021 Shift Your Relationship with Money

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show. In this episode we're going to talk about how do you shift your relationship with money? Stay tuned.

This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

Hey there, Mel Abraham here and welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show. And like I said, this episode we're going to talk about how do you shift your relationship with money? And this is going to be a cool episode because I actually do believe that our connection with money is just like a relationship. And just like any relationship, if it's not nurtured, if it's not given attention to, it can be a problematic relationship. So this episode is a result of me being asked about this whole idea of would you write an article around the relationship for money for a popular publication? I thought this is a great episode to bring to the show, a great topic to bring the show. So here we are, we're going to talk about it. I'm going to actually walk you through something I use with my clients in the affluence blueprint and my one on one clients, which is called the money reframe flow. It's hard to say, but the money reframe flow. And so here's the thing for this episode, if you can get a journal next to you, get a piece of paper, get a pen and you should do that for all of my episodes because we try to teach some points for you to take away because there's some things I'm going to give you some specific questions and question prompts to answer, to start to shift some things, because here's what I know, and as we go to the iPad, that if we don't get this right, there's a couple of things that we fall prey to. The lies, if you will, around money, the myths around money, that that money is evil, that money's only for the greedy, that if in order for me to make money, someone has to lose money. All of those types of lies and myths that are around money, where the fact of the matter is that if you've watched me or listened to me for any length time, money's neutral. It's just a tool. It's how it's wielded, it's how it's used that creates the positive or negative. It's just like a hammer, it's just like a screwdriver, it's just like any other tool. So the question is that if we start to believe those myths, if we start to believe those lies, we end up having a bad relationship with money. And then sometimes we have a bad relationship with money because the lies came as a result of observation. See, most of our money education is caught, not taught, okay? Most of our money education is caught, not taught. In other words, they don't teach it in schools. We don't do a whole lot of coursework on it. God forbid we talk about money because it's taboo. We shouldn't be talking about money. How dare we talk about money and it's really not to be talked about. Well, the fact of the matter is that if money is an issue, money is actually a symptom. And money is a symptom of the fact that we're not having conversations to understand and educate ourselves about how to use the tool effectively. Would I give a tool, a chainsaw, to a child and not instruct them how to use it? In fact, I wouldn't give a chainsaw to child anyways. But would I give a dangerous tool to someone without the instructions on how to use it? Well, money is no different than a tool. But no one ever wants to talk and have conversations around how to use the tool effectively. And so what we end up doing is we observe. We see our parents fighting about money or talking about money. We hear the media, we see social media, we hear our friends, we see our friends. Some people have stuff, some people don't have stuff. We see how they act around it and we make our own interpretations and we create these myths in our head in doing that. So if we don't get it right, what ends up happening is that we start to believe the lies as truths, and they're not. They're not. The second thing that happens is that we're frozen in fear. We don't understand what. We don't understand. We don't know what. Well, we don't know, and therefore we don't do anything. See, too often we think that. And this is one of the lies and one of the myths. They say that all money's complicated. Investing's complicated. Building wealth is complicated. It's complicated. I'm not good with money. I'm not good with numbers. I'm not a numbers person, all that stuff. So we freeze in fear or the other side of it. As you took and stepped out, you stepped out and you made an investment. You tried something and it didn't go your way. You lost money. So now you're afraid to make this another mistake, another bad investing decision. I get it. I've been down that road. When I'd lost one third of my net worth in the Ponzi scheme over seven figures, okay, I could have crawled in and I started to withdraw and say, I'm not good at this, I'm not good at this. And I had to push myself back out there, but it's like falling off a horse. You gotta get back on. But before you get back on, we can talk about this. But before you get back on, you got to get aware of what you did wrong. You got to take the lessons from there so you don't duplicate it. So with the Ponzi scheme, I sat down and said, what did I learn? What was my contribution? What was my responsibility? What were the things that came out of it? So I can take those forward with me and know that those will not be duplicated. I don't want to lose money again, which I will, because that's just the way investing goes. Not everything is a home run. But if you use rules, if you use principles, like we teach in the affluence blueprint, when you use those things, you reduce the likelihood of loss and risk tremendously. But my point is, is that. That too often we make a bad decision, we have a bad experience, and. And then we, you know, or we think it's too complicated, we don't understand it, so we're frozen in fear, and we do nothing. And we do nothing. The other thing that happens is if our relationship with. With money is incorrect, that we end up in a situation where we actually cannot see the insidious effects of what it's doing to our life because it shows up in our life in a lot of different ways. It could be show up as overspending and that we're doing whatever you want to call it, retail therapy or something. We could be running up our credit cards, we could be bouncing checks. We could be money hoarding. So instead of us overspending, now we're just keeping it. We're not spending at all. We're miserly. And what we do, and we're very, very cheap in what we do, we could be using extreme budgeting. So you're budgeting down to the nth degree and, and you feel confined and you can't move and. And it puts pressure on your relationships. You could. You have the fear of investing. You've got. And you don't see it. You don't feel the psychological pulls of keeping up with the Joneses. You don't see the impact and how it shows up in your life. Much like carbon monoxide poisoning, it's completely invisible. You can't smell it, you can't see it, but it is deadly. And so when we, when we think about the relationship with money and some of these things, we don't believe we have control. And all of a sudden it's showing up as overspending, over budgeting, fear of investing, extreme budgeting, money hoarding, bouncing checks, all those things. And we see what's happening, but we don't realize why it's happening. And the insidious impact of that bad relationship comes to the surface. That's why I say that most people don't have money issues. They have behavior issues. And a lot of those behavior issues are known to them, at least to why those behaviors are in place. And when we can detach those behaviors, the why in those behaviors, we can then shift those behaviors. That's what I want to do here. So here's the other side of that. That when we do this right though, things shift because we can live on principles. As I said, we can live on principles. When you understand the right money principles, things like what we teach in the affluence blueprint, you understand the money principles, the wealth principles, the investing principles, the rules that keep you safe, you can actually be freer to make some decisions because they're principle based. Now, what are principles? Principles are universal truths. They're fundamental truths that exist. They're not fads. They're not trends. They exist. Another definition, I love this definition for principles is a system of behaviors. Principles are system of behaviors. And if we get the right system of behaviors in place for your money, then your Money, your wealth, your richness, your affluence, all that stuff is a lot easier, a lot safer, a lot less risky, and a lot more fulfilling. Okay, so you live on principles when you do this, right? When we get this relationship right, the other thing that happens is that you take confident action. You're no longer frozen in fear. You literally say, I've got these principles behind me and I'm going to take confident action to do the things that I know I need to do that I know over time, work. And third, third, you're conscious and intentional. Now if you listen to me for any length of time, you know that I am not the type of person that's going to sit back and say, hey, you know what, don't buy that. Now very few times I do that. I don't tell people what to do, what not to do. All I do is try to make sure that they're intentional, they're conscious and they're aware of their decisions. As long as they intake, make a financial. That's intentional, Conscious and aware of the consequences and the rewards of that decision, I'm good. You go ahead and do it. It's not my place to tell you to go buy something or not buy something. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to inform you and to educate you so you can make empowered decisions for yourself. I want you to be in control of that and do it. So it's conscious and intentional and knowing that the decisions you make today create the financial future, future of tomorrow. This is a lot like planting bamboo. See, I don't know if you know much about bamboo, but bamboo gestates under the ground. You plant the seeds, you plant the seeds and it gestates under the ground for years. You know, couple years, two to three years, it's under the ground, you can't see the growth. And then all of a sudden it pokes its stock through the ground and it grows full grown within a year. But you had to plant the seeds. This is why they call it a, a bamboo shoot, because it grows so fast once it pokes through the ground. But you gotta nurture it, you gotta take care of it. You gotta, you gotta give it the time to gestate under the ground. We need to do that with our money, relationships. We need to do that with the concepts and some of the things that we're, we're doing on the show or, or in some of my other trainings and everything to make that happen. So if we do this right, what do you need to have in place to make this happen? What do you need to make this happen? There's. There's a couple principles that I think are really important for you to think about is this. The first is that curiosity leads to growth. Curiosity leads to growth. In other words, getting curious about money, getting curious about your relationship with money, getting curious about growing and learning and reading books and understanding leads to growth. If we sit in ignorance, if we sit in naivete, if we sit. If we sit in a blinded fog of our past, our past decisions, we have no ability to grow. And so what we need to look at is say, what are the things that I can put in front of me to get curious and grow? Whether it's in conversations, whether it's reading, whether it's in podcasts or shows like mine, if it's in programs or training or courses. Where can you get curious? Because curiosity leads to growth. The second principle that I think is important to understand is this. You control the meaning. You control the meaning. Listen, when I got wiped out by the Ponzi scheme, I could have easily made it mean that I was useless, I was pointless, I was an idiot as far as finances and money. I can't make good decisions. I shouldn't be doing this. I should be get out of my business. I should turn in my CPA license. I should stop all of it because I'm not good at. But was that the reality? Was that the fact? Or was that simply my interpretation, the meaning I gave it. Now, I didn't give it that meaning. I started to, but I caught myself because of some of the things that I'm going to teach you here. And so the challenge is that too often we allow our interpretation, the meaning. We put on something to control us. And it's not the fact that the facts are, I put money in investment. The facts are this investment turned into a Ponzi scheme. The Ponzi scheme, I lost money. Those are the facts. The interpretation, the meaning I gave it. Those aren't facts. Facts are observable things. If I put a camera up and you could see through the lens, what do you observe? Mel giving this guy money? This guy. Not giving money back to Mel, this guy. That's the facts. The rest is interpretation. You control the meaning of the things that have happened in your life. You control the meaning and the interpretation of the financial things that have happened in your life. And so when we understand that, we have the ability to give something a different meaning, a different meaning. And then the third principle is one of the most important is that behavior drives wealth. People say, ah, I just, I need to make more money and then I can be wealthy. No, it has nothing to do with how much money you make. In fact, there was a study of 10,000 millionaires. It's published in a book called Everyday Millionaire by Chris Hogan. And we'll pop that into the show notes. But Chris Hogan wrote a book called Everyday millionaire. They studied 10,000 millionaires. And you know, most of those millionaires, they were everyday Joes, they were teachers, they were, some were accountants, but they were wage earners. They weren't entrepreneurs that were, that were living on the edge and, and building big businesses and selling their businesses for multimillions. They followed the principles, they understood the behaviors that needed to be in place to create the wealth that they wanted. Remember I say that the, the idea is that no one has money issues. They have behavior issues. When we get the right behaviors in place, we get the right behaviors in place, the money issues start to take care of themselves. If we are behaving differently with our spending, with our investing, with, with our, our knowledge, our curiosity, all behavior issues, we fix those. The byproduct is our wealth. Those are the principles that we need to think about to make that happen. Which then leads me to this. All right, great. So I understand what happens if I don't get it right. I understand what happens when I do get it right. I understand what the three principles are of curiosity leads to growth. And you can control the meaning. You get to control the meaning and behaviors drive wealth. So what do I do? So this is where I want to introduce you to something called the, the money reframe flow. Okay? The money reframe flow. And it's a three step process that I take my clients through and people through in the affluence blueprint that starts to understand and reframe their relationship with money. Their relationship with money. And so the first step of this is this, this is all done in journaling. And here's the way I would, I would invite you to do this, is listen to this all the way through, then come back to it when you're in a quiet place with no interruptions and do the exercises. This will be game changing for you because it'll be enlightening, it might be even confronting in some cases. But I think it's really important for us to understand this and do this in making it happen. So the first thing is that we ask ourselves activating questions. This allows us to see if you will, the kinds of beliefs the Kinds of interpretations, the kinds of meanings, the kinds of things that are controlling our money decisions. So they're activating questions to activate our consciousness, our awareness to the things that might be impacting us and everything. I'm going to give you the questions in all of these so you don't have to worry about that. But I want to give you the framework first. So the first step of the framework is to ask activating questions. The second is to find the unearthing lessons in those questions. In other words, you're going to get some enlightenment in this first step, in this first phase of the activating questions. Now the question is, what did you learn? Just like I did with the Ponzi scheme, I asked myself some activating questions. I asked myself these questions and I looked and said, what did I learn? What came out of that? What were the lessons? What were the things that I couldn't replicate, I couldn't duplicate, I would not do again. How can I change my rules, change the principles, do all those things to make it happen? So we go from activating questions to unearthing lessons to solidifying actions. In other words, once I've asked the questions, figure out the lessons, what are the actions I can take to make those lessons stick? That's three step process. That's it. That's it. So let's talk about. Let's look at the questions that should be answered in the process. Let's talk about the activating questions first. And there's four questions here that I want you to consider and I'd love for you to answer. Now, if you're not driving, if you're either watching the video or you're listening on the podcast, and you have the opportunity to get a piece of paper and a pen out, I'd love for you to do this and I'd love for you to stop the video or the audio after each question and do the exercise. This is going to be a lot of great knowledge if you just go through it, but it's going to be a lot of big change if you actually do it. Okay? So the first question is this. What does money mean to you? What does money mean to you? And literally, I want you to just take a page and I just want you to journal at least a page of meanings without interpretation. Don't worry about it. Positive, negative, no interpretation, no filter, no demonization, none of that. Just. Just take and write out everything that money means to you. It could be freedom, it could be liberation, it could be impact, it could be, you know, status. It could be whatever it is, it could be more. I'm just using one word. But it could be more than that. I just want you to just list. I want you to brain dump. I want you to heart dump. I want you to soul dump. I want you to do that and just write it down. What does money mean to you? Okay. And then when you're done with that, when you're done with that, I want you to go to the second question. The second question is this. What is your first memory of money or a money trauma? What is your first memory or a memory of a money trauma? And how did it make you feel? I know for me, I remember a money trauma. I just remember I was around five, six years old, sitting. We had a kind of a bay window in one of the bedrooms, and my bedroom was next to my. My parents master bedroom. And I was sitting on that bay window windowsill. And my dad had just come home from work and my mom and him were. Were talking. And I don't even remember what they were talking about, but it was something about that my mom wanted to do, but my dad said, I can't, we can't afford to do it. And I remember seeing my dad in tears. It's one of the first times and the one of the only times I remember seeing him actually in tears. Feeling like he let the family down. Feeling like I work hard and I'm trying to give you everything and it's just not good enough. I feel like I'm failing the family. And it just. It broke my heart as a. As a kid and it just. I just never, you know, I'm. I'm gonna be 60. So you're talking about 55 years ago. And it still hits me today. I still see dad with tears. I still see dad with the desire to make sure that his family's taken care of. And his family has everything that they want. And the fact of the matter is that we had everything we needed. He didn't know that. And I know for me, it made me feel that I can't. I've never allowed this to happen. And that's why I talk about money. That's why I talk about richness versus wealth. That's why we do these things. So what is it for you? What is it for you? What was your first memory of money? What was your first money trauma? How did it make you feel? And write that out. Just however. And don't filter it. Don't worry about it. This isn't about justice. This is about to really activations to get it out of you. Now that gets us to the third question. The third question is, what have been some of your best money wins? Okay, you've had to have money wins. It could be paying off a credit card, it could be getting a raise, negotiating something. It could be, it doesn't matter how large or big. Again, I want you to journal in a flow, your money wins. What were the money wins that came about? And so you're going to have a page of wins, you're going to have a page of meanings. You're going to have some memories in there. And then number four is that if you were to describe your ideal relationship with money, what would it look and feel like? If you were to describe your ideal relationship with money, what would it look or feel like? Now, I'm hoping that you're doing the exercise with this. If you're just sitting here listening to me, you will not get the benefit of this. This is hugely powerful. It is transformational when you do this, because this process is going to unleash, it's going to unshackle you to your money past. We're going to change the relationship. So when we do this now, all of a sudden you've got these four questions that you've got journaled out. And then, and then we go to phase two. We go to step two. And step two is where we get. We get to look at the unearthing lessons. In other words, now we got to go digging. Now we're the archeologists and we say, what are the lessons? What can I learn from the past? And so there's three questions I need you to answer here. Three questions relating to your answers of the first four. And the first question is what lessons and meanings came from what you wrote down? In other words, I want you to go back to those pages and I want you to start looking and say, what are the lessons? What are the meanings? I gave these things. How did this impact me? What are the things that are there that come at it? So if we look at it from that perspective, what are the meanings that came from it? Then that gives us the second question. The second question is, how would life look three to five years down the road if you continue to hold this meaning or belief? Okay, so now I want you to look at the, the meaning or the beliefs that you have on those first, from the first part of the exercise and say, what's my life going to be like three to five years from now if I continue to hold on to this? These. What's My life going to look like if I continue to hold on to these. Go ahead and stop the audio and work through the questions. This is going to be transformational, I promise you. And then when you come back, I want you to go to question number three. Question number three is, what else could this mean instead? In other words, now I want you to flip it. I want you to look at the meaning you gave it and say, what could it mean? What could it mean? The Ponzi scheme, One of the meanings that I gave it, instead of it me being I'm horrible at investing was, is that I'm going to be a rule based, principle based investor. It means that I need to adhere to principles and rules to keep myself safe, keep my clients safe, keep my family safe. What else could it mean? What else could it mean? Keep asking that question. Not just once, twice, three times, four times, five, what else could it mean? Because it's as you get down the road to start seeing that it could mean something else. Yeah. I remember hearing a story about a kid, and I don't know if it's true, but a kid who was standing on the side of the road and as a car was coming by, he threw a rock at the car and it broke the windshield. And in that moment, the guy was extremely angry. He pulls over his car, he's yelling and screaming at the kid. He's saying, why would you do something like that? And the kid is in tears and he says, we got in an accident. We're down the embankment, my mom's in the car and she's hurt. It meant something different then. What could it mean instead? What else could it mean? Instead leads us to the last question. The last question is this. If you were to hold this new, more empowering belief, in other words, you've got a new meaning. Now, if you were to hold this new, more empowering belief, what is possible for you then? Think about that, the beauty of that. So now you understand the meaning. You gave it a new meaning. You understand what that meaning can do for you. And now you look at it and say, what's my life like now with this new belief? So now you have a list of new beliefs. Now you have a list of the things that your life could be all about. With those new beliefs. We take it to the last step. And the last step is solidifying actions. So the solidifying actions is this. Now we look at the new beliefs and we say, what are small but habitual actions you can take to reinforce the new belief? So you look at those list of new beliefs and you sit back and say, hey, what actions can I take? It could simply be something like I'm going to read 20 minutes a day on finances, on investing, on money management, on budgeting, on getting out of debt, on real estate investing. Whatever it is, those small habitual actions start to pile up. The compound effect of investing is the same thing as the compound effect of learning and lessons they build on each other. So make a list of small but habitual actions that are easy for you to take, that are going to reinforce the new belief. Then I want you to then decide and define on those actions just right next to the actions, what's the frequency and the rhythm of those actions. Are you going to do it daily? Are you going to do it weekly? Are you going to. One of the things that you can do is look at your finances, look at your net worth statement on a monthly basis. You're going to do that on a monthly basis. You do it on a weekly basis. Whatever, you're going to look at your cash flow on a weekly basis. So you create a frequency and rhythm to the actions that you're trying to create as habits that are built on the new beliefs. Now hopefully you see the cascade effect this and then leads us to this last question is at the end of each week, you have a list of these habitual actions you want to take. You have a list of these beliefs. Give yourself a score. Give yourself a score each week. And not from a judgment standpoint, but to attract, to track your progress. Hey, you know what? This week I wasn't as good on habit one. I was at a three and I wanted to be at a five. You know, on a scale of one to five, one to ten, whatever you want to do. But what I want you to do is track your progress, track where you're at and it's okay. It ebbs and flows. There's plenty of times that some of my habitual actions I drop down and I go, ah, all right, but remember, we're aware, we're conscious, we're intentional and we can do it differently the next go round. So this is a process and it could take a little time. But the power of this is that once we shift this relationship that you have with money, it's shifted forever. Some people I think have a, they're in an abusive relationship with money. We're going to change that, we're going to change that and it's basically done in this three step money reframe flow. Three step, okay, four questions. In step one Four questions in step two, three questions, three things to do in step three. That's it. We spend the time, we understand, you know, what are our activating questions are, we understand what our unearthed lessons are and we understand what our solidifying actions are. That's it. So here's what I want you to do. And I know that this may be more work than most of my episodes, but this, this will shift everything for you. It can be a game changer. So here's what I'd love for you to do is I'd love for you to take the time to go back through this episode, go through the questions, take and journal it out, find a quiet spot, put your favorite music on, put some headphones on, do whatever you need to do. I did this. I've done this repeatedly down at the beach because I love the beach. And I'll sit on the rocks and I'll write. Find the place that you can be in flow, Go through the activating questions, go through the unearthing lessons and then develop the plan for your solidifying actions. And if you have questions, if you have comments, if you have AHA's revelations, any, anything that comes to you, I'd love to hear about it. Send me a DM post about it, tag me in it, do whatever. I'd love to hear about your journey and the shift in your relationship with money because it will be a game changer forever. And when you change your relationship with money, you change your relationship with money for your kids, for the people around you, because it's contagious. Okay? So do me a favor, let me know how it all goes for you. I hope that you found this valuable. This is a huge process that we walk through in some of the trainings that we do and the shift that it's done for people has been tremendous. And now I want it for you. Okay? So keep rocking, keep crushing it, keep doing what you're doing. And remember this. Always live a life that outlives you. And I look forward to seeing you and another episode, hearing from you, having a conversation with, seeing in the Facebook group or anything like that. But more importantly, I look forward to being on this journey to a new financial destiny in your life. Cheers. Bye. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur, our Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.