How The Belief That We Need To Work Hard For Money Holds Us Back Financially

Growing up I was taught that if I want to make good money or a lot of money, I had to be willing to work super hard.

I bought into this belief and learned to work hard.

I spent my twenties mastering hard work, reading up on how to push through exhaustion to get to my second wind.

I truly believed that if I worked hard enough, people would eventually notice.

I believed this until I connected my lack of sleep to my anxiety and connected my anxiety to my panic attacks and my depression and connected my depression to my digestive issues.

That’s when I decided: no more!

My mental, emotional and physical health was (and still is) too important.

I stopped buying into this concept of success and started asking myself key questions: how can I build a company and still prioritize self care and pleasure? How can I increase my income with ease?

The belief that we need to work hard for money, holds us back from expanding financially

This belief we all hold onto, holds us back from thinking bigger and increasing our income because it sends the message that the only way to increase income is to work harder and we miss the most important aspects of increasing income: delegating, having a great network/tribe, creativity, automation etc.

Most people are already working 8 hours a day to make money so they assume that to double their income, they need to double their work hours and that to triple their income, they need to triple their work hours.

Or that they need to go get a masters degree or a PhD, which also involves mental labor.

This is why most people get de-motivated by large income numbers because they think they need to give up everything and work even harder to make the goal a reality – so fun goes out the window, they cut back on sleep and stop connecting with family and friends and focus on the hustle.

Because it’s really a matter of capacity – you only have 24 hours in a day and if your thinking is that increasing income means working harder then you can’t be blamed for assuming that tripling your income, means tripling the number of hours you work.

The hustle life is rough on our emotional and mental well being; there’s a reason why so many start up entrepreneurs struggle with depression and mental health issues.

This is why for some of us, increasing income becomes a choice between making money and living.

No one wants to work 24 hours a day, so most people just give up on setting high income goals and focus on making a small side income.

The belief that we need to work hard for money also comes from the belief that we are not good enough to make the money we want with ease

It sends the message that we need to be extra with a dash of cream to make the money we want.

The message we get is that we need to do more to make more money, but what if we can make more money by doing less and focusing our attention on the activities that lead to more income and outsourcing the rest?

I’ve seen this in my life.

The real work is the inner work and the mindset work – when we change the way we see work and money, we can start to find creative ways to expand and uplevel.

Click play on the video below to learn more about this topic

What activities do you need to focus on to increase income?

Who would you be if you gave yourself permission to make money with ease?

Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section below.