This is from my 4th episode of my podcast Heart of Living, where I share about money mindset and what it means to have an abundance mindset and a lack mindset.
I share my own money story and the beliefs I had about money and how I shifted my life from lack towards abundance.
You can read the post, or you can listen to it here,
Money Mindset- Abundance Mindset Vs. Lack Mindset
Table of Contents
This episode is a bit personal and I hope you listen to it kindly because there might be many things you might not agree with me right away, but I would just like to say that do listen to this with an open mind and hopefully also apply it as an experiment and maybe even do a little research after this if you want.
Today I’m going to be talking about money and money mindset as this has been a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time as I see my own life and realize how much of it has changed.. also financially for the better from how it was 5 years ago and now..
and, I really wanted to share everything that helped me shift my life from lack to abundance.
This is going to be a bit long, so I’ve decided to do two parts of it- where today I am just going to be sharing about money, and money mindset and give you journal prompts for you to reflect on your own money mindset and beliefs.
And maybe in the next episode, I will share with you 5 main money mindset shifts that will pay off huge in your life.
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But before I dive deeper into this money mindset thing, I want to start with my own money story
My Money Story
It might not seem like it, but me, my parents, always had a hard relationship with money. I grew up listening that money doesn’t grow on trees, and I bet all of us have.
I grew up listening to my father who told me, “Go out and try earning even 1 rupee, it’s so hard!’
Growing up I felt closely what a toll it can be to not have money and how negatively it impacts how we feel about life entirely, what actions we end up taking and also what strain it can put on relationships.
I grew up listening to my mum saying how broke she was at the end of every month and sometimes even just at the start or how much she owes to someone which would never go away.
As for me, I used to feel inferior and ashamed of not having money like it’s almost a crime and I tried my best to hide it. I think we all try to hide it.
Having scarcity and lack in my life made me also feel insecure in my relationship.
When my boyfriend used to buy something for himself, I would feel bad just because he could buy things for himself without much thought and I couldn’t, and I would feel like he was intentionally trying to make me feel that way.
So I grew up with a lot of negative ideas about money and it took me and still takes a lot of mindfulness with regards to my money beliefs and my money mindset to get rid of the lack mindset from my life.
So I want to share my thoughts on things that I hear people say a lot often when it comes to money.
It is that- money is the source of all evil, or money is the dirt of our hand and all such negative talks around money.
We might be frustrated for not having enough money and wanting more money in our lives, yet we say all these negative talks about money that contradicts what we really want and what we say.
But if you say that, can money ever come to you?
It’s like, if you constantly say bad things to someone, and try to diminish someone, how will your relationship be? Obviously, there will be a strain.
Will that person ever come to you lovingly?
No, they will always run away from you and maintain a hard distance..
and this is simply what money is doing too.
My Money beliefs now
Now I don’t think money is the main evil, ‘not having money’ is, because not having money sows the seed of frustration, resentment, anger, hopelessness, and judgements in normal, ordinary humans like us and brings in the need to compete, compare, bring others down and all other crime and evil.
I saw my father grow pessimistic about life, and foster resentment in other people’s success even though he was a good person.
Also for ordinary human beings like us, I know it’s not compulsory, but I really feel like we just can’t move towards our higher purpose, focus on our creativity, and start to think of changing the world around us when we are in lack.
I’ve seen how much of our good energy goes into just trying to make ends meet when we’re living in lack, that we just forget about our higher goals, our visions of life and expressing our true potential.
But here I want to say that it’s also not just about having more money, but more than that it’s about having abundance in our life because I truly believe we all deserve to be abundant.
And if we want to change our relationship with money, then we must shift our mindset from one focusing on lack to one focusing on abundance.
I wish now my father was here and I could tell him how wrong he was.
That it’s all in our hands, in our own mindset first.
So I want you to think,
How do you feel about money?
Do you think money is abundant or scarce in this world?
Do you think money is good or a source of evil?
What are your perceptions about rich people?
How do you talk about money with yourself and others?
Because All of these reflect our money mindset.
What a negative money mindset does
A negative money mindset focuses on lack and scarcity and that is why it’s also called a scarcity mindset.
A negative money mindset limits us in how we show up financially and in all other various aspects of our life.
But the first thing a negative money mindset does is that it puts a limit on our financial goals and dreams where we just settle for less and don’t think that we will ever have abundance and wealth in our life and just dismiss the kind of lifestyle we want saying it’s unachievable.
For example, a person with a negative money mindset might think that just getting a job even if the pay is very less than what he deserves is great because they feel that money is scarce and opportunities are scarce and if they want to earn a lot, then they have to work a lot harder
This does not by any means connote that accepting a job with less pay is bad, or that being satisfied with our job is bad, but what I mean is that yes, you may accept a job with less pay, and yes, you must be satisfied and grateful for your job, but just don’t settle for less because of a belief that you can’t ever have more or just because of a belief that you don’t deserve it.
If you put that limit on yourself, then you will never try to outgrow it.
In one of the books Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon hill quotes Henry ford, who says, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right’
There was a time when I thought even 30,000 rupees in salary, which is close to around 350 dollars a month is a great job and I didn’t think I would get a job like that.
All my teenage life I doubted myself and just couldn’t imagine myself having a great job and a lot of wealth in my life because I saw people around me all in scarcity.
During my college time, I never took tuition, I didn’t really feel the need for it, but also I knew my mother couldn’t afford it and I didn’t want to put pressure on her.
But during my third year, the syllabus was very vast and one of my friends suggested that I just go to tuition with her for a week and take the probable questions suggestions and notes from her teacher, and I wouldn’t have to pay the full amount that way if I just went for a week.
So I took my friend’s suggestion and went for a week and in the end when I asked how much I had to pay in fees, told me I had to pay the full amount which I think was around Rs 5000 or so.
Hearing that I was so shocked and scared to tell my mother about it.
I knew it would be so hard for her and I remember crying all the way back home by myself thinking about what a toll it would be on mum and getting angry at myself for not asking before.
I still remember this till now because I was so sad and hurt and tired about my and my parent’s financial life.
At that time, I vowed that I wouldn’t live in this kind of scarcity in my life ever and this would not be my reality in future.
I even wrote it down in my diary and vowed that I would have abundance in my life and that I would work for it.
I also started reading books and it gave me the motivation and courage that I must not limit myself beforehand and that I must dare to dream.
But those with a scarcity mindset truly believe from the bottom of their heart that they will never get out of debt at least in this lifetime and this is how their life is deemed to be and that is why they can’t afford anything.
Having a scarcity mindset looks like constantly fearing losing out on a job or their source of income and becoming too strict with their finances because they don’t believe money will come to them again through any possible medium.
They hate parting with money and feel guilty for spending even on things or don’t want to spend money on things they like- like travelling, going out once in a while or just treating themselves to nice things and enjoying what money has to offer.
They tend to hoard things when they find them cheap.
They fear investing money because they feel they might need it in some kind of emergency.
In simple terms, people with scarcity mindset just don’t like to put money in anything because don’t think anything is worth putting the money in.
And if they have to give money to anything- they do so with a heavy heart and feel extremely conscious about it and have the urge to save more for the money they ‘lost’.
I don’t know whether you can relate to this or not, but I really know and have known people in my life who tick all of these descriptions and are living in the kind of scarcity they don’t deserve.
For many of us, we might not be extreme, but there are still many ways this scarcity mindset activates in our life which all limits us in how we live our lives and in achieving true financial freedom.
My Scarcity Mindset
One time I came to know of it was with regard to investing in improving my blogging knowledge.
Because there was no one who could help me personally in growing a blog and I knew nothing about blogging, I wasn’t seeing any results.
I just thought blogging was about writing and nothing else, when actually there are so many hidden tasks involved.
There were so many bloggers out there recommending all these great courses that got them results and all of them said that we must invest if we want to grow.
But it was really so hard for me to make that decision to go for it and take a simple $97 course and part with my money.
I had all kinds of thoughts like what if it doesn’t work for me like others, and that I will be wasting my money and that I can instead just work on it myself because it’s not worth it putting in the money…
It took me more than a year to make that decision. Now coming to think of it, it was actually my scarcity mindset trying to hold me back.
Apparently, it was the best decision I ever made.
Investing in my blogging education was the first step I took towards taking my blog seriously and it gave me actual results in just one month.
That small investment I was so scared of making actually returned me more than 50 times the money I paid for the course.
After that incident, now I don’t hold back on investing and putting my money into anything I find worthy if I find that it can save me time and energy and if it can help me learn things I didn’t know.
I trust that money will come to be in many folds and just try to enjoy what money has to offer.
I had always thought I had to save money in order to grow money, but it’s really not the case.
How I changed my Money situation
It was only when I started being more free with money, more happy with how I spend my money and what all I could do with my money with a feeling of gratefulness that money started to grow
When I stopped thinking that money is scarce and instead just started to believe that money is abundant, and I started focusing on my own self first and decided that I deserve abundance in my life, that is when abundance started to flow into my life.
So where a negative money mindset focuses on fear, lack, scarcity and not having enough, a positive money mindset is where you start to develop a good relationship with money and think good about money.
Abundant Money Mindset
An abundant money mindset is where you think there is plenty of money, opportunities and plenty of room for all in this world so you don’t need to be jealous of anyone’s success and just trust and work on yourself.
You might not believe me or find it very hard to believe in this right now, because of how you have experienced your life until now or because of how you yourself have seen so much competition in this world, but trust me in this that there is plenty of money, plenty of opportunities.
If you want abundance in your life, then you have to first believe that it is there, reprogram your mind for abundance and believe that you deserve it.
But I want to tell you here that just because our money mindset might be negative right now, it does not mean that we are negative or we are bad for having a scarcity mindset.
- It’s not our fault that we think money is scarce, money is bad, or a source of evil
- It’s not our fault that we can’t believe earning money is easy
- It’s not our fault if we think that we always have to compete a lot, and bring others down to have any amount of financial success in our life.
- It’s not our fault if we think that rich people are mostly bad or must be bad because one can’t have so much money working sincerely.
- It’s not our fault …. because that’s what we have been taught.
It’s what we’ve heard the rest of the world say. Its’ what we learned- from what we have seen and heard about money from our parents, from our surroundings, from media always portraying rich people as evil, and from the wider society that always says that we have to compete, we always have to put others down if we want to be truly successful.
But I want to tell you that all of these are straight-up lies and you must not believe any of them.
Yes, some are bad, but not all and its definitely not a perspective we must have about money.
It is because of all these reasons, we poor people think that achieving wealth is either not achievable, or that earning a lot of money is hard and so we don’t ever dream and just settle for less.
Or we start to feel ashamed or guilty for wanting more money and so we again end up settling for less.
When the truth is that, us settling for less is what’s wrong.
So For today, I would just like to give you some journal prompts that will help you analyse your money mindset and your beliefs around money.
Journal Prompts for Money Mindset Awareness
1.What is your money story growing up and how has it affected what you think about money?
2. What are your beliefs about money?
Some of the money beliefs include
- I’m bad with money.
- I just can’t save money
- I never have enough.
- There will never be enough money to have it all
- God doesn’t want me to have money.
- I can’t make enough.
- I feel guilty and ashamed of my debt.
- Making money means that have to take from someone.
- In order to make money I have to work really hard, because success is hard to achieve.
- I’m bad at paying off debt.
- Saving money is a struggle.
- I always have to think so much before purchasing any single thing
- Living within our means is the best way to live.
- You shouldn’t make a lot of money by helping people
- Life is too expensive.
- I can’t afford a vacation
So these are all beliefs, and we have to be very mindful about what we’re believing about our money situation.
3. What do I believe about people who have a lot of money?
Do you think that in order to have a lot of money, you always have to bring others down? If you think that way then it’s certain that you think bad about money and judge people just because they have a lot of money.
Movies mostly portray wealthy people and businessmen as evil and bad, and like I said some people may be bad and only be thinking about money, but not all.
If we read the story of millionaires and billionaires, it’s not true.
They all started from scratch with nothing and the only way they are able to make millions in money is not because they were too focused on money, but mainly because they focused on how much value and impact they can provide to the wider society.
Just think about google.. Facebook, YouTube, apple.. and think about the value they provide to us.
4. What do I feel people will think about me if I have a lot of money?
Most of us feel that we won’t be accepted by people we love and they will now start to judge us for having wealth or that we might lose out on our friends, and all those fear.. so write any thoughts you have.
5. What is my current relationship with money?
Is it difficult? How have you talked about money till now with your friends and family?
Is it a strain every month and you are living pay check to paycheck and never really being able to open up freely with your money?
Write them down.
Next its now time to turn them around and shift your mindset from lack to abundance.. so the next prompt is
6. Write down what good things money is providing for you?
7. How can you be kind to yourself while handling matters related to money?
A small thing you can do would be to keep some amount of fun money for yourself which you use to buy for things you like.. simply for the sake of it and when you use that money be happy and grateful for it.
When you’re paying your loans and debt, part with your money being proud of yourself for being able to give back and trusting that you are clearing out your life for more abundance.
8. How can you start cultivating a good relationship with money?
9. If you could write a letter to money, what would you write?
So try answering and writing the answers to these prompts and just get it out from your head that money, job and opportunities is scarce in this world.
Instead just start seeing money as a part of living and a wonderful medium to help us live better, give better and nothing more.
I would also like you to gain personal finance knowledge and read good books on money and finance. Its the best thing you can do for yourself in your 20s or 30s or any age you may be.
Three books I would really recommend reading are think and grow rich by Napoleon hill, The Millionaire Fast lane, and the Richest man in Babylon.
Concluding: Abundance Mindset Vs Lack Mindset
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I’d like to end by saying that We all deserve to be abundant, and to have abundance is our birthright and Universe wants us to be abundant so that we can be here fully, and take care of this world better.
I will share more money mindset tips and give you 5 money mindset shifts to make on how to foster an abundant mindset in the part two of this episode.
Thank you.
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