“Mindset is everything because it touches, impacts, and influences quite literally every aspect of your life.”
Your mindset is the filter through which you see the world. It is comprised of your beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and perceptions that inform your thoughts, habits* and decisions. Mindset encompasses both your conscious and unconscious thoughts as well as how you view yourself. It, your mindset, determines how you spend your time, who you spend your time with, what decisions you make, and where you invest your resources (time, talent and treasure).
Your mindset is an important part of your toolkit for success. Like glasses, they can either obscure your path or bring clarity to the road ahead. Thus, taking an active approach to understanding and crafting a positive mindset is important. Most people don’t realize that they’ve been programming their mindset through their experiences and perceptions. If you constantly feed your mindset with negative perspectives, your outlook will be negative. Garbage in, is garbage out.
On the other hand, cultivating a healthy wealth mindset will help you stick to your financial goals and you find ways to increase your earning potential. And, there are two key inputs that shape your mindset: the environment (or people) you spend time with and the media (written and verbal) you consume daily.
There’s an old saying in financial circles that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you want to be fit, hang out with friends who exercise. If you want to think big and aspire to build wealth and change the world, then you must consume inspiring positive media and hang out with people who have great purpose and big audacious goals.
Just as you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, the same is true for your ideas and aspirations.
A wealth mindset is a set of beliefs, habits, and behaviors that separates the wealthy from the rest. A wealth mindset will guide you to make the most of the money you have. It is essential to effectively and successfully save for the future, invest for the long term, build wealth and achieve financial freedom. A wealth mindset means spending less than you earn, making wise investments in assets, and looking for ways to improve financial well-being with minimal risk.
A wealth mindset matter matters because 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, according to Dave Ramsey. And as of 2018, 175 million Americans actively use credit cards. A majority of these credit card holders engage in impulsive spending behavior, wasting money they don’t have on items they don’t need.
“Wealth is a mindset!”, writes Shynna Key, author of “Wealth Is a Mindset”. She encourages you to “keeping it real” with your current financial position, identifying challenges, and taking responsibility for changing the way you view wealth. She opines that you must begin by examining “…what we have been taught as it relates to money and wealth. Though finances are a very private area for most to discuss, it is a crucial topic that will help us to understand the root of our financial ‘woes’ as well as the fruit of our financial ‘favor’; which is essential to our overall growth of wealth.”
“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” – Lao Tzu
To accumulate wealth and achieve financial freedom, you must first be and think like the wealthy. By doing so, you will develop the habits and take the necessary actions to attract the resources to you. You must be someone first; someone who has what he or she needs in order to take the inspired action. To become a wealthy, you must be an individual who thinks and manages money like the wealthy. For example, “the average wealthy person spends 10 times more time planning their finances than the average middle-class individual”, explains Thomas J. Stanley, author of “The Millionaire Next Door”.
Money and wealth can buy freedom…financial freedom. Very few wealthy people became wealthy overnight. Building wealth is a deliberate process that requires patience and planning.
If you want to be wealthy, you’ll need to develop a wealth mindset. Start by defining your financial goals: how much money do you want to have in a year’s time? Five year’s time?
To realize your financial goals, you’ll need to develop a wealth mindset, create and follow a plan, and continue to learn and grow. And remember, the road to wealth is bumpy and filled with detours and misconceptions.
In many ways, the health of your finances, as well as your physical health, depends on your mindset and emotional well-being. Thus, it’s important to make it a priority and to take time for you. When you focus on purpose, potential, curiosity and collaboration, you will experience increased energy and well-being. Because, what you focus on…expands!
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Unknown
References:
- https://wealthfit.com/articles/wealth-mindset/
- https://wealthconnecters.com/wealth-mindset
- https://www.audible.com/pd/Wealth-Is-a-Mindset-Audiobook/B07MWHKS46
- Draper, Taylor, “Mind Matters”, Costco Connection, May 2021, pg. 17.
- https://bydeze.com/why-mindset-is-everything/
- https://nevadapartners.org/2021/05/21/12-real-differences-between-a-wealthy-mindset-vs-a-poor-mindset/
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Socrates
* Habits are consistent, unconscious patterns. They constantly express our character and result in our effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Habits are deeply ingrained and we are constantly pulled in their direction.