How to improve your money mindset to improve your financial situation
“The money mindset is the overriding attitude you have about your finances.”-Brian Tracy
Our money mindset is, to a high extent, influenced by our beliefs, the beliefs that we formed about money as a child and later on in our lives as we developed into the individuals that we are today. Many people hold negative and opposing beliefs about money such as that “the rich are bad” and that “they are only rich through the exploitation of others” or one of the most common ones which is that “money doesn’t grow on trees”. These beliefs influence our thinking which than goes on to influence our behaviour and actions. As a result many, with negative beliefs about money can find themselves in situations where they lose their money and they always have a lack of it, therefore if you want to make more money you must get rid of your limiting beliefs.
Ways to get rid of your limiting beliefs about money:
1.Write out your negative beliefs
To start with, you must write out all the negative beliefs that you hold about money, this might include things like “I’ll never be rich”, “I don’t know how to make money” or “I will never have enough money”, it can pretty much include anything, and don’t be embarrassed to write them down because you don’t have to show your list to anyone. Writing out your limiting beliefs helps you identify and accept that you hold these beliefs which can help you erase and replace them with positive beliefs.
2. Determine where these beliefs come from
You have to identify the source of these beliefs, this could be your parents, friends, the media and many other sources. If for example, your negative beliefs about money come from your friends than try to avoid conversations with friends about money because if you want to change these beliefs you cannot be reminded about all these negative beliefs because that can stop you from being able to change them, thus you have to try to cut off the source of these negative beliefs. And once you embedded a more positive thinking and beliefs about money you could maybe challenge their views and try to give them a different outlook about money, and if you are persuasive enough maybe you could even change their views and beliefs to a more positive one.
3. Replace the old negative beliefs with positive ones
Once you identified the source of your negative beliefs and cut the source off and identified your negative beliefs you must replace them with positive ones. For example, if previously you held the belief that “you’ll never be financially free” than you can replace it with something more positive like, “if I put in more effort and start budgeting and saving more, and maybe try to increase my income through starting a side hustle or getting a promotion or even work extra hours, I could increase my income and limit my spending so I could one day become financially free and stable if I’m patient enough”. Through doing this you challenge your beliefs, helping you be more rational and look at problems in their actual size, this is because a lot of times we stress about things unnecessarily and as a result exaggerate the situation and make it look bigger than it actually is.
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4. Try to focus on the positive
Every time something bad happens we may pay too much attention to it and when we do this, when we focus on the negative we will start seeing it everywhere which than blinds us from seeing the positive. Therefore we must focus on the positive, for example instead of focusing on that expensive energy bill try to focus on the positive for example, that you spent less on groceries, and be rational, do you have any influence over your energy bill, if you do than try to use less electricity and if you don’t, and in most cases we won’t have an influence over all things than just try to minimise its impacts through having contingency plans, because external factors also impact our lives which we have no control over but we can limit its impacts. And think about the worst thing that can happen and see if its really that bad, and you’ll realise that it’s not as bad as you think and you could easily overcome it.
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Budgeting explained: creating a budget and the benefits of budgeting
Steps involved in budgeting
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Zero based budgeting for individuals
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