If there was just ONE thing keeping someone from building wealth I can usually guess it 90% of the time without even having met that person! It’s that the money story that they keep telling themselves is corrupting their money mindset.
Snoop Dogg may have gotten this right when he said “With my mind on my money and my money on my mind”. In order to be able to build wealth you have to have your money on your mind and your mind focused on successful practices regarding your money.
To get there, you need a new story about money. This new story will essentially become the absolute most basic element of programming that will exist in your brain. It will establish the default thoughts that reside in your brain when the topic of money is mentioned, inferred or even conjured up.
Your brain has an operating system regarding money
Basically, this story will become your brain’s ‘operating system’ as it relates to the topic of money. Think of it this way. Up to this point, you have had an operating system in your brain about money.
Unfortunately, the operating system you have has not served you well and in fact, is the reason you currently struggle with money in your life.
So what should your money story consist of? Although everyone will and needs to have their own money story, I suspect that you are interested in having a positive money story. In addition, I’m also willing to bet that if you currently don’t have a positive money story you’d like to create one if it’s possible.
That said, a positive money story has several elements to it:
There is no victim:
Money really doesn’t care who you are, where you are from, your gender, your religion or anything like that. It only recognizes value and goes to those individuals who create it for others. It also stays with those individuals who respect it and know its role in life.
As a result, you are not a victim when it comes to money. You either make choices that put you closer to it or you don’t. There’s no magic about it, although there are more proven methods of creating it and keeping it which we’ll talk more about later in other posts.
Money is not evil in and of itself:
Money itself isn’t evil. Certainly there are individuals who have it that are evil and some other individuals do evil things to get it but left to its own devices as a concept, money is not evil. In fact, it can do amazing things when applied in a positive manner for society.
As a result, money doesn’t make you a better or worse person and if you are able to start accumulating some money and begin to create wealth you will not become an evil person as a result. You will simply be the same person you were before but with more money in the bank and in your retirement account.
You are worthy of money:
Just because you are of a particular gender, ethnicity, age or have a particular last name, you are no more or no less worthy of money than anybody else in this world. The bottom line is that you have everything already in you to be worthy of earning money, creating wealth and being able to responsibly manage it.
There is no cosmic rule against you being able to create wealth nor is there a cosmic element in play regarding money. You ARE worthy of money!
You have enough knowledge about money:
“I don’t know enough about money” is the most common excuse that I hear from people who are broke. My response to that is bull crap! Just as most, if not all of us, know what it takes to get in great health most, if not all of us, know what it takes to become good with money. Similar to our health, our relationships, our careers, etc. we know what needs to be done, we just don’t do it!
You know enough about money to be able to earn it, become good with it and create wealth. In fact, you don’t need much more of a formal education in order to be successful with money than a 4th or 5th grade education. Really. All you need to be able to understand is a few very basic concepts and have some exceedingly basic math skills (add, subtract, multiplication, division and percentages will do).
Money is about financial security and options:
Having money and creating wealth is nothing more than creating security and options for you and your family. It’s not about becoming someone of status or importance and it’s not about having a particular lifestyle.
A healthy mindset is to look at money simply as a tool. It can do things for you. It can do things for others. One of the biggest things it can do is create financial security in your life.
If you have enough to pay for your lifestyle and create a cushion, it can take some significant financial pressure off of you and your family members.
Not having to worry about making your next rent or mortgage payment or having to worry about how to fix the car is a feeling that, believe it or not, less and less Americans get to experience in their lifetime.
Money is also about creating options. Although you may never have to worry again where your next meal or paycheck comes from if you become really successful with money, being able to not be stuck to a particular job, industry or location becomes possible when your income exceeds your expenses and you build up a nest egg.
Knowing that you have some time before you need to get another job or being able to take a chance on another employment opportunity, which would have looked ‘risky ‘before , is now a part of having options.
As a result, having options is about having freedom. Freedom to make different decisions. Freedom to not have to make the same choices you had to in the past because of financial constraints or considerations. Being able to consider other alternatives than the one facing you.
Having money is no accident, it’s intentional:
People that have built wealth normally have not been able to do it by accident. As obvious as this sounds, building wealth normally takes a concerted effort. At its most basic elements, it takes a plan and consistent effort to get to a point where there’s a probability of building wealth.
But here’s the interesting, if not completely, encouraging point; building wealth is more formulaic in nature than most people believe it is. More specifically, if an individual was to abide by solid wealth building behaviors and were to practice them consistently over time, provided that market conditions perform the way that they have over the past several decades, then the odds of having built wealth are very high.
Conclusion
If you don’t have a positive money story or a solid money mindset it’s going to be downright tough to build wealth. Why is this? It’s my experience that your actions and behaviors take direction from what your mind tells itself.
If it tells you that you are worthy of building wealth, have all the capacity that you need to do it and have the ability to stay the course then you’re going to build wealth.
If you’re continually telling yourself that you’re not worthy and could never build wealth, then you’re probably not going to.
A good money story can only start when you have your mind on your money…and your money on your mind. Just like Snoop Dogg says.
