Clinton Skakun

Rich people think differently! Rich people are conditioned differently!

One of the better books I’ve read on money: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth This book explains that how we handle money in our adult years, and how much we have of it, is rooted in our childhood and what we were “fed” by our parents, teachers, friends, pastors, neighbors etc. Eker grew up in a family that had many mixed feelings about money. His mother wanted him to get a “real job” and his father told him to work for himself. Eker’s father was an entrepreneurial minded who lit the spark so to speak in Eker’s interest in business and wealth building. Eker told the story of how he fell on his face a few times in his twenties before finally building and selling a company for little over a million dollars.

What’s your Money Blueprint?

Until reading this book I had never heard of a money blueprint and didn’t know what it was. Eker uses the money blueprint as a metaphor for your subconscious programming towards money. Take for example these people who can loose billions one day and gain it back the next. And then consider people who win the lottery, and months later they’re back where they started…broke. Is it that not everyone can make the kind of money to build wealth? Do billionaires have skills that millionaires don’t and do millionaires have skills that the middle-class don’t? Eker takes the responsibility off of skills and onto behaviors and attitudes. The fact is we all have a set level in our money blueprint. For some it’s $2400 per month for others it’s $2400 per day! We all act consistent with our money blueprint. If your money blueprint is $50,000 a year you’ll probably end up working a job making around $50,000, get a degree that only gets you a job working for that much and work extra or lesser hours to fit that figure.

How do you find out what your Money Blueprint is…look at your bank account, look at your yearly income, how about your net worth. The symptoms, job..income..debt…net worth..etc, will tell you a lot about your blueprint.

Self Sabotage and the Financial Thermostat

What does the thermostat in your house do? When it gets too cold the heat kicks on, when it’s too warm it shuts the heat off. Lets say you set the thermostat to 22 deg, when the room temperature is say 18 deg the heat will kick on until it’s 22 deg. If it’s a very hot day, the furnis wont come on. Thing is, the same type of mechanism works with your financial thermostat. If, for example, your financial thermostat was always set to having $900 left over at the end of every month. One month you get a bonus, or sell a car, or inherit some money. Now your brain says, “WOW I’ve got extra money, lets buy a new widescreen/car/pool/shed” You will probably spend until you have around $900 in you account…why? Because somewhere deep down you’re working hard to stay at that level. You could say, “well they’re just bad with money” true but not true. Lots of people are bad with money, but somehow they seem to divert to the same level they’ve been set to. Why is it that Doug gets promoted to a higher paying job, making almost twice as much as before, but eventually moves back to his old job using excuses like “it’s too much work/too much of a pain/really hard to adjust to” His brain is really saying “It’s WAY too hot in here, turn off the heat”.

So what happens when Average Joe makes too much money, say he inherits $50,000? He tends to party and get contentious, until he runs out of money or hits his set level once again. What if Rich Jack had only $50,000? He’d feel broke! He wouldn’t spend a cent until he worked himself back up to his level(maybe in the millions)! Is the difference skills? NO! The difference is that Average Joe has a $3000 a month standard and Rich Jack has a $100,000 a month standard.

We don’t monitor our thermostat consciously. Most of our behaviors and choices are made subconsciously.

“People’s regular behaviors make or break them” – T. Harv Eker

How do you change your Financial Thermostat?

You change your Financial Thermostat by recognizing how your childhood beliefs about money have shaped your life and then decide to set new standards for your life. If you grew up in a regular family you probably heard your parents, teachers, friends, neighbors bash rich people. You read in the paper and heard on the news about rich people who were thieves or extortionists. If you decided to grow up as a honest person, and you had mixed feelings about the rich, you’d avoid ever getting rich. RIGHT? On top of that we all have heard these cliches, basically mantras for poor people: “you can’t be spiritual and rich”, “if I had a million dollars I’d give it all away”, “If I had a million dollars I’d buy a private jet”, “they’re a bunch of rich snobs”, “But I’d be bored if I didn’t work(aka I’ve worked paycheck to paycheck so long I don’t know how to do anything else)”, “If I can’t buy a limo why should they?”, “If God gave me a million dollars I’d buy five Ferrari’s”(in that case I hope God doesn’t give money to you.) I have news for you, 98% of everything you’ve heard about money is total and complete bullshit! Do this if you want to be rich: Stop listing to people who have no money and go find millionaires and hang out with them, listen to what they have to say about money.

“If you ever want to be wealthy, you can NOT have ANY negative feelings toward rich people. What you’ve heard about rich people is a lie!”

If you haven’t read Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth, BUY IT and READ IT NOW! If you don’t want to buy it borrow it, or get it from the library.

Tags: Blueprint, education, investing, money, rich, saving, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker, thermostat, wealth

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This entry was posted Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Business Entrepreneur, Wealth Building. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.