The way people approach finances psychologically and their relationship with money can be very different.
Some people have an abundance mindset. They have the unconscious idea baked firmly into their minds that they will always have cash available and will always be able to make it.
Others have a scarcity mindset. They believe money is always in short supply and that they need to do everything they possibly can to scrimp and save. After all, hard times could be just around the corner.
What’s interesting about these mindsets is that they are largely unconscious. For the most part, you’re not actually aware that you have them, but they can influence your life profoundly. How you think about money determines how your life turns out.
Take a moment to consider how you see yourself. If you’re like most people, you view yourself as a person of limited means who will never have material abundance. You’ll continue working until you retire, saving just enough money to see you through. And that will be your financial life.
Some people, though, take a completely different approach to their finances and their relationship with money. They don’t see their value as bound by their time or skill. Instead, they look at the world for what it truly is – a place of opportunity. Fundamentally, there is no difference between them and the millionaires and billionaires. They just need to put their plans into action.
Don’t underestimate the power of your money mindset to influence your life. If you believe that you’ll always be poor, then the chances are that you always will be. You won’t go for that promotion or start a business. Instead, you’ll continue plodding along as you are now, without making any significant life changes.
The good news is that you can retrain your brain to start thinking differently about your relationship with money. While your success is partially dependent on your actions in the real world, most of it comes down to changing the way you think. You don’t need to be a virtuoso or genius to get rich – just somebody with the right attitude.
Stop Seeing Wealthy People As Greedy People
When you view wealthy people as greedy, you’re essentially saying that their money makes them “bad.” And that can affect your unconscious mind.
As a respectable person, you want to view yourself and your relationship with money in a positive light. So if you associate becoming wealthy with vice, you’ll avoid it. You don’t want to be that kind of person.
But this attitude is actually hurting you more than it is helping. And most of the time, it’s not even true.
Think about how people create wealth. The majority do it by working hard and creating value for others. In other ways, they think about how they can best serve the people around them, and then go for it.
Sometimes it doesn’t pay off. But when it does, it can create fabulous wealth. People voluntarily hand over their money because they’d prefer to have whatever the wealthy person sells.
Associating wealth with greed hurts you far more than people with money. So erasing the idea from your mind can help you a great deal.
Introduce Yourself To The Reality Of Your Financial Situation
A lot of people in wealthy countries have a perpetual desire for more. No matter how much money they have in their accounts, they always feel like they’re coming up short for some reason.
Giving yourself a big, fat reality check, however, can soon give you some perspective. Remember, around half of all people alive today around the world are surviving on less than $2.50 per day. So if you’re making $25 or $250, you’re actually doing incredibly well on a global scale.
Celebrating the basics like a roof over your head and food on the table can put you in a more positive frame of mind. It reminds you that you could be a lot worse off, regardless of your current situation.
Make Your Savings Automatic
Many of us go through life, putting away money into accounts manually. Again, though, it’s a bad idea psychologically. Every month, you have to overcome your desire to spend and instead commit to increasing your savings balance. And that’s not easy.
Making your savings automatic, though, is a way to get around this problem. Instead of leaving it to your mood, get your bank to harvest part of your pay and automatically set it aside elsewhere. It might sound like a trivial thing, but a relationship with money can make all the difference in the world.
Repeat Abundance Mantras To Yourself
Another thing you can try doing is repairing abundance mantras to yourself. Here, you simply repeat a phrase like “I will always have more money” whenever you feel like you don’t have enough. It might sound silly, but, again, it can really help.
As you go through life, you’ll inevitably have to make expenses. Costs add up, and nobody can avoid them forever.
But a relationship with money is worth pointing out that you’re not just a passive recipient of mounting bills. Instead, you’re an active agent, able to change your destiny.
So what if something costs a lot of money today? You will always have more opportunities to earn more in the future.
Don’t underestimate the power of time when it comes to personal finances. If you’re young, it’s almost always on your side. Small savings today can quickly grow into mountains of cash over the decades, completely changing your financial perspective.
Just remember there’s genuine power in the words you say to yourself. If you think that scarcity is a real problem in your life, you’ll act like it, and that could undermine your efforts to achieve financial freedom.
Learn About Money
Money is important to all of us, but you’d be surprised just how many people never actually bother learning anything about it. They waltz through their financial lives, blissfully unaware that they’re missing out on massive financial opportunities. And that’s a tragedy.
Making money partly involves learning how the financial system works. It’s not always easy, especially when the jargon gets technical. But if you commit the time, you can soon get a feel for it and use the knowledge you gain to your advantage.
Organizations like Plenti, for instance, run through some of your options. Modern apps also take a lot of the administrative difficulty out of investing. It’s just a question of figuring out where your money should be going and playing an active role in saving.
Building your financial knowledge today is much easier than it ever was in the past. There are now so many resources out there you’re spoiled for choice.
The best place to start is probably with books that explain how to build wealth from the ground up. Creating the life you really want with your money doesn’t have to be difficult. You just need a system. Once you have it, your finances will take care of themselves.
Spread Your Wealth
Spreading around your wealth might sound a little counterintuitive. Donating to a good cause or treating friends and family to a coffee every now and then seems like a drain on your financial resources.
However, what goes around tends to come around. Just providing your friends with a small gift can help them view you in a completely new light. They start thinking about how they can make your life better and the services that they might offer you.
Donating money also helps you to rid yourself of a toxic scarcity mindset. When you spread cash around, it teaches you unconsciously that you do actually have assets and that you can afford to be a little generous.
This type of attitude can lead to changes in the way people treat you too. If you’re closed up like a clamshell all the time, people won’t want to deal with you. But if you’re warm, open, and willing to use your money for good causes, others will naturally gravitate toward you and you could find your wealth and influence multiplying.
Understand That Wealth Isn’t Just Your Bank Balance
Lastly, it’s worth considering what wealth actually is. Most people are surprised to find out that it isn’t their bank balances. That’s just a measure of wealth. Instead, it’s the quality of your lived experiences.
Nobody spends their entire life working to build their stock portfolio. What they really want are great experiences, sensations, and health.
When you take that view to life, you soon see that you’re much better off than you think. What’s more, you soon recognize that many of your problems in life aren’t financial but products of your mind. It’s how you talk to yourself that really counts.
Wealth, therefore, isn’t your bank balance. That’s just a measure of your financial resources, just like inches are a measure of your height. Bank balances by themselves can’t give you quality of life – only an abundance mindset can.
So the conclusion to this article is a little strange: money isn’t the goal. The process of getting it is. When you think abundantly, you dramatically change your outlook for the better.