Money problems or financial troubles are the leading cause of stress in a relationship. According to a 2015 Citibank Survey, 57% of divorced couples attributed the demise of their marriage to money troubles. According to a Suntrust survey the same year, 35% of people in a relationship experiencing difficulty stated that money issues were the main cause of their problems.
A quick search did not reveal any low hanging fruit to how money troubles kill personal creativity, drive and health: most of what I found dealt with killing creativity in a business environment.
The point of my blog post today is this: part of the viscosity of getting out of a money hole is figuring out how to remove the wet blanket debt and/or lack of money puts on your life. It’s like you have virtual handcuffs holding you back.
It’s easy to listen to a successful, wealth person tell you how to grow your business or start a business. It’s much harder to muster the creativity, drive, and confidence to actually create something that someone will want to buy when you’re overdrawn at the bank and wondering how you’ll pay all the bills that are due. It’s hard to create ads and ad copy that draw someone in when you are screaming inside that the bank charges you $36 for a mistake that resulted in bad check charges… and you’re waiting on a check from a customer… argggg.
Maybe you’re a songwriter, or a painter, or a woodworker, or a writer. That blank sheet of paper, block of wood, or empty musical staff is much easier to conquer when you have the bills paid and money in the bank.
I think this is the ONE fact that all the “coaches” and “gurus” out there forget. They forget how it “feels” to feel like a failure because of money trouble. It’s like getting kicked in the stomach over and over. I guarantee as you work your way out of it, you’ll have setbacks and that those kicks in the stomach will feel twice as bad.
So how is it possible to break through these virtual handcuffs? It’s hard. This is why a lot of lottery winners end up broke or even worse off after winning large amounts of money. Your mind has to change. Your life has to change. You have to evolve. This can be the hardest part. If you want to stop drinking or smoking, some good advice is to stop hanging around people who drink or smoke. If you want to stop being broke, stop hanging around with broke people!
Take on the attitude of an athlete in training. You may have to make major changes in your life. If you have loser friends, you may have to see less of your friends. Alter your normal way of doing things. Read more, watch less TV.
In older blog posts on this blog, you can find where I touted “The Law of Attraction”, “Intentions”, clearing with “Ho’oponopono”. These things can be useful, but by themselves do nothing. It’s so easy to fool ourselves into thinking we’re doing something positive for ourselves when all we’re really doing is lying to ourselves and in a lot of cases, putting money into a snake oil salesman’s pocket.
Along the lines of thinking like an athlete “envisioning” yourself where you want to be, performing like you want to perform is helpful and useful. But then you have to put in the work, hard work. There is no magic involved. Usually there’s a lot of failure involved before improvement is realized.
Athletes train to improve their God given ability and hone their skills. They don’t just get up every morning, read a positive message sign on their refrigerator and wonder why they’re not getting any better. No, they get up before everyone else, train hard, work hard, study how to get better, and put in more time than everyone else. They seek coaches and trainers with knowledge and experience to move them forward: and this is key, they follow their advice.
Back to money: it’s no different. Reread those last two paragraphs and tell me if you can come up with any reason this is NOT the path to changing someone’s situation in life.
If you have a business, product, or service (or even if you don’t), you CAN make a lot of money “online”; however the “wild west” days of the Internet are gone, long gone. It takes more than a little good content and SEO, you pretty much have to pay for traffic and you’d better know what you’re doing or you’ll waste a lot of money… and be right back at square one. You have to put in the hard work, or, you have to have the ability to pay for people’s services who know what they’re doing, or a mix somewhere between the two.
If you don’t have much money to put in, then you need to spend wisely because you have no margin for error. It’s always smarter to spend the dollars for high quality products, services, and coaching because you’ll actually get results and a return on your money. Remember the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “He chose poorly” vs. “You have chosen… wisely”. You want to choose wisely!
If you have a business, product, or service: go here and watch this video, in fact, watch ALL the videos on this page. These are best techniques and the best product out there to improve your business and sell more of your product or service. I’ve had years of experience in this area and I would not recommend this is it did not work and was not the best out there (and yes, these are affiliate links, does not affect what you pay, I just get a commission if you purchase).
What if you don’t have a product or service yet? Then you can sell this product itself and they have great training on how to do just that in their affiliate program. Do it!
Remember, choose wisely, work and train hard.
Until next time,
Fred