Written by: Daniel Mangena, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
What is your relationship like with money? Are you someone who believes that hard work and “The Grind” are synonymous with financial success? Well, I think it’s high time that we lift the lid on this and get you thinking differently about how you work towards your financial goals.
If this is the first article of mine that you’re reading, thank you! My name is Daniel Mangena. I’m a best-selling author, coach, and public speaker. One of the most important things that I encourage the people I work with to examine is their relationship with money. I have worked with experts in this field and put together some exercises that essentially get people thinking about money as though they are in a romantic relationship.
It sounds weird, I know, but there are a number of really good reasons why we do this. Here are the two most important:
You can not move towards a destination without first knowing where you are. Trying to build a wealthy or abundant lifestyle without knowing what you’re building it from is far too imprecise.
You need to understand your relationship to money to understand what needs to change and what practices will best suit you in pursuit of your goals. In other words: by working out who you are with money, we can tailor a process to work with you (as opposed to you having to force yourself into alignment).
Have you considered what your relationship to money is before? I’m sure that, in some way, you probably have. I’m positive that on a deep subconscious level, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Just bringing up the subject of money will provoke an emotional state of some kind within you.
You might be the sort of person who feels a pang of anxiety when opening your banking app, in case you don’t like what you see. Maybe you feel your ire rising every time you open a bill or come to pay for dinner. Perhaps you have the opposite reaction, and you love spending it, even getting a kick out of paying for things. A ‘flutter’ at the tables, perhaps.
Whether good or bad, it is incumbent upon us to fully grasp our current relationship to money. If we want our financial situation to be different, we need to show up differently about how we relate to money. And that’s something that you should really interrogate as well: do you really want your financial situation to be different, or are you just pursuing that end to placate someone else’s vision for you?
The practice of treating money as a romantic partner might all seem silly or dismissively esoteric, but there is a very practical reason for doing this.
If you are the kind of person who believes that the only route to financial abundance is working harder and putting in ‘the grind,’ then you’re looking at money the wrong way. Why? Because you’re approaching it from an energetic space of lack. Deep down, you don’t trust that there is enough out there in the world that can come to you with ease, in a state of flow. You feel the need to force it with hard work and graft!
The trouble with viewing the financial world as a zero-sum game like this is that you will never be a wealthy person. Sure, you might amass a lot of money in your bank account, but you will still be living as a person trapped in a state of lack. You won’t truly be able to relax and enjoy your riches.
There is a very good reason why 90% of all lottery winners lose it all within five years: they were not wealthy people, to begin with. Who they were on the inside won out (as it always does) and returned them to what their subconscious perceived as their safe, natural state.
Who we are on the inside dictates our outer world and the experiences we have. This is not one of those crass “just think of yourself as a millionaire, and you’ll be one by magic or whatever” snake oil pitches. Nothing of the sort! They don’t tackle the root of the problem, and they also offer nothing practical. The real point of tackling who we are internally first is that your subconscious programming is running your behavior most of the time. For some of us, it’s as much as 95%! If we don’t set that programming up correctly, it will keep giving us undesirable results.
What is your subconscious job? Primarily, it’s to keep you safe and alive, but because your subconscious dwells deep in the part of your brain that is primeval, it can not intellectualize this function. Nor would you want it to, of course. If the mountain lion is chasing you, you don’t want to consider the merits of running away before doing so.
Because of this need to work at lightning-fast speed bases, it's programming on non-verbal, impulsive inputs. This is why psychologists will spend time delving into your childhood and weeding out the traumas in your past. These periods of heightened emotional stress will have gotten through to your subconscious as something to avoid. Consequently, you will still be engaging in certain behaviors that are dictated by your subconscious as a means to avoid the consequences of a relived past trauma. You may have moved on intellectually and consciously, but they’re just so embedded in there that you won’t be aware of them.
Your relationship with money is no different. You might have grown up with parents who hammered home the need for financial prudence, for example. “Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves” - was a popular one when I was growing up.
Hey, look, I get it; my parents grew up still in a post-war era, where financial security was prioritized and a collectively held belief. Rationing and all that was still somewhat prevalent (or at least the sentiment of it was).
Nevertheless, this kind of fiscal dogma and the fear of destitution that it evokes will take its toll on your subconscious. Instead of looking for opportunities for money to come to you with flow and ease, your mind will be finding all the ways to hold on to what you’ve got.
Do you think that wealthy people prioritize austerity or prosperity?
This is not to say that millionaires got to where they are by being callous with their money, not at all. But conversely: nor did they get there by being the kind of people who worry about how they’re going to pay the bills. This is why I teach people to get to a place of ‘financial freedom’ first before generating financial abundance. Get your bases covered so that you don’t have to work - you choose to.
In my own life: I had built and lost two multi-million pounds (I grew up in the UK) fortunes by the time I was in my twenties. It took hitting absolute rock bottom before I recognized where it was that I needed to make the shift. Now I live in Cabo, Mexico, in a state of financial abundance that I know is here to stay. I have completely rid myself of financial stress because I shifted how I relate to money, and you can too!
The way I earn money now requires nothing from me but ease and flow. I don’t wake up every morning stressing about meeting a deadline or worrying where the next contract will come from. My earning is done in alignment with who I am and how I choose to live. I focussed on building that, then allowed the money to come to me due to who I am and how I live. Make sense?
This is why you need to understand your relationship to money to understand what needs to change and what practices will best suit you in pursuit of your goals.
Who are you with money right now?
Do you go out and buy a ‘big ticket item’ as soon as some money comes your way?
Do you start planning all the things you can buy?
Maybe you siphon it all off into a savings account, under strict instruction not to touch it?
It’s not that these things are wrong to do, but you have to understand the mentality behind your actions. What are you feeding your subconscious as you do them?
Going out and splurging on a new car, for example. If you’re doing that because you see this as a rare opportunity to buy something you can never normally afford…you’re setting yourself up for the lack. The message this sends to the subconscious is: “pull in the purse strings, we’re in for a bumpy ride” and “I am not normally the kind of person who can afford such things.”
Pretty soon thereafter, I’d wager, you’ll be worrying about said new car, fretting over every new ding and scratch, and eventually just resenting the damn thing because it represents a financial black hole. It’s inevitable aging and tarnishing becomes an avatar for your ‘real’ penurious self.
If, however, you buy the car, but you do so safe in the knowledge that more money is on the way and that you are the kind of person who drives such a car, your subconscious will be fed the message that you have stepped into a space of abundance where such things are now the norm. It will start to help you by looking for more evidence to support your new status quo!
The bottom line with all of this is that money is not, in and of itself, anything but a facilitator. It’s a medium through which we exchange and apportion value. The emotional charge associated with it comes from us. Whether conscious of it or not, we are completely in control of how money operates in our lives. The missing component for most of us is how to gain conscious control of our relationship with money.
There are many techniques out there, some of which I use in my programs, but the first thing is to make yourself aware that you even have a personal relationship with money. That awareness alone will hopefully open your mind’s eye to how you’re showing up in day-to-day financial interactions. You can start to change from there, and I urge you to seek guidance in how you can practically do that. It doesn’t have to be through me, but you can check out my contributor profile below for more resources.
Thank you so much for reading this article. I’ll be back again soon here on Brainz Magazine with more.
Daniel Mangena, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dan Mangena is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and public speaker. Recently named in the Wall St Journal as a "Master of Success," he is completely self-made and has spent decades perfecting his world-class coaching methodology. His books, podcasts, events & retreats continue to help captains-of-industry and private individuals alike live an abundant, joyful, purpose-driven life. He offers many unique and effective free tools via his website.
