Your attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets towards different things affect your actions. In order to have your actions create the best life possible for you, you want to make sure you get rid of unhelpful attitudes and embrace empowering ones.
Money has a large presence in our lives, so our attitude towards it in particular is important. Some people have attitudes that help to build wealth and so are able to treat their money in a way that makes it grow. Some people, however, have unhelpful attitudes towards money and so they end up pushing it away or restricting their actions.
Where your attitude has come from doesn’t matter. It could have come from your parents’ view of money, whether or not your family had money when you were young, your friends’ attitudes towards money, or perhaps you have never given money enough thought. What does matter is that you can change your attitude to what will benefit you the most.
There are unhelpful attitudes towards money that it is worth being aware of. If you see an attitude below that you currently hold, consider the benefits of no longer holding it.
1. Money is taboo (let’s not speak about it)
For something that is so prevalent in our lives, money is often a subject that is avoided.
When this is the case, people isolate their financial life from others, sometimes even from their partner. If you avoid talking about money at all costs your knowledge of anything financial is limited to what you have learnt from education, research, or experience.
In any other part of our lives, it is understood that sharing knowledge on important topics is very useful. If you run across a problem in a job (or relationship, or sport, etc), you mention it to a co-worker, friend, or family member and they often have advice that can help you solve your problem. They probably also have information that can help you that you never knew about. Doing the same with money can open up solutions and opportunities that weren’t there before.
People spend lots of their time working in a job, building a business, or trying to get financially free. There is often a lot to talk about. You are not in competition with your family or friends — withholding business or financial knowledge from them doesn’t hurt you, and sharing with each other can benefit you both.
2. Money is not important
Not caring about money can get you into debt
The only way you can hold this belief without lying to yourself is if you were brought up in a very wealthy household where money was never an issue.
Money is very important. Not in and of itself, but because it is the means of exchange that can get you what you want in life (not to mention the things you need). People who say this might be struggling financially and just pretending it’s not an issue, or they are simply ignorant that they spend 40+ hours a week working for it.
Not believing in something true doesn’t make it go away, and believing in it helps you focus on the problem at hand and improve things. Don’t delude yourself. Get help from someone if you could benefit from it.
Additionally, if money isn’t important to you then you won’t be careful with how you spend it (which can cause all sorts of financial problems), or you won’t try to become financially free (which leaves you working in a job for most of your life).
3. Money is in short supply and/or it’s hard to get
This belief can hurt you in two main ways:
- You become a scrooge or a tight-arse
- With this attitude you know the importance of money, you tend to budget well, and you save money. This is good. However, with a scarcity mentality you think money is hard to get. This causes you to not “waste” money on more expensive items, count every cent, and perhaps not enjoy life as much as you could.
- You don’t think you have the ability to increase your wealth
- Believing money is hard to get, and that in order to increase wealth you need particular skills that you don’t currently have, is very limiting. Not believing you can do something means you won’t even try, so your chances of succeeding are zero. Now is a great time to lose your fixed mindset and start believing that you can learn anything necessary to achieve your goals.
Money is a means of exchange — understand what you want the money for, and believe that you can get more of it if you desire.
If you want to become wealthy or simply financially free, make sure you don’t have any of the above attitudes holding you back.
