In “The Secret” Mike Dooley introduces the simple “Thoughts become things” catch phrase. (Actually, Mike has been saying this for years on his “Totally Unique Thoughts” site but I recently rediscovered him in the Secret.)
This is a concept that I’ve experimented with for many years and I have found to be absolutely true. It’s not a new concept and many, many, many people over the years have talked and written about it.
Our thoughts create our reality. If you believe that you don’t have enough money, you will never have enough. If you believe money is hard to come by, it will be.
Up till recently, the idea of poverty is what I created for myself. I left my parents house when I was 16 to go to College and University and from that day on, I felt dirt poor. I felt like I didn’t have enough. I felt trapped. Thanks to my tuition fees, I felt like I would have debt my whole life. I looked at people with money and felt it was so unfair for some to have so much when others have so little. When friends or family wanted to give me gifts, I felt unworthy and would often turn them down. I was the epitomy of the “poor me” mentality and this way of seeing things became so engrained into by being that even though I was making a ton of cash after University, I still felt like it wasn’t enough. So after years of feeling poor I created real poverty in my life.
Now, let’s put things into perspective… I was part of the middle class which made me rich by 3rd world country standards. I always paid my bills on time, put food on the table, clothes on my back, a good roof over our heads … really I had everything I needed. But I felt poor because I couldn’t just get everything I wanted when I wanted it. Because of that I always felt frustrated and it created this negative spiral that prevented me from living the life I wanted… and from seeing what was in front of my nose; I was already wealthy.
Like everybody I know, I’ve been sprinting my life marathon since I left my parents house: Highschool, College, University, Climbing the corporate ladder for 10 years till one day a boss told me he owned me. Quit the corporate world, started a business and had a child at the same time. Honestly, I never had time to stop and think about anything. I just kept running and spending like so many other rats in this race.
By today’s standards, we owe very little. I look at other blogs where people owe 60K or 130K or even more. We don’t owe anything near that. But for us, it was as far as we wanted to go in our poor us mentality.
Wealth is a state of mind not just a number on your bank statement.
Now, we are learning to shift our thinking from lacking to abundance. We express gratitude for all our blessings… big and small. We treat our money with respect and reward ourselves frequently for being money conscious. We enjoy simple things that cost nothing that enrich our souls and we have a mini celebration everytime we pay our bills and our cc debt because we know that we are getting closer to our goal of owing nothing.
