You've Actually Never Failed at Anything: Here's Why Believing in Your Failure Controls Your Relationship With Money I reclaimed my power by realizing that I've never failed at anything.
By Daniel Mangena •
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I could wax lyrical about money-making strategies. I live for that stuff and I get super excited about teaching others about what has worked for me. Seeing results come for them gives me such incredible joy.
Just as important — if not, more so — is a focus on knowing how to be wealthy.
I should preface this by saying: I'm not talking about specific strategies here. Trust funds, investor portfolios and the like are all well and good, but what we need to get right is first and foremost, you!
I learned the hard way that I am at the center of my universe and that I've never actually failed at anything.
I'm not saying that from a narcissistic point of view. I just mean that very literally, my life is seen through my eyes. How I experience the world has to be filtered through me and my senses, so who I am and how I interpret what's going on dictates the experiences that I derive from it.
We're all guilty of misreading situations and other people's intentions. If we're honest with ourselves, we probably do it on a regular basis. Others will have done it to you in the past too, without a doubt. If we can accept this responsibility though, really understand that our power lies in the choices we make in relation to our interpretation of everything around us: We become unstoppable.
Your relationship with money
But how does this realization relate to wealth retention?
You need to work out who you're going to be in regards to the way you interpret the world when you become wealthy. What's a day in the life of you going to be like? How will you react when the bills land in the mail box?
A lot of people don't do this. They remain a person living in a state of lack mentally, so even though they have money, they are still stressed by expenditure. This invariably means that they are resistant to investment opportunities and consider their money to be a finite resource. The reality you create for yourself when you do this is becomes one of mistrust.
Something I get my students and clients to write a love letter to money as part of their training. Personifying money is vital to understand who we are when it comes to understanding our relationship with money, where the emotional blocks lie and what we need to overcome.
Related: The 5 Things That Matter More Than Making Money
As with the rest of our experiences, money comes with no more emotional weight than that which we attach to it.
It's just a facilitator. A medium of exchange. Those people who call it "the root of all evil" miss the point that it requires human agency and intervention, in order for evil acts to be carried out in its name.
It's quite often wrongly assumed that rich people got where they are by being tight with their money. That simply doesn't hold water, for no other reason that the small matter of inflation! Sit on a pile of money long enough and it'll become virtually worthless in real terms. You need to invest it in order to grow it, and you need to grow it faster than inflation. Quite apart from that though; penny pinching and parsimony are hardly winning mindsets when it comes to being wealthy!
What is the energy of a rich person?
Maybe you know some. Are they tight or do they pay for things without having to mentally calculate their subsequent bank balance first and worry about affording their grocery shopping? They're probably very giving people, who don't worry about where the money is going to come from, in order to pay for what they want to do. This could be because of inherited wealth, or because they educated themselves to such a level that they know how to acquire capital.
The point is, it's their relationship with money that makes them a rich person! They don't even have to have a high net worth per se. It's more about their relationship to the universe and a confidence that they will be provided for. Not only that, but they understand the difference between being good with their money and being tight with it.
Related: 10 Ways to Make Money While You Sleep
Why you've never actually failed at anything
The kinds of frivolous and foolish behaviors that people engage in as they start to achieve success end up dragging them back to square one. That's certainly an observable reality and points to folks who haven't done the mental preparation for how to be wealthy.
I'd go one step further though and say that there's actually no such thing as "sabotaging behavior". What I mean by this is that, yes, people quite often revert to type thanks to their subconscious programming. These acts of "self-sabotage" aren't actually you failing. The mind does not lose — you're executing a plan perfectly, you're just not executing the one that serves your consciously chosen outcome.
Again: This is about reclaiming your power as the sole architect of your experience. You must recognize this if you want to enact change in your life for good!
Wealth creation and retention is just one aspect of it
If we think back to us being the filter of information, we have to own it. If we leave any aspect of it to others, we are simply giving away our power. It's so tempting to abdicate responsibility for our lot in life, but doing so is akin to leaving your subconscious on cruise control, then letting go of the wheel.
This is not to say that you must spend every waking moment consciously choosing every aspect of your life. Nobody has the time or will power to do that, and it would make for a pretty miserable existence. It's also not about suggesting that external forces that are beyond our control don't exist. What you need to do is set up your subconscious in order for it to run on a new set of programming that make the choices that you want it to.
You've no doubt heard about the reticular activating system and what it's function is within your brain. It's a filter, allowing you to focus and see only the things that support you in your aims. As a caveman or woman, this was probably more attuned to finding food and shelter, but the same prehistoric system dwells within us today.
I'm sure you've had the experience of buying something, a car perhaps, and then marching out into the world feeling all special, only to see the same car every few minutes. I recently became a father, and now everywhere I go I see parents and expectant mothers. I'm sure they were there before, but I wasn't tuned to seeing them because I had other subconscious programming running the show.
Getting this filter to start looking for the evidence to support the life that we want is a very practical way of reclaiming your power. There are enumerate methods and practices for doing this, but the most simple is gratitude.
Gratitude
Start practicing gratitude for what you have you'll set up your reticular activating system to start noticing more to be grateful for. Do this consistently and you'll lose your limiting beliefs around money and your power to create it. You'll feel inherently abundant in every area of your life.
Sounds hokey I know, but trust me — it works. They say that it takes three weeks for something to become a habit, so try it. What have you got to lose? Make it a morning practice to get up and immediately write down the top five things that you're most grateful for, before you start your day.
Try it for three weeks and you'll see a difference.
