By: Brian Tracy

The way you think about money will determine how much of it you accumulate more than any other factor.  Your attitude toward money affects your emotions and your motivations.

Do You Feel That You Have Enough?
In psychology, money is what is called a “deficiency need.”  This means that it only motivates you when you feel deficient in it, when you don’t feel that you have enough.  Above a certain level, when you feel that you have enough, it is no longer a motivator.  Put another way, when you have enough money, you don’t think about it very much.  But when you have too little, you think about it all the time.

Determine Your Attitude Toward Money
The effect money has on your emotional life depends on your attitude toward it.  If you feel that you have too little, money can become an obsession for you.  It can dominate your thinking, feelings and actions. Arguments over money are a major reason for marital breakdown. Problems with money are the primary reason for business failure, the ruination of friendships and psychosomatic illnesses of all kinds.  It’s not uncommon for people to even kill themselves over money problems.

Practice the Reality Principle
The Reality Principle applies especially to matters of money.  This principle states that, “You must deal with life as it is, not as you wish it were, or could be.”  Most people live in a world of partial self-delusion, with regard to money.  They wish, hope, and pray about their financial futures while at the same time, deep in their hearts, they know their dre ams will never mat erialize.  In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, one of the characters says quite happily that he is quite capable of believing several impossible things before breakfast each day.  In the same way, many people believe quite impossible things about money and then they wonder why they are having so many financial problems.

Overcome Deep Seated Beliefs
One of the most common obstacles to achieving financial independence is a deep-seated belief that somehow money is wrong and that people who have a lot of it are inherently evil.  This belief is not based on any factual foundation.  It goes back to early childhood conditioning when the growing child is often told this because of other people’s desire to rationalize away their own financial failures.

Money Is Good
The fact is that money is good.  It takes money to buy homes, cars, clothes, food and most of the good things in life.  Money has an energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well.  Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others.  At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to improve your attitude toward money:

First, be perfectly honest to yourself with regard to money and to the amount you want to acquire in life.  Pretending that you don’t care about money when you really do will only make you unhappy.

Second, begin today to think about all the wonderful things that you could have in your life if you had more money.  Then, begin to think of all the things that you could do to increase the amount you earn and the amount you keep.

Brian Tracy