Lesson 5: Money Habits
Learning Objective
Identify helpful and unhelpful money habits and how to replace the habits that aren’t working for you
The mind is the thing that exists between our reality and us.
It is our thinking process. It has unconnected compartments, the conscious (under our control) and the unconscious (not under our control).
Our subconscious mind is a memory bank storing everything. Its job is to ensure that we respond to things the way we are programmed to. It enables us to do things with little thought, like on autopilot.
Decisons or Habits?
In Charles Duhigg’s research for his book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, he found that around ninety-five per cent of what we do every day isn’t actually decision making, it’s habit. He suggests that habits are decisions that we’ve made at some point in the past and that we continue to act on. He uses the example:
Backing your car out of the driveway is habit for most people. It’s actually a pretty complicated activity when you think about it. The first couple of times, we have to concentrate, monitor the mirrors, gauge the distance… it takes about a week, and then we can start doing it almost on autopilot. We can talk to our passengers and fiddle with the radio. Our brain has this amazing ability to take repeated patterns – even complex ones – and make them into habits.
What’s interesting is that many of our money decisions that we make on a regular basis are essentially habits, or are made on autopilot. Being on autopilot isn’t always a good thing. We sometimes don’t realise when we switch to autopilot and react in a certain way and this can mean we can get stuck in patterns of poor routines and habits.
When we are in autopilot we:
- React with habit
- Relive the past
- Miss the details
- Limit our choices
- Repeat past emotions
When it comes to our money these behaviours aren’t ideal.
Creating Helpful Habits
We need to create money habits – mindfully by:
- Responding with awareness
- Living in the present not the past
- Notice detail
- See the big picture
- Increase our choice
By letting go of our automatic behaviour, we can live in now.
Habits are hard to break – they are wired in a section of our brain that controls our behaviour – a part of the brain that is beneath our conscious awareness, this is why we are unaware we are practicing repetitive habits.
When it comes to money habits here are ten unhelpful and ten helpful examples:
| 10 Unhelpful Money Habits | 10 Helpful Money Habits |
|---|---|
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Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you.
How we Develop Habits
Habits tend to have two components – triggers and rewards.
The triggers are usually easy to identify, they are:
- Time of day
- Place
- Emotion
- Presence of specific people
- Routine
The reward we get from our habit may be harder to define – generally it tells us what the habit gives us – and why do we do it in the first place.
It might typically be:
- Feeling
- Emotion
- State of mind
A supportive environment is the key to changing our habits. If we’re trying to change our spending habits, we probably shouldn’t socialise in shopping centres. We could also start by unsubscribing from the sales emails we’ve signed up for, and we can let our friends know that we’re on a mission to save not spend! We can also set rewards to help motivate us to stick to our new habit for a week or two.
The strategy of rewarding ourselves is known as the science of small wins.
If we break things down to small steps we create a sense of achievement and momentum.
With each small win, it makes the next steps much easier and the desire to keep going much stronger.
Creating mindful money habits
If you’re going to try and create new mindful money habits, try these simple steps:
- Think of a new habit that you’d like to build when it comes to your money.
- Set your intention for this habit.
- Make it public – or tell at least one other person to create accountability.
- Record your progress.
- Celebrate milestones.
To change your life, change your thoughts.
Using visual aids help us track our progress with new habits. Download the habits momentum chart we’ve created for you!
By visually keeping track of our progress in creating a new habit it:
- Reminds us of our habit – having it somewhere we can see it will help to make it stick.
- Displays our progress, measuring our consistency and commitment to our new behaviour.
- One look at our picture and we know exactly how we’re progressing.
- Can drive our motivation on a daily basis and help us create a lasting habit.
- Has an additive effect on our motivation – as we see visual evidence of our progress, we can become more motivated to continue the habit.
Self-Sabotage
We all know our mind can play tricks on us.
Our conscious and subconscious mindset and actions can sometimes work against each other in ways that can prevent us from creating and keeping wealth in our lives.
Self-sabotage can come in lots of different forms and habits:
- Not being able to say no
- Constant worrying
- Procrastinating
- Ignoring something or burying our head in the sand
- Quitting something when it becomes difficult or we think it’s too hard
- Comparing ourselves to others
- Focussing only on the negative and what’s not working for us
- Constant daydreaming
- Perfectionism
- Failing to Plan
- Undervaluing ourselves
- Working ourselves too hard
Mindful Question/Reflection:
Can you identify with any of these self-sabotage techniques?
Do you have one or more default when it comes to your money?
For each of the ones that you can identify with, see if you can replace this action with a more positive action.
When it comes to our money, often we know we should be saving more, but we continue to spend.
We know we shouldn’t be using our credit card, but we still use it anyway.
We know we should be planning for the future but we live for today instead.
We know we have a habit of paying our bills late, but we continue to miss the payment dates and incur late payment fees.
We may set a budget or try and improve our financial literacy but when our subconscious self-sabotaging habits kick in, things fall apart. We start to do things that undermine even our best intentions. More often than not, we’re not even really aware of how our habits or beliefs may be ruining our chance of creating more wealth. We don’t mean to sabotage ourselves, nor do we make a conscious decision to spoil things when things are going well, or let our habits undo the hard work we’ve created.
When we are self-sabotaging, we attempt to rationalise something that we know isn’t in our best interests.
We need to create self-awareness to understand when we are in “self-sabotage” mode.
Once we recognise that we are doing things that aren’t in alignment with our “wealth” practice, we can then switch these beliefs, habits or actions to healthier ones.
Rather than justifying why we did (or didn’t do) this or that, we can observe our behaviour in certain situations. We can look at it almost as if it’s someone else’s behaviour we’re watching.
We can ask ourselves then: “What did I do there?” and “What was driving it?” More likely than not, there will be an emotion behind our action.
It may be fear, or spite, or a need to be in control, a desire for attention or a lack of self-confidence or worth. It’s through this process that we start to gain clarity on why we do what we do.
The Power of Visualisation to Overcome Money Blocks and Barriers
It might sound overly simple, but the belief that you can, have or be something has a very significant impact on our ability to actually achieve it. In fact, research on human behaviour has show that your self-belief has more affect on your performance than your level of education, gender, age, health or intelligence.
Whenever we are challenged, pushed out of our comfort one, or striving to achieve something, it’s important to tell yourself that you can do it.
Visualisation is a fantastic method you can use to face and overcome any blocks or barriers you are facing.
Using visualisation turns our imagination to reality: it’s a simple as imagining ourselves doing the thing we want to do, or having the things we want to have. It works by picturing or visualizing yourself actually doing, or having the things that you need in order to have more wealth.
Your subconscious mind begins to accept the thoughts that you often repeat and begins to change your mindset accordingly, as well as your habits and actions.
And the best thing about this visualisation technique is that we can do it anywhere, anytime – no one has to know you’re doing it either.
Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of Module 2
Well done on completing the second stage of your journey. Keep an eye on your inbox, and we’ll send you an email when Module 3 is available (remember, you get one
module each week). Until then, we’d love to hear your feedback or help you
with any questions you may have.
Best wishes,
Lea + the mindful wealth movement team.
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