Career Change Tip

Review and challenge your beliefs about money

An important career change tip to follow when you are exploring new career ideas and possibilities is to look at your underlying beliefs about money.

We all have a complicated relationship with money.

We think it will buy us freedom, but very often it can become a trap which holds us back.

We love it but feel guilty about it.

We want it and push it away.

We often hold a mixture of negative beliefs (money is bad in some way) and limiting beliefs (I can’t manage money) and it is important to acknowledge and challenge these. Yes, taking practical steps to manage your money is important, but the underpinning beliefs you hold can creep in and sabotage all your efforts if you are not careful.

So if you know that money issues are one of the key barriers to your career change plans, follow my career change tip and take some time to explore the conditioning that lies beneath our attitude towards money.

Key beliefs about money

Look at the following beliefs about money and notice how you respond to them. Make a note of your reactions in your Career Change Project File as you may need to remind yourself of the insights you have gained from time to time.

• Money is a good thing.
• Money is a bad thing.
• My sense of self worth is related to the amount of money I have.
• I can’t survive on less money than I have now.
• I am no good at managing my money.
• The money I earn is to compensate me for doing a boring/difficult job.
• I need money to help me keep up appearances.
• Money only comes to me through hard graft.
• Finding a way to be wealthy is really important to me.
• I feel uncomfortable about wanting more money.
• Money is the root of all evil – money corrupts.
• If I do earn more money, I will feel guilty.
• I will never have enough money.
• I can’t do a job I‘d love and get paid well for it.
• People who have lots of money must have exploited others to get it.
• The only way I can earn money is from a full time paid job.
• I just can’t save. It’s not in my nature.
• Spending money is to help me to put up with other stuff in my life like a boring job.

You may hold many other similar beliefs which you have not been aware of till you stopped and reflected on money.

Managing negative beliefs about money

Part of my career change tip on tackling money issues is to challenge the negative beliefs you have identified.

Here are two strategies you can use if you find you have negative beliefs about money.

Strategy 1

• Consider where that belief came from.
• Ask if it is still valid for you today.
• Think about the habits you have got into around money which reinforce this belief.
• Ask yourself ‘how do these beliefs help me?’
• Define some alternative beliefs and try them on for a while. For example ‘I deserve to be paid well for what I do’, ‘I can take responsibility for managing my money well.’
• How would you be feeling and behaving if you held this new belief?
• What could you do to try this new belief out for a while?

Probably the best switch in attitude you can adopt is summed up by changing all the ‘I can’t…’ beliefs you hold into questions beginning with ‘How can I…?’ or ‘What can I do to make this possible?’

For example:

‘I can’t manage my money.’

becomes

‘What can I do to manage my money more efficiently?’

Make notes in your Career Change Project File.

Strategy 2

You might like to try an exercise that I came across from Life Coach, Michael Neill. He mentions it in his book Money Made Fun.

Ask yourself:

Is making money a worthy goal?

You may find you have mixed feelings when you respond to this question, so reframe the question like this:

Is making how much money, in what time frame, doing what, for what purpose a worthy goal?

So you might try out:

Is making £50K in a year, doing a worthwhile job which will help others a worthy goal?

Play around with the amount, the time frame, the activity and purpose and see what feels comfortable to you.

Is money a core value for you?

At the end of the day, you may acknowledge that, yes, you want to have lots of money. Financial independence is important to you. This is something you want to give high importance in your life.

That’s fine!

We all have different values and for some, wealth is important. But the key question is, what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to stay put in your current job, feeling frustrated and moaning about it?

Or are you going to follow my career change tip and take action to change things? Why not take a first step in the right direction by looking at some of the practical steps you could start taking right away.

I consider this career change tip about challenging your mental blocks and beliefs about money to be one of the most important ones for you to follow. Don’t let your fears about money prevent you from finding and pursuing the career you would love to do!c