Kill Your Poverty Consciousness
by Randy Gage
Posted By: Randy Gage / December 16, 2020
How You Build Wealth, Part 3 of 2 🤣
You didn’t really think I was going to be content with publishing part one and part two in the How You Build Wealth series, and not dig into the 800-pound gorilla in the room, did you? Of course, I’m talking about poverty consciousness, and how your beliefs about money and wealth can impact, alter, or even sabotage everything you do in terms of developing your net worth. Let’s begin with a foundational premise…
Your net worth will never outrun your self-worth.
BOOM! Thanks for attending my TED talk. Kidding aside, there is much truth and insight into that statement above. Because the primary driver of self-sabotage behavior is worthiness issues. You don’t manifest the prosperity you deserve; you manifest the prosperity you believe you deserve. This isn’t some sketchy woo-woo philosophy. Your subconscious mind actually regulates as a flow valve to expand or restrict the level of prosperity you accept for yourself. (Which is why I suggested in the earlier post you grab my upcoming Radical Rebirth book. You can’t be treated for prosperity; there’s no medicine, operation or vaccination available for that. You manifest prosperity by being willing to receive it.
The original two posts generated a lot of comments, DMs, and social media talk, a lot of which revealed some deep-seated anti-money bias, or other forms of poverty consciousness. Let’s double-click on a few of them, in the hopes the process unlocks your willingness to receive more prosperity in your life.
Someone said, “Was it the attitude ‘I can always make more’ or just DFM behavior?
When you wrote you had 200 watches at one point…I was like, wtf, not unless you were planning on opening a watch shop, wtf were you thinking? I’ll defend to the death your right to buy as many as you like, but when does it get just stupid?”
For sure, some of what was driving my behavior was the belief, “I can always make more.” That belief can be a double-edged sword. It can lead you to foolish, wasteful conduct. And there are other aspects of that belief that were really helpful in blowing up my poverty consciousness. One on those was the idea that I could spend what would have been a ridiculous, life-changing sum of money in my past, for a whimsical purchase. (And do so without jeopardizing my financial security.) Ex: $10,000 for a pair of shoes or $35,000 for an airplane flight.
If you’ve ever had to pay for your groceries in food stamps as I once did, there’s an intoxicating thrill in making purchases like this. If I did this all the time, I’d probably be back to food stamps pretty quickly. But the occasional well-timed extravagance can blow up some limiting beliefs with an amazing level of effectiveness. The goal is to stop every fucking decision you make from coming down to a ‘you could take that (X amount of money) you spent on that and do (some sensible or noble action) with it’ equation. For example: “You spent $1,500 on that dress! Do you have any idea how many starving children in Africa could be saved with that?”
That line of reasoning will lead you done a path to a place you won’t want to end up in…
No one ever has to fly first class, get a massage, or book an ocean front suite. No one ever has to get a pedicure, go to the movies, or get fresh flowers delivered either. At what point do you draw the line? You can always find a nobler purpose for every creature comfort you purchase. Here’s how that plays out…
You don’t have to fly first class to Hawaii, you can save 8K on the ticket and donate that money to charity. Ok. You don’t have to have an ocean view, if you settle for the panorama of the parking lot, it’s $100 a night less, which you can donate to charity. Ok. Actually, why does it have to be Hawaii? If you stay home in Cleveland and just visit the museums, you’ll save another 5K which you can donate to charity. Come to think of it, what about if you didn’t take a vacation, and just ask the boss to give you the extra money, and you can donate that to charity?
People with healthy self-esteem no longer feel obligated to play that game, because following it to its logical conclusion leads to asceticism. Personally, I don’t desire to be an ascetic. As your esteem and prosperity consciousness develop, you begin to understand which areas in your life mean the most to you and your happiness, and you’re willing to splurge on yourself in those areas. For me it was exotic cars, beautiful homes and fashion items like wristwatches. If I wrote that I collected comic books, beanie babies, or baseball cards and had 200 of them, no one would have batted an eye. So why for the watches, if not for that some of them cost $25,000 or $65,000? That’s an anti-money bias.
For you, it might be ski trips, collecting stamps, and motorcycles, or it could be spa days, cruises, and climbing mountains. I learned a long time ago, don’t count other people’s money and don’t let them tell you how to spend yours.
A lot of comments I received on social media seemed to be rooted in the belief that prosperity is an either/or proposition. It’s not. Living a prosperous life does not require choosing between living abundantly or doing charitable work. You can spend $10,000 on that dream vacation of a lifetime and also support building wells in Africa. You can buy the $35,000 watch and support the shelter for battered woman. And you can spend hours perusing your stamp collection and volunteer at the suicide hotline.
You don’t manifest wealth by taking it from someone else. True wealth and prosperity are only created by adding value and solving problems — which is another way to say, creating more abundance in the world.
Poverty is not the absence of money and material things — it is a state of consciousness. All poverty is grounded in ignorance. And to truly cure poverty, we need to raise the prosperity consciousness of everyone on earth. That was the purpose of the original posts about building your wealth. If you want to help the poor, disenfranchised, and downtrodden, don’t be one of them. The way to bring prosperity to the world is to begin with yourself.
Peace,
- RG
Originally published at https://www.randygage.com on December 16, 2020.
