Could your money mindset use an upgrade?
For most of us, the answer is definitely yes.
It’s just so common to have had childhood and cultural conditioning that tell us things like:
—The pursuit of money is greedy.
—It’s more spiritual to keep finances minimal. Or,
—Talking about money is tacky.
And on and on.
If you’re still not sure whether your money mindset is as healthy as it could be, ask yourself a few questions:
—Do you wish it were easier to reach your financial goals?
—Do you long to experience overflow when it comes to wealth?
—Has money been a cause of stress in recent weeks, months, or years?
If you said yes to any of these, you stand to benefit from money mindset work — which exposes your unconscious money blocks, uproots them, and replaces them with healthier beliefs around money and the flow of it.
Grab a pencil and paper:
This post contains hands-on exercises that I encourage you to try with me!
You see…
A few years ago, I recognized that my own money mindset needed serious help. I was the kind of person who’d rather give something away for free than ask for a fair return on the value I was providing.
What at first felt good eventually came to feel like a codependent trait (was I needing to feel like a martyr?).
I became so determined to thwart my pattern of self-sabotage that I signed up for multiple money mindset courses and continued the self-inquiry until I felt like I had cleared away most of my big blocks.
I even created my own workbook — at first to put myself through a subconscious transformation and then to help others do the same.
I present to you: 3 exercises to improve your money mindset, adapted from what I’ve learned on my journey and what I share with my students. Let’s do this!
Table of Contents: Jump To
Can yoga teachers make full-time money? Leigha breaks it down. Watch the vid.
1. Tell Your Money Story
Think of a money memory from before you turned 7.
This one is a two parter:
- Set a timer for 2 minutes and jot down an early childhood memory that influenced the way you think about money.
- Set another timer for 2 minutes and write about the VALUES you adopted because of this story.
Mine as an example:
1. THE MEMORY →
When I was very little, my mom and I attended a gathering in a church basement, presumably to eat donuts. The priest told a story that has stuck with me until this day:
Jesus was collecting alms for the poor and was approached by 3 people. The first, a wealthy man, gave a lot of money. The second, a moderately wealthy man, gave a moderate sum of money. Finally, the third, an impoverished woman with only a penny to her name, gave all she had — a penny.
The moral of the story, and one that my mom would emphasize throughout my life, was that this impoverished woman was the most noble of the three because she had given all she had.
2. THE BELIEFS + VALUES THAT RESULTED →
I internalized the faulty beliefs that day that:
- GOOD people are POOR people, that
- there is nobility in being impoverished, and that
- extreme, self-sacrificial generosity beats practical-minded giving any day of the week in the eyes of God.
It’s a subconscious system of beliefs that has steered nearly every decision I have ever made in some way or another, believing as I long did that it was not spiritual or good-hearted to pursue wealth even when doing so would provide my family basic comforts and less life stress.
It’s a value system that I STILL STRUGGLE TO UPROOT. Even though I know, on paper, that it is perfectly good and practical to pursue monetary abundance, I STILL cannot help but romanticize the “nobility of poverty.”
I know that I have a pattern of sabotaging my own efforts at earning because of this deeply engrained, lovely-but-flawed story and the value system that arose from it.
The first step is acknowledging the problem.
2. Are These Ultimately True? Declaring the Opposite
Let's counter every faulty belief we internalized from our stories above.
In your journal or sheet of paper:
- Take a look at the list of faulty beliefs and values that arose in #1. Write down an OPPOSING statement that feels basically true.
- For each new statement, jot down some proof or evidence of its truth.
For example:
1. Good people are poor people. Good people come in all shapes and sizes and financial situations.
2. Evidence, example + reasoning:
—Some, if not many, wealthy people are generous and good-hearted
—Poverty is not a requirement for ethical behavior
—I know a wealthy person who donates tremendous amounts to the needy and who runs coat drives every year.
—I know a person who doesn’t have a lot of money and is conniving.
—Ethical people make ethical choices regardless of resources. Some have lots of money, some have little.
—If I make more money, I’m in a better position to give.
In the next exercise, we switch gears a bit and examine our private judgments about those we perceive as more financially secure than we are.
3. Journal Out Some Judgments That You (or People in Your Circle) Have About the Wealthy
How do you REALLY feel?
As long as you, or those you associate with, harbor crappy feelings about those you perceive of as wealthier than you are, you keep yourself distant from wealth.
Think about it. How can you BE something that you privately detest, or at the very least, make judgment about?
The answer is, you can’t. Until you take a good, hard look at your secret prejudices about financially comfortable folks, you’re not likely to become one of them.
Another two-parter:
- Fold a piece of paper into 2 columns. For 2 minutes, on the right-hand side (this will trick your brain), list all the unkind things you’ve heard people say about rich people. Maybe you’ve said them yourself, maybe not.
- For the next 2 minutes, on the left-hand side, list all of your reasons why the OPPOSITE of each of these is actually true.
1. JUDGMENTS →
Rich people are…
- superficial
- greedy
- willing to step on others in order to get what they want
- are not spiritual
- don’t have their priorities straight
- don’t spend enough with their families
- are trust fund babies, inherited their net worth
- got lucky
2. REALITY →
MANY rich people…
- are deep humans with deep relationships
- are generous
- earned their money by helping others and providing a valuable service to the world
- are spiritual people
- have their priorities nicely in order
- spend plenty of time with their families
- inherited nothing or very little (or a lot and who cares?)
- work hard and take advantage of lucky situations when appropriate, which is wise
BONUS EXERCISE: The Great Human Power of Imagination
What is your "I AM WEALTHY" number, and what will it afford you exactly?
So many of us are caught in such an impoverished mindset that we hardly give ourselves a chance to clearly imagine what we would do with our high earnings if and when we actually achieve them.
Worse, at times we envision ourselves winning the lottery and doing something dramatic with the money, which becomes a fantasy so far-fetched that it remains exactly that, a fantasy — which is by definition, distant from reality.
In this two-part exercise, timer optional:
- Identify the monthly income number that feels in the realm of achievable reality to you but that would still make you feel amazingly FREE.
- List out the real things you would do with that money if you found yourself earning it month after month. These can be mundane or wild!
1. AN EXAMPLE “I AM FREE” NUMBER →
$20,000/mo
2. WHAT WILL I DO WITH IT? →
- Renovate kitchen + bathrooms
- Save and invest more aggressively
- Travel to Italy, France, Africa
- Donate money to causes that heal the planet
Finally: Uplevel Your Relationship with Finances
It takes active self-inquiry work to re-program your subconscious to welcome the flow of money rather than repel it, but it can be done!
With a combination of self-study, somatic work, and nervous system soothing, it is entirely possible to rewrite your money trajectory.
What are YOUR biggest takeaways?
About Leigha Butler
In the online game since 2011, Leigha helps yoga teachers and wellness entrepreneurs expand their capacity to receive money — through practical guidance, self-inquiry prompts, and somatic work.
