Your Money Beliefs Might Be Stopping Your Financial Success
Are you someone who knows what you should be doing with your money but can’t seem to change your behavior? Do you make a budget and ignore it? Is retail therapy your favorite form of “self-help” leading to frequent overspending? Or maybe you are so frugal that spending money on anything can seriously stress you out? Does the amount of money in your bank account make you feel good or bad about your self? Or do you just avoid thinking about your finances? All of these behaviors might be reflections of your money beliefs. Money believes or money scripts, might be holding you back from achieving wealth and success in your financial life. If left unexamined and unaddressed they could keep you from reaching your financial potential.
Understanding your beliefs about money will determine your relationship to it: how much you will have, save, spend and even earn. Money beliefs (or money scripts) are unconscious beliefs developed around money. They usually are formed from experiences you had growing up that you internalized and then came to believe to be true about the world. In general a belief gives us a feeling of certainty about what things mean and who we are. We have a tendency to think of beliefs as facts about the way the world works when they are not facts but things we chose to believe. Thinking they are facts is what can make these believes so hard to identify. If you want to know if your money beliefs are impacting you negatively look at your life. Your financial life is a manifestation of your money beliefs.
Though appearing to be true, these money scripts are actually inaccurate views of money relationships and only contain partial truths. Formed out of our childhood experiences, they’re often rooted in an incomplete understanding of the world and the immaturity of childhood beliefs. These believes helped you make sense of a complex and scary world that you had little understanding of as a child. Given these views were made when a child to make sense of the actions of adults, these money scripts from your past are most likely no longer serving you today.
Beliefs and reality usually reflect one another. When reality starts to contradict a belief, tension is created in our lives and causes us stress. At this point we have two choices to mitigate the tension- we can change the belief system or change the reality. Because most of us don’t realize we have the belief in the first place, we have no choice but to sabotage our reality to be back in line with what we believe. Ever hear about someone who won the lottery and lost it all? Or a famous athlete that became ultra-wealthy and lost it all back to their originall net worth? If your money beliefs doesn’t align with your current reality you may self-sabotage to get back to a place that matches what you actually believe.
So you may be asking ok what do I do about this? The first step to change your money scripts is to start by building awareness. You must first become aware of the scripts you’re operating from, and with that awareness you will come to see how they are impacting your life. Only then can you decide if those beliefs serve you and do the work to start to shifting them to serve who you are today.
If you would like help in identifying your money beliefs and changing them to create the finanical future you want for yourself Dyvergent Path can help. We specialize in coaching around identifying money beliefs and work with you to transition from your old money scripts to new ones that will best serve you and create a positive and healthy relationship with money that serves you today. Click the link below to schedule a free consultation and get you started designing the financial future of your dreams.