Do You Have a Millionaire Mindset?
How you think about money may be one of the most important aspects to your personal finance. Surprising?
Your money mindset is the feelings and thoughts you subconsciously develop towards money from your life experiences; AKA your Money Story.
Because our thoughts influence our actions, developing a negative money mindset can create a block between you and financial freedom. It can keep you in a place of stress and anxiety and it can keep you from achieving financial goals.
Let's bring a little mindfulness to our money. The first step to changing your mindset is to recognize self-sabotaging thoughts.
Some examples of common self-sabotaging, negative thoughts are:
- I’ll never get out of debt
- I don’t earn enough to save
- I’ll can't afford that
- I’ll never make the money I want
Why do you have these thoughts about money? I work with my client's on their money story; exploring where these beliefs came from and you can download one of our worksheets for free. Here.
Another stumbling block to a millionaire mindset is approval addiction which I blogged about here. HOW APPROVAL ADDICTION AFFECTS YOUR MONEY . If you are trading money for approval, this can be an expensive mindset.
Read on for tips about how to shift your negative money thoughts to a positive, more productive mindset.
Change how you think about your bills and debt. One exercise we do in both private and group coaching is values-based budgeting. This is all about shifting how we think about the car payment, student loan debt, credit card debt etc. and take actionable steps to align our budget with our values.
Practice appreciation and forgiveness. Appreciating what you have is the first step to getting rid of the negative self-talk about money. Then forgive yourself for the mistakes you have made about money. Look at those mistakes as learning opportunities. So you maxed out your credit card to take that vacation you really wanted...holding onto the memories and let go of the guilt. What did you learn from it? Next time, I will save up for the trip before I go. Or, a $3,000 vacation on a credit card is really a $5,000 vacation. Maybe you learned the best place to shop for shoes at that destination. You learned SOMETHING. Hold onto that and keep moving forward.
Define what you really want. One thing I work with my clients on is a Financial Vision. We start with defining short and long term goals and then write a vision. This creates the money map for the financial journey. It helps to keep you focused on where you are going and why.