Are your subconscious beliefs holding you back?
If you believed something weird about cats, it would probably come up in conversation and be addressed. “Everyone knows cats can fly for up to 72 feet,” you state. “Umm, ha ha, no,” your friends would reply. But if money is taboo how would your weird money belief ever come up?
Money scripts, or money beliefs, are those things you believe about money that may be holding you back from achieving financial success. If you believe “most rich people got there by doing something bad,” the odds of you “being bad” in your own eyes and having financial success are much lower than for someone who doesn't have this belief. You might take the first job offer given to you without negotiating for more. You might make the money, and then immediately give it away or waste it to be free of the rich people cooties. And the most disturbing part is that you will likely do this without any conscious understanding of what has just happened.
You see, you were designed to be efficient. Back in cave man days calories were hard to come by, so your system was built to be very efficient. Any extra fuel was stored as fat, and your wiring means you are loathe to waste any of those calories on unnecessary effort.
You might think just sitting and thinking isn't very hard work, but in fact using our conscious mind to evaluate options is actually a big fuel-consumer. The part of our brain used to make those thoughtful, adult decisions is the slowest and least efficient part of our brain. So whenever possible, our thinking brain outsources work to lower, more efficient parts of the brain.
That subconscious part of our minds is wide open when we are kids. We take in what is happening in the world around us, in our families of origin and in the broader culture, and soak it in. Repetition is a great way to add something to the subconscious. So repeated conversation over the dinner table where judgement is passed against others, rich or poor, goes into the software. Anything that is emotionally charged tends to go in as well. So if mom and dad have a big money fight, the emotional charge you have sends that argument into the memory bank.
Most of us do not receive much formal education about finances. While Sex Ed might have been limited to “the talk” with a parent plus the one day in Health class when the boys were separated from the girls, that's exactly two more deliberate conversations most of us had about sex than we had about money. If you think the teen pregnancy rate is high, imagine what the teen debt rate looks like.
One of the most enlightening things you can do, either with a journal or with a partner, is to work through what you picked up about how money worked as a kid and compare that to what you now understand as an adult who is doing financial self-education. Were any of those values helpful? Might some of the money scripts you picked up be true in some situations, but not in others? Does looking back at those beliefs as an adult cause you to realize where some of your issues may be coming from?
Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions. Your actions lead to the results you are getting. If you don't like your results, look back at your thoughts. Dig deep, into not just what you consciously believe, but also those beliefs you may have put on auto-pilot. Are they true? Are they serving you?
Once you find those unhelpful beliefs, raising them up to the level of awareness is often enough for them to dissipate. If that doesn't do the trick, pick a thought that seems more helpful but is still believable. Work your way up from negative to neutral to positive and watch your external reality change.
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