How is your relationship to money? If I was to sum it up, most people I come across to want to change their relationship with money. And by change, I mean improve. I mean, most of us want more money, so it makes sense that if we improve our relationship with money, then we can expect money to come to us more easily, or to stay with us. I recently had a discussion with a person who posed a question that went something like this;
I’ve noticed a pattern with the way I spend money. During the times I’ve had little money, I feel more grateful and feel like I understand the value of money. Then when I have a larger amounts of money, I go crazy with spending, despite having a budget. Most of it is spent on instant gratification like takeaway or comfort food, even when I have a fridge full of delicious and healthy food. I make budgets and don’t stick to them, I’ll see something I like and think “I’ll take it out of next weeks paycheck, and on it goes”.
Now, I found this really interesting. What it sounded like to me was a mis-alignment between the conscious and subconscious mind (check out my post, Why your not getting what you want which dives into this). The conscious mind very clearly had a plan of what it wanted. To save money, budget, put some away for a rainy day…. The subconscious mind was like, “hey I’m not used to having all this money, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m going to sabotage this”. My view of it was, that this woman probably had much deeper, subconscious beliefs like;
- I’ll always be poor
- I’m no good with money
- Money goes out faster than it comes in
- Money is bad and evil
- Rich people are selfish
- I’m not good enough to be wealthy
- Who am I to have money in the bank
- I’m not worthy of achieving financial success
I asked this woman the question, did she have any of the above beliefs and she that nearly all the beliefs resonated. She held most of them as beliefs. While she was surprised, I wasn’t, because here’s the thing. Most of us have similar beliefs and stories playing out. Most of us have work to do on healing or improving our relationship with money.
So how can we do that?
As a starting point, here are four steps that you can start to re-write your money story. It comes down to changing the beliefs you hold around money (so you can bring more in, keep it and circulate it in a way that aligns with you, and not let it burn a hole in your pocket with whatever you see).
1. Identify the beliefs you hold.
Similar to those that I listed above, write out the deeper beliefs you are currently carrying towards money. There’s no shame here and you don’t have to share them with anybody. The first step to any change is becoming self aware, so just clear them all out, get honest so you can see them.
2. Unpack the beliefs
Most of us are carrying these stories from our childhood. Whether our parents always argued over money, your mum cried at the supermarket because she didn’t have enough, no one liked the family down the street because they always talked about how much money they had. Whatever it is, see if you can identify where it came from. This will usually trigger an ah-ha moment.
3. Write a love letter to money
If you want to improve your relationship to money, write it a letter (we’ll call it a love letter!). Write this love letter to money like it’s a person, someone who you want to be around, who provides you great opportunities, who let’s you be more you, more generous, whatever it is you want money to be for you. Write it all out, in a loving way and create your new money story.
4. Form your new beliefs around money into affirmations and repeat often
Pull out some new beliefs to become mantras or affirmations from your love letter. Work with these multiple times a day, writing them out, repeating them in your mind and use the framework I provided in here, to reframe when you find yourself slipping into the old beliefs. Just keep at them until you believe them These are the steps I personally worked through when I wanted to re-write my money story a few years ago. They worked so well for me, I hope they set you on your path to forming your new, loving relationship with money. Love this article? Subscribe to my emai list, grab a free journalling guide and never miss a thing (and I treat your inbox like I do mine, with respect and value only!).