Learning how do you stay positive when money is tight is the secret to moving yourself out of your current financial situation. It is our thoughts and not our circumstances that keep us stuck more than anything else.
Money has deep emotional connections for many people. If you ever went through a time in your life – especially before the age of 7 or 8 then the lack of money can have deep-seated emotional connections for you.
These emotions can have a very dominant effect over our thinking and can wipe out all forms of logic and reasoning.
On a conscious level, you may want to stay positive but when the motions of scarcity and the lack of money come up, all positivity goes out the window.
It is important to realize that you, like everyone else, have patterns of thinking and acting around the ideas of money and finances.
Most of your thoughts around money are not conscious decisions but rather subconscious programming that runs in your mind like a computer program
Let Your Mind Work For You – Not Against You
If you want to how do you stay positive when money is tight then you probably already know that your mindset has something to do with your financial situation.
The one aspect is how the law of attraction affected what you attract into your life. This comes down to the fact that what you place your energy and your attention on will grow in your life and create an energy that will be attracted to you in some shape or form to reflect that.
In very simple terms, negativity can only attract more negativity. Positivity can only attract more positivity.
The second aspect of how your thoughts affect your money mindset is that your thoughts create your decisions and your decisions create your actions.
On a practical level it is your decisions and your actions that will affect your financial situation more than anything else.
So, to change your money mindset you have to start by changing your thinking. You have to change your thoughts about money from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking.
This may sound complicated but it is not.
It is simple but it is not easy.
The reason why it is not easy is that you probably have a lifetime of beliefs that “makes you” think and feel about money in a certain way.
This causes you to think about money in a certain way which leads you to make decisions in a certain way and act in a certain way.
Your mind is an incredibly powerful tool. Wealthy and successful people think differently than people who have lack and scarcity. That is all that it boils down to.
For you to move out of scarcity and being in tight money situations every other month, you need to focus only on your thoughts and the way you think and feel about money.
How To Change The Way You Think About Money
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve ever learned was that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
This is especially true for money.
You may think that you just need to stay positive when money is tight but staying positive is quite a weak concept. What is positive? What does it really mean?
You need to go well beyond mere positivity. You need a complete shift in your perception and start focusing on abundance and prosperity.
7 Steps To Change The Way You Think About Money
1. Stop talking about it
One thing I’ve noticed is that people who experience a scarcity of money just love to talk about it. They discuss it with their friends, complain to their neighbors and even argue about it with their spouses.
Every time you speak about how money is tight you give it more energy which allows it to stick around for longer.
Yes, you may be in a tight financial situation but you need to treat that sh!t as blasphemy.
You do not speak about it.
You do not say it out loud.
You do not give it any of your energy or attention.
You look at the problem. Understand its extents. You then et it aside and start working on abundance.
At every moment of your life, you can choose to give your energy and attention to the scarcity or you can give your energy and your attention to abundance and prosperity.
Racing car drivers know this concept very well. When you take a turn at 180 mph and there’s a wall in front of you, you learn to focus on the road and where you DO want to go – not the wall.
Almost everybody hits the wall at first because the fear takes over and you focus on the wall.
Keep your focus on where you DO want to go – not on where your fear takes you.
2. Interrupt the triggers
When money is tight, your thoughts can quickly lead you to spiral down into the depths of despair. You get an unexpected bill and your mind starts racing and before you know it your mind has you living on the street.
Whenever there’s a conflict in your mind between your imagination and your logic, your imagination will always win.
When you start getting really desponded, depressed or petrified about your financial situation, what triggered that?
Knowing these triggers can help you avoid going down these spirals of negativity.
3. Change your limiting beliefs
This is a big one. We all have beliefs about money and experts now established that almost all your beliefs about money were fixed by the age of 7.
Children at a very age assign meaning to everything and their minds constantly make connections between things.
Most of the time, children get “wired” about money in a way that has no basis in reality. You see your mom and dad argue about money and you make the connection that money = fighting.
This is a simple example but it illustrates how our young minds perceive things and create beliefs.
We all heard things like…
- Money doesn’t grow on trees
- Money is the root of all evil
- Money can’t buy happiness
- We can’t afford that
- To make money you need to take big risks
- Rich people are bad/evil/greedy
- You can’t be rich and spiritual
These are all negative beliefs about money that you probably hear a thousand times in some shape or form.
You probably have your own and they are probably even more complex than these. You need to identify your limiting beliefs and work on changing them.
As long as you have limiting beliefs around money you can try as hard as you like to change consciously but it just won’t happen.
The root cause of your poverty mindset lies in your limiting beliefs about money.
4. Feed your mind
Negativity is constant. You probably don’t want to hear that but unfortunately, it is just the world we live in. Every time you turn on your TV or look at the news there is some sort of news about financial disasters heading your way.
We are bombarded by negativity from almost every front. From the mainstream news to your uncle Tom and your best friend Sally.
Apart from switching off from this negativity as much as possible, you need to deliberately feed your mind with positive “food”.
You need to increase your financial IQ and your financial EQ. You need to start studying money and read books and listen to podcasts or audiobooks daily to feed your mind with positivity.
It doesn’t have to be about money and finances either. Just make sure you spend at least some dedicated time every day to feed your mind with something positive and inspiring.
If you don’t, the weeds will, grow automatically.
5. Create a vision of your future
In my opinion, having financial goals can be quite damaging. They tend to instill more fear in us than anything else.
The instant you set a bold financial goal you are immediately confronted by the fear of not achieving it or even knowing how to achieve it.
While I am not opposed to the idea of setting financial goals, it is much more powerful to build a vision for your future than to merely be blinded by a dollar amount.
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.
– Zig Ziglar
Abundance and money is not the same. When your energy and attention is on abundance you attract an abundance of everything – including money.
When you have an abundant vision of your future and you can see yourself living an abundant life with everything you could possibly want in excess, it is exciting.
If your vision is exciting it moves you out of negativity almost instantaneously. You can use your imagination to build any future you like.
Having a “go to” image of being prosperous and abundant is the fastest way to drag yourself out of negative thinking.
6. Service and Contribution
This may sound so counterintuitive it is almost funny but if you put this into practice it will transform your life more than anything else.
The concept is simple. You can never sincerely give something away without having it return to you with interest.
The thing is that when you are trapped by your negative thoughts and worries about money you are consumed with yourself and your own life. This keeps you in a selfish bubble.
No matter how bad you think you have it, there is always someone who has it worse.
When you get your head out of your own ass and start focusing on how you can help someone else or be of service to someone else then your energy shift immediately.
Empathy and compassion are some of the most powerful positive emotions there are. You don’t have to give money or possessions but find someone to help in some way that only you can. It can be something simple. It can be something big.
The real secret to getting is by giving. You will not understand this law of the universe until and unless you put it into practice.
7. Gratitude
Nothing is more powerful than gratitude to drag out out from negative thoughts around money and finances.
No matter how bad things may look in your life, there are things to be grateful for. When you are grateful you shift from scarcity to abundance thinking in a heartbeat.
Your mind can never hold two contradicting thoughts at the same time. When you shift your thinking by starting to focus on things you are grateful for then your entire energy shifts.
Keeping a gratitude journal is a powerful exercise that you can do once or twice a day to help you tap into the power of gratitude.
You can also use it as a tool to combat negative thinking. As soon as you start feeling negative about money in any way. Stop. Close your eyes and think about something you are grateful for.
Stay Positive When Money Is Tight – Conclusion
Money is important in life and anyone who claims the opposite is just not grounded in reality.
We all have beliefs and ideas about money that is hard wired into our minds. These ideas and beliefs will either serve you or ruin you financially.
To stay positive and optimistic about money when everything seems to point to scarcity and lack can be incredibly tough. Emotions can consume you and fear can take over.
Don’t allow your emotions about what appears to be real consume your reality.
The reality is that your current financial situation is the result of your past thoughts and actions.
The way you change your future is to change what you think and feel about money now.
