Examine how you think about money
Parents establish your Patterns
We adopt thinking and behavioral patterns in our childhood - from our parents, and other adults. They are carried around all the time in your subconscious and influence your conscious life.
If you are not happy about your career and lifestyle, there are some unfavorable beliefs about you earning decent money and having a happy life. A pattern considering wealth is shaped in our childhood and adolescence through what we had heard, seen and experienced in relation to money.
Most Common Unhealthy Money Patterns
Let’s examine some of those most common scenarios that stick to us, that are created by unwise, poor, unhealthy, and sad environments:
- You may have observed your parents working hard from dawn to dusk and still having very little.
- Your parents thought the only way to survive in life is an enormous effort, without time to relax and enjoy life. If they had spare time, they spent it on low activities such as gossiping, watching TV and commenting what they do not like there or drinking and indulging in their sorrow.
- Your parents often said that money does not bring happiness. So they lived in poor conditions and by little means.
- Your parents often said - the rich are thieves, good people are poor.
- Your parents often quarreled about money.
- Your parents lived off benefits and were angry at the world.
- Your parents thought that the word and life is unjust and hold a grudge against money in general, especially those who have them.
- Your parents tried to improve their living conditions the whole life but failed and were disappointed.
Realizing the Opposite may, can and is True
If any of the above statements relate to your upbringing, more or less, it is a time to change it. It is time to realize that the opposite may be true. It is time to challenge those patterns of your parents. To rebel against those wrongful ways of thinking and behaviour.
You are an adult now, and you are a parent to yourself.
First, let's try to invoke an A-Ha moment when you realize something fully in your whole being. As you realize the opposite truth - it changes unhealthy, unconscious patterns of thinking and behaviour. This way, you start to change your personality, and are more able to improve your life.
Consider the below:
1. You don’t need to work hard from dawn to dusk, to earn decent money. There are many people who enjoy their life who work little or the work is such a joy that they do not feel like they are working. It is a pleasure to them.
2. Effort is certainly required to achieve success in life. But how it is done, its quality and on what level - is another story.
We live to reach a certain life-style that we hold in our imagination. If this life-style leads to such low pleasures, it is not very encouraging. Why earn money to live in front of TV and complain about what you see? What is your ideal life-style?
How do you perceive money, and what would it allow more - in your life? Are you afraid you may drink more, when you have more money? Will you be lost at what to do with all the spare time? Do you have a hobby that is valuable, and you would like to pursue it?
3. Money MAY bring happiness and often, more often than not - it brings a key to our happiness. This is how our world is created. Having more money allows you to live a more healthy, meaningful life-style.
Of course, sometimes people put so much effort into making money that they lose their health and family relations suffer. We see this pattern all over in films, when a successful man cannot attend his son's football match on Sunday, because he has an important business meeting. Because of this, you are afraid you will lose touch with your relationships.
There are many more people who live a happy and balanced life, earning a lot of money and taking care of their relationships.
4. The statement that ‘rich people are literally bad, and poor people are good’ comes from many sources, mostly from religion. There is this belief that rich people have to be sly, cunning and greedy, and take advantage of the poor people.
This notion also comes from our ancestral memory when wealthy industrialists during the Industrial Revolutions in the 19th century and early 20th century treated their employees with intimidation. We are sort of aware of it, and this is one of the most common limiting patterns.
We don’t want to be bad, we don’t want to be unjust, we don’t want to be mean towards others, we don’t want to make other people feel unhappy.
Realize, there are many people who earn a decent amount of money and help others. They earn in a graceful way without the need to harm anybody. This has become a more established pattern in the 21 century. So realize that this is an old notion, a relict, and reflect on this belief.
Notice people who are wealthy, and by their work, many more people become more happy. Cherish the providers of your food. Do you think they rip you off, or do they make a lot of effort to get food on your table?
Yes, there still may be disadvantages, but overall we are more aware that we can earn and have a lot of money and promote well-being in others.
5. You perhaps want to avoid these unpleasant feelings when your parents quarreled about money. It can be deeply rooted in your subconscious, and you may be completely unaware of it.
What you notice instead, is that most of the time you worry about money. You don’t want the outburst of quarrel, so you keep quiet and quietly you worry about money.
Realize that this is only a pattern in your mind, a filter, that you can change. Yes, it can take a while, but with repeated affirmations, you may activate more pleasant associations about money.
6. Living off benefits is another deep rooted pattern that your bringing up may have influenced your perception of money and adult life.
Now you seek an outside source to help you. You don’t rely on yourself, you don’t believe in all of your abilities. There may be a big part of you, that is unconscious, that wants to be taken care of.
It means that you are giving your valuable power away - to the outside circumstances - you expect life to make you feel good. You become angry if it does not.
7. Being jealous about other people's success is one of the biggest poisons that we may hold, more or less consciously. The answer to this may be escapism.
We do not want to face the world, because we think - as our childhood showed us - that life is a treacherous and nasty place that you need to scorn and disrespect everything.
Often this pattern brings a life of constant scoff and sneer. This is our defense mechanism from hurting ourselves. We also may indulge in a very negative way of thinking about everything, and see any positivity with difficulty.
8. You are afraid to fail, remembering how your parents tried and tried and they could not reach the desired outcome - a happy and fulfilling lifestyle. We feel sorry for them, and we feel sorry for ourselves because we think we are in exactly the same position.
This is a deeply influencing pattern and in order to remove it, you have to do some deep internal work first, before you will feel real confidence in your abilities.
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Read the above, perhaps a few times, and allow yourself to feel the many shades of disappointment that your parents and other adults may have conditioned into your life.
After realizing the patterns, we can come to work through them in a more conscious way. We want to loosen down those patterns that are unhealthy, that contract your natural growth, and natural way of feeling happy and empowered.
Saying appropriate affirmations to yourself, basically from morning to evening, is one of the best ways to self-help your life-pattern.
Remember - you are now an adult. Now, you take care of yourself and others. Now you are able to change within yourself the patterns that your parents installed, unconsciously, within you.
It does not mean that you will hold a grudge against them. It is best - to forgive. They were carrying unconscious patterns from their parents. You can break that vicious circle. We all deserve to be happy. If your parents were not, that best thing you can do for them, is to heal yourself.
In the next chapter:
