The way to change the way you think about money is to start talking differently about money, changing your beliefs, redefine what money is and to start being grateful for what you already have.
The way you think about money affects every aspect of your financial life. Your thoughts lead to your feelings, your feelings lead to your actions and your actions create your results. So how do I change the way I think about money then?
The way you think about money is a complex mix of beliefs and experiences that you accumulated over a lifetime.
Our thoughts are both strange and wonderful.
While they are within our control they are very often not. That is because our conscious mind only affects a very small percentage of our thoughts.
It is the subconscious mind that is largely responsible for your habitual thoughts and thought patterns. Unless you change your thinking at the subconscious level you will rarely be able to make significant changes in the way you think.
Our thoughts are incredibly powerful and it dictates more than just what we do and how we do it. Our thoughts shape our lives.
The law of attraction is always at work and it dictates that whatever you think about consistently will be attracted into your life.
The reason why most people remain bound in their current financial situation is because the way they think about money does not change. It explains why lottery winners can rarely hold on to the money.
Almost nobody consciously chooses their thoughts and beliefs about money. Most of our beliefs about money are firmly rooted by the age of 6. We then spend the rest of our lives “seeing evidence” to back up and reinforce these beliefs that were handed down to us subconsciously.
The good news is that you are now an adult and you are a conscious decision maker and you have the power to change your thoughts and your beliefs. It’s simple but not easy.
So, how do I change the way I think about money? Here are 13 powerful ideas on how to change the way you think about money.
1. Change Your Definition of Money
What is money? This is a hard question and one that very few people ever consider. Money is NOT the paper bills and coins in your pocket. Those are symbols that represent money but they are not money.
Money is an intangible idea. It is an energy and every time you think about money it leads to a feeling which creates an energy.
Money means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some it means power, for others it means luxury while for some it means misery.
Examine what money means to you and remove all the negative meanings you have created about money.
Ultimately money is only what you think it is and what you have decided it means to you.
2. Change Your Limiting Beliefs About Money
Your limiting beliefs about money is almost always a direct result of how your family believed in money and how they handled money.
When you are young, you learn subconsciously by modeling your parents’ behaviour, their actions and their beliefs.
Seemingly harmless saying like “we can’t afford that” or “money doesn’t grow on trees” and dozens of others tend to build our money beliefs at a young age.
Becoming aware of your own money beliefs and what you were handed down as a child is the first and most important step to change the way you think about money.
Looking back at how your planets and your family was with money will reveal a lot about your own beliefs. Once you are aware of these limiting beliefs you can change them.
Awareness is the key though because you can not change what you do not know.
Once you know these limiting beliefs you can replace them with positive and empowering beliefs and that will start to shift your thinking.
3. Change The Way You Talk About Money
Words are incredibly powerful. Not just the words you speak out loud but the conversations you have with yourself inside your own head affects your life more than almost anything else.
We all have a language we habitually use about money and finances. This language and the words you use greatly affect the way you think and feel about money.
Saying things like “I am broke” are incredibly destructive. Your subconscious mind responds without reason to your words. Your words act as commands to the subconscious which simply obeys.
Start paying attention to the words you use around money and finances. Pay particular attention to any and all negative associations you have to money.
Stop uttering words like “I can’t afford it” or “I don’t have enough” etc. Never speak badly about money or anyone because they have a lot of money.
Develop a positive and empowering vocabulary around money and deliberately start using it. Never ever say things like “I am broke” or “I can’t afford it” etc.
4. Your Worthiness To Receive
The feat that we won’t be loved and that we are not “enough” is a primal fear. Feeling worthy to receive money and abundance is a big block for many people.
At some level we all have to deal with the worthiness to receive. This is mostly the result of the fact that we get taught that receiving money is conditional.
The belief that you have to be good enough, smart enough or even good looking enough to receive what you desire.
The truth is that you ARE worthy and deserving of everything you want. This is one belief you have to instill within yourself. You are a child of this universe and you are as entitled to its bounty as anyone else.
As long as you feel unworthy of receiving money – regardless of the amount, you will always think that you can’t have more than you currently have. This limits your thinking and consequently it limits your potential to earn more and have more money.
5. Be Grateful For What You Do Have
If someone asked me how do I change the way I think about money, and I could give only one piece of advice then I would say: Practice Gratitude!
Gratitude is the fastest and most powerful way to change the way you think about money. No matter how much or how little you have, gratitude is the energy that allows more to come to you.
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never have enough.
– Oprah Winfrey
As long as your thoughts are fixed on what you don’t have, you experience poverty – even if you have a million dollars in your bank account.
Start being grateful for everything you have in your life. You can even be grateful for the things you don’t like because they are giving birth to the things you DO want.
Gratitude is incredibly powerful and will change the way you think about money if you start practising it daily.
6. Detach Money From Your Happiness
When you are struggling with money then it always seems like more money will make you happy (or happier). We tend to attach far too much of our future happiness on money.
This is a very dangerous way of thinking because we know for a fact that happiness has nothing to do with how much money you have in the bank.
You have to detach your happiness from money. Money will never ‘make you’ happy. Happiness is something that you are and that you can choose to be.
When you are unhappy and you think that money will make you happy then you relinquish your true power and you become a slave to money. You think that money is your saviour and you end up putting it on a pedestal.
Money most certainly can plug a lot of holes and fix a lot of problems but in the long term it can not make you happy or sad. This way of thinking is a trap and by detaching your happiness from money you regain your power to choose how you want to live your life.
7. Create a Financial Goal(s)
There has been many studies about how goals affect us and what the repercussions are for the 10% of people who do have goals.
Your mind needs a target. It is always moving towards something. Unless you consciously give your mind a target, the subconscious will supply a target and it is usually something you fear rather than something that excites you.
Setting yourself financial goals can be incredibly powerful as it affects your thinking and your decision making to a great extent.
When you set realistic goals that are still big enough to excite you, then you also start thinking that something is possible rather than wallowing in the misery of the impossible.
Setting financial goals is simple. It can be as simple as deciding how much you want to earn per year/month. Write it down on a piece of paper and place it next to your bed or on your desk.
This will force your min to start thinking about that amount and that can vastly change the way you think about money in general.
8. Positive and Empowering Money Affirmations
Affirmations are a powerful way to change the way you think about money. An affirmation is a positive statement that you repeat over and over again to “install” a new thought.
Most of your thoughts and beliefs were installed through this exact same process of repetition. The problem is that it mostly happened unconsciously.
With affirmations you get to choose the thoughts you want to turn into beliefs in your mind.
You can either create affirmations to release negative beliefs or you can create affirmations around specific financial goals or you can create affirmations that just change your general thoughts about money.
Affirmations work, but you have to work them.
9. Learn About Money
Money and sex have a lot in common. Part from being taboo topics that we tend to shy away from, we are expected to know about it even though we are never really taught how to handle it.
Most people have a terrible knowledge about money. Our financial education is almost never deliberate and we either learn by making poor decisions (and getting into bad debt) or we learn by assimilating what our parents do.
Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.
– Jim Rohn
Teaching yourself about money will change the way you think about money. Most people fear money because they don’t understand it.
Buy a book. Take an online course. Get a mentor. Whatever you do, start learning about money. How it works, how to invest it, how to make and how to grow it.
There’s a wealth of information available to you. Overcome the fear and the fearful thoughts about money by learning about money.
10. Surround Yourself With Rich And Successful People
Your financial level will be roughly the average of the 10 people you second the most time with. Who you surround yourself with will affect what you desire, what your ‘baseline’ finances is and what you aspire to financially.
If you start hanging out with millionaires you will quickly start lifting your own internal financial level.
Rich and successful people think very differently about money. They talk about very different things and they aspire to very different things.
If you keep hanging out with people who think negatively about money then you will have a very tough time changing the way you think about money.
You might have a tough time finding a millionaire willing to hang out with you but you can join masterminds and join meetups with like minded people who are aspiring to change their money mindset.
You can at least limit yourself from being surrounded by people who have a poverty mindset and who are always complaining about money. Their negativity will infiltrate your thinking.
11. Spend Less Than You Earn
For a business to make a profit there is one very simple rule: spend less than you make. This is true for you also. If you want to have more money, you have to spend less than you earn.
Do you just spend, spend, spend and hope that you will be okay at the end of the month?
Are you afraid to look at your bank statements?
Spending less than you earn is more than just a practical tip to start saving money. It’s about taking charge of your finances and knowing that you will not be in the red at the end of the month.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
– Charles Dickens
This fear that you will be in the red at the end of the month greatly affects the way you think about money. Money becomes something you fear and a source of anxiety.
By simply spending less than you earn, you are forced to budget, take note of your spending habits and exercise a level of control over your finances.
If you are looking for a very practical way on how do I change the way I think about money then this is it. Just knowing that your money is growing and not growing in debt can give you great peace of mind and remove a lot of the fear.
12. Pay Yourself First
This is a very well known idea and comes from the classic book by George Clason called The Richest Man In Babylon. Pay yourself first is a wealth principle that can change the way you think about money.
Most people spend the first day after getting paid to pay all their bills and expenses. They pay their bills FIRST and then look at what’s left over to decide their budget.
Paying yourself first is all about making yourself a priority. Set aside an amount of money you can afford to save and invest and make sure that every month, that is the FIRST thing you pay.
You make yourself and your financial future the most important aspect. This changes the way you look at what you earn and how you invest your money.
You still pay your bills and meet your obligations but you pay yourself first because you are the most important investment in your own financial life.
13. Be Generous
The idea of giving away money seems very counter intuitive. If you want more money, then giving it away means you have less, right?
Generosity is a strange and wonderful concept. It is a fact that you can never give away money with a sincere heart without seeing it come back multiplied in some way.
This works all the time without fail.
Generosity comes from a compassionate heart. The energy of compassion is one that opens your heart and it also allows more to flow to you.
Many religious people give money out of a sense of duty or obligation. That is just a waste as that money does not have the energy of compassion. It will not help the ones giving or the one receiving.
Money that is given from a sincere heart is imbued with love. When you give, it creates a vacuum that draws more back than what was given away.
Something really interesting also happens on a subconscious level when you give away money. Your subconscious mind notices the act of giving away money.
Since it can’t reason, it simply registers the fact that you “have enough to give it away” and it responds with a feeling of wealth and prosperity.
This feeling in turn raises your vibration which attracts more money into your life.
Generosity is a mindset and creates a completely different way of thinking about money. It changes your thinking from scarcity and having to cling on to the little bit you have to share feely in the unlimited supply of money available to all of us.
14. The Stream Of Abundance
We’ve briefly touched on this idea with generosity but the idea of living in an abundant universe is something you need to understand if you want to change the way you think about money.
Money is not a limited resource. If money is just an idea and an energy, how can there be a limit to it.
Yes, there may be a limit to the amount of paper bills and coins but this is not money.
We live in an ever expanding universe which is abundant and prosperous. There is more than enough of everything in this universe – and more is being added every second of the day as the universe itself is expanding.
You are part of this endless and every expanding universe. Money, as a currency of life is part of this expansion.
There is more than enough for everyone. The only limitations on money is the belief that there is a limit and that there is not enough.
The stream of plenty always flows toward the open, expectant mind. So, feed your mind thoughts that create a prosperity consciousness…
– Bob Proctor
You are entitled to everything in this world. All the “stuff” and all the money you could ever want is already here. All you have to do is to allow it into your life.
You ultimately get to choose “which” universe you live in. Do you live in an abundant universe where there is more than enough for everyone OR do you choose to live in a universe where there is only a little and you have to fight to get your small piece?
