Wealth Mindset
You’ll know by now that the first M in the 6M’s is Mindset. Without getting your focus right, frankly you are wasting your time if you are dreaming of making it big - that’s all it will be, a dream. You must develop a wealth mindset and not dwell on what you don’t have or don’t want.
Christine at Self Made Chick has written a post entitled “Congratulations, You Are Now A Millionaire” that you MUST read. I don’t mean if you get the time or can be bothered, I mean you really must read it.
I won’t spoil the impact of the post by telling you about it but I do want to share a fact or two about my own mindest and why I struggled to break free for so long. I wasn’t aware of this limiting belief until quite recently.
GIVE ME YOUR DINNER MONEY
When I was younger I went to a school in, we’ll call it a “rough area”. I was no different to most of the kids and we were all just trying to get through the day, weeks, months, years until we could leave and get a job. There was an enormous amount of disruption in every class and academic learning was very much a by-product of the survival learning.
Most days the bigger, tougher or wannabee kids tried their luck and demanded the younger, smaller, weaker kids hand over their dinner money or whatever else of value they happened to have with them.
There were always stories of house-breaking, shoplifting and car radios being stolen at night. Typically a walk home late evening would mean much looking over the shoulder - we got street wise in a survival sense very early!
Now the point in telling you this is not some sob story of poor me but a vital lesson in where an element of mindset comes from.
My deep rooted belief system was that “there is no point in having wealth as someone will just come along and take it”.
I didn’t know that’s what I thought, I hadn’t planned to believe that - it was just there from a very early age. In fact I guess that thought was reinforced by the fact we didn’t have any money! My mum was alone until I was 12 and I used to talk with her about where we would earn enough money to pay the bills.
During my early years at work I bought a really cool car, which was stolen - more proof to support my beliefs. After about 10 years at work I decided something needed to change as I was sick of having nothing left over.
I started reading more about having money, about self-development and about business in general. I started to think about my beliefs and where they came from. Still I couldn’t identify why I felt the way I did about money.
AN UNLIKELY SAVIOUR
In the late 70s early 80s I found the answer. I was a great fan of Bruce Springsteen’s early work and continued listening to his music until he lost his energy and lost that hard edge to his writing. A few of the lines in “Something in the Night” from the “Darkness on the Edge of Town” album hit me smack between the eyes when I first heard it:
You’re born with nothing
and better off that way
Soon as you’ve got something they send
someone to try and take it away
Click the arrow above to hear the song
I recognised immediately that was exactly how I felt. What a revelation. Now I knew the problem I could do something about it.
No, it wasn’t easy but I started by looking at all of the people I could think of who did have money. Football stars, rock musicians, business men etc. Was their money being taken away? Apart from the taxes (governments are probably the biggest cause of negative mindsets - but that’s a different story) no, on the face of it they still had much of their wealth.
I decided there and then that my focus needed to change. I tried to put myself in their shoes. How would they act, how would they react and what would their attitude be if they lost everything? I knew they would start over and do it again. I’d read enough about millionaire’s who had lost everything more than once to know that to be true.
Now, if you haven’t already read Christine’s post, “Congratulations, You Are Now A Millionaire” please do so - she writes so much better than I do and I honestly think it will help you if, like me, you are struggling in any way with your mindset.
