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The environment we grow up in, our parents, social circle, relatives, teachers and friends have a big part in the formation of our belief system. In our childhood, we tend to blindly believe what we are told to believe or what we see as being practiced by people around us. In the course of life however some of the opinions and viewpoints change for us. This happens when we are presented with proof to the contrary by circumstances, experiences or by people. However, there are some beliefs which we carry with us to the grave even if they help us in no way. The damaging part is that we pass them on as legacy to our next generation as well.

95% of us come from non-entrepreneurial families and most of us arrive at adulthood pre-loaded with a certain belief system like a computer comes with a software. To reverse these beliefs and understand that wealth is not an ugly word needs a lot of coaching. It can be by oneself with an introspective approach, unlearning and relearning or perhaps with the help of a coach to uproot the beliefs that are set deep inside us and refuse to budge.

Grant Cardone, the world’s greatest salesman ever and one of my long-distance mentor, calls this the middle-class mentality and believes that this mentality is the single biggest obstacle in people’s path to success!

I fully agree with him on this. I am of the opinion that if you don’t believe in a concept or if you are indoctrinated with a concept that puts wrong beliefs in you, you will never succeed. You will be your own biggest obstacle.

Here goes some of the omnipresent indoctrinations or conditioned beliefs and the rationale behind why we should change them…

1. Study hard. If you work hard, you can achieve anything. So, even if you hate doing it, do it – If there is no heart in it however hard you study or work the success you achieve is limited
2. Get a job, preferably a stable government job. Entrepreneurship is a huge risk meant only for rich people to dabble in – There are innumerable success stories of people coming from humble backgrounds and achieving their entrepreneurial dreams. Sadly, we focus on stories of failure rather than the success stories.
3. You need to be formally educated to be a wealthy person. There is a limit in the possibilities for success possible with just informal education and experience – Academic education is considered the conclusive path for being wealthy. Yet again, a myth! We have many successful people who worked their way up and with just the vast experience of theirs pulled off magical achievements in life and ended up with massive fortunes.
4. Be cautious with money- do not take risks. Keeping it safe is your first responsibility. A penny saved is a penny earned – A penny saved is just a penny saved and it cannot add up as any significant wealth. Risk and reward are directly proportional. People who repeat the same things can only expect the same results as well. Only with a change in approach one can see better and brighter rewards. While caution is commendable, fear and panic are not
5. Being wealthy is stressful. It makes you lose sleep. If you are reasonably well off, be happy – It is just ill-gotten wealth that makes you sleepless. As the joke goes, its better to be unhappy sitting in a 200 feet yacht in the Bahamas than be sad in a 20-year-old hand me down Toyota of your dad’s!
6. Money doesn’t grow on trees. So, restrict expenses and lead a frugal life. While being sensitive to wasteful expenditure is a great habit to have, glory lies in working towards wealth creation and being able to afford all your needs and even your wants.
7. Whatever talent, skill or motivation you have, if you are not lucky, you stay poor. It shows a deeply pessimistic and regressive mindset to blame luck or take shelter under poor luck to justify inaction and failures or not put efforts to reverse the setbacks
8. People with money most probably made money because they were corrupt. Wealth and goodness do not go well together. This is again a defeatist mentality which focuses on others and not your journey.
9. Wealth corrupts. Hence, if you are wealthy you have to eventually resort to unfair means to retain it. Your values erode with wealth. The better the values with which one has grown up, the more the chances that they would guide you in the toughest circumstances. Wealth corrupts only if you let it corrupt you. On its own wealth is powerless. It is your direction and value system that gives it the significance
10. It’s wrong to have a lot of money. When there are so many people in poverty it is unfair on them and selfish for you to hoard wealth. This is precisely the reason why you should be wealthy. It is a sad myth that one can be wealthy only at the cost of someone else. Wealth is what has the capacity to reduce the social inequities.

There are still more such deeply ingrained beliefs we have out there, where these comes from, wouldn’t you agree?

I was at a training where the coach asked us to write 3 things that came to our mind when we thought of sales people. All of us around the table wrote things similar in sense to the following:

1. Sales people cannot be trusted
2. Snake oil salesmen 
3. They are untrustworthy 

Once we were all done, he told us that we were all businessmen. As businessmen we had to sell our products and services, which makes us salesmen above all else. If we ourselves don’t believe in salesmen, how would we ever be able to sell or convince others to buy? He did make a lot of sense!

If we substitute salespeople with “wealth”, it is the exact same kind of negative concepts that would crop up. If we have negative beliefs on wealth, we will never be able to attract it into our lives. Exactly like joy, love or peace. Good things need to be welcomed into our lives. They never come unbeckoned.

Wealth is an enabler. It helps us to have a better standard of living. It also helps us to help this world to be a better place. 

For those who wish to be wealthy, the following exercise could be very helpful:

1. Write down your beliefs about wealth
2. Identify negative beliefs among them
3. Replace them with written down positive beliefs instead
4. Keep writing the positive beliefs every day (if possible, twice) to reinforce it in your mind

You are sure to see the miracles accumulate with the positive affirmations on wealth.

If you are looking for some help in uprooting some of the limiting beliefs on wealth, do write to us at harish@harishrao.world to know how we can help you with it. We would love to work with you on this or any other business coaching needs you may have!