Ep.41 ➡️💥 Retrain Your Negative Biased Brain for Financial Gains Today!

[CFM COACH ASSISTANT AI ]: Welcome to the Money Style youe Problem podcast, where every week we talk about how you can become good with money in your pocket and in your mind by using practical life coaching tools and simple and efficient ways to do money math. Are you ready to invest in yourself? Let's dive into this episode. Hello. Hello, welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Money's not yout Problem podcast. I hope all is well and if not well, let's try to find some strategies and some things to do so it can become a good week. Actually, this is a perfect segue to the episode. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about negative bias. I know that doesn't sound very fun. Huh? But I also want to talk about the positive bias. If we're going to have some negative thought in our minds. And if you have to make a decision and you have one possibility that's good and you think that you only have another one that's going to be bad, well, at least give equal time for your thinking about both of them. Don't only think on the negative, also think on the positive. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. So last episode I talked to you about how I hadn't done my 2024 year review. I know, and it's already almost the end of February. But I decided to do this exercise that one of my life coaches, Brendan Burchard, he suggested that we would do it at the end of the year. Well, I'm just doing that right now. Hopefully the end of this year. I'll get it done before. But I thought it was really interesting. I had no idea what this exercise was gonna do, so I just took some time. I went to a coffee shop near my house just to have quiet time. If I stay home, the dogs will drive me crazy because they would want to go outside and all that. So I just needed some time for myself. I sat there and I took the worksheet with me. And this exercise that he suggests that we do, it's a visual review of our year. He recommends that we look at our phones and look through the photos that we have starting from the beginning of the year until that time. So you scroll through the pictures on your phone starting from January 1st all the way to the day that you're doing the exercise. Then as you go through the photos, write it down. Maybe things that were exciting or the memories that stood out the most. Which events or experiences brought you joy, pride, or gratitude. So when I start writing things down and looking through the pictures, of course I am a structured type of person. So I decided in four categories. Actually, four. No, I had five categories. I had experiences my business or career, gratitude, people and what was hard. And I was able to do it. And as I went through the phone, the pictures, I started noticing things that I had completely forgotten about it. So a few things on experience. So karaoke for my friend Christine's birthday, or I helped a friend with a live event, or I attended Lacey Bird's presentation at uvu, talking about her difficult life and her overcoming all that. Those were really great experiences for me. And of course, it doesn't have to be anything big. I have here also going through old pictures. I decided to open the boxes that I brought from. I don't know how many moves I have those boxes with pictures from Brazil. I decided to finally take them out and put it on the shelf. And I went through all those albums and it was so much fun. And I was able to take some screenshots and send to friends. I was also able to think about my opportunity to go see Savior of the World at the Conference Center Theater, which was great. Also, we had our friend Josie Merrill stay with us for a few days. All those things were really incredible experiences for me. And some of them are big, some of them are not big, but they generate that level of happiness and enjoyment. On another note, I started looking for moments of gratitude. So I started remembering all the things throughout the year that made me feel really grateful. And I can understand why people are psychologists and leaders and gurus and influencers. Everybody encourages us to write gratitude. As I told you in another episode, I follow what President Henry B. Eyring of the church told us to try to look for ways or moments where I can see Lord's hands in my life. So I look for that. And that's. Those are the moments of gratitude that I write it down. But that's a practice that's really good. It doesn't matter how you do it, but if you look through things that you're grateful, those always bring a good feeling in us. It's hard to be grateful and to be grumpy. Another part that I did, too, was looking for the people that I met throughout the year or people that I interacted and that I was just grateful to have them in my life. So I was really grateful for. I went to see Brendan Burchard. So that was really cool. And I wrote here Denizi. She is a baker, a Brazilian baker that lives here close to me in Pleasant Grove. And I was so grateful for her because I was Able to order all sorts of brigadeiros and delicious Brazilian things. And she did it with a lot of heart. And I could feel that it was made with love and it was delicious. I was also very grateful for Angela Swasuna. She helped us help my niece to get her immigration documents done. And she had to add a lot of patience because my niece and her newly wed husband, they had a little bit of a hard time trying to get all the paperwork together and get those things. And she was very patient. So I was, I was really grateful that she was helping us through that process. And then I also told different things about my business or my career. So one of the highlights, one of the things that was really cool about my career was I was able to to have an opportunity to teach a behavior management class at the university at uvu. It was so much fun for me. It was mind blowing to teach a class when people want to learn. As a high school teacher, it was always like pulling teeth. But people did not want to learn. And we're always trying to learn new strategies for engagement to try to see if the kids want to pay attention or not. And this class, I must tell you, I couldn't even make them misbehave to help their classmates. Having to demonstrate the strategies that we were learning in class, they would raise their hands, they want to participate. I was like, no, no, no, no. You cannot participate. You have to create chaos so they can practice the classroom behavior. But there was no way they wanted to learn. Everybody wanted to participate. And it was very difficult for them to not be good students. So that was such a fun experience. Also, another thing that was really great for my business, I did a big launch and I had help from my dear friend and business coach, Zill Eiler. And she was able to look through my program and see how I was able to help other about money. Also, another thing that was really cool was attending Growth Day Live and the coaching experience with Brandon Burchard in la. It was three days that I just loved it. I couldn't get enough. It was so much fun. And we were able, Rob and I to go together. Something that we usually cannot do. Our girls tend to fight and we have the three dogs. And it's just very difficult for us to to have everything lined up so we can just the two of us go somewhere. So that was really special for us. Also, I started learning more about my custom GPT. So on my program, the CFM Academy, I am able to offer to my clients, to the members of my program, the Opportunity that they have to interact with this tool that answers questions and helps them in real time with the things that we learn, they learn in the program. So everything that I teach them and the things that I learned, the things that I believe in, kind of like I would be coaching them in the middle of the night, but they have that access and I was able to learn how to adjust the answers and make sure they talk like me that speaks Portuguese. So all those things that I had to adapt and feed the clone so the GPT can answer those. And I am really grateful for that because sometimes I use Brendon Burchard's custom GPT. It's called Brandon AI. And it really helps me because it's the material that I already read, the things that I like and the things that align with me and I hear different opinions and suggestions and it's coaching me. So I think it's a really incredible tool. And I was able to add this to my program to help my clients, my members then I think one of the things that was most interesting about this process was doing as I went through all the fun things, the people and the places, I started noticing that things would come up to my mind, things that were hard, but I was able to do it. So it's not that I had pictures of the hard times. I had pictures of things that remind me that that was difficult for me to get to that point or it was difficult for me to do thing. But then it turned out good. So I made a huge list of things that were hard and that turned out to be so good for my soul, for my mind because I was able to see how much I grew and how much I was able to learn over the year. So right here I wrote it down. To be able to learn how to clear my calendar, to finish different things are more important. Or realizing that I am a peacemaker, a non conflict seeker. What does that mean? Well, every time I try to fight my way to put my opinion out there or to how people say, stand up for myself or to make a point, every time I try to be harsh and even though I have the evidence, I felt really bad and it never solved my problem. It didn't matter how many attempts I had to try to convince the person or to impose my opinion or to show that the person was wrong, I always felt so much worse and it didn't help me a bit. The person would not do what I wanted, things would not change. So I was finally able to let go and accept. But I'll let them Win if that would bring me peace, of course I will bring up some of the points that the person needs to be aware because sometimes they don't know why am I doing, what am I doing. But I decided to let it go. And that was really hard. Another thing that was really hard was we had my niece living with us for a little bit. And that was hard in different ways. But after she got married, actually she just did her first wedding anniversary on the 15th. This is February when I'm recording this. It was really hard afterwards to not step in and help her, even though I knew that she needed some more help. And it was really hard. But I knew that doing things for her, it was not helping her because she needs to grow. So some of those things, some of the hard things she needs to go through as well. And that's just part of life. So that was really hard for me to not just go and rescue. I guess I do that all the time. I go and rescue a person. So it was hard for me to resist the temptation to just go and do things for her and let her figure it out. Her life with her husband. Husband. So all these things. When I finished doing this, I started writing and writing and writing. I actually needed not only the worksheet that I had prepared, that I actually have prepared for you guys to. It'll be available for you to download, but it took me another two or three pages for me to just write in down those things. I had no idea that doing this exercise was going to put me in such a good mood. It made me grateful. It made me proud of myself for the hard things. It made me excited for the experiences that I had and I. And also for the growth that I had. I love this exercise that we use the phone to see the pictures because sometimes, of course, I could have remembered half of these things, but when I look at the pictures, it is much easier for me to remember to have those emotions again. And I don't think we spend a lot of time on the good of our lives. We are planning, we're thinking ahead, or we're just caught up with the past and the things that we did wrong. Instead of just say, hey, I'm going to sit down and just look at the good things. And I think sometimes too people get concerned about looking at the good things because if they share with someone else, that person might judge them or might try to one up them or just, just put or just diminish what they went through. That's not such a big deal. Why they're Excited about that. So when you do that on paper, on purpose, it just brings you joy. And that's the best part for you to do anything else. When we're motivated by joy and love and gratitude, then we can serve others. And that helps us achie our goals and move forward. Doing things that even when they're hard, we also forget the great moments from the past year. And looking through those pictures, we can see that it's a simple way for us to reframe our thinking and counteract the brain's natural focus on negative experiences. I know this is called negative bias and has been studied for many years in behavior psychology and also in neuroscience. So what is negative bias? Well, our brains are wired to focus on the negative and more than the positive. Of course it's for survival. We talked about that. There's the motivation triad in the brain. So it's to seek pleasure, avoid pain and spend less amount of energy. That's how we get habits, right? We just do them automatically so it doesn't take more energy from our brains. And that's why change is hard, because you're spending more energy and the brain doesn't like that. All of this to keep us alive. So we already wired to look for the negative instead of the positive. So with this tendency already happening in us physiologically, then it's easier for us to just dwell on failures more than victories and that that influence our mindset and our future choices. Remember that I talked about my one of my life coach, Brooke Castillo. She taught us how to organize our thoughts in a way that we can identify what is creating our pain. A lot of times we think that the pain is the thing or whatever happened the other person, but it's not. It's how we think about the things and when we think negative thoughts that create negative emotions. And usually we don't take good actions from negative emotions. And these are scientific concepts that have been studied. A lot of cognitive behavior scientists, psychologists, they talk about this. And some of the scientific experiments, they actually prove this. So people study and they create some kind of setup and then they see how people react. And what are their results? I have some examples of scientific experiments that prove this. One of them is that negativity outweighs positivity in memory. Researchers have found that negative memories are stored more vividly and last longer than positive ones due to stronger narrow connections. What does that mean? Well, it means that when something bad happens, it creates a very strong emotional, emotional impact. And that's why we remember them more often when we Something positive, which probably happens with little things, it doesn't create the same impact. So then it's much easier to forget. So at the end you had, you end up with a lot of things in your memory. There are all those negative things that are connected with an emotion. That's why we remember them so vividly. Another experiment they did was based on media and attention bias. Studies show people are more drawn to negative news than positive news news, proving our tendency to focus on the worst possible outcomes. I'm going to tell you this story. I hope my sister doesn't get mad at me. I purchased, based on a recommendation, one of those earphones that translate and you download the app and the person wearing one of the headphones, they speak their language and the other person's wearing the other headphone listen in their language, the language that they understand. So for example, if I speak speak Portuguese, the other person would hear in English, or if they speak French to me, I would hear in Portuguese. And I was telling my sister how wonderful it would be to someone to travel to Japan and be able to just go and wherever they wanted to go. So in this case, we were talking about my niece because she served her mission in Japan. And some of the language, if you don't use it all the time, you end up kind of forgetting, right? So then my sister, that's the first thing that came to her mind. Imagine you're in the airport, airplane going to Japan and then you lose one of the earphones. So it's like, well, could you think about anything else worse? So you see that that's their tendency of our brains is to go towards the negative. The worst case scenario, of course, if you think about the news, if you think about social media, the things that shock us, the thing that those news are negative, those are going to get more clicks, more likes and dislikes, more comments and more publicity. People are going to be drawn to those more. Of course, you can see this just driving on the freeway, if there's an accident, you see how much the traffic slows down because people want to see what happened. They want to see the disaster, which is so sad. But that's something that's ingrained in our brains and it's good to know so we can catch ourselves and say, no, I'm not going to let this distract me. Another one that they did research is the fear of loss versus the desire to gain behavior. Economists found that people avoid losing money more than they motivated to gain money, leading to poor financial choices. So the person so scared of losing the money that they don't invest or they don't believe in the stock market, or they don't believe in, in a good product or an advice from a financial counselor who has their best interests in mind. You saw a lot of people at the Depression, 1929, where those people, they grew up and they continue getting older and they would not invest in different things in stock market mut funds. They were completely averse to invest anything because they thought that the money was gonna go away, disappear again. So then what they did, they just keep stashing. They kept stashing money everywhere. You know, there's, you always heard, you might have heard a story or two or three of people that hide money in their houses or they buried the money in the backyard because they were afraid and they didn't want to lose money again. So then they did what they could. Unfortunately, that means that they, they could have had their money grow, but they, they missed out on that because, you know, to grow money when you're investing long term, it has to be there for a while and it has to be. You just leave the money there. You have to believe that the money is going to grow even if the economy goes up and down. It's just like a roller coaster. You don't jump in the middle of the ride. You just have to stay there. Some people think so much that the drop's going to be so big that they take the money in the wrong time and then they lose money until the money is there. Just riding the roller coaster. You haven't lost the anything. But the way the person thinks that they already lost money because it dropped, then that's going to make them take those initiatives and take the money out, and then they're going to have the loss. That's for sure. Now, as we're already talking about money, when we have this negativity, negative, when we have negative bias, People often repeat financial mistakes. Instead of learning from them. Their beliefs about money shape the decisions. That's what happened with us. Remember, the emotion leads us to our actions, and the actions give us the results. Result. But the emotions are created by what we think. Those are our beliefs. And many of these beliefs are based on what we call thought error. Thought errors come from past experiences, fear or false assumptions leading to bad financial choices. So Brooke Castillo, she thought about this concept of thought errors. I love it. Thought errors are false beliefs that we assume are facts. So just because we think something is negative or something is wrong or something's not going to work doesn't mean That's a fact fact that it's just how we think about that. We have our bias. And because we keep thinking that those are thought errors. Just like when we had error on the computer. Sometimes you try something, it doesn't work, just says error, error. The same thing with our thoughts, with our brains. When we think those thoughts that are not true, but we believe they are true, then we have this thought error leading us to feel horrible. And then it could hear, it could create fear or aversion or panic. And then we're going to take the actions that go along with it. And thought, they're often subconscious and lead to repeated mistakes because if we don't address the thought, we're going to keep doing the same thing over and over again. So why do we have them? Well, we have them because based on the experiences that we had, things that we learned when we were little. And I know a lot of people blame their parents for all the problems they have. And if you're, I don't know, if you pass your 25, 26, if you need help, help to stop blaming your parents for all the problems that you have, you need to go find, find help, go find a therapist, process your traumas, process your problems, write down and analyze your thoughts and do that work, you can be able to just let them go. They did the best they could with whatever they had. And maybe their good was not good enough for you, was not their best. But if you keep blaming them, you give all your power to them. They still control you. So take control of your life again. Again, let go and try to adjust your thought errors. They also create self fulfilling prophecies. So when we have those thought errors and we keep repeating the same things, then we get the same result all the time. If you keep using a credit card when you don't have money either to buy the thing or pay for the credit card bill, you're just going to create more debt and more debt. And that emotion that dopamine hit that you get by just click buy on Amazon or whatever other, I don't know, whatever else you buy, things that dopamine hit, it's not going to be there when you get the bill and you just keep having that problem and then you keep saying I'm just bad with money while you're bad with money because you keep doing the actions that lead to bad financial results. See, here's one of our financial, here's one of our common thoughts. There are thought errors and finances. I'm just bad with money. Well, just Believing that you are bad with money, that that's the person that you are, it stops people from learning and improving their financial habits because they think that's the way I am. I cannot change when stuck on that. Then you're going to continue doing the same things you do, because that's who I am. So then of course I need to do, I'm going to make a bad choice. Instead of saying this, it's important for us to learn how to recognize that this thought is a thought error. And fine, you may not believe right now that you're great with money. Your brain is not going to believe that. There's a lot of evidence proving the other way that you're not good with money. But if you start just believing that I can learn, I can learn to manage my finances, I am capable of learning, or I get money. Not even that. If you start, I make money at my job. If you start very neutral and start moving forward, then you start seeing evidence of the change. And as you start seeing evidence, you're like, oh, I guess I'm not that bad. You start changing how you think about how you do. And a lot of times you will need some practical information on how to manage money. Sometimes you just don't have the knowledge, the basic, basic financial literacy elements for you to make different choices. But that information is available to you. My program, we have nine lessons, and to be honest, two of them are actually the money part. Because the most important, though, is for you to identify what are your behaviors, what are your behaviors, your thoughts and your beliefs that are making you do those things that first, you didn't know. And two, the things that you know for sure are not going to give you a good financial resources. They're not going to give you the financial life that you, you want a prosper and abundant life. One, that you don't have to keep struggling from month to month, but a life, a financial life where you can do the things that you want and be able to pay your bills on time, have money in the bank, save for emergencies, and invest for your future. All right, here's our second thought error. I have to wait until I make more money to start saving. People delay saving because they believe they don't have have enough. When you believe that you don't have enough, you're going to create that in your life. You're not going to have enough to pay for your bills. You're not going to have enough to help someone. You're never going to have enough. It doesn't matter how much money you make, you have to start believing that you are capable of saving a little bit at a time. The truth is small saving habits create wealth over time. You don't believe it? Well, that's a thought error. How do I know? Well, that's what compound interest did is if you start investing very little per month, but you keep doing that, especially if you're investing for retirement and you start maybe with $160 every month, $160 only. But if you do that consistently for 20, 30 years, you end up a millionaire. But you have to be consistent and you have to put this every month. Fine, 160 seems a whole lot of money. But if you and your family skip two visits to the movie theater or a family dinner and at maybe Olive Garden or a sit down restaurant, you already have that money to invest. And here's our last thought error for today. Budgeting is too restrictive and stressful. Or I don't like the word budget. Well, it's just a plan for your money. If you don't have a plan, then you're not going to accomplish anything. Many people avoid budgeting because they think it's a punishment. That's funny. But it's not a punishment, it's a plan that you create. You determine how much money you're going to spend in each category. Of course you should be an adult and determine first what are the most important things for your life. So a place to live, food for survival, pay, your location, your transportation and basic clothing. So these are some of the things that are more important. I know we live with Internet today, but if you cannot afford the top speed Internet then that is not a need, is a want. Or if you have five or six subscriptions of Stream services, you don't need all of them. As a matter of fact, you might not need any of them. So all these things you have to take in consideration when you create your plan, then as you make more money, then you put your priorities in place, then you're going to start having some excess of margin. And that's when we create our wealth. It's when we have margin. Margin between how much we spend and how much you make. Now on the budget situation instead of having that thought error, that budget too stressful and it's a punishment. You could think a budget gives me freedom and control over my money. Automatically know I don't like this thought. I wouldn't use this thought as a, as my go to positive bias. I would say for me, I would say a budget is just A plan for my money. I have plans for everything. Budget is just a plan for my money. This works for me. If I think it that way, then I'm like, okay, let's follow the plan. It's just easy. And we know that the, the plan works if we work the plan. Now here's some problems that we have when we give in to our financial thought errors. You can end up with with impulse spending to feel better. So if someone buys expensive things when they're stressed, believing that you'll make them happy, well, the truth is happiness is built from gratitude and purpose, not things. And after that initial thrill of buying something is gone. When you get the bill and you don't have money to pay the stress, it will stay with you. Another one is avoiding money conversations. A couple fights about money, but avoid setting a budget together. Well, the truth is this financial peace comes from clear communication, joint planning. When you're with your spouse, you're on the same page or you have your goals aligned with money. That's much easier than just keeping blaming each other or spending money behind their backs. Each other's back not good. And you know that money fights and money problems is the second leading cause divorce in America today. And if one thing is for sure, if you want a good marriage, then you already know that one of the problems is dealing with money. Because people come from different backgrounds, how they handle the finances and but learning how to be on the same page together or having the same goals together, like getting out of debt or doing those things together, that's what going to build that trust and that communication. Dave Ramsey usually says that people come and say, hey, you solve my marriage problems. When people go through his class and he's like, what are you talking about? I talk about money. And, and he realized that because they didn't know how to communicate or they didn't have the same language, the couple would fight a lot. And now going through the class together, then they had something in common that they were sharing. And one might be more extreme than the other, but if they find a middle ground, that's going to be really great for their marriage because it's just another part of communication. And then let's see this next one. We already kind of covered this a little bit. Is the fear investing due past losses. So someone invested and they lost money in the investment and then now they refuse to invest again. Well, if you learn how to invest and invest in things that you know and understand, then it's going to lead to long term growth. That's Just proven. They can look at the past and see the proven record that that money is going to grow if they invest wisely and with education, learning how to do it, and investing in things that you know, if you don't understand investing, then first do things little by little and start learning little by little. If you have a financial advisor, then make sure that someone that's a teacher at heart, that someone's going to sit with you and explain what they're doing. A lot of pro athletes, they just say, huh, they got all that money that they're paid per year. And then they're like, ah, I got a money guy. And that money guy is making decisions on their own. And the athlete doesn't know anything that's happening with their money. So eventually if they lost a bunch of money, then they, they try to blame the financial advisor but in reality is their fault because they were not involved involved in learning and understanding what that money was being used for. Now, we talked about a lot about the negative. So let's go to a positive. If we have positive money mindset shift, we can start small. If you have mostly negative thoughts, then start to sketching. Write it down on your negative thoughts and look at the ones related to money and start thinking, how could I think this a little bit different and that way I can have some juice. Different results. One of them is right here. Believe that small, consistent efforts lead to big financial wins. We talked about investing. Even if you invest a little bit every month, that's going to grow in the long term. Now let's say for example, not talking about investing, let's just say savings, right? If you save $5 today, not because 5, $5, not because $5 will change your life, change everything, but because starting is key and that builds momentum and rewires your brain toward positive financial behaviors. Last episode we talked about habits, those habits that are keeping you broke. If you did not listen. Well, here's the invitation for you to listen to. We talked about to build habits, we have to do little things day in, day out. Same thing with our finances. If you keep spending money little by little every day, you're going to by the end of the month you spend a lot time of money. One time I did a calculation with my students. I used to teach the senior class financial literacy, personal finance. And I gave them the job to figure out if their parents they were seniors. So the parents kicked them out of the house. They had to support themselves and they had to get a job with whatever skills they had. High school graduates and One of them had. They had to create a budget, of course. And one of them decided that he was going to do a dollar menu, knew at McDonald's he was gonna do that every day for all three meals of a day. So we calculate that, let's say, for example, he got fries and a burger and a drink. So that's $3. And then we times that by three. That would be $9 a day. $9 a day times 30 days, that was $270. And of course, the person's gonna get sick of eating the same things. So we talked about how is that not helpful for their health. And again, again is the same thing. They would be eating bad things every day. Little by little, they would be getting sicker and sicker, and at the same time, they would spend a lot of money. Okay, sure, it's a dollar menu, but when you put that in perspective of doing that over and over again, it will increase the impact. Same thing with savings. If you save a little bit at a time, then eventually you're going to get more money. You're going to have a bigger amount of money saved. Now, this is really important because we talked about this change from the thought error to a positive, positive mindset. Then it's a choice. You have to choose to do this. Nobody's gonna force you to do it. And if you want to take control of your financial life, you have to think differently. If you haven't got any positive momentum by now. Now I'm gonna tell you the story. This is really to illustrate this, the negative bias right in us. And sometimes we have that thought error and we don't know how to get it out from us. Us, we don't know. And we might need some help. That's why it's so important. The people that you spend time with, what is? The people that you have around you, do you have a support system? Do you have friends that care for you? Do you have a family that is helping you? Sometimes friendships and even family, sometimes we have to get a little distance if we want to change what we're doing. So in this story, this one is for my brother Vlmir. He loves this band, it's called that Flapper. We love it, too. And one of the things that I like the most about them is the story with the drummer. So his name is Rick Allen. So Rick Allen was a Def Leppard drummer, and he lost his left arm in an accident. It was New Year's Eve. He was driving his Corvette and there was this big accident. So he lost his left arm. And then, of course, you're a drummer, you need the arms to hit the drums. When he was in the hospital, he thought his dream drumming career was over. But his bandmates believed in him, and he learned to drum with one arm and his feet, using a customized drum kit that they had put together for him. Def Leppard did not replace him. They stood by him, and he returned stronger. Sometimes others have to believe in us before we believe in ourselves. So in this case, the bandmates believed that he could do it, that he could learn how to drum using his feet and using his right arm. And they didn't let him get discouraged. Of course he would get discouraged. It's so frustrating. You know how to do something, and then all of a sudden, you cannot do it that way anymore. But he learned something, and he overcame this hard thing because he had the support from his friends. A lot of times people were just like, oh, well, he lost. He lost his arm. So now his career is over. And it wasn't what his bandmates did. So that was. I thought this was really cool. And so sometimes if you don't have someone who believes that you can change your finances, financial situation, well, I'm here to provide that support. I can tell you that I believe anyone can change. And I know someone who really believes that we can change, and that's God. The importance of our mindset is important to God. And he gave us this amazing thing that's our brain, that we can use it for good. In Romans 12:2, we read, Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renew of your mind. Mind they may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So it's important because changing your thoughts is necessary for transformation. Look, God is telling us this. A negative financial mindset keeps us stuck. But renewing our thoughts allows for change. Also we have Philippians 4. 8. Whatsoever things are true, Whatsoever things are honest. Whatsoever things are just. Whatsoever things are pure. Whatsoever things are lovely. Whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think of these things. So when you think good thoughts, when you think about good things, things are good report lovely, pure, just honest. That's going to create a life for you that are those things. Focusing on positive, virtuous thoughts can shift our financial habits and outcomes. What we think, it's what we're going to become, what we're going to do, and get the results. Now, we have here second Nephi nine, 39. Remember to be carnally Minded is death. And to be spiritually minded, it's life eternal. A scarcity mindset leads to fear and poor financial choices, while an abundance mindset aligns with faith and growth. And if you don't believe, you can do it, Jacob 2, 5 says, know that by the help of the all powerful creator of heaven and earth, I can tell you concerning your thoughts. God. God knows our thoughts and when we're aligned with them, when we're aligned with the principles of faith stewardship and financial wisdom, we are going to prosper. He wants us to overcome our difficulties. Now if you want to learn a little bit more about scientifically based books and the negative bias, I suggest the Power of Bad by John Turney and Roy Bumester, which explores negativity bias and how to counteract it. Another one it will be a book by Rick Hanson, Hardwiring Happiness explains how to rewire the brain to focus on positive experiences. And a third option here would be Recommendation Would Be the Bright side by Sumit Paul Chodhori. It discusses how optimism leads to better decision making and success. So just to finish our episode today, sometimes changing our beliefs is hard because because we have so much evidence against ourselves. We talked about this, how when you see all the evidence of the bad decisions, financial decisions, whatever decisions we're making, whatever habits we have, when we see those, our brain just reminds us, see, you're bad with money. You did this. See that other thing right there? You did that wrong too. See the credit card bill is right there. Do you see the red on your bank account? So it's difficult to change, but it's possible. And believing that is possible, it's one of the first things that you can do to change your trajectory of your financial life. And I'm not trying to put more pressure on you, but if you have kids, your kids are watching you and when we voice those ideas and we keep saying, oh I'm terrible with money and they see what you're doing, they can associate what you're doing, what's happening around them as being bad with money. And sometimes they believe that they are the cause cause of the financial problems with the family. Remember to be mindful of how you show up, how you convey your thoughts and the comments that you make around your kids. They are learning from you, they are observing what's happening and they gonna associate any kind of mistake, money mistake, they might take on that that's their fault. If you try to shield them as well, they're gonna think that everything is okay, but it's not and that's also false sense of security. And it's hard to think that you're hiding from the kids, but they can sense the stress, they can sense the lack of peace. And they might think, am I crazy? Why am I thinking this? But my mom is saying that. So it is important to be age appropriate. Talk about your struggles. Talk about your struggles or difficulties, but don't make them panic. The most important thing is as you believe that you can change, they can watch, watch you change. And then they can have that hope that I did something wrong, but I can still change. And one thing that I want to bring back. Why did I tell you my experience doing the exercise from Brendon Burchard? I felt really good after doing that. And I hadn't done anything. I didn't spend any money. I just look at my phone. So I encourage you to look at your photos. Do this exercise bring some joy, success and progress into your mind. When you feel that way, you're gonna act differently. You're gonna have that spark of hope that by renewing your mind, you can change and that God is there to help you overcome the difficult things. I always heard people saying, oh, God's not gonna give you anything harder that you cannot handle. That is not true. If we want to grow, he has to give us things that are difficult, but we're not supposed to be doing those alone. We are able to grow because we can rely on him. He loves us more than anybody. And if you don't have, again, if you don't have anybody who believes in you, you got you. You got our savior and you got me. I believe you can change. I believe you can start putting things in place. Little by little, you start creating the evidence that you're changing, that your money situation is getting better. And sometimes it won't work. But you're like, okay, I gave it a try, didn't work. That's fine. So there are practical things you can do, but none will work if you don't believe in yourself. So start believing that at least. I believe in you. Keep taking small steps, building proof that you are changing. Your financial future is not set. What you have today is not what you're going to have forever. It is created by the thoughts that you believe today. That's the importance of today and the thoughts that you have. Remember, the renewing of your mind will result in the renewal of your life. I believe in you. Don't let the natural tendency of our brains, of your brain to keep you stuck in your thought errors and prisoner of your negativity thoughts. The thoughts take you to your actions and the results are just consequence of your actions. Break free from it. Believe in yourself. I believe in you. I know you can do it and whatever I can do to help you, I'm here for it. Thanks to listening to this episode and I'll see you next time at the Brevio Brigada. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I want to take a moment to extend a special invitation to all of our listeners. If you're ready to finally become good with money, both in your pocket and in your mind, then I want to introduce you to a transformative opportunity. The Chief Financial Mom Academy. Our program is designed specifically for working moms of faith who are tired of feeling overwhelmed by their finances, constantly juggling priorities and feeling like they're always broke. You will learn how to manage your money effectively, build wealth and achieve your long term goals through practical lessons, personalized guidance and a supportive community. If you're ready to say goodbye to financial stress and hello to financial freedom, I encourage you to join us at StrasbourgCoaching.com join CFM again, it's strobs ProsperCoaching.com forward slash J-O I N C F M take the first step towards a brighter future for yourself and for your family today. Thank you again for listening and remember, the future you who is good with money is in your hands. We'll see you on the Chief Financial Mom Academy. Ate Brevi Obrigada.