Learning how to change the way you think about money is simple, but its not easy. We’ve all been conditioned to think about money in a certain way.
Most of it was ingrained in our subconscious mind at an early age – and age where we did not have the mental capacity to consciously decide how we want to see money.
We know from the law of attraction that the way we think and feel about something is what will determine what we attract into our lives.
People with a prosperity mindset always attract money while those with a poverty mindset will always find ways to prevent it from coming into their lives.
What you think about expands.
The only things that can grow in your life is that which you place your energy and your attention on.
If you have an abundance mindset then your thoughts are always on abundance. Someone with a poverty mindset may be in exactly the same circumstances as you but because of your abundance mindset you will quickly move out of it.
If you want to see the greatest threat to your financial future, go home and take a look in the mirror.
– Jonathan Clements
The way you think and feel about money will always determine your level of financial success. You can never go beyond your own internal money thermostat.
It explains why more than 90% of lottery winners are back to where they started within 3 years.
What Is Financial Abundance?
What is financial abundance to you? What does it mean for you to be abundant? We all have different pictures in our mind of wealth and success.
Abundance is an idea that goes beyond wealth and success. Having a lot of cash and stuff does not necessarily make you abundant. There are a lot of people who inherit millions yet they are still not abundant.
Abundance simply means that there is no lack and no scarcity. There is more than enough.
Financial abundance then means that you always FEEL that you have more than enough of everything to meet all your needs.
Not just enough.
More than enough.
The idea of having too much as being ‘bad’ is a dangerous idea that so many kids are taught. We then take this idea with us into our adult lives and apply is to money. We then wonder why we always have just enough to scrape through the month.
When you have financial abundance it is not so much about having billions of dollars.
It is a mindset and a way of thinking where you always FEEL like all your needs are met in abundance. Because of this mindset you will bring that energy to everything you do. With that energy, the law of attraction must bring (in physical form) the equivalent to you.
Changing The Way You Think About Money
Learning how to change the way you think about money and more importantly, the way you feel about money, is often a case of seeing the opposite side of how you are currently looking at things.
Dr. Wayne Dyer so accurately pointed it out when he said “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”
Keep this in mind as we look at some of the most important ideas you have to change to develop a wealth mindset.
There are 9 key ideas to help you change the way you think about money:
- Money Is Only an Idea
- There Is An Abundance of Money Already
- You Are Worthy and Deserving
- Money is Good
- Focus On what You Already Have
- Stop Saving Money
- Money is a Means to an End
- Pay Yourself First
- Make Money Work For You
1. Money is only an Idea
Money is not the paper bills that you put in your pocket. It is an idea. Dollar bills may represent money, but it is not money.
Right now there are billions of dollars swirling around in mid-air as people are moving it around digitally. Money is an energy and the idea of money is where you have problems – not the actual paper bills.
You may think you need to win the lottery or get a better job but that will not fix your mindset and until and unless you change the ideas you have about money, nothing will change for you.
Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful; used wrong it makes a mess!
– Bradley Vinson
2. There Is An Abundance of Money Already
All the money that you can dream of is already in this world. Every ‘thing’ that you could possibly want is already here. You do not have to ‘create’ money.
The only problem is that it is not in your life, but it is here and it is available. When you start noticing that there is already an abundance of money in this world then your eyes start to open up a bit.
You need to start making abundance part of your experience. If abundance and wealth is something “out there” and it remains a foreign concept that you can not attract it.
If your focus is on poverty and how there is never enough, then that is what you will see everywhere. If your focus is on abundance and prosperity then that is what you will see everywhere.
It really is as simple as making the decision and deciding what you will focus on and what you will pay attention to.
3. You Are Worthy and Deserving
Most of us grow up not feeling like we are deserving of abundance and prosperity. Unless your parents were really wired for abundance you probably inherited their scarcity mindsets.
Do you feel like you deserve the best? Do you feel like you deserve abundance and prosperity?
It really does boil down to something as simple as realizing that you are as deserving of wealth and abundance as anyone else. Nobody has given special privileges by some divine power to be rich or poor.
We are all entitled to everything on this planet.
Yes, some people have monopolies on certain industries and some people are born into great wealth. However, we’ve seen industries wiped out and billion dollar industries grow from people’s bedrooms.
There is no limit to the amount of this abundance that you can claim for yourself but you have to believe in the truth and that is that you are worthy of having it.
Changing your money beliefs to one where you feel deserving is a powerful way to change the way you think about money.
4. Money is Good
Middle class people tend to hate money. They work hard for it and feel like they are always just behind with their finances and no matter how hard they try they just can not get ahead.
As long as you have any ideas in your mind that even hints at money being bad, then your mind will do everything it can to keep money away from you.
The idea that money is bad is absolutely absurd.
Money is not good or bad. It is neutral. It has no inherent goodness or badness. People make it good or bad, but money itself is simply a tool.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
– Mark Twain
The challenge is that you probably heard your parents fight about money when you grew up. You probably saw your parents struggle to make end meet and you probably saw the pain in their eyes as they wanted to give you things they couldn’t.
These are all ways in which your mind gets wired to believe that money is bad.
You may not consciously believe it, but subconsciously your mind has made some connection that money is bad and leads to pain in some way, shape or form.
The truth is that money can bring out the best in people. It is staggering if you look at the amount of good that rich people do in this world.
Money can do a lot of good in the right hands. You need to start looking at dollar bills in a different light. See it for all the good it can do in your life and the good you can do with it in the lives of those around you.
This is a fundamental shift in thinking and it will change the way you think about money.
5. Focus On what You Already Have
We tend to focus on the things we do not have. You may be broke and all you can think about is how you can possibly make it through the month.
Before you know it, your mind is dominated by everything that is missing in your life.
The fastest way to snap out of this is with gratitude. When you are grateful for everything you already have you instantly go from poverty consciousness to prosperity consciousness.
Practising gratitude on a daily basis can be life changing. When you are grateful you shift your energy and consequently you shift what you attract into your life.
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
– Oprah Winfrey
When you are grateful for what you already have then more of it comes to you. Gratitude is an energy that expands.
Start your day by sitting down and writing down 5 things that you are grateful for in your life. At the end of the day, review it just before you go to bed.
This simple exercise of being grateful will change the way you think about money because it will prevent you from falling into the trap of thinking about what you do not have.
6. Stop Saving Money
Most of us have been taught to save money. The idea of saving is generally seen as a “smart” thing to do with your money.
The problem with saving is that it comes with a certain mindset. Saving is all about hoarding, protecting and being closed off.
The energy of abundance is the opposite of that. Abundance flows.
Hoarding money will never make you wealthy.
Stop only buying stuff that’s on sale. Stop spending hours looking for the best deal that will save you $2. Your time is more valuable than that.
Instead of saving, focus on investing both your time and your money. Invest it in things that will allow money to work for you.
This does not mean that you become reckless with spending money. It simply means that you do not have the scarcity mindset of having to hold on to and horde the money you have.
7. Money is a Means to an End
Money is a means to an end. It is a tool that allows you to do certain things and to have certain experiences in life. Generally speaking, the more resources you have the richer your experience of life will be.
When you look at money this way, everything changes. Wanting it for the sake of having it is just pointless and usually an ideal that poor people have.
Someone with an abundance mindset is not seeking money. They seek experiences and they seek what they can do with it instead.
Ultimately money will not bring you happiness. That is because it was never meant to make you happy. It is the most absurd argument about money out there.
If you think that having more money will make you happy, then perish the thought. Money will simply make you more of what you already are.
8. Pay Yourself First
One of the great lessons from the book The Richest Man in Babylon was this idea of paying yourself first. Most people pay themselves last and that is reflective of how they value themselves in the eye of money.
Do you pay all your bills and expenses first and then look at what’s left over to decide what you will do next?
You need to value yourself enough to pay yourself first. Decide on an amount of money that is within your means that you will set aside every month as the FIRSt expense you have as soon as you get paid.
Put this money into an asset that grows and where it can work for you.
When you make yourself important in your financial decisions then your mind recognizes that. If you always come last in the monthly “hand out” then your mind recognizes that too.
This will change the way you think about money because YOU now become a financial priority in your own life instead of being an afterthought.
9. Make Money Work For You
We touched on this already, but the idea of making money work for you is how you create wealth. Working for money is the worse way to become rich. In fact, very few people become rich from working alone.
The concept of compound interest is amazing and if you sit down and look at what you can accomplish with a small start you will be amazed. Einstein called compounding it the 7th wonder of the world.
When money works for you, you start changing your relationship to money too. People who have to slave themselves to the bone to just scrape by usually hate it. That is partly because they see it as something that is scarce and difficult to obtain.
People who invest and allow money to work for them love it because they realize that it is a means to an end.
Spending everything you earn is a mindset. Its also a trap and will ensure that money will always be in control of you.
When you start seeing money as your servant it shifts your thinking. Most people are servants to money but that is the wrong way round.
This shift in thinking will change the way you think about money and all the money decisions you make – especially the big decisions.
