Rethinking Your Past

 

“While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.” –Ronald Regan

Your past is not a reflection of the future. Let me explain. I grew up in a blue-collar working class family. My mom raised me as a single mother who was on disability from the time I was 8. She is a very loving mom and I love her with all my heart so for that I am so grateful. Unfortunately anytime I heard about money it was always negative, there was never enough, it only created arguments and anything I ever learned about money I had to learn on my own. I made a decision when I was very young to never let the lack of money affect my life and it hasn’t. Luckily for me I read somewhere at an early age that most millionaires are self-made, 80% to be exact. Most of us grow up believing that you have to inherit wealth to be wealthy. We tend to claim excuses such as well my parents aren’t rich or it takes money to make money. Anyone ever hear that one before?

Take a minute and close your eyes what phrases come to mind when you think about money. Write them down in your journal. Some of the things you wrote down were probably “money is the root of all evil”, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “Money cannot buy happiness”, and “Time is money”. These are probably the most common. Is this how you think about money? If it is that’s ok, you are in the right place to get the right mindset.

Let me explain why these conditioned beliefs are misleading and the wrong way to look at money. Money is not the root of evil. Although I do believe the love of money is evil. “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) the words “love of” change the meaning. Money is neither good nor bad in itself. It’s simply a magnifier. It magnifies who you already are. If you’re a good person you will do good things with it, and if you’re a bad person you will probably do bad things with it. It’s that simple. Ok, money doesn’t grow on trees but it definitely grows and we will talk about that later. What people are really saying when they state “money doesn’t grow on trees” is that money isn’t easily obtained and it’s a scarce resource. They are speaking from a lack mentality. It’s also true that money alone cannot buy happiness but it does allow you more choices in life. That in effect allows you to spend more time with friends and family, take more vacations, not worry about paying your bills, and help others both with your free time and money. To me those things create a happier life, call me crazy. Lastly “time is money”, my friend time is not money. It is much more valuable then money. You can have all the money in the world but can it buy you more time? The average person trades hours of their life for dollars; they work for their money. That is what the poor guy does. The rich guy has his money work for him. I understand that in the beginning of your transformation you will be working for dollars and that’s ok. I did the same. My goal is that by the end of this book you are on your way to making your hard earned dollars work for you and on your way to financial freedom. Now take the piece of paper you’ve just written all these things down on tear it out of your journal and rip it up. That way of thinking is in the past.

To move towards becoming wealthy you have to stop letting your past affect your future. It’s easy to make excuses about where you where raised, how you were raised, why your not rich, why this happened, why that happened. But there isn’t one excuse you can make that will get you to where you want to be in life. Think about that for a second. Not one excuse you make will help you reach your goals. So why make excuses? If you continue making excuses for yourself you will never wealthy. Making excuses is for people who are not growing. What you need to do is use everything from your past as fuel for your fire. All the times people said you can’t become rich or you will never succeed, use it as motivation. The past is the past any negative thoughts that may hinder your future success must be dismissed immediately or turned into fuel for success!