You know that things like self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, comfort eating, and staying in bad relationships are forms of self-sabotage, but did you know that many of us have money habits that actually sabotage us financially?
Self-sabotage is defined as behavior that interferes with long-term goals — and when it comes to money, it’s rampant. Just look at the sad fate of most lottery winners who go broke within a few years of their windfall.
In my virtual coaching program, I’ve shown hundreds of students how to discover the keys to managing their own money psychology, so they can stop sabotaging themselves financially.
These deeply encoded bad money habits show up as mindsets or actions that either keep you where you are or actively undermine you.
Here are four examples of bad money habits my students discovered:
- The Problem: Kristi experienced feelings of abundance and wealth when her paycheck came in the mail, so she’d hold on to it! She would keep the physical check on her desk for days and sometimes weeks because once she had deposited it, she felt that it was gone.
The Solution: Kristi was able to see the silliness of treasuring paper checks, and moved her happy dance to the moments after depositing them in the bank.
Now, instead of keeping checks on her desk to feel wealthy, Kristi tracks her finances using Mint. She’s created goals for her net worth and retirement and is on track to retire early. - The Problem: Adrienne was spending half her time chasing dance and yoga gigs, telling herself that she needed to feed her creative side, but not getting paid what she needs to in order to become financially independent.
The Solution: Adrienne got really motivated to experience having more than enough money in her life, and saw that spending half her time doing work that doesn’t pay her well enough to pay her New York City rent isn’t exactly helping her be creative.
She’s now offering scalable packages for her health coaching business, feeling excited and proud, and teaching yoga just once a week. - The Problem: Alek is a full-time employee at an Internet marketing firm and offers one-on-one consulting on the side. But when all was said and done, he was charging the equivalent of about $5/hour for consulting. In my coaching program, he realized that his subconscious block was that he thought selling and charging money was sleazy.
The Solution: Alek knew that his mentality about sales came from his past, and once he saw that it was really holding him back, he knew he needed to let it go.
He was able to rewire that belief and soon tripled his consulting revenues while taking fewer clients and working fewer hours. - The Problem: Mariela had left her corporate gig to start her own business, and thought the goal would be to replace her $60,000 annual income. She discovered that for years, subconsciously, she had been managing to that exact number.
Her business revenues hovered right around $60,000 year after year, though her profits were significantly less than that and she hadn’t been paying herself regularly.
The Solution: Mariela created new revenue goals well into the six-figure zone and went into business development mode. When she raised her prices, she didn’t lose a single client, and now she’s creating even bigger goals to grow her business and hire her first assistant.
If you want to learn more about how the language we use about money impacts our money habits, and in turn our financial results, check out my TEDx talk, The Surprising Power of Language to Make You Rich.
This article was originally published on Hilary’s DailyWorth Connect Platform for Experts. June 04, 2015