I have come to believe that many people are running a mental program around their thoughts on money that they may not even be aware of. I also think that this is only partially our fault, and the origins of this program were created to try to control the masses and cause us to keep ourselves poor. In my last post, I explained how we’ve gotten ourselves confused on what value means, this post is a follow up to further provide some solutions on how we can change our toxic thinking around money so that we can create value for others and provide for ourselves and our dreams.
In the last year, I have observed extreme behaviors around money on opposite ends of a spectrum. Money brings out extreme emotions in human beings. I’ve seen rich people who believe the poor brought it upon themselves, and I’ve seen poor people who blame the rich for taking all their money. It was through these observations that I was able to see the programming clearly. I feel a lot of us are running a version of the ”twisted money mentality program”, and I also think its making us mentally ill. A lot of extreme behaviors around money are the result of the skewing of our money system and our confusion.
Living in Lack- The Poverty Mentality.
Many of us know of someone who “grew up during the depression”. There are hard core personality traits that develop in generations of people who have experienced extreme lack. This is an example of a mental program around money. In some cases, an older person will have plenty of money, yet they still save scraps of tinfoil to use for later. “Hording” is a behavior where this mental illness has gone to an extreme, based in a feeling of deep insecurity and fear. The accumulation of tons of “stuff” somehow makes the person feel safe.
Lack is a mentality whose mental effects can stretch far beyond the remedy. Fear of not having enough causes people to go into survival mode, and in many cases, it becomes “survive at the expense of another”. When we experience extreme lack, human beings can do despicable things that they would never normally do. For example, what would a mother do to feed her starving child, would she kill if she had to?
People are confused when it comes to how they deal with their feelings of lack. Even if someone suddenly has their needs met, the lack mentality can still continue and in some cases backfire to sabotage the person. There have been studies done on people who have won the lottery and how it has effected them. Surprisingly, many of them ended up spending all of it and put themselves into worse debt then ever before. In many cases it destroyed a lot of them. There have been communities of people that lasted for years while they were impoverished, and then a sudden inflow of money or success destroyed the community. This is because no one ever dealt with the lack mentality, and the emotional baggage of the program.
How to De-Program Yourself From a “Lack Mentality”;
Pay close attention to your behaviors and your words. Are you constantly looking for discounts? Are you always thinking about how you can turn something small into something bigger? Are you allowing the words “we can’t afford that” to come out of your mouth more than once a day? Or worse, are you taking from others in order to feel you have your needs met?
There is nothing wrong with being a bit frugal and wise in your use of resources. This is not about overconsuming. This is a lesson in balance. After you have assessed your behaviors, imagine that today you won the lottery or had a big windfall where suddenly all of your needs were met. Then ask yourself, what would I do differently? Would you speak more positively? Would you act more confidently? Would you treat others better? If the answer is yes, then start doing some of these things NOW, before you have a windfall of success. This will help to de-program you from your lack mentality.
Fear of Success:
A close companion to the lack mentality is a fear of success. Many are familiar with the fear of failure, which can lead to the inability to make a decision or take action because a person is afraid of rejection. However, the fear of success is much more subtle, harder to spot and also harder to eradicate.
A person with a lack mentality will also exhibit characteristics of a fear of success mentality. All of these are part of the twisted money mentality programming that many suffer from.
Behaviors That Indicate a Fear of Success mentality:
- Studying and trying to implement self-improvement techniques and/or personal development tools but your life does not improve or may even get worse.
- Settling for less than you feel you deserve or are capable of achieving.
- Starting new projects full of enthusiasm and optimism but wane in your efforts or stop short before you have completed them.
- Expect things to go wrong no matter how well the situation appears to be at the moment.
The fear of success can also make you behave in ways that hold you back which leads to the following “success killers”; procrastination, inability to see the bigger picture, becoming a perfectionist or apathy towards any kind of forward moving action. Ask yourself if you have been experiencing some of these results in your life. If you have, and more specifically if they seem to be repeating results, then it may be part of the mental programming.
This can be remedied and de-programmed in small steps. One suggestion is to find something small that you can succeed in accomplishing, and when you complete it, celebrate it in a big way. Then move on to something bigger. Pretty soon you’ll not only overcome your fear of success, you’ll start expecting to be successful in everything you do.
Are We Resisting Money?
Is money the root of all evil? Many say that it is not money itself, but rather it is the LOVE of money that is evil. But what if money is just the representation of value? Is value evil? Is a person that appreciates value offered to help others evil?
I’ve seen this phenomenon lately that would appear to be one of the most detrimental effects of the twisted money mentality programming. Some people have a belief that all people who have money must have done something evil to obtain it, therefore in order for them to have money they too must be evil. They don’t want to be evil, so they associate resisting the accumulation of money as being “good”.
This has been a common misinterpretation throughout many religions where it seems that to be holy is to be poor. And to be rich is to worship the devil.
We should be happy and excited about the idea of offering something of value to someone who has a need and receiving something of value in return. Instead there is a weird sort of wall that I’ve seen in the following behaviors:
-People feel bad for charging for their services, give everything away for free and then feel resentful when they have to pay to have their needs met by another.
-People will resist money when it is directly associated with a task that they need to perform, (a job, a project, a customer order) but will take the resources of another where no work is required. Example: the lazy person that does not want to even try to get a job, but expects his parents or a wealthy friend to just keep paying all his expenses.
-People who are successful are despised by people who are resistant to money. The success of another person becomes a mirror to the unsuccessful person and triggers the money programming mentality. Rather than celebrating the success of another (or better yet, trying to imitate it for oneself), the programming tells the person to become bitter, jealous and create justifications around the reasons why one person was successful when they were not.
Take Back The Joy of Creating Value!
It’s time to reclaim a healthy desire to create value and end the brainwashing that money is evil. It is good to provide and receive value. It is good to earn money. Especially if those who earn money will do the right thing with it and continue to create value for others.
