Improve Your Relationship with Money
It might sound funny, but you have a relationship with money just like you have a relationship with anything else. It’s how you interact with and relate to money.
Our relationship with money is created over time and can be influenced by many factors. We are guided by how our parents interacted with money. We’re also shaped by mentors, teachers, friends, our experiences, and society as a whole.
Why our relationship with money matters
Even though our personal financial situation is extremely important to us, it’s often one of the first areas of our lives that we neglect. It can take a backseat to topics that feel more urgent, less daunting, or more fun. This affects our results, how we reach our goals, and our well-being. What we pay attention to grows (or doesn’t grow).
It can be hard to understand our relationship with money because, for the most part, we haven’t given it much thought. Everything about it feels so normal to us. However, the way we’ve been treating or experiencing money our entire lives is our status quo. But how we handle our relationship with money can keep us from making the progress we want towards our goals.
So the first step to building a good relationship with money is creating awareness. This means we need a clear picture of how we’re spending money and we’re our money is coming from. A money journal is a great place to start.
Once we uncover those things, we can start improving our relationship with money.
Build awareness
Try describing how you interact with and relate to money. Then, translate those tendencies to an important personal relationship in your life.
For example, how would things go with your best friends if you just ignored them? Would your friendship be flourishing or would you not even be on speaking terms? They probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about it. The same goes for your money.
Notice your money beliefs
As you become aware of your relationship with money, you might notice that you have some beliefs about money and yourself that can hold you back.
For example, if someone was brought up thinking that money equates with greed, they’re either going to have a very hard time earning money or a very hard time keeping that earned money in their bank account.
This makes complete sense! Why would anyone want to be greedy? If we truly believe that having and wanting money makes us greedy, we’re not going to allow ourselves to acquire and keep it.
Take a few minutes to write down some beliefs you have around money.
Your relationship to wealth.
Take out a piece of paper (digital or real) and give yourself 90 seconds to answer each of these five questions. Try not to overthink it. Just go with your gut.
What comes to mind when you hear the word:
Wealthy
Rich
Poor
Millionaire
Billionaire
What do your answers mean? It’s a window into your thoughts about what it means to have a lot of money or build wealth. build wealth