Why the Best Laid Financial Plans Go Wrong
When I started on my personal finance journey, everyone told me to do affirmations and visualization and that everything would shift when I did this.
I even started budgeting because I wanted to see a shift in my life. And I was desperate!
Yet something interesting happened in my world – the more I affirmed, the worse I felt and the more critical and negative I became towards myself.
I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me. I believed I was beyond help and that I was cursed when it came to money.
I would stick to my budget for maybe 2 weeks but by the third week, I’d fall off the wagon and go on a major spending spree; I couldn’t stop myself, no matter how hard I tried.
It was almost like I was possessed and I needed to blow all the money I had in my account.
Why does it sometimes feel like we're going round in circles when it comes to money?
And why does reduced spending not always lead to increased savings or investments?
A common theme that came up in the Fall I Love With Your Bank Account Challenge was this idea of paying off debt, only to find yourself back in debt or have other aspects of our lives fall apart.
Or increasing your salary only to find yourself saving even less money.
Or changing your spending habits, only to start spending money on all sorts of emergencies or family emergencies.
What’s going on, is this a new form of witchcraft?
Most importantly – how do we stop it?
1. STOP PRETENDING POSITIVE THINKING IS A CURE ALL
Affirmations are amazing, but research has shown that affirmations don’t always work, because we have deeper wounds around money that need to be worked on in a deeper way.
When decide to push against these wounds, by doing affirmations, we meet resistance and our subconscious mind starts to fight what we’re feeding and telling it.
The best way to change our thinking is to get the mind to start questioning itself so it can find its own truth.
2. FINANCIAL OUTCOMES DEPEND ON MORE THAN JUST OUR BEHAVIOUR
According to the Lazarus theory of emotions, we think a thought, feel an emotion and then behave in a particular manner.
So our behaviour is dependent not just on the actions we take but our thoughts and emotions as well.
And it’s not just our thoughts it’s also our memories, our ancestral memories that we carry within us, our spiritual beliefs etc.
I want you to think of all the thoughts, memories, emotions and beliefs that cause us financial pain as wounds to our psyche. These wounds keep us in survival mode and impact the way we take action as well the actions we do take.
3. FINANCIAL KNOWLEDGE DOESN'T JUST LEAD TO BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE
Just because you have a budget or you know how to budget, it doesn’t mean you have to follow the budget because knowledge doesn’t lead to behavioural change.
If knowledge led to behavioural change, then we would all eat healthy, drink lots of water and exercise every day.
Knowing something, doesn’t mean we will apply that knowledge. Applied knowledge is totally different.
Watch the video below to understand why the best laid plans go wrong and I look forward to seeing you in the masterclass on Wednesday, September 27th.
