Lesson 3: Money Beliefs and Limitations

Our money beliefs are ideas, thoughts or opinions that impact our money behaviour. Most of our money beliefs are formed as a result of our experiences and influenced by family, friends, education, social media and society.

Our beliefs are our perceptions of how we see and interpret things surrounding money – often helpful – other times these beliefs can be less helpful and even sabotage our actions. Over time, they become engrained in our conscious mind, moving to our subconscious or unconscious mind. Beliefs can be for a lifetime and some are replaced with new information as we grow.

Our unconscious beliefs challenge us and unless we create awareness around them, they will not be changed. To make change – we need to be able to identify our money beliefs.

Believe in yourself!

Oprah says many people are held back from becoming who they were meant to be by shadow beliefs and feelings of unworthiness.

Discovering our Money Beliefs

Some of us grow up with the belief that money, or lack of it, is something to be feared (limiting belief), while others of us may grow up with the confidence that money comes freely and with ease (empowering belief).

We might believe that we’re not deserving of money, that money is a limited resource or that there’s not enough of it to go around. Other common money beliefs include that you have to work hard to have money or that money is the root of all evil.

The interesting thing about these empowering and limiting beliefs is that often we don’t even realise that we have them.

A combination of our money beliefs form our attitude towards earning, saving and spending money and how likely we are to give it away or invest it.

Are Your Beliefs Limiting You?

In addition to empowering beliefs, we may hold limiting beliefs around money.  These beliefs are held in our subconscious mind and are a result of beliefs from childhood.

We have to uncover our true beliefs and replace these with abundant beliefs.

There are four common categories of limiting money beliefs:

Money and Sense of Identity
For many of us, we identify ourselves with our jobs and our income. If our family were poor or working class, we may adopt this image for ourselves. “I’m just a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl,” or  “I can’t imagine eating in a fancy restaurant.” Or, “I’m just a hair dresser”, “I’m just an artist” and “I’m just a mum.”

Money and Sense of Self-Worth
If we have low self- esteem we feel we don’t deserve to make or have more money. We feel that there are people who need the money more than us, or that by receiving more money; we are taking it from someone else. If we’ve lost money in the past, we may feel undeserving of it now or in the future. Common beliefs tied to our self-worth include “I couldn’t handle the changes that more wealth would create in my life.”

Money and Beliefs about Others: We grow up with preconceptions about people who have money and we often hold envy or resentment towards people who have more wealth than us. We might believe that “rich people are greedy”. When we hold these negative emotions about wealthy people, we’re unlikely to become one. If we hold beliefs that rich people are greedy then, unconsciously, we avoid increasing our wealth, as we don’t want to appear greedy or be judged by others as being that way.

Money and Religion / Spirituality: Some associate religion or spirituality with being poor. We may feel that it’s “not spiritual to want money” or that “if we focus too much on money we’ll lose our spiritual or religious focus”. This is not the case at all. Remember that money is purely a tool. It’s also a magnifier, so if we’re greedy and mean, then more money is likely to make us greedier and meaner. And if we’re generous and sharing with our money, then more money will generally make us more generous.

Here’s the trick though:

• We won’t develop empowering beliefs just by deciding that we want to.
• Conscious decision about what we want to believe isn’t enough. For a belief to really serve us, it has to be something that we really resonate with on every level, consciously and unconsciously.

Our thoughts control our energy within and around us.

Whatever comes up for you, just breathe; do not judge these feelings, thoughts or emotions. We’re just exploring them and by becoming aware of how we feel about money, it empowers us in our relationship with it.

Changing the Energy of Money

If we hold negative feelings or emotions with money, even on a sub-conscious level, then it can be difficult to attract more of it into our life. Now that we’ve explored emotions and feelings we have with money, let’s change our energy with money and surround it with super positive feelings.

As we become increasingly aware of our money beliefs, our awareness grows and we begin to notice how our beliefs influence our behaviour.

Move on to Lesson 4