Overcoming Money Myths

I tapped the figures of my paid invoice into the spreadsheet where I track my income, and, before pressing Enter, shifted my gaze down to the cell marked ‘Annual total’ where the formula would automatically update. I wanted to see it tick over with my own eyes, and in nano-seconds, it did. The cell now said 31052.47, and that innocuous number held more feelings, hopes, fears and uncertainties than any novel could.Because my annual salary in my previous job had been £30,000, and I’d just beaten it. But more than beat it; I’d made more money in the first seven months of 2018 than I had in the previous twelve.

I know how easy it is to see someone that isn’t you making money and read a certain inevitability into that. To believe that that figure or attainment isn’t replicable to ‘normal people’ like you, that it’s more than you are permitted to wish for. You can’t look at your experience, your situation, and see how there’s a path for you to reach that. But let me tell you that that belief is not only self-limiting, but also vastly untrue. You are someone, not just anyone, and you are a someone who wants something. All you have to do is want it enough.This time last year I had literally just left my job, I was about two weeks out. And my goal then was to maybe make close to my old salary. I guess, really, it was to not make a huge fool of myself financially and have just enough money to live off. It didn’t occur to me that I could have more; it didn’t even occur to me to dream for more. How sad is that? That the dream was to maybe, one day, get less money than I had been making.

It’s easy to say that with hindsight, and to see it with the distance of it not being you. But the fear of making money is a very real one I see in my clients, and it is not for me, in the position of having no mortgage, no kids and a working partner, to belittle those fears. What I want you to do is challenge them. Ask yourself, ‘but why can’t I make money?’. Don't be the reason that you don't get what you want.Since being self-employed, I’ve learned so much about money – and I don’t mean filling out tax returns (because I still don’t know how to do that), but about my attitudes and emotions towards money. Here are some of the myths I’d been carrying around with me about money that I’ve gradually busted over the last year.

Money is finite

This is something I think we’re taught by the workplace – that there’s only so much money and once it’s gone it’s gone. You have your salary and that’s all there is for you until you maybe get a pay review. You get your paycheque and you have to manage it every month, watching it always whittle down. And I think that makes us approach money from a mindset of lack. Money is always something disappearing, running like sand through your fingers.In my business, though, there isn’t a set, finite amount of money I can make – it’s down to me. This realisation came when my camera broke back in February and they weren’t sure whether it would be covered by the warranty (it was, in the end). While my initial feelings were “crap, how am I going to pay for this?”, just as quickly I had the answer: “I’ll just make more money”. Because money wasn’t finite anymore. I wasn’t having to dip into a depleting pot; I could make a brand new pot. I knew I could create a really valuable new product that would pay for the camera if I needed to. But I realised then that my views on money were changing, my mindset was becoming more abundant and that money was something I could create and control.

I’m not motivated by money

I used to wear this like a badge of honour at my old jobs. “Oh no, I’m not motivated by money” I’d say to the sales teams as they strove towards their bonuses. Which definitely comes from my upbringing when people were generally poor and nice or rich and untrustworthy, and someone being ‘motivated by money’ was a marker that they weren’t people like us, they were to be avoided.I also think now that I wasn’t motivated by money in the workplace because of money being finite. I could do a great job or I could do an average job; I’d still take home the same amount each month. It didn’t motivate me to work harder like praise and recognition did.Now, of course, money can be my measure. How much I earn is directly correlated to how good a job I do, how good my ideas are, how well I show up. It isn’t the only measure I use, but it is something that I’m not ashamed to say motivates me. To set financial goals and track them, to have agencyover the money I’m making feels very empowering.

I’m taking people’s money

This is a myth I know a lot of people struggle with which yet again fits into that money is finite thing – we worry that other people only have so much money and feel guilty for taking some of it. Reading You Are A Badass At Making Money really helped me to reassess my guilt around charging for services. I remember being on a train reading the section that said that money doesn’t belong to anyone, it’s constantly moving and comes to you throughother people, rather than fromthem.Worrying about other people’s money is not your responsibility; they are adults and are able to choose what they want to do with it. Your responsibility is creating the best product or service you possibly can. Jen Sincero again talks about this in the book, but your pricing invites people to operate at a higher frequency, invites them to expect more of themselves. Imagine if I offered you a course half price – what I’m saying is that you’re only half as likely to succeed, you are only half as capable. Whereas charging the full price the product deserves is reaching a hand down and pulling you up to a new level. I know which one I prefer.

This is ‘not for people like me’

This is a myth that I’m just uncovering and challenging in myself – looking back I’ve always told myself ‘that’s not for people like me’, but only now am I conscious of it and catching myself thinking of it. Doubtless this comes from that experience growing up of money, foreign holidays, high-flying careers being ‘not for people like us’. Not because we were dirt poor, but because those things are for other people and we stay in our place.The first time I noticed this was when Sara Tasker announced she’d made £200k in a year, and my response was ‘wow that’s amazing but I’d never do something like that’. And for the first time, a voice in my head asked me ‘why not?’. And I couldn’t give it an answer. I realised that I’d been keeping myself down, limiting my potential by only aiming to maybe, hopefully recoup my financial losses from leaving my job. But I also realised that I was the only thing limiting me now, and I just had to change my ideas of what ‘people like me’ could do.Since then I’ve noticed that voice come up again and again, whether to do with an expensive course, working with a semi-celebrity coach, going on one of those beautiful business retreats somewhere exotic. In every situation my first impulse was that I wanted to do it, but hot on it’s heels was the reminder that I can’t do things like that, they’re not for me but rich, successful, cool people. It’s still a process, but I am at least conscious of it now.