For example, when you hear the word “investing,” what immediate thoughts come to mind? Are they positive thoughts? Negative thoughts? Does the idea of investing excite you, or put you to sleep?
When you hear the words “financially independent,” what thoughts do you have? Do you say to yourself, “Yes! I can do this! This journey will be fun!”? Or are you saying, “I’d rather be happy than rich. This sounds too hard. I don’t want to lose money.”? It’s the “I-can’t-do-it” or “I-don’t-know-how” thoughts in your mind that will prevent you from having the financial success you want.
Janet, a friend of mine, and I were talking about what kind of car she should buy. She is young, bright, single, and attractive. I asked her, “Have you ever test-driven a Porsche?”
She immediately got flustered and irritated. She snapped at me, “I don’t want a Porsche!” I was taken back by her instant emotion around this.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m not that kind of woman!” she said quickly.
I had to do my best to keep my cool because—I had a Porsche! I kept calm and curiously asked, “What kind of woman?”
She looked at me like I should know the answer, “The kind that is flashy, loose, flaunts her sex, has no brains, and wants to be seen.”
“Wow!” I thought to myself. “How in the world does she associate Porsche with all that?” That thought made no logical sense at all to me, but somewhere in Janet’s subconscious, the idea that a female Porsche driver equaled a stupid sex bimbo made perfect sense to her. I decided to skip the psychoanalysis and stop talking cars with her altogether.
The Power of Your Thoughts
One of my favorite books of all time is As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, written in 1902. He explains that the purpose of the book is “to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that—They themselves are makers of themselves.” He goes on to say, “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.” He puts this concept into a poem:
Mind is the Master-power that moulds and makes.
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The Tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills;—
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.
We Hear What We Want to Hear
According to Allen, your thoughts create your world. Your thoughts also determine how you process the information you take in.
Let’s talk about this in relation to money. Imagine that the glass in the diagram represents your thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and judgments—in other words, the foundation or context of your viewpoint on money.
The water being poured into the glass represents information and data you are learning on the subject of money. Let’s say we are talking about “financial independence.” If your secretly embedded thought is that “I will never become financially independent,” then it’s quite simple. You will not. If your thought is, “I don’t have the time,” then you will not have the time.
No matter what information is poured into your glass, it has to pass through your context, or your filter, around money and financial independence. Like brewing coffee, the flow of information is filtered first through your thoughts, opinions, and beliefs before it lands in your glass. The information that does not match up with your core thoughts and beliefs around money will either be rejected or filtered out so that the information can be made to fit your context.
Your context, how you think about money and investing, is often more important than the actual content of investing information. All the data in the world will be of little value to you if your filters, your invisible thoughts, are at odds with your stated goals. When you change your context or thoughts to be supportive and aligned with your goals, then the invisible becomes visible.
How Do You Make the Invisible Visible?
It’s not difficult. The first thing is to begin to watch your thoughts. Listen to that little voice in your head. In 1985, a friend challenged me to “spend the next hour catching glimpses of your thoughts.” I did, and it changed my life. I had no idea how many self-defeating thoughts were floating around in that head of mine. I challenge you to do the same.
You may also want to write down your thoughts in a journal. When fear sets in, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” and just start writing. Don’t think about what you’re writing. Don’t edit it. Don’t judge it. Just write. Write until you come to an aha, or realization. You’ll be amazed at how much clarity will come through.
Emotion
Your emotions are typically driven by your thoughts. For example, if someone says something very mean and hurtful to you, you will probably get upset because your thought may be that you would never speak so rudely to anyone. What if, on the other hand, you grew up in a society (or family) where really rude remarks were a sign of affection? If that were the case, instead of getting upset, you might actually feel loved. It all depends on your context, which is created by your thoughts.
The primary emotion that comes up for women around money is fear—fear of making a mistake, fear of losing money, fear of what other people might think. One of women’s greatest fears today is running out of money during retirement. It’s a bit of a Catch-22: One fear is the fear of not having the money to support us as we get older. The other fear is the fear of actually doing what we need to do so that we have that money as we get older. The thing we need to learn is that fear, and then breaking through that fear, is a tremendous catalyst for our own personal development.
I do not know of one woman investor who did not have some, or a lot of, fear in the early stages of her investing life. Even today, given how volatile and uncertain the economy is, I get nervous venturing into new areas of business and investing. It’s natural. The problem arises when the fear paralyzes you to the point that you do nothing because you are frozen in your tracks. Or you turn your financial responsibilities over to someone else because you fear making a mistake or losing money. Shelby Kearney of New York City learned that lesson the hard way.
I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and believed every word, but fear had me paralyzed from taking any action. However, a couple of years later, my boyfriend, who was a realtor, encouraged me to buy a duplex and a triplex. I felt he knew a lot about rental properties, and I was less fearful investing with someone I knew. He also offered to manage the properties for me so I turned over all management responsibilities to him and paid no attention to it.
Needless to say, both properties went into foreclosure because of mismanagement. I was able to sell one property, but lost the other. After that devastation, I knew I had to educate myself and not rely on anyone else’s judgment of a good deal or good management.
In the last few years, I have attended several seminars and read many books on real estate. I tried purchasing several four-plex properties in the Atlanta area, but either got out-bid by other buyers or discovered something unappealing during my due diligence. I figured it was a sign from God and turned my focus to Pennsylvania, which is much closer to where I live in New York City.
Earlier this year, I closed