LEMMYC'S MONEY MAKING 101 SERIES: PRACTICAL STEPS TO CHANGE YOUR MONEY BLUEPRINT

Before any great accomplishment there is first of all an activity. Income generating ideas and thoughts coupled with income generating activities leads to increased revenues. The point here is that we need to be intentional in our thought, word and deed in terms of improving our money habits. There are three things that impact our journey to any successful outcome – to be, to do and to have; at the heart of these are and attitudinal mind-set, knowledge or skill set and the experience or outcome of our desire. Underneath these elements are sets of values and beliefs as well as attitudes that subconsciously drive our behaviours.

I have always been interested in figuring out how these dynamics affect the decisions and therefore the actions we take. In order to change our financial destiny and indeed any area of our lives, we need to really envision what we need to really desire to happen in our financial universe of experience. This is because it’s our belief and value about what we consider to be possible have resulted in our present experience in terms our relationship with money. When our brain is given mixed messages in terms of our money and wealth blue print we have mixed result in terms of our visible results with money. The reason is that we sabotage even the possible avenues to create wealth and money. We have the power at our disposal every moment of the day to change the belief systems that have created our present moment. You need to know what they are, and figure out ways to move out of this “prison of yours” – your comfort zone.

The following are possible suggestion which you can use to change your perspectives and positions and therefore change your thinking and the results you get:

· You can use affirmation and positive self-talk to affirm already having what you want, doing what you want and having what you want

· You can create powerful and compelling internal images of having, doing, and being what you want

· You can simply change your behaviour

All these three approaches will shift you out of your old comfort zone. To change the cycle you must focus instead on thinking, talking, and writing about the reality you want to create. You flood your unconscious with thoughts and images of the new reality.

How is this practicable?

You need to develop the habit to move yourself from mediocrity to success. This is possible by learning to ask questions to challenge your ideas and thoughts, decisions, action and your experiences. The questioning habit will open a new horizon of possibilities in the way you do things. The following prescription will be valuable in any process of change.

· You need to have the desire or want to change

· You need a plan in place in order to achieve your ultimate financial goal

You need to remember that the question you ask or fail to ask determines your chance to succeed or not. The questions determine where you focus, how you think, how you feel, and what you do; which does impact on the outcome you experience.

If you want to change your finances you’ve got to hold yourself to higher standard, change you beliefs about what is possible and develop a better strategy.

THE 3 PRINCIPLES TO RAISE YOUR FINANCIAL TEMPERATURE

Your financial climate over a period of time follows a particular pattern. Over a long period these patterns become blueprint to describe the results or outcome from such system. For this pattern or blueprint to change you need to adopt the following three principles described by Anthony Robbins in his book – Awaken the giant within.

· Raise your standard

· Change your limiting beliefs

· Change your strategy

The above three principles are very important and they focus on different aspects of our personality as we become creative. The raising your standard is a call to accountability and responsibility and deals with “who you are”; namely purpose, value, belief and attitude we bring to the creative process.

The change of limiting beliefs is to focus on those limiting thoughts that are limiting and are part of our habitual thought pattern. You need to change your story from the WAY IT IS TO WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE. The former may be limiting but the later should be empowering. Align your thoughts constructively to your desire.

Change your strategy deals with “how”. For you to change your experience you need to change your thinking as well as the way you do things which results in your experience.

Raise your standard

“We are where we are because we have first imagined it.”

David Curtis

Who you are determines what you see and how you think. In raising your standard about your money blueprint, you’ll be giving yourself permission to cultivate the habit of big picture thinking. What type of person do you want to become in terms of your relationship with money? How can you figure out the habits in terms of the behaviours brought you to the present situation?

What decisions / actions can you take now to shift from your old standard to a new one?

You have the choice and freedom to choose your path. Whatever you decide to do write it down, and follow through to the next step.

Change your limiting belief

Are you aware of how your own thoughts may be holding you back from your financial destiny?

Your belief and values (life rule and priorities) about what is possible or not around money have this far. Your belief create your reality meaning that what you belief will affect your actions which in turn will gradually reinforce and will persist; therefore results in your experience. Your values are set of intangible and tangible ideals that affect your experience and the degree of attention that you give to them.

These attribute – belief and values are not written in stones and the evidence that you receive in life in terms of your experience are good indicators as to whether they support or limit us towards the realisation of our dreams.

What are your beliefs – positive or negative around money?

Are they limiting or empowering? (The experiences you now have around money is a good pointer)

How can you change this?

Change your strategy

According to Jack Welch former CEO of GE Capital:

“Strategy is first trying to understand where you are in today’s world. Not where you wish to be. Then it’s trying to understand where you want to be five years from now. Finally, it is assessing the realistic chances of getting from here to there. “

Every successful outcome or failure is due to strategy. You can change your strategy by modelling the strategy used by successful people in the area that you want to develop expertise. The idea here is that you master the skill at a very short time than it took most of them to develop expertise; this is leverage.

For the experience you desire to be realisable you must take action. Knowing what to do is not enough; sustained, consistent and determined action towards your desired result is what matters.

MOTIVATING EXAMPLE

Affirmation and visualisation with consistent and sustained action works – an example from Jack Canfield will suffice.

“We go the direction we face, and face the direction we think.”

- Jim Rohn

In the above sections, we’ve looked at the principles that will enable you to raise your “financial temperature” by raising the “financial thermostats” that will unlock your future wealth and financial success.

It requires intelligence and good thinking. Intelligence enables you to position yourself in the light of the changing environment as well as use your ability and capability to creatively through divergent and convergent thinking to map out a new direction for yourself so as to move you forward in the direct of you destiny.

The following examples from Jack Canfield will provide you with inspiration and courage to change your financial blueprint by adopting or reshaping the principles highlighted here.

“Everything you want is just outside of your comfort zone.”

Robert Allen – Co-author the One minute millionaire.

These examples from Jack Canfield’s book illustrate the fact the affirmation works. In his book Jack Canfield explained in detail adapted and used the principles of affirmation and visualisation to raise his earning from $25,000 a year to $100,000 or more.

His decision was based on taking action on the lessons shared with him by his mentor W. Clement Stone who himself was a millionaire. He challenged hin to set a goal so far beyond his current circumstances, the reason being that he would be amazed by what he’ll be able to achieve. He accepted the challenge when he wanted to raise his earnings. This is a case of raising your standard.

First thing first – declare your intention

· The first thing he did was to craft an affirmation statement after the one he saw written by Florence Scovell Shinn; his affirmation was:

“God is my infinite supply and large sums of money come to me quickly and easily under the grace of God for the highest good of all concerned. I am happily and easily earning and investing $100,000 a year.”

The key idea here is that you need to declare your intention. You may not have the need to raise your income to the turn of $100,000 as jack did, but the idea is to have a map of what you want and put it in a written form.

· He created a huge replica of $100,000 bill which he affixed to the ceiling above his bed. The idea here is for him to see the bill on awaking. He’ll then close eyes, repeat his affirmation and visualize what he could be enjoying if he work living a $100,00 a year life style. He envisioned the house he would live in, the furnishings and artwork he would own, the car he would drive, and the vacations he would take. He created the feelings he would experience once he already attained the lifestyle.

The money is in the idea

· He woke up one morning with his first idea on how to make $100,000. It occurred to him that if he could sell 400,000 copies of his book, “100 ways to achieve self-concept in the classroom.” In which he received a 25cents per copy royalty. I would earn a $100,000 income. He added on his money visualisation the image of his book flying off the book shelf and his publisher writing him a $100,000 check. Not long after, a freelance journalist approached him and wrote an article about his work in National Enquirer. As a result thousand additional copies of his book were sold that month.

More money making ideas

· Also daily, more and more money making ideas flowed into his mind. For instance, he took out small ads and sold the book on his own - making $3.00 per copy instead of just 25 cents.

· He started a mail order catalogue of other books on self-esteem and made more money from the same buyers.

· The University of Massachusetts saw his catalogue and invited him to sell books at a weekend conference, helping him to generate more than $2,000 in 2 days – and introducing him to another strategy for making $100,000 a year.

Workshop and Seminars

· At the same time he was visualizing greater book sales, he also got the idea to generate more income from his workshops and seminars. He asked a friend who did similar work how he could charge higher fees, he realised he was already charging more than double what he was being paid, As a result he tripled his rates and discovered that the schools that were hiring him to speak had budgets even higher than that.

Outcome

· His affirmation was paying off big time. He realised that if he hadn’t set the goal to make $100,000 and been diligent about affirmation and visualizing it, he would never have raised his speaking fees, started a mail order bookstore, attended a major conference, or been interviewed for a major publication. As a result, his income was skyrocketed from $25,000 to $92,000.

Conclusion

· He reasoned that he missed his $100,000 goal by $8,000, but he wasn’t depressed about it. On the contrary, he was ecstatic – his income quadrupled in less than one year, using the power of visualisation and affirmation, coupled with the willingness to act when he has an “inspired idea”.

· His wife quipped, “If affirmation worked for $100,000, do you think they would not also work for $1 million?”

· The rest is history. From then on they’ve used the power of visualisation and affirmation to achieve the $100,000 as well as as well as continued to make $1 million or more every year since.

· I’ll leave you with this quote from Earle Nightingale from his work –“ Leading the Field”:

“The only limit to your income is you. All you need is a plan and the courage to press on to your destination. Nothing in the world can stand in the way of a plan backed up by persistence and determination. Think of ways to increase your service and income will take care of itself.”