Money Thoughts vs. Money Circumstances

I have found that many of us vastly underestimate just how powerful our thoughts are.  To illustrate I want you to imagine a Super Bowl Party attended by fans of both teams.  At the end of the game, it is very clear who won, and everyone agrees that is the final score.  However, there will be a spectrum of reactions from mania to depression and everything in between.  These reactions may even spill over into how fans react with their families and co-workers for days or weeks.  The actual circumstance at the end of the game, the cold hard facts are the same, and yet somehow our interpretation of this, our thoughts about it can elicit that wide range of emotion, action, and results in the coming hours and weeks.  That’s powerful!!!

Now to take this a step further.  Sometimes we confuse the circumstances (super bowl score) with the thoughts about them.  I see this often in my clients when they say things like “We don’t make enough money.”.  That can seem innocent and like it might be our circumstance, but it’s not.  Circumstances are facts and they should be something everyone can agree on or would hold up in a court of law.  The circumstance in this example is “I am employed at Y company with a salary of $X/year”.  “I don’t make enough money” is a thought about that circumstance and not the circumstance itself.

So why is this so important?  When we think that our thought about our circumstance is the circumstance, we lose a primary ability to do anything about it.  If we follow this example of – “I don’t make enough money”, that probably makes us feel helpless, which probably makes us accept things about our life that we want to change, which means we can get stuck in inaction.

On the flip side if we understand the real circumstance “I am employed at Y company with a salary of $X/year”, then we get the freedom of how we think about it.  We can have a new thought that might be “I get to decide how I spend every dollar of my salary to support my best life.”  That probably feels very different, empowering, and might lead to taking actions like a new class, hiring a coach or advisor, or some other action that can have profound results in our life.

In conclusion, when you are working with your finances it is important to understand and work with your true circumstances – facts that would hold up in court.  Get clear on your circumstances and ask yourself if your thoughts about your circumstances are serving you.  If you can do this you are taking a big step on your way to getting unstuck and making progress towards your best life.