How to get rich? Mindset matters

Do you have limited money patterns that's holding you back from building wealth or getting rid of debt? When I was in my 20’s I had sleepless nights because of dept. I was buying "stuff" and paying with borrowed money. My account was always in minus and at the end of every month I was anxious because I could barely cover my expenses. At the time I was working as web editor at a popular women's magazine and I'm sure that from the outside it looked like I had all the success in the world and had everything put together. In reality I wasn't feeling that great and something had to happen! Something had to change.

The thing that changed my life back then was asking myself some tough questions about my money past, present and future. I got the questions from a danish book (unfortunately it's not translated to English) by Mette Marie Davidsen. I had a copy of the book at home but never read it until one night - in the middle of the night - where I was sleepless again.

Since that night I haven’t had a sleepless night and I paid off my debt in two years including my student loan. Since then, I haven’t had debt except house mortgage. I was 100% committed to pay off my debt. Today I’ll share with you what I did to change my money mindset.

Reflect on your money past, present and future.

Grab your notebook or journal and write your reflections to the below questions down. Make sure you're in a space where you have room for reflection and also take your time to write down everything that comes to mind. It'll be interesting and rewarding to read these reflections a few years from now.

Money, Past:

To dive into your money past, and potentially limiting patterns you've inherited. you want to ask yourself the following questions:

• What did your parents say about money?
• And about rich people?
• Did your parents ever sit you down to teach or talk to you about money?
• What spending habits did your parents have (did they save, take loans, were they living large or low - was one parent different than the other)?

Review your notes on money past reflections. Did you have any revelations about your parents' saving and spending habits and your own relationship with money. Do your patterns differ from your parents' or are they the same?

Take your time answering the questions and you might want to come back later and note down new reflections.

Money, Present:

Wait a couple of days before you move on to this next topic: your current relationship with money.

• What drives your current money decisions?
• Look at the word "money" and write down keywords that comes to mind.
• Now review the words you wrote down: Are the words positively or negatively loaded?
• What are your own spending habits (do you save your money, take loans, live large)?
• What do you think about people who are rich?
• What is your biggest financial fear?

Review the notes you took on your current relationship with money. If your list of words connected to money is negatively loaded, try to find antonyms or other words you want to replace the negative words with. If you realise your spending patterns need to change: Write down 3 money promises or questions to yourself about what habits or biases that needs to change. For example: How can I pay off my dept and enjoy the process?

Money, Future:

Again, before you dive into the next topic about your money future you want to take a break and wait a day or a week before continuing. Remember that if anything coming to mind about past or present money patterns you can continue to note down in your journal.

For this next part you'll want to look into and visualise your money future.

• What are your concrete money goals? What are you working towards? (read this post for inspiration on setting goals)
• What is a future money scenario that you can feel excited and energised about?
• What about your future money habits will you feel grateful about achieving?
• Without any limits: dream and visualise your future with money - what would it look like if you had all the money in the world?

I hope you'll enjoy this journey. I hope you achieved to be completely honest with yourself and that it  opened up doors that you hadn't though off. I hope that you got to set a future goal and will continue to visualise and dream about your future. I believe visualising is one way to achieving goals.

Tip: If you have a partner this makes a great partner exercise where you can ask each other these questions and reflect on shared money habits, patterns and goals.

Download additional questions for free.