Attitude #3 - Prosperity versus Poverty Thinking

I hope you enjoy this quote from Warren Buffett:

“Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”

This leads to the next attitude in our little blog series:

The wealthy have prosperity thinking, not poverty thinking

Many of us think about how nice it would be to be rich; to travel to exotic locations, live in a luxurious home, drive fancy cars and wear expensive jewelry. And many of us have conflicting thoughts about what it would be like to be rich. Maybe you were given messages from your parents when you were young that to be rich you to have to lie and cheat. Rich people take advantage of poor people. These types of messages as a child shape you as an adult unless you examine them for yourself.

In my workshops I have people perform a word association exercise regarding money. From that we create an actual score to see if their attitude leans more toward prosperity or poverty thinking. Imagine this; you have a beautiful yacht with the strongest, lightest weight material ever created for the hull. But your ship has holes in the hull below the water line. This represents the struggle between prosperity thinking (the yacht) and the holes in the hull (poverty thinking). You might say you want wealth or to become rich, but your old messages will fight you.

Here’s an example of poverty thinking: “I’ve heard that to have a big financial ship you have to enter deep water. With my experience, skills and attitude I’d probably have to launch my ship in a bathtub.”

Or, here’s the one I had while married to my first wife: “It doesn’t matter how much money I earn, I still won’t have anything left over to invest.” And this became a self fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s a quote from a very wealthy man to counter any negative messages you may have received from parents: Andrew Carnegie said, “Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.”

At Mr. Carnegie’s death he donated all of this wealth, setting up and libraries, a university, and more. Do you want your wealth to be self-serving or to benefit others? Having no wealth does not help anyone.

For a free copy of my best selling, award winning book, Wealth On Any Income, log onto www.WealthOnAnyIncome.com , enter your name and email address and press the button that says “Click here for your free book.”