookie jar, they put
it in their savings account wherever they put it, and
over a period of time they starting to accumulate money.
They get thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars or something. If
they don't know what their real purpose is, they are
(48:04):
going to spend it on the wrong thing if they
make a bad decision, because they're doing it right, but
they're going down the wrong way. If they're saving money,
they're being disciplined, but they're saving it and they don't
really know what their goals are. They don't really know
the direction that they want to go. Something might come
(48:26):
along that they think is the right thing, and they
might take that money and spend it, and then within
a short time they realize they never should have done that.
It's not what I should be doing. So it's more
important to understand what your goals are and what your
purpose is, and then your money will be managed effectively
(48:47):
because you will discipline yourself. You will control your own destiny,
you will have your goals. You will start substituting things
of value with how you spend your money to accumulate wealth.
A very good example of a biblical story that really
illustrates this is when Joseph was in prison and the
(49:07):
pharaoh had dreams one night, and they knew that Joseph
could interpret dreams, and the pharaoh dreamt that there were
seven really healthy cows on the bank of the nile,
and seven thin scrangly cows scrony cows came up and
ate them. And then he fell back asleep, and he
had another dream of a stalk of grain with ears
of grain, or a stalk with grain on it, and
(49:27):
there were seven really healthy grains, and then another stalk
that had seven unhealthy, the seven unhealthy, eight the seven healthy.
And this meant, according to Joseph, that we're gonna have
seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and
he advised the pharaoh to plan for that, and they
put into storehouses enough food of the plenty to last
(49:48):
them for the seven years and they weathered the storm.
That's what I'm trying to teach you to today. Have
a plan so that you can have an alternative to
how you're gonna face your hardship. I hope you got
the message today. I hope you enjoyed it, hope and
motivated you. Next week we're gonna have Willy Butler on
the show, and Willie is going to be just wonderful
to listen to. You're gonna learn a lot from Willie.
(50:08):
And with that said, God bless each one of you,
and just have a great day. Thanks for listening to
Right Thinking with Steve Copland. I'll look forward to being
with you again next week, and remember, don't quit plan ahead.
It will get better. God bless you and have a
great week.
There must be lies burning brighter somewhere. Got to be
birds lie higher in the sky or blue. Good morning,
Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm your host,
Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in. Let's have
(00:37):
a great day. Good morning everybody. I hope that you're
having a wonderful day, and when you listen to this,
I pray that I'm having a wonderful day too, and
I know that I will be. It's a little bit
of a time warp for me because I recorded this
(00:59):
show back in July, on July the fifteenth, actually pre
recorded it. I usually don't pre record, but as you
hear this today live, I will be in Baker City, Oregon,
with returning citizens in Powder River Correctional Facility, delivering the
(01:27):
message of right thinking, foundation of love, encouragement, hope, and
providing tools. And I've been preparing for that presentation with
the tools and the printouts that I'm going to take
with me, trying to give something to the men that
will help them as they're released. And so I just
(01:49):
say thank you for all of you that have listened
to me, been listening to me, and given me this
opportunity to go out and serve and to try to
help other people. So thank you, thank you very much.
Last week we had Dave richards on that he followed
up on the show that I had done on choices,
(02:09):
and it was in my mind it was a very
very wonderful conversation. Further in the conversational choices and in fact,
you know, Dave says Steve, that's really your sweet spot,
because choices is really what makes or breaks people's lives
to be successful or not experienced levels of a better
life that we're all trying to reach a certain kind
(02:32):
of enjoyment of life, and so forth, we all suffer through,
we all persevere. Sometimes people feel like giving up and quitting,
but right thinking foundation is here for all of us,
myself and all of you that are going through hardships
and people that want to be there to help those
(02:54):
that are going through hardships. And so today I've chosen
a theme for today's show that it is called having
something in your back pocket, and I've got some stories
to share with you today. I've got some experiences that
I've gone through that I hope will motivate you to
(03:14):
do as much as you can so that you can
have something to fall back on and keep the good
fight going. So with that said, let's just go into
today's biblical theme that I want to present to you.
It comes from Matthew twenty five, verse twenty three. His
Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.
(03:36):
You have been faithful over a few things. I will
make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy
of your lord. That is absolutely beautiful scripture. And where
it's coming from, and Matthew there it's that the wealthy landowner,
the Master they called him when you read this on
(03:58):
different levels. The Master's I obviously Jesus Christ, but in
the parable it's a wealthy landover and he's going to
take a journey. And so he brings his three servants
to him, and he gives the first servant five talents,
which is a very large unit of money. I've researched it,
(04:19):
and some people say a talent could be like close to,
you know, millions of dollars in today's economy. This is
a couple thousand years ago. But he gave him five talents.
He gave the second two talents, and he gave the
third one talent. And the point here is that the
scripture has a lot to do with the fact that
we all have different abilities and gifts, and the Master
(04:43):
gave each of them a certain amount that was based
on their abilities, and it's not value in anyone it's
just entrusting them with something that they should be capable
of within their own abilities. Well, he came back. The
servant that he had given the five talents to reported
(05:05):
back to him and he said, Master, I have invested
the money and I've doubled it now and we have
ten talents. And the Master said to him what I
just quoted. You know, you have been well done, good
and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things.
I will make you ruler over many things. So he
did well. And then the man that he gave only
two talents to, he doubled it. He also came back
(05:28):
with two more than what he was given, and the
Master said the same exact thing to him. But the
third that he gave the one talent to, he buried
the talent because he was fearful of the Master, because
he felt that the Master was a harsh master. He
was afraid of him, and the last thing in the
(05:49):
world that he wanted to do was risk anything and
have it lose and have to face the Master. After
he lost the talent that he was given, he thought
that he was doing well with his talent. He buried it,
he kept it in safe keeping, and when the Master
came back, he said, here's the talent that you told
me to hold on to for you. Here it is well.
(06:11):
The Master was very very irate about this, and and
he basically chastised him royally and sent him down his way.
He said, he called him, you know, an unproductive servant
because he took no risk, because he he didn't use
his talents. I've said in other episodes, we can't be
just lukewarm. We have to either be you know, all
(06:32):
in or just say no. But but these are some
of the lessons that we're trying to work toward. This
particular parable though, it's very very important because it goes
deeper into other things. The gifts that we have from
the Lord, they're not just money there. They are things
such as our skills, our abilities, connections, social positions, education experiences.
(06:55):
Someone who uses their gift to teach a preschool and
a church preschool program, for example, is using their gifts.
The Lord wants us each to use our gifts. And
so that's my lead in for today's show is to
it's okay to take a little bit of risk, it's
okay to move forward. And it ties into all the
(07:16):
other messages that we've been giving as far as trust
in the Lord. When you really trust the Lord and
you're being obedient and you're getting it right with the Lord,
and you're becoming a more and more of a righteous person,
then you can just move forth in faith. And right
before it came on the air today, I was telling Chuck,
that's the producer, that it's really neat about this time
(07:38):
warp that I'm in because here I am on Saturday,
July the fifteenth, and in a couple of weeks July
the thirty first, on a Monday, I'll be at an
Oregon And I have to tell you, for all of
you that have ever thought about doing something, going after
something big, going after something big, dreaming big, I'm telling
(07:59):
you fifty years in the making for me to be
able to go all the way across the United States
from Norfolk, Virginia, all the way to Oregon. One of
my favorite songs my whole life was Otis Redding. He's saying,
sitting on the dock of the bay died the year
that I graduated high school in nineteen sixty nine, and
it's three thousand miles I've roamed. Well, this journey for
(08:20):
me is eight thousand miles. I've roamed just to make
this dock my home. What I'm trying to say to
you is that it's emotional for me to know that
I have persevered. I have tried. I've tried to develop
my skills and my abilities. I've tried to associate with
the right people. I've tried to do it all with
integrity and honor my good name the things that I
(08:42):
try to try to teach. And I see myself right now,
I'm leaving in four days to go on the trip.
It's almost like a dream to see myself all the
way out there standing in front of another group in
prison that I've done hundreds of times in sharing my
love and encouragement to the men I'm going to meet.
And it's a blessing for me to be able to
(09:02):
do that. And I thank each and every one of
you that are paying attention to the work of Right
Thinking Foundation for the love and the support and the
encouragement that you give to me, But keep going after
that dream that you have and you'll get it. And
what I said that Chuck was, this is really interesting.
This is kind of like faith. The people that I'll
be talking to in the future for all these broadcasts,
(09:25):
I don't know who they are. I just know that
they're there, that they're going to be there, and that
I'm putting putting my messages out for a future people
that will stumble onto or find out about this broadcast
that y'all are listening to right now. So for that, again,
I say thank you. What I want to talk about today,
(09:45):
what I want to talk about today is the importance
of financial stability and living in a way that you
discipline yourself so that you can not do things that
are just totally wasteful without purpose, so that you will
(10:06):
be in a better position to deal with life when
some of the some of the curve balls come at you,
when some of the hardships come your way, when some
of the unexpected things that you have no control come
at you, the job layoff, the health problem, the accident,
the divorce, whatever it may be. And I'm not just
(10:28):
focused in my life on the hardships. There is so
much beauty in this life. I embrace this life. I
love living in this life. But we need to prepare
for that rainy day. And a person who's just living
day by day hand and mouth will not be able
(10:50):
to face the pressures of something very very difficult tragic
that comes along, and they'll put them into a a
panic mode. It'll put them into just reaching for straws,
grabbing for a solution, looking for a quick answer. And
in all the years that I've been doing personal financial counseling,
it's not just the five and a half years I've
(11:11):
been in prisons. I've been doing it. I've been doing
it since I was eighteen nineteen years old working on
a personal budgets with people. And then I became an
accountant graduate at VCU and nineteen seventy I had to
think I dropped out of college twice. But my point
is that I have developed counseling and the financial area
(11:36):
that will help people to be able to better handle
their financial life in order to be able to move
forward in life and have a better life. And today's show,
I'm going to tell you a story in a minute
that's just a profound story that was shared with me.
(11:56):
But we want to be all to acquire things called assets,
things of value. An asset doesn't have to be money.
It could be it could be something that you've got.
A good reputation. A good reputation, a good name is
probably the best asset you could ever have, because if
(12:19):
you need help sometimes and you've got good credit, that's
a good asset. Credit is a powerful asset, and credit
sims from honoring your commitments. I've taught that in my
seminars on credit. But if you have good credit and
something happens to you and you're in a bind, in
(12:40):
a tough place, there will be people out there. It
could be family, friends, associates, employers, banks, whatever, that will
be there to help you if they trust that you
will honor your commitment. But right now, it's to not
(13:00):
have to rely on credit. If you have accumulated enough
stability in your life to have your own things of
value that you can use when you need to. And
I've got I've got a family that I want to
tell you a little story about that just came up today,
(13:21):
and I won't use any names. It's confidential when you
share things with me. But there's a family and the
son goes through a lot of financial difficulty and is
a wonderful father, a loving husband, has kids, and his
finances though are always very very difficult, no savings, not
(13:46):
good credit works hard has a lot of personal situations
in the family that he's as much of a man
as anybody that I know for dealing with his situation
family health crisises and so forth that he just deals with.
There was a there was a truck repossessed and there
(14:09):
was no money to get it back. So it's a
family trauma. It goes into all sorts of relationships that
are involved in within this family. And so the point
is is that there was no resources. There were no
i'll say war was I'm not sure the grammar. There
(14:30):
aren't any resources available within this person's own possessions, bank
accounts or money under a pillow or whatever to go
get his car back struck back. So other family members,
you know, are getting involved. But so here's what I
wanted to tell you my life coming from what they
(14:52):
call a broken home. And what's what's kind of tragic
is is that nineteen fifty eight, when when my parents
went through when I was seven years old, there weren't
as many that we know of broken homes. All the
neighbors loved me and took care of me, had me
over for a lot of meals and things because I
(15:12):
was a latch key kid. But in today's world, I
think that there are more families that are not in
a good solid family unit. It's more the norm to
not have two parents living at home raising kids. I
think there's more single parent families in America than there
(15:33):
are two parent families. We can do a fact check.
If somebody wants to check that out, let me know
the answer, please. But what I'm getting at is from
seven years old, I was a latch key kid, which
meant that my mother was a sales girl at Lerner's
department store. She caught a bus and went down to
the department store every day to work, and she worked saturdays.
(15:56):
And we were very poor and relied on alimony, and
she got a little child support and I underlined little,
And there were many many days that she didn't have
bus fare. And I had a little bit of money
from allowance that my dad might give that he did
(16:17):
get me, not might. I say might, because sometimes I
rejected receiving the allowance because if I didn't write a
letter once every two weeks to my father out of state.
He withheld my allowance for that period, so it was
kind of like I got disciplined to write a letter
so that I could get an allowance. And I got
older and decided that he needed the money more than me.
(16:38):
And I've told my testimony about my dad on earlier shows.
He's going to be ninety four on August the fourth
in a couple of days, and I sent him a
jar of I got one from my birthday from my
daughter in Oregon, dark chocolate. It's a gourmet kind of thing.
It's dark. It's a sauce for ice cream. It's dark
chocolate with sea salt caramel, and it's incredible. My dad's
(17:04):
got a sweet tooth like me. So I sent it
to him and he called me this morning to thank me.
So I love my dad and we've gone through years
and years of relationship building, which it takes sometimes. But
since I was a little boy, I've always had to
fend for myself, and I wore hand me down clothes.
I had a cousin that was a year older, and
he gave me, gave me his clothes for years and years,
(17:25):
and my mother was a sales girl, like I said,
and she didn't have bus fare, and sometimes I had
a little money laying around and she would borrow it
from me. But my mother would come home after work
every day and she kept a change pers so she'd
always have bus fare. And when I was eight years old,
I got interested in coin collecting, and today's story, my
(17:48):
first story is about my coin collection and how that
coin collection literally saved my life on numerous occasions because
I've fought to survive financially and different things, unexpected surgeries
where I had no money and whatever. And I created
(18:11):
an asset for myself at a young age that had
a good monetary value and I was able to leverage,
which means use that put it up for collateral or
whatever in my whole life. And so at eight years old,
I got for a birthday present a subscription to a
(18:31):
newspaper that came out weekly for two years called coin World,
and it also covered paper money as well, but it
was a thick, thick newspaper about the size of the
Wall Street Journal, and it was all about numismatics as
a name for coin collecting. Also it was all about
money coins and what I really loved about it. One
(18:55):
of the main reasons I got into it was all
countries have their own currency for the most part, some share,
but money is usually stamped or printed with a famous
historical person within that country. And you can learn a
lot of history. And I love history and I love
(19:15):
to travel. You can learn a lot if you study coins.
Whenever I go on a vacation somewhere to a foreign country,
I'll keep a little bit of money from that country
and just a baggy or something and throw it into
my collection so that my grandkids someday. That's one of
the disappointments in life, though it seems like sometimes what
(19:37):
I think is going to be valuable to the next generation.
As far as comic books and coins and things. They
may they may not have any interest, but I hope
they do. There'll always be, I believe someone to come
along that wants to know more about history. It's going
to love those coins. It's gonna love those old baseball cards.
But anyway, I started going through my mother's coins because
(20:01):
I was reading Coin World and collecting coins and and
and really studying it. I would work jobs all the time,
cutting grass, weeding gardens, doing whatever. And then I became
a paper boy. But the bottom line is is I
started collecting coins, and every night I went through my
mother's change purse to look for coins that I needed
(20:22):
to put into the coin book albums that I was collecting. Well,
my favorite coins are the standing Liberty and the winged Mercury.
On the mercury dime, it's probably foreign everybody listening, but
the dime that we have, it's the Roosevelt dime. President
(20:43):
Roosevelt is on the dime. But the mercury dime is
the uh, the Roman mythology, uh, winged mercury, mercury, And
I'm not gonna tell you what mercury is, the mythology,
mythological god of Go see Wonder Woman. You'll learn more
of that kind of stuff. One of my favorite movies ever, phenomenal.
(21:04):
But in studying coins, Lady Liberty, though, is my favorite
favorite coin, and she's appeared on many, many different coin issues,
but my favorite one is on the half dollar, the
fifty cent piece. And wow, I went through my mother's
(21:26):
change perse in nineteen fifty nine sixty right in those years,
and she had a half dollar in there. That was
a nineteen twenty one d half dollar. And if you
study coins. A coin is valued if you try to
sell it. Let me say this, I don't believe that
you ever get money out of a coin collection when
(21:48):
you try to sell it much because the collectors they're
not going to pay you a very good amount, and
so it's a it's really a misleading type of a value.
But it's always worth its face value in America because
the government guarantees the solvereignty of our money. So if
you got a fifty cent piece, it's going to be
worth fifty cent in America. It will always be I
(22:08):
have faith in America. But that coin, they only had
two hundred and thirty two thousand of them, meant it.
And just to put it in perspective, many times there's
millions of coins mint in a certain coin, and it
was the most valuable one, and according to the books
where you get value, it could have been worth as
much as one hundred and twenty five dollars. Well, I
(22:30):
told my mother that I didn't steal the coin from
my mother. She just said, well, just give me fifty cent.
She said, you can't have it unless you replace it
because it's my bus fare. So I gave her fifty
cent and to this day. That's my most valuable coin
that I have in my collection. It's my most treasured coin.
But that coin collection that I diligently kept, it got
to where my father started giving me gifts on my
(22:52):
birthdays of proof sets that are minute coins in a
special way that have never been touched and they're enclosed
in a certain kind of a cellophene sealed. And when
I was in high school, probably fourteen or fifteen years old,
my coin collection was valued at the time, probably never
get it out if I tried to sell it, but
(23:13):
it was valued at about twenty five hundred to three
thousand dollars. And here's the lesson that I'm trying to
give you. That was my first real asset that I
ever acquired in my life, outside of my own personality
and things of that nature. My first monetary asset of value.
And there were times when I was struggling, struggling a
(23:38):
whole lot, especially in my college years when I had
dropped out of college a few times and was kind
of searching. But however bad things got for me. I
always knew that if I have to, I can sell
somebody my coin collection. Because I knew a lot of
people that knew I had a coin collection, and they
(23:59):
always made me some offers. They were nobody was gonna
give me a real value for it, but some of
ere give me a whole lot more than what the
face value was. And I could have easily got a
thousand or fifteen hundre dollars from my coin collection when
I was in those early years. But here's what it
did for me. When your backs against the wall and
you're losing hope that you're going to be able to
(24:20):
get through whatever crisis you're going through, and if if
a lot of you that are listening, well, let me
say it different. I believe that I believe that many
of you that are listening can relate to what I'm
trying to tell you. I have been out there without
a job, having medical issues where I'd have to have
a surgery or something, had my motorcycle where I couldn't
(24:42):
get it out of the shop because I didn't have
the money to pay for it. Whatever, struggling, struggling, you know,
and a lot of people think this is what we
all really go through. But there are some people that
they don't let this happen to them. They plan better
next week. We're gonna have a guest. His name's Willy Butler,
(25:02):
and he is a financial planner consultant, and he has
a podcast, a streaming podcast on the internet, and he
understands what I'm talking about now, because what his show
is going to be about, I'll put in the announcement
right now for that. He is gonna talk with me
about trying to help you build a solid financial future
(25:25):
when you feel like it might be next to impossible
to get through your crisis. So tune in next week
for Willy Butler. You're gonna love Willie. But what I
want to get back to is, have you ever been
in a position where you feel like nobody's there to
help you, where you don't have any more options, where
it's just never gonna happen, and you're pretty much just
(25:46):
accepting that and giving up and turning to the proverbial
bottle or something else just to kind of give you
some kind of of a boost so that you don't
have to deal with your crisis. Well, let me tell
you right thinking foundation is don't quit, plan ahead, it
will get better. That's my life motto here, And I'm
(26:07):
telling you that when you have something in your back pocket,
that's of value. It's yours. It's not having asked anybody else.
You want something that is your very own, that has
a value, because that will give you confidence to keep
the good fight going and not give up. And I
want to tell you that coin collection, at least fifteen
(26:28):
times to the course of my life, I have known
that I may have to use that coin collection to
sell it, or to borrow against it, or use it
as collateral. Itch means put something up like at a
pawn shop. Stay away from pawnshops. They're incredibly expensive and
it's a game you're not going to win. If you
can't get it out, they're not going to give you
anything close to value for what you let them hold.
(26:50):
Because if you're that desperate where you got to get
money from a pawnshop and you think, well, I'm gonna
come pick up my wife's diamond ring in two weeks
when I get this deal finished, you don't get the
deal finished where they got your diamond ring for one
hundred and fifty dollars loan. So don't do this. But
what I'm getting at is you need assets in your life.
You need to spend your money in a way that
(27:12):
is productive. Working for you. Like in the parable the
Lord rewarded those that were resourceful, that took a little risk.
He wants you to do that. It's good to work
and invest your money wisely. So what I'm saying to
you right now, though, is if you have something that
you can fall back on, it will give you a
(27:34):
confidence that I'm not destitute. I'm still standing, I'm on
my feet, i can still keep trying. And so I
have a very good friend, and his name is Jim
Gilday and his wife Ann, and these are two of
the loveliest people that I've ever known. They celebrated their
fiftieth anniversary a couple months ago. I've known Jim through
(27:57):
business business. He worked for the City of Norfolk and
uh the Planning Department, and and I was down there
a lot doing development deals back in the eighties, in
the nineties decades, I guess, but uh I did. I
did a lot of things with the City of Norfolk,
and Jim Gilday was one of the people that worked
(28:17):
in the Planning department and I got to know him.
Another gentleman. There was my main point of contact. But
I knew Jim and I've always liked Jim, and we've
had lots of good conversations and and right when he retired,
he started coming to YMCA all the time. And then
we really started getting to know each other better. And
we started going on walks every now and then, and
(28:39):
we went for this one walk in my neighborhood one day,
and uh, he's a really really good person. And I
told him the story about my coin collection. And the
last the last part about the coin collection, I'm moving
to the story that Jim told me that I'm going
to share with you that's so profound is recently. Is
a year ago I needed money, very very badly, and
(29:04):
my father, who helped me, encouraged me and helped me,
gave me proofsets and things. I didn't want to take
money from my father he offered, but he did say, well,
how about if I loan you money and if you
can't pay me back, I'll take the coin collection or
different parts of it. So I had a couple thousand
dollars of the state quarters they put out a series
(29:26):
ten fifteen years ago of every three months they put
out a commemorative quarter with a state and the state
motto on the back of each quarter. And so I
bought rolls and rolls of those as an investment, with
with the thinking that hey, I'm just going to put
these in my collection and someday I'll give them to
my grandkids. Another thing, I apologize, Hey, I'm going to
introduce the story with Jim Gildat, but let me tell
(29:48):
you this because I think it's really going deeper for me.
My grandmother, her name was Bubby. She died in about
nineteen sixty five. Every year we had a family reunion
and she gave out silver dollars to all the grandkids.
And they were about at the time they were like
I had like fifty six first cousins and second cousins,
(30:09):
so there were many of us. But my grandmother, the
gift that we got was a silver dollar, and at
one time I had about had about fifteen or twenty
of her silver dollars. I got them from other people
sometimes too, and they went all the way back to
(30:29):
dates like eighteen seventy six and eighteen eighty seven and whatever.
They were wonderful. Well, I want to tell you, I
toll you I made a lot of mistakes in my life.
One of my mistakes was when I was eleven twelve
thirteen years old. In summertime, we played a lot of baseball.
My buddies would come over and wake me up and say,
let's go bowling. And I didn't have money to go bowling.
(30:52):
So I took my silver dollars and spend a lot
of them. And I look back now and go, man,
I wish i'd still have those silver dollars. So I
spent a lot of my coins that I used to
have on frivolous things, bowling and different things. But you
know what, hey, I was working hard as a kid.
I went bowling, I had a good time. I learned
how to handle my money. Might have been a bad decision,
(31:13):
but having something of your own is wonderful. Okay. So
let me tell you, though, a story that I want
to share with you that on that walk with Jim Gilday,
This story about having something in your back pocket that
you can have that is yours, that gives you hope
(31:33):
to carry on. And I called Jim up a couple
days ago and he was he was going on a
family reunion I think it is for five or six
days with his wife. I would have had him on
the show today for this show, this particular theme I'd
already scheduled, and that's why I called him. I said, hey, Jim,
will you give me five or ten minutes and tell
(31:55):
me that story again, because that was an incredibly powerful story.
And he said yeah, So on the phone a couple
of nights ago, we talked for an hour. But he
is such a wonderful person. He took notes on this,
and he wanted me to have his notes, and instead
of just telling me the story so that I could
kind of give you the guts of the story, he
(32:18):
gave me some notes. And I'm going to share this
with you now without any editing or any further conversation
until after I've read it. But so please just let
me give it to you. His notes are approximately twelve
points in each of us paragraph. So here's the story.
(32:40):
And Jim's retired and he's in his early to mid
seventies right now. And he said that he had a
friend that was about when he was about fourteen years old,
and they were Explorer scouts, boy scout kind of thing,
and they were both in school between the eighth grade
and when they become freshman in high school. The year
(33:02):
was nineteen fifty six or so, is what he says
in his notes, twelve boys from Norfolk, Virginia were able
to sign up for a two week hiking trip at
the Philmont Scout Ranch in Northern New Mexico nineteen fifty six.
Northern New Mexico from Virginia. That's a long way. I'm
(33:25):
going to stop and stick to the script here and
come back afterwards, because I could elaborate on this every paragraph.
It was a put together group of boys. Each knew
only one to four of the other boys. There were
fourteen of them that he said were in this group. However,
the adult leader had most likely volunteered to the local
Scouting council and volunteered for this assignment. My friend was
(33:50):
not an explorer post. He was not in an explorer post,
but he was led to this man that I'm going
to tell you about. When I say aye, I'm talking
about Jim. And when he says my friend, that's his
friend that went on this trip with him. Lieutenant Colonel
John M. Wright was the leader. There were several breaking
(34:12):
the ice overnights that they had hiking in the Shenandoor
National Park along the Appalachian Trail and other park trails
that were there. Colonel Wright, for whatever reason, was basically
a quote here and noun leader with his troop and
his group of men here young men. However, it turned
(34:35):
out that fourteen years earlier, so we're talking about nineteen
forty two, Colonel Wright had been captured by the Japanese
and the Philippines, and he had survived the extended Baton
death March two, and he became a prisoner of war
with the Japanese and was put into a war camp. Subsequently,
(35:00):
the prisoners of war were loaded and basically heard it,
into the whole of a cargo ship to be transported
to prisoner of war camps in Japan. Colonel Wright spoke
little of that experience that he had survived, or the
or the rest of the war. However, at least once
(35:23):
during these two Philmont weeks, when they were in New
Mexico hiking, he spoke of the strategy and the survival
pack that he and a paired up prisoner made with
each other. They were handed one canteen of water to
share over the transit to Japan for what was a
(35:46):
trip of unknown duration. Colonel Wright shared with his group
the part that he shared with his fellow pow. They
would not begin to drink the war from their canteen,
no matter how thirsty they would get during the voyage.
(36:08):
Others consumed their water until there was none left and
no more was distributed. My friend remembers as clear as
a bill Colonel Right's comment that some significant portion of
the prisoners did not survive the journey once they had
(36:31):
consumed their water and lost all hope. The phrase, he
remembers Colonel Rights saying softly, they went mad. The lesson
was clear, take priority steps to assure hope, whatever the situation,
(36:56):
and you will be more promising with a chance of success,
no matter how challenging it may be. The year nineteen
fifty six was approximately one halfway through Colonel Wright's career.
My friend eventually lost track of Colonel Right, but remembers
(37:20):
reading that a General John M. Wright commanded the first
Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam about nineteen seventy. How many
people other than my friend did Colonel Wright so strongly
influenced during his career, and aside at least in the
(37:43):
mid fifties, the slogan for Philmont Ranch was come as
a boy, leave as a man with fifty Let me
get this last part done here. I okay, I got
(38:03):
the note now, and this is the last paragraph of
my friend Jim's notes that he gave me. This was
very important. The colonel took them on hikes when they're
trying to make these young boys become men, and what
he said to them was walk for fifty minutes, do
not stop, do not stop, do not give in. Do
(38:25):
not give in for fifty minutes, and we will take
a ten minute rest. Colonel Wright taught Jim and the
others at this camp as young men, had to discipline
themselves and had to keep moving forward, and how to
survive basically, and that's why the expression he was instrumental.
And they came to camp as boys and they left
(38:47):
as men. Okay, it was hard for me, and I
apologize not making any comments while I was reading that story,
but I'll make a few now. My friend Jim has
carried this story with him for sixty years. And when
we walk that day around my neighborhood and I shared,
(39:08):
I shared the concept of having assets, something to fall
back in your back pocket. How the coin collection has
always been something that made me feel like I had
achieved something, that I had some success, that I had
something that I could fall back on, because sometimes the
world you cannot identify who is there. That's one of
the things about the world. It's very difficult. Sometimes you
(39:32):
just don't see or believe that there's anybody out there
that cares about you, that wants to help you and
all of you that I'm speaking to when you move
forward in your life and get through hardships, or when
you're trying to teach your children lessons. A lot of
people that listen to my show are not going through
specific hardships right now. They are mentoring other people that
(39:52):
are going through hardships, and I thank them for listening
to my show and giving me some of their comments
and insights that helped me get new things that I
I can share with people. I just want to be
there to help people find better ways to move on
with their lives and stabilize. But the theme here is
if you've got something in your back pocket, it will
give you hope and encouragement, self reliance. It'll give you
(40:14):
this confidence that I'm still standing, I'm not gone yet,
I'm still fighting. Yeah. You know. One of the things
that I'm a karate master and I developed a wounded
animal philosophy. One of the most dangerous animals in the
world is a lion that's wounded in a cave, with
(40:37):
its back up against the wall, with its pride around him.
You do not want to try to pet a lion
that's been wounded in a cave. Yeah, So the thing
is you learn to honk her down and learn to
go into your deeper inner self. And a little comment
that I'm going to give you is, but don't stay
(40:57):
inside yourself, go straight up to the world, and then
he will give you that strength that you're looking for.
With that said, I want to thank Jim for inspiring
me with the story that he gave me these notes
on that I had not expected he would do that.
So I just want to speak directly to Jim for
a second. Jim, you are just a fine, fine man,
(41:22):
and what you've shared through me today with our listeners,
I believe will inspire many many people for years to come.
Just like you said to me, you can't add up
the number of people that Colonel Wright might have talked
to in all the different camps that he led and
all the different associations he had with men under his command.
(41:43):
But what I'm trying to say here is thank you, Jim,
thank you, and I look forward to seeing you when
you get back from your trip and I get back
from mine. Listeners, I do a lot of shows with
different people that I bring on to try to help
encourage you and motivate you. And I've done a couple
(42:05):
shows with Don Green, the executive director of the Napoleon
Hill Foundation, a nonprofit whose purpose is to help make
the world a better place in which to live. And
we did a whole show that I would encourage you
to go back to and listen to on the Mastermind Group.
Don Green, executive director of Napoleon Hill Foundation, speaking on
(42:25):
the Mastermind Group. And one of the things that I
always say is that you know, Right Thinking Foundation, even
though it's a final education, a financial education program, it's
not just about money. In fact, it's only twenty five percent,
give or take about money. It's really seventy five percent
about persevering, not quitting, surrounding yourself with the right people,
(42:49):
making good decisions. Our associations in life will make or
break us who we choose to hang out with. And
so I gave a whole show with Dave Richards on
the concept of quality and relationships and what is quality
and our parents want us to become a quality person
and have quality friends. All of the shows on Right
(43:11):
Thinking are all geared with the same type of messages
that I'm trying to communicate to you. And so today
we've covered a little scripture, I've told you a couple
of stories, and so let me let me do some
more with you. I just want to tell you that
(43:32):
if you learn how to handle your finances in ways
that are geared toward thinking about the future, thinking about
having some reserves, thinking about having something for a rainy day,
if you live like that, you won't be in a
(43:55):
crisis mode as much. And that's the whole point of
Thinking Foundation. The program is based on the premise that
if a person is under financial stress, he or she
will make bad decisions. A person that has been incarcerated
and is making bad decisions has a very high chance
that he or she will recidivate. The program teaches an
(44:17):
overall awareness of how money works in a person's life
and provides tools that assist them as they learn to
think and plan ahead, making right decisions, reducing the amount
of stress in their lives, and not reverting back to
the old ways of thinking that resulted in their incarceration.
Let me share something with you. There's a national statistic
(44:42):
that I learned five years ago. If a person has
been incarcerated and they come out and they're not working,
they don't have a job, they're really trying to re
establish themselves, reacclimate into society, come back into society. If
they go out on job interviews, the average is seven
(45:06):
rejections over a two month period. They will go back
to their old ways that they know that might have
been illegal, committed crime. Because there's a fact of life.
That fact of life is if you have a baby
that's hungry, you're going to find a way to feed
(45:26):
that baby because you're not gonna watch your baby starve.
I will, you will, We all will. So why don't
we do it the right way? Why don't we take
the time to really think about how to do things?
And one of the one of the things I want
to share with you that I'll bring this up over
and over again until you finally take me up on
(45:49):
it and start doing it. If you know your purpose,
if you know what you really want, I've say it
over and over again. Napoleon Hill, The Secrets to success
are very simple. It's only two things. Know your desire
and never quit. When I was reading Jim's notes here
when he got to the part about the men that
(46:13):
wouldn't drink their water so that they would have something,
and Victor Frankel that I've spoken a lot about on
my first show in Choices in particular. In other shows,
it's the same thing. It's just the will, the purpose
to survive. These stories that you hear about people that
(46:35):
have survived and persevered, they're real, they're true, they're uplifting,
they're motivating. Become that person, but have a clear focus
on what you want. Let me just share this with
you right now. I've trained many people and had to
budget their money, and I teach a discipline. I teach
(46:56):
you to say, from every paycheck, put a little bit aside,
pay yourself first. Things of that nature. I know people
that are such good people and they want to survive.
They want to be stable, they want to be there
for their family, they want to be somebody that can
(47:19):
help other people. But they just have been beaten down
so much through their circumstances. And then when they start
finally getting on their feet, and I teach them the
importance of savings so that you can have a little reserve,
a little nest egg to fall back on, so that
you won't be dependent upon other people, just in case
there's no one else that will come to your aid.
(47:42):
And they save twenty five to fifty dollars whatever the
amount is that they can afford out of every paycheck,
and they put it in the cookie jar, they put
it in their savings account wherever they put it, and
over a period of time they starting to accumulate money.
They get thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars or something. If
they don't know what their real purpose is, they are
(48:04):
going to spend it on the wrong thing if they
make a bad decision, because they're doing it right, but
they're going down the wrong way. If they're saving money,
they're being disciplined, but they're saving it and they don't
really know what their goals are. They don't really know
the direction that they want to go. Something might come
(48:26):
along that they think is the right thing, and they
might take that money and spend it, and then within
a short time they realize they never should have done that.
It's not what I should be doing. So it's more
important to understand what your goals are and what your
purpose is, and then your money will be managed effectively
(48:47):
because you will discipline yourself. You will control your own destiny,
you will have your goals. You will start substituting things
of value with how you spend your money to accumulate wealth.
A very good example of a biblical story that really
illustrates this is when Joseph was in prison and the
(49:07):
pharaoh had dreams one night, and they knew that Joseph
could interpret dreams, and the pharaoh dreamt that there were
seven really healthy cows on the bank of the nile,
and seven thin scrangly cows scrony cows came up and
ate them. And then he fell back asleep, and he
had another dream of a stalk of grain with ears
of grain, or a stalk with grain on it, and
(49:27):
there were seven really healthy grains, and then another stalk
that had seven unhealthy, the seven unhealthy, eight the seven healthy.
And this meant, according to Joseph, that we're gonna have
seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and
he advised the pharaoh to plan for that, and they
put into storehouses enough food of the plenty to last
(49:48):
them for the seven years and they weathered the storm.
That's what I'm trying to teach you to today. Have
a plan so that you can have an alternative to
how you're gonna face your hardship. I hope you got
the message today. I hope you enjoyed it, hope and
motivated you. Next week we're gonna have Willy Butler on
the show, and Willie is going to be just wonderful
to listen to. You're gonna learn a lot from Willie.
(50:08):
And with that said, God bless each one of you,
and just have a great day. Thanks for listening to
Right Thinking with Steve Copland. I'll look forward to being
with you again next week, and remember, don't quit plan ahead.
It will get better. God bless you and have a
great week.
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