Money Matters: Which values & beliefs surrounding money (limiting or otherwise) are at play

Laurence Hart

There are so many limiting beliefs (i.e. things we believe about ourselves that influence our actions) around money. They’re like phobias – we maintain they’re logical but as soon as we speak them out loud they seem almost comical. Most often they manifest themselves in a sense that “I will never make more than the bare minimum of what I need”, which often leads to “what’s the point in trying?”.

How about this: “I don’t deserve to be wealthy”? If you were a psychiatrist you would be rubbing your hands and gearing up for multiple sessions of unpicking that (says who, for starters), but imagine if you were a business guide and it turned out to be the reason your client didn’t take enough out of the business every month and they had to shut it down? Or the flipside of that: “I never have enough money” so will be constantly taking bits and bobs out of the business and never keeping sight of what they’ve drawn out and what they owe in tax. Or the one most likely to be heard down the pub: “You only make money in life if you work insanely hard (or are gifted it or scam it)”, i.e. there’s no point in grafting and setting targets and the like because the Universe is against you!

The opposite to beliefs that restrict your goals are those that wildly supercharge them. If you have too much (unfounded) faith in your own abilities in business then you will probably take too many risks, or be blind to the downsides, or be delusional and hope that something will turn up in a sticky situation. Again, the consequence may well be counter-productive decisions and poor outcomes.

The only way to stop ourselves from continuing in these cycles of behaviour is some good old-fashioned thinking, taking time to reflect on the real underlying reasons why we’ve acted as we have, and putting in place some strong achievable strategies to prevent us doing it again and to break the pattern. A simple medicine to prescribe, in practice much harder to take!

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