Do you think Rich or Poor?
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · 2 Comments
Why do some people end up rich, and some people end up poor?
Millions of men and women have started off with nothing and become financially independent.
- How did it happen?
- What are the common principles of becoming wealthy?
In this article we are going to discuss what wealthy people do and do not do.
You can apply these things to yourself.
You become what you think about most of the time
The things that you think about define your reality. If you dwell on something, the belief that ‘that’s how it is’ grows.
Wealthy, successful people fill their minds and thoughts with images, words and pictures of wealth, affluence, success, productivity. These thoughts trigger the reticular activating cortex in the brain - the part that makes you alert and sensitive to the things that are important to you.
So, you will start to notice that which you focus on. For instance, if you want a yellow car, and you think about that a lot, you will notice yellow cars.
Your brain is sensitised to pick out those things and draw them to your attention with greater frequency and vividness.
People who are not well off fill their minds with scarcity, lack, poverty, being unable to afford things. They talk about how little they have and can have.
Think like wealthy people think
People who are now wealthy, were thinking from an early age,
- How much they already have (rather than what they don’t have).
- How much they want
- What they can do to earn the money to get the things that they want.
You can think and talk only about the financial success that you have and desire. (Refuse to dwell on of lack of finances. If you must think about them, do it, and then think about what you are going to do to change things).
When you do notice yourself thinking, “I cant afford it” change that dialogue to “how can I afford it?”.
Your finances and your time perspective are linked
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · Leave a Comment
Time perspective means whether you think a long way into the future or a short way into the future. It is also, the amount of time that you take into consideration when planning your day-to-day activities and when making important decisions in your life.
A study was done during the 50’s and 60’s at Harvard University, to find out the reasons for upward social mobility. The researchers were looking for factors that would predict whether or not an individual was going to move upward and be wealthier.
People with long time-perspectives move up economically.
- When you spend weeks, months, years developing your skills and abilities in order to be successful, you have a long time-perspective.
- When you take longer to make decisions, delay gratification, and do not act on impulse then you have a long time-perspective.
- In the extreme, a person with a long time-perspective is thinking and planning 20 or 25 years ahead (which is more than most people).
People with short time-perspectives do not move up over time.
- They don’t have the ability to delay gratification.
- They respond to the impulse to satisfy their desire for fun or pleasure in the short term.
- In the extreme they do not even think about tomorrow - they could have a irresistible urge to spend every penny that they earn, or can borrow, almost immediately.
Elongate your approach to time
When you develop a long time-perspective you develop the ability to delay gratification. You can save some of your money instead of spending it all. You can consider investments. You can resist impulse purchases.
The combination of a long time-perspective and an ability to delay gratification gives you an advantage regarding becoming financially independent.
Exercise:
How do you want your finances to be in 5 years time?
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How do you want your finances to be in 10 years time?
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How do you want your finances to be in 15 years time?
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How do you want your finances to be in 20 years time?
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What is one thing that needs to happen for this to become a reality?
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What can you do to take you into doing that one thing that you need to do to make it a reality?
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What is one thing that you can do this week that will move you towards the thing that needs to happen for your financial desires to be realised?
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Your beliefs about money determine your wealth
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · 1 Comment
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.
Banish those old demons and stop being held back financially
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · Leave a Comment
What do you beieve about money?
We have just spoken about beliefs about money itself, now lets move on to beliefs about you having money.
Some people believe that they don’t really deserve to be rich.
Some believe that they shouldn’t be successful and rich (”its not right for people like me”)
If you have those kinds of beliefs, and then you do manage to become wealthy you may struggle with feelings of guilt or shame.
I have known people have these feelings quite strongly, and it has affected their thinking, and their actions.
They subconsciously try to get rid of the money, they…
- Lose it
- Waste it
- Give it away
- Invest foolishly
To try to numb the feelings, they may
- Drink excessively
- Overeat
- Use drugs
- Have affairs
- Do other destructive, risky, or self-sabotaging behaviours.
If you want to change your results with money you need to change your attitude to it.
- Value money,
- Respect money
- Do worthwhile things with money.
Money flows through the fingers of those who do not understand it, or take care of it, or use it wisely.
Your money-skills
Some people say things like, “I’m not very good with money” or “I’ve never got any money” or even worse, “I’ll never have any money”.
Being good with money, acquiring money and using money to make your life better is a skill that all of us can learn. Saying that you are just not very good with money is a cop-out. An excuse. A way of not taking responsibility.
Money doesn’t just come to you (usually) you have to do something to get it and keep it and use it wisely. It doesn’t just happen. You can take responsibility for making that happen. If you don’t take responsibility for making it happen, you need someone who takes that responsibility for you. Somebody has to be good with money, or you have none.
Detailed belief changes
The starting point for acquiring money is to change beliefs.
- Believe that you have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need.
- See yourself as a financial success
- Feel like a person who is deserving of all the money that you can honestly acquire.
- Let those images, thoughts, ideas and feelings guide you in what is foreground, and what becomes the scenery. Allow your decisions to be made while taking in the big picture (i.e. everything that you want in life, not just your immediate needs).
(If you know about NLP, or if you can get to an NLP practitioner, make the concepts of a ‘moneyed you’ have plenty of sensory detail. Anchor those states)
Keep your focus wide, and stay ethical
The preoccupation with money, to the exclusion of the really important things in life, is a problem - not money itself. Behaviours fuelled by greed, and pursuits driven by a sense of entitlement (rather than those of responsibility) not only hurt other people, they hurt the self, too. They have a stunting affect on our personal growth.
We can grow on a personal level and accumulate wealth at the same time. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
- Earn your money honestly.
- Treat people with respect.
- Be loyal to people who have treated you well.
- Work to get what you want
- Take responsibility for your financial situation
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Money is essential to our lives, and also essential is having good relationships, being loved, loving, laughing and being relaxed and at peace.
Decide now which beliefs about money are not serving you well.
Confront those beliefs by asking yourself, “what if the opposite is true?”
Be the person that you want to be. Create the financial situation that you want.
Do not confuse money with happiness or with success.
But, alter your opinion, attitude, and beliefs about money and your financial life has the potential to change your life, by impacting on your decisions and actions.
5 ways to become a millionaire
February 18, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · Leave a Comment
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Once you have decided that you want to become wealthy, you will need to know how you can do that.
Here are the five main ways that fortunes are made in America
(if you know of a source of similar statistics relating to the UK, please post a comment or email me)
- Having a self-owned businesses (74%)
Entrepreneurship of all kinds
Businesses built from the ground up.
- A professional at the top of his or her game (15%)
Doctors, lawyers, architects, structural engineers, scientists, etc,
Become very, very, good at what you do
The top five percent in any field earn 10-20 times more than the average in that field
- Being a senior business executive (10%)
Join a large corporation and work with them for a lot of years.
Rise to positions of seniority
Take stock options, profit sharing and bonus options.
- Sales people and consultants (5%)
It is not necessary to have a degree to be skilled in sales
You don’t have to start your own business
Become very, very good at selling products or services and invest wisely
- Sports, music and other celebrities, inventors, authors, lottery winners, beneficiaries of inheritance (1%)
Only 1%?
‘Fraid so.
The chances are slimmer, but you do get to live your dream
What to do about it
It seems that there is a direct relationship between excellent performance and the kind of high income that leads to financial independence.
So, if you want to become a millionaire - decide what you really enjoy doing (and have a talent or aptitude for) and then throw your whole being into doing it extremely well.
If you are really serious about becoming a millionaire, you must take steps towards it by taking the actions that matter.
- What is it that you are doing right now that is leading you to becoming wealthy?
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- What changes do you need to make in your life to enable your path towards millionairedom more direct?
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- see also Goal Setting and more about money skills
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