Your beliefs about money determine your wealth
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais
Good or Bad?
Your attitude towards money affects your emotions and your motivations. Therefore, what you believe about money, and the way that you think about money, will determine how much of it you accumulate.
For some people money is coded as a deficiency need, i.e. it is something that motivates you when you don’t have enough. Then when you have enough, you don’t think about it as much and it is no longer a motivator.
The effect money has on your emotions depends on your attitude to it.
If you are concerned that you have too little, you can become over-focused on the sence of scarity and this can dominate your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Arguments over money put a strain on marriages and relationships, can ruin friendships and excessive worry over money can cause psychosomatic illnesses.
Deep-seated beliefs can be obstacles to accumulating wealth.
What are your beliefs about money?
Do you believe that money is …
- Wrong
- Dirty
- Shameful
- Disgusting
- Scary
- Cursed
- Sinful
- Evil
Have you ever believed that money…
- Ruins relationships
- Changes people
- Causes more problems than it solves
- Breeds resentment
- Is a tool to hurt others
- Makes people leave you
- Makes you unlovable
- Turns people nasty
If you answered ‘yes to any of the options above, ask yourself whether it is the money, or the way that people used money that caused you to conclude those things.
Beliefs are not all based on factual information. They are a distorted conclusion made in a very primitive way, either in childhood, or by being convinced by what others say or what cultures instil, or by drawing conclusions without analysis.
We can often test out beliefs, once we are aware of which beliefs we hold. Ask yourself whether what you are believing is true. Ask yourself to provide evidence for that to support its truth. Say it out loud. Ask other people’s opinion about whether they also think it is true (people who are different to you). After different perspectives ask yourself again whether it is true.
Be willing to hold a new reality
What if money is good?
What if money is used to buy homes and food, cars, education, entertainment, and toys and fun things. What if that is good?
What if money is neither good, nor bad
What if it is to do with the people who use the money - whether they use it in productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, create opportunities for others.
What if there were no money?
- Would all the badness related to money go away?
- Would people still fight over wealth? Still use objects and services to have power over others?
Is it money itself that is bad, or how you decide to use it?
Responsibility
Unless you are not in a capitalist system, you have a duty to acquire money. A duty to yourself and your family, to use it keep yourselves healthy and happy. To meet your survival needs, and then after that, a nice quality of life.
If you want a lot of money, fine. If you want sufficient money, fine. You decide the life that you want. And then work out much money you need to give yourself that life.
Pretending that you don’t care about money when you really do, will make you unhappy.
Spending time and effort into gaining more money than you need to provide the life that you want, is a waste.
If you really want more money, you are going to have to do what it takes to get the money - it will not just come to you, as if by magic (no matter how much you believe that you are going to get it).
However, if you improve your attitude to money and change your beliefs about the availability of it, or your ownership of it, then money will become much less of an issue in your life. The issue will, in fact, become more about the activities that you engage in to gain the money, as well as the quality of your life that the money funds.
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