How To Change Your Relationship With Money

Wondering how to change your relationship with money? Everyone has a relationship with money. How you spend money, how you earn it and how you save it are all part of that relationship. But there’s another way you relate to money and that is how you think about money. How you think about money, what money means to you and how you see those who have money all have an effect on how much money you have.

To change your relationship with money, you first need to become aware of how you think about money. Holding limiting beliefs about money such as “money is hard to earn”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “money is the route of evil” and “I don’t care about money” will most definitely have an effect on your ability to earn and hold on to money.

Your emotional entanglements too have an effect on your ability to attract money in to your life. Are you envious of the rich, for example? Do you think “rich people are greedy”, or that “money corrupts”. If so, you may have a negative association with money and this can effect how much you allow yourself to have. Do you find you are regularly struggling with money, perhaps you have a belief that “making money is difficult”, for example? If so, you could be harbouring some unpleasant emotions regarding money. If you perceive yourself as good, but believe money to be “bad”, you’ll likely be subconsciously pushing money away from you.

How To Change Your Relationship With Money

How much money are you comfortable with in your bank account? Would you feel happier if you had ten times that amount, or a hundred times as much? Although you might think that you would relish this idea, it may bring some problems with it. A common trend among lottery winners is to be back where they were within a couple of years after winning, having blown the lot! This is because of something known as your financial thermostat.

Lottery winners also report their wins as having devastated relationships with their friends and family members. Think about how a lottery win might affect the people in your life, and your closest relationships.

Your financial thermostat is the amount of money you are comfortable having, not that which you want.

Once the amount you have, or earn goes above that amount, you’ll find ways to lose it, to maintain your “comfortable spot”. You may already be subconsciously sabotaging your own success to maintain the “status quo”.

Your identity is wrapped up in how much money you earn, too. So a large change in your income, or a sudden windfall is likely to threaten this. So how can you get over your limitations in terms of your financial thermostat, your self image (or identity) and the way you are thinking about money? Here’s a few things you can do.

How To Change Your Relationship With Money: Pay Attention

One of the easiest things you can do is start to notice how you think about money and how you talk about it. Take a notepad and for a week, jot down anything you notice you say in conversation regarding money. It might be how you perceive someone who is wealthy, any debt talk, or anything which relates to money. Often we are unconscious about the negative things we are saying about money. So doing this exercise is useful in that it brings more awareness to the subject and how you think about it.

When you are talking to others, what story are you telling them about yourself? Is it one of success and financial abundance, or is it the opposite. In the North of England where I live, the “daily struggle” can almost be a source of competition in conversation. Whoever has had the most difficult week wins! This kind of talk is clearly sending the message that you must struggle in life, and of course this relates clearly to money as well.

When you start noticing such things in your conversation, take note. Pay attention to how you speak money into (or out of) your life in your daily conversations. You might also notice yourself thinking negatively about money, work, life or yourself. Pay attention when this happens because those negative thoughts can have a big impact on your financial thermostat.

How To Change Your Relationship With Money: Birds Of A Feather

Have you heard the saying “birds of a feather flock together”? Like minds attract like minds and this is important if you want to change your financial thermostat. How would you compare your income and lifestyle with that of your 5 closest friends? It’s probably pretty similar, right? That’s because “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” – Jim Rohn.

In his book “Stop Acting Rich” Thomas Stanley points out that people who move to richer neighbourhoods end up spending more money. That’s because they are surrounded with wealthier people and their behaviour rubs off. This same phenomenon happens with your friend circle, or your “circle of influence”. When you’re around your circle of influence, listen to how they talk about money. You’ll learn a lot about how your financial thermostat is hard wired. Particularly listen to any limiting ideas about money. Is money/work thought of as negative in any way? Are rich people envied or disliked in your crowd?

Finding a different circle of influence is a good idea if you want to increase your financial thermostat because we tend to want to fit in to our crowd and therefore we will take on ideas and beliefs of our friends to do so.

How To Change Your Relationship To Money: Self Image/Identity

Your self image (or identity) is an important part of your make up. It serves as a large piece of the jigsaw that is your world view, and how you fit into it. A huge change in your circumstances, such as a financial windfall, is a threat to your self image. To keep yourself safe, you perpetuate the same world view and therefore maintain your self image. Your income is an intricate part of your self image so another way to change your financial thermostat is to work on your self image.

How can we change the way we see ourselves? Maxwell Maltz wrote a book called Psycho-cybernetics where he shares some ideas about changing the self image. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who discovered that many of his clients were unhappy even after they had the surgery which corrected something they didn’t like about themselves. He started working with self image on clients before they had surgery and discovered that many of them no longer wanted the surgery. They had changed the way they perceived themselves, and so their lives changed.

If you continue thinking of yourself in the same way you always have, you’re likely to earn the same amount of money you always have. One of the quickest ways to change your self image is to notice the thoughts you are having about yourself. Notice the stories you’re telling others about yourself too. Shift your story and thoughts and your self image will change.

Gratitude Diary

If you’re struggling with money, it could be your thoughts are very much about lack and limitation. This can create a lot of negative self talk which perpetuates further struggle and pain. One simple strategy to alter your vibrational frequency and change your thinking is to use a gratitude diary. Gratitude is a great antidote to frustration, struggle and inner turmoil.

Rather than focus your attention on the pain, struggle and difficulties in your life, which further reinforces this as your reality, focus instead on something you are grateful for. This can be difficult at first, but with practice, you should notice this becoming part of your regular daily routine. As you make this a habitual habit, it will reinforce a different reality and shift your vibration to one of frustration and difficulty to one of harmony and gratitude.

As you become accustomed to this new way of thinking, you will notice it is much more pleasant to be in an attitude of gratitude than in one of pain and suffering. Grateful thoughts will attract more of the same, and soon, you will have completely shifted your mindset. If you lack money, focus not on the lack, but on the things you do have, that you can be genuinely grateful for. Start with small things, like your health, your clothes and the air in your lungs!

A gratitude diary can create dramatic results in your life over time if you make it a daily regimen. If you are consistently focused on the things you don’t have, the result is dissatisfaction. Gratitude helps you change this and shift your vibration to a lighter energy.

Read Money Books

There’s a lot of books that have been written on money. There’s a few on this website in pdf format here. Napoleon Hill’s Think And Grow Rich is a classic and in chapter 2 he talks about “autosuggestion”. Autosuggestion is what goes on constantly in your inner mind chatter. Whether you control this or not, Hill says, is immaterial. But we have the ability to control this inner chatter. Because thoughts become things, we should pay very careful attention to what this chatter is saying because it runs constantly throughout our lives!

The Science Of Getting Rich (Wallace Wattles) is another classic book worth a read. Both books mention the power of gratitude.

Other practical books on money are David Bach The Automatic Millionaire, Thomas Stanley Stop Acting Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki and Bob Proctor’s Change Your Paradigm is a nice easy read.

The Latte Factor

David Bach’s book The Automatic Millionaire has a heap of advice for managing your money. One of the points made in the book is to know your “latte factor”.

The latte factor refers to a latte coffee which may be something you buy on a regular basis from a coffee shop such as Starbucks! If so, you can easily justify the spending, of perhaps $5 on a coffee and a biscuit, for example. But, if you do this on a daily basis, over the year it will cost you $1825. Knowing your “latte Factor” writes Bach, means knowing where you justify spendings which you could save instead. Those savings will compound over time, bringing in more and more interest.

Bach also talks about setting up automated savings which leave your bank account when you are paid. This has a two-fold effect. It forces you to live on less and allows you to create a buffer of savings which earns interest over the longer term.

Knowing both your spending habits and creating some saving habits will have an effect on how you manage the money you already have.

Resistance To Receiving The Good

Imagine how your relationships will change when you have more money. Does this affect you? Would a close family member or friend feel out shone by your increased success, or would they be happy for you? Could you comfortably earn more than your parents? Often, we carry subconscious biases about money to protect others who we think would suffer if we were to have greater success. Might the relationship change if you increased your earnings?

Or we fear becoming someone else, perhaps someone we wouldn’t like, should we allow ourselves greater wealth. If you have any negative thoughts of those who are wealthy, how will this sit with you if you attain the same?

Are you worried friends and family would want a handout? Or, perhaps you may be corrupted by money if you were to attain greater wealth? Our many sub-personalities and influencing thoughts can sabotage our best efforts if they are not aligned with our desires. Particularly if they hold negative ideas, grudges, fear or anger towards the very thing we want to attain.

Working With The Law, Raymond Holliwell: “We dare not give our time, thought or energy to that which is opposed to what we want. That is setting up a resistance contrary to the Law and barring the way for our good to come in”

Enjoying What You Do Vs. Job You Hate

It can be difficult to earn money in a job you hate. The thought to working is tied up with pain, and this can act as an inhibitor to wanting to work in the first place. If you’ve done any length of time in a job you despise, you’ll know what I mean. A recent Gallop Poll showed that 85% of workers are dissatisfied in their jobs, which means a lot of people have a problem with the way they earn an income.

If you’re in this camp, it can be difficult to get positive about making money through your job. If that’s the case, you’ll have a much better relationship with money if you can transition into some meaningful work, whatever it may be. Look for ways to escape the rat race if this is you.

When you get paid doing work you love, your relationship with money will have changed! In Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, he shows that you can be earning income from four categories: I (Investor), E (Employed), SE (self employed) and B (Business owner). When you have multiple income streams, you have much more choice about which work you choose.

Summary

You now have some strategies and know how to change your relationship with money. Everyone has a relationship with money which can be multi faceted. How you earn money, save money and spend money is all a part of this relationship. If you’re struggling with money, it may be the way you think about money which is a problem, as well as a real difficulty. While many financial problems are created by outside factors too, particularly at the moment in 2023, there’s a lot of internal things you can control too, such as the way you view the rich, and the way you view money.

Strong emotions around money are a strong signal. If you catch yourself having strong emotions to do with money, its a clear indication that there’s something going on inside of you which may be limiting your ability to have money in your life. A lot of beliefs and ideas about money come from our childhood. Before we are 10 years old, we have inherited a lot of biases around income, money and wealth.

You can investigate your childhood influences around money by thinking back to your earliest money memories. Think about what your parents thought (and felt) about money. See also money mindset coach.