How to Change the Money Mindset that keeps you Broke

By Contributing Author

Are you finding it hard to improve your finances? Or are you struggling with a force that keeps pulling you back every time you try to get ahead? If so, have you ever stopped for a second to find out why that’s the case? It could be something external, or maybe internal, like your mindset.

In this article, we will focus on your mindset, and how something as simple as a shift in your thinking can take you from scarcity to abundance. But before we do that, let’s make sure we are on the same page about money mindset.

So, what is money mindset?

At its most basic, money mindset is a dominant attitude that you’ve got about your finances. It informs the way you make critical financial decisions daily and can have a significant influence on your ability to attain your targets. You can make bad or good financial choices depending on how you tune your money mindset.

The basics of personal finances are pretty straightforward: spend less, save more, and don’t buy the stuff you do not need. However, as you (and everyone else knows), doing this is easier said than done. The stories we tell ourselves suppresses our ability to transform our financial reality. In fact, we pay more attention to aspects that shouldn’t matter. It’s easy to spend most of your money as soon as it hits your bank account or even find yourself scared of spending the money. And although there are emotional aspects linked to this, usually it boils down to your mindset and how you make and spend money.

Understanding the scarcity and abundance mindset

Scarcity mentality or mindset is the belief that there will never be enough – whether its emotions, food, money and so on – and as a result, your thought and actions root from a place of lack. This mindset tends to make you cling to things you have for fear of lacking.

Abundant thinking or mindset, on the other hand, is a belief that there are enough success and resources to share with others. It allows you to see the possibility instead of limits and as a result, changes your perspective.

With that in mind, let’s now focus on how you can change the money mindset that keeps you broke to a mindset of abundance.

Master your money mindset

Your primary belief comes from your childhood. If you’ve grown believing that money is complicated, you’ll spend the rest of your life being mistrustful, hiding money, lying about money or saving the money at different institutions. Your actions will always be a reaction to money being complicated, so much so that you won’t realize that it’s what’s complicating your life. The same applies to beliefs like “I don’t deserve money,” or “it’s not okay to want money” and so on. So, your first step should be to change this childhood mindset (or money myth) to something more positive like “money is good,” “I deserve money,” “I am going to be rich.”

Conquer your fears

Fear is a good thing – it’s our body’s way of telling us something is not right, and we need to flee. However, not all fear is good, especially if it only serves to limit and trap you. You may fear that you’ll be thrown out of the house, or you won’t be able to pay your child’s tuition, or that you’ll retire with nothing and so on. And while this may nudge you to work harder, it becomes problematic when it’s crippling your present. If you want to make more money and be more financially secure, you’ll need to control your fear. And the best way to do this is to decide that you are going to make more money and be fully committed to that course.

Act and work on enhancing your skills

It’s not enough to decide to change. You also have to take new actions. Remember, you can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results – that’s insanity. Once you start acting, your brain will also be reprogrammed to align with your goals. You can also re-characterize yourself before your friends and family by sparking different kinds of conversations. You will be surprised by how these declarations will transform your actions.