When we’re talking about profits, or how much you make, or wealth, so much of it is down to your mindset. Your attitude towards money and your beliefs about money are either helping you or hurting you so it’s useful to examine those beliefs and change any that are holding you back.
Your financial thermostat is a big deal. You know how a thermostat works. It maintains the temperature within a certain pre-set range that is known as ‘comfortable.’ If the temperature gets too hot the thermostat kicks in, turns off the heat, and gets everything cooler again. If the temperature gets too low the thermostat kicks in again to turn the heat on and get things back into that comfortable range.
The exact same process is going on with your financial thermostat. If your earnings dropped sharply you’d be out there hustling, working harder and longer hours, trying new things, and searching for new opportunities, all in a massive effort to get your income back to the range that you define as comfortable, at least to the minimum level you have in your mind.
Once you’re back in that comfortable range most people relax and take their foot off the accelerator. It’s human nature. I don’t think it’s actually a bad thing to lower the intensity slightly, it can actually be the healthy thing to do, as long as you are still moving forward and making progress. It really depends on your goals.
The far more damaging issue is where you have your upper limit set on your thermostat. Most of you will not have thought about this consciously. But it’s in there. There is a point, in money terms, where you become uncomfortable and think ‘too much money.’ When you reach this point, subconsciously you will start to sabotage your own efforts, you’ll slack off, and you’ll do all sorts of things to make sure you don’t make any more than you’re comfortable with. If I asked you “How much money is a lot to make in a year?” what would you say? What do you really believe? The truth is if I asked you all I would get 100 different answers. It’s important to know your answer and to make sure you have not set your financial thermostat too low.
People have all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff in their heads about this. Some people never make more than what their father made. That becomes their self-imposed upper limit. Some just have some pre-determined round number that once felt like a lot, like £100,000. And they never readjust their thermostat as the years pass. My father-in-law thinks that no-one should be allowed to earn more than the prime minister. Seriously.
The lesson here is that as you grow and improve and figure out how to create more value for others, your expectations around money should be going up. You need to be re-adjusting your financial thermostat upwards. The trick is that this is not just what my wife would call ‘psycho-babble.’ You can’t just tell yourself some crazy number and pretend you believe it’s possible when in fact you don’t. You actually need to get yourself to believe. You have to figure out ways to get very comfortable with much bigger numbers. Being here in OSA exposes you to lots of proof of what’s possible financially from what I’m doing and what top members are doing. That builds belief. Paying attention to all the money that is flowing around in the world is a good habit to get into. Look at where people spend silly money and constantly remind yourself that there is no shortage of money in the world. Hang around with people who make more money than you. Read books about wealth like Think And Grow Rich and The Richest Man In Babylon and start proactively shaping your thoughts about all this rather than just running with whatever stuff has accumulated in your mind by chance over the years. Examine your beliefs about wealth and upgrade them. Start getting comfortable with bigger numbers.