Limiting Beliefs Around Money

Today’s episode is for everyone out there who struggles with money. You can’t see me, but I am raising my hand.

I recently finished a book called The Illusion of Money: Why Chasing Money Is Stopping You From Receiving It. It blew my mind, so I wanted to dedicate this episode to covering some of what’s in there.

A lot of us struggle with money — whether it’s thinking we don’t have enough of it, or thinking we’ll be happy once we have a certain amount of it.

The Illusion of Money was written by Kyle Cease, and if that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s a well-known actor and comedian that left his life in the spotlight to become a motivational speaker.

And his book talks about how our obsession with money actually prevents us from living a truly fulfilling, abundant life.

The summary for the book is this:

Money is one of the biggest excuses we make to not go after what we really want. Our fixation with money–the desire for more of it, and the fear of not having enough of it–is often really just a longing to feel safe. But this obsession with money is coming at a much bigger cost: our sanity, our creativity, and our freedom.

We all have limiting beliefs about money, deep in our subconscious, and we might not even be aware they exist. 

I want to run through some of those beliefs. Please reach out to me if any of these sound familiar. I’d be interested if they strike a chord, because some of them really resonated with me. So have you ever heard that…

• Money doesn’t grow on trees
• Money doesn’t buy happiness
• Money is the root of all evil
• You have to work hard to earn a lot of money
• Rich people are greedy 
• Rich people are lucky
• More money, more problems
• I don’t deserve a lot of money
• I’ll be successful when I have a lot of money

Growing up, I heard several of these on more than one occasion. Both of my parents worked tirelessly to provide for us. Some nights for dinner, I remember that we had sliced potatoes mixed with onions and hot dogs. They used to call it “jumbut.” 

And I never thought about this once as a kid, but I now realize we ate it during times my parents had to have been financially struggling. Neither of my parents went to college (which is completely ok, by the way). 

My mom got sick at a young age.

My dad would be out the door for work at 5am every single day, and have side jobs every single weekend.

And I have four siblings. Kids aren’t cheap, but they always did what they had to do to make sure we had food on our plates, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs.

I frequently heard growing up that money doesn’t grow on trees.

Or, even to this day, if I need to ask my dad for something, he always jokingly says, “I’ll buy two in case one breaks.” 

But here’s the thing: When we constantly hear these things growing up, it instills a deeply engrained negative association with money throughout our adult lives, that we become attached to, and they are simply not true.

Because the tangible, paper form of money and our beliefs about money are two very different things, and that’s where a lot of people get it wrong and perpetuate money problems throughout most of their lives.

Do you believe a story about money that comes from a place of lack and scarcity, or growth and abundance?

Can you believe a new story that your financial well being is a state of mind?

Because if you can, there’s already a world of wealth and abundance inside of us that you can access to attract money to you. But first, you need to stop looking to outside sources like money or a massive paycheck as your source of security.

If you’re not quite buying into this yet…stick with me.

Imagine that you’re walking down the street, and you come across a penny. Would you pick up that penny? Or would you leave it sitting there? 

If you would leave it sitting there, you have a limiting belief around money that is holding you back from earning more of it. Because if you can’t appreciate or be grateful for the value that a penny can bring, how on earth could you ever expect to assign real value to a dollar? 100 dollars? A million dollars?

Why do you think so many lottery winners wind up growing broke? 

As soon as they have it, they operate from a place of: “What if I lose this?” So it has nothing to do with the amount of money they have, and it has everything to do with fear and their belief that money equals security. 

It’s because they don’t see themselves as worth millions, so they subconsciously do whatever they can to make sure the money in their bank account matches what they think they are worth, the story they’ve told themselves their entire lives. 

Even think of millionaires and celebrities: They often hire security teams and put up big gates in front of their homes for an extra layer of external security that money did not bring them.

Kyle says in his book:

“We can never actually be fully secure externally – we’re flying through space at thousands of miles an hour in a solar system with exploding stars all around us.”

My dad always says, “You don’t see the armored car behind the hearse.”

We can’t take money with us when we die and we’re all ultimately headed that way, so why in the world do we give it so much power?

Why do we stay in soul-sucking jobs that we hate…because of some false sense of security? That’s not how it should work.

I’ll give you another example that Kyle mentions in his book, talking about appreciation and expanding our awareness of appreciation to include things we commonly overlook. 

Imagine you’re stuck in traffic – are you the person fuming with road rage, angry that you’re on your way to a job that doesn’t pay you enough, and the person in front of you won’t let you merge? 

Or are you the person jamming out to your favorite playlist, thinking how amazing it is to have heated seats, thankful for job that affords you a paycheck that helps you pursue other things you’re passionate about?

Those two energies are very different – one of lack, and one of abundance. 

Kyle says:

“When you’re in the problem, there’s no room for solutions to show up. Staying at the level of the problem while trying to solve it is kind of like trying to paint the walls of your house while there’s a murderer in the living room. You can’t paint the house until you figure out how to get the murderer to leave.”

Listen, you don’t have to buy into the law of attraction, manifestation, or universal energy here, but you do have to shift your mindset.

Negative money scripts can have disastrous effects on your financial situation because let’s face it:

What you think affects how you feel, which in turn shapes the actions you take and eventually, the results you get.

So how can you shift your mindset? It’s tough work. One of those things is to notice when those limiting beliefs are coming up so you can rewrite that story.

I personally find visualization very powerful.

For example, I tell myself every morning that I am capable of becoming a multi-millionaire. I tell myself that if I am capable of making $100,000, I am also capable of becoming a millionaire. I ask myself, who am I not to make that kind of money, if I use it to infuse the world with good and help the people I care about?

Every time I see a brand spankin’ new Jeep Wrangler on the street, I picture myself paying for it in full with cash and believe that will be true for myself one day.

I pick up the tab whenever I possibly can, as if I already have all the money in the world.

But I also tell myself that I am so  grateful, and I am extremely fortunate for everything that I already have and have achieved.

I am already wealthy and living an abundant life, but I’m not talking money.

I’m talking my relationships, my two crazy dogs running around the house, and the fact that I even woke up this morning. 

I would also encourage you to make a vision board and fill it with everything you want to achieve over the next 5, 10, 20 years.

I have that Jeep Wrangler on mine. I have stacks of money on it. I have affirmative statements like “I am financially free” on there. 

I have a private jet on it. Is that a bit of a stretch? Sure. But one day I know I want to bring all my favorite people on an all expenses trip to Hawaii, and let’s be real, with crazy airline fees multiplied by the amount of people I want to bring, the only way to get them all there first class is with my own plane.

But I digress…

In the past six weeks alone, my business has met and is about to exceed the revenue that it took us all of last year to make. I attribute that to focusing on how I’ve changed my relationship with money.

Money is merely a tool. I am the power behind it.

I’m not saying don’t pay attention to your finances at all. We all have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet. And most of you listening right now, like me, have probably experienced living paycheck to paycheck. 

But what if you looked at your bank account, no matter how big or small, and were simply grateful for the amount that was in there? And if you believed that because you are even here, alive and breathing, that you already have infinite value?

Kyle says:

“Your value is not based on how much money you have, because you are the source of value. You are the source of money. You are the source of creativity. You are connected to all of it. Money might fly at you the moment you start to realize the true value that you are, but money does not create what your value is. Money showing up can be a result of you stepping into the infinite value that you can always have access to, but it’s a result of your value, not what makes you valuable.”

Think of Ellen Degeneres: she’s rich and valuable. She spreads kindness, helps others share their stories and show up in their infinite power and full expression, shows up as her authentic self, and her fame and bank account exploded as a result.

Your value is what you contribute outside of money. 

So ask yourself: what else brings value to your life? What do you currently have that you can already express gratitude for? How else can you describe your life as already abundant outside of money?

Start paying attention to the story you tell yourself about money. Stop hoarding your history. 

If you’re looking for tips to invest, the answer is to invest in yourself, changing those limiting beliefs about money from statements like “money can’t buy happiness” to “money gives me the freedom to do what brings me joy.”

And then the real thing will follow.

It has for me.

When you wake up to who you really are and you’re grateful for what you already have, you begin to realize that you are not here just to struggle and survive – you are here to create, contribute, expand, and thrive.

 Changing those limiting beliefs raises our value, silences those old stories, and helps us move toward an exciting, expansive, wealthy future. 

Because money is only the result and the side effect of finding what you’re really looking for.

I’m sure it’s clear that I found this book absolutely brilliant. I really only scratched the surface here, and he has really wonderful exercises in there that I strongly encourage you do, so if you’re interested in grabbing a copy, you can find it on Amazon here.

Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a future episode, and please share this with someone you care about that you think would find this valuable.

And to wrap up, I want to leave you with a final quote from Kyle’s book:

“Money is not what we really want. What we want is freedom, joy, creativity, love, connection, community, energy, health, contribution, peace.”

My friends, don’t forget that life is short, so do your best to make today count. I appreciate you being here, and I hope you have a fantastic day.