Where I Get MY Money Mindset

I got married when I was young. I had a child and got divorced within 2 years. I was a young single mom on her own. What to do now? “My parents did not tell me how to do this” was my panicked thought. I had no idea how to live as a single parent, how to manage my finances. I was married so briefly that we were not very good at managing money, we were just paying our bills.

I know I am not the only one whose parents did not tell me how to budget, save, invest, or in general, how to manage money. What I decided was I better learn; and I did. I asked questions of my dad, I read, I asked questions of other people that I admired that I saw living well. I managed. Within a couple of years after I was divorced, I bought a house and a car, took vacations and had a savings as well as took care that my daughter and I had our necessities and our bills paid. I did not like it, but I did it. I made decisions that were impactful and long lasting. I decided if it is up to me, I will do it. That decision has shaped much of my life in positive ways, as well as negative ways (I used to never accept help, support or contribution!). I also decided I did not like dealing with managing money and as soon as I got remarried, I handed that responsibility over to my husband. That, too, had positive and negative consequences: he is smart and responsible and has taken great care of our family financially but there have been times I could have supported decisions he made alone that caused some financial losses.

We cannot escape the fact that we made decisions about money matters when we were young and that are influencing our money situation today. Our mindsets are mostly set by age 10 and those decisions do not seem like decisions, and our mindsets don’t seem like mindsets, but just ‘how it is’.  In working with my clients, and in my workshops, every single person can see this phenomenon when we inquire together. Everyone, when you think about it, can discover that they either learned by their parents, or someone important to them telling them certain things about money or in what they observed and see how that plays itself out in how you are about money today.

Common Threads

I am going to share some common threads my clients have shared with me and how it influenced their situations.

One person got the message from her parents that money is hard to get, fleeting and you should enjoy it while you can. How she is influenced today by that: She works really hard, doesn’t really enjoy her work anymore, she feels panicked no matter how much she makes because it is fleeting, and she worries all the time if there will be enough (while she makes a healthy more than sufficient salary).  Another client said she concluded “why bother” because the message she got was no matter what her parents did there was never enough.

The thing about these mindsets is that we, as people, see life, and in this case, money and the ability to make, have and manage money through that view and we act as if that is true, and our actions then cause that mindset to be true. When you can see that view as simply a mindset, you can free yourself from whatever you decided when you were young. You could try out new mindsets, and take actions from that new mindset and see what kind of new results you produce.

 

You get to give yourself what your parents did not tell you…. That you can create whatever you choose.

The Zenith Business has workshops, online programs, coaching programs as well as public speaking engagements on this topic. For more information, go to thezenithbusiness.com