“Poverty is a state of mind”: 4 steps to big money

How to understand that something is wrong in our relationship with money? There are signals to watch out for:

• The desire to quickly spend the money you just received.
• Strong excitement when receiving large sums.
• Refusal to pay for your work.
• The habit of greatly underestimating the cost of their labor.
• Buying unnecessary and low-quality things that break quickly.
• The habit of lending money to untrustworthy people.

“There are also very offensive situations: for example, we fall ill before important negotiations that promise good profits, or we are late for them. Thus, a block for income appears, ”explains Stanislav Efremov.

But there are two more blocks – for spending and savings. Then we save in mere trifles, we buy only the cheapest things, we don’t throw away old and worn out clothes, but store them “on rags”. Some people spend the whole day going to a remote store for a sale, store unnecessary things at home on the principle “maybe it will come in handy”, and doomedly go on vacation to an unloved dacha or stay at home because “you need to save money”. So we forbid ourselves to spend.

But we also do not allow ourselves to accumulate. What signals does this block give? “If income doubles sharply, then expenses will immediately catch up. And if a large amount comes, for example, a lucrative contract or inheritance, then all this will quickly be spent on clothes, equipment, a car, travel, furniture upgrades and super-expensive repairs. The accumulation block prevents the money from staying with the owner, ”the expert says.

How to get around these blocks and allow financial flows to come into our lives and enrich it? The psychologist suggests taking four steps in this direction.

Step 1. Goal setting

“Try to write down your goals, without using the words “no” and “not”, in the form of positive affirmative statements. Instead of “I don’t want to lose money” – “I want my apartment.” Further, you need to write about each goal, what it gives: “My own apartment is my stronghold of security, I can live in it under any circumstances, no one will kick me out if I lose a lot of income. Your apartment will give you more freedom: if you want, I invite guests, if I want, I screw screws into the wall. I can renovate it to my taste: paint the ceiling purple, hang pictures with beautiful lighting, make a mirrored wall, put furniture that I have long dreamed of. Such “chips” give a lot of joy,” says Stanislav Efremov.

It would be nice to imagine yourself in this apartment, to “feel” what it is like to be in it. And write down those feelings. “This description gives motivation for change, as well as a direction for work – when and how much money is needed. It is important not to dream for 20 minutes every day, but to create a bright image and use it as a “carrot”, motivation – wave in front of you and move on.”

If you dream for 20 minutes, sending a request to the Universe, then the brain will decide that you already have an apartment (and the brain does not really separate reality and fantasy), and will not give you the strength to make money. Our inner critic will certainly wedge into dreams, it must be turned off. How? Change the wording.

“Some of the goals can be regarded as impossible, or unworthy, or too great. If it is difficult to write “I want not to work, but …” – write down “I would like not to work, but …” or even: “I would like not to work, but to do what I love.” Because the critic inside us will remind you that “everyone should work, there is nothing to believe in fairy tales.” With the help of “would” we neutralize it.

Step 2. Search for restrictions

Successful interaction with money is quite often blocked by thinking. Therefore, finding these blocks is the second step. Much depends on in which process – receiving, spending or saving – barriers appeared.

• barrier to receiving. “In fact, we just get little money, as a result, we have little money for life and no savings,” comments Stanislav Efremov.
• Savings barrier. “Life can be chic, but from payday to payday. If there are problems with the source of income – dismissal, illness, pension, business bankruptcy – a person is extremely vulnerable, he does not have an airbag, and from his usual wealth he immediately falls into frightening poverty.
• Spending barrier. “A person can be rich, have good savings, but still live in poverty, not allowing himself anything. And if you live in poverty, then what is the use of savings?

The reasons for the limitations often lie in the scripts that we have inherited from our kind. We do not know other models, because our parents, grandparents lived like that. Dealing with someone else’s inherited script is one of the destinations on our path to a rich life. But how to see it?

“Tell about your monetary rules to a conditional“ Martian ”, that is, a creature who knows the meaning of words, but does not know the way of earthly life at all. Periodically step into the role of a Martian and ask the question “Why?” For example, you can build a dialogue like this:

– It is important to save money.

– Почему?

Because it’s important.

– Почему?

– Well, how else?

“If you repeat the same thing several times with bewilderment or irritation, this is a sure sign of the script,” explains Stanislav Efremov, “Notice it:“ It is important to save money. And move on in a conversation with the “Martian” further.

What happens if you don’t save?

– Bad.

– What exactly is bad?

– You will die in the alley.

And here it becomes clear which scenario works: “It is important to save money, otherwise you will die of hunger.” Naturally, such a dialogue is most productive not with oneself, but with another person, best of all with a psychologist. If it is not possible to contact a psychologist, ask a friend or girlfriend. Most importantly, the “Martian” must maintain goodwill and detachment.

“You can tell the same Martian about your cases with money. Briefly, in a paragraph, write out 10-20 such stories. What happened? What did you do? What happened around? What were the consequences? In which of the three processes (receive, spend, save) did you find a barrier?

It is useful to remember how we received the first money, did we have savings in childhood, what happened to them, how does this relate to the current relationship with money? Analyze your family: what were the stories of losses (any), how did they affect your ancestors. How did your ancestors treat money? How did they live? Are there stories that are similar to yours or resonate with you? What are your favorite proverbs, sayings and sayings about money in your family? What advice would your parents and grandparents give about money?

Step 3. Rewrite the script

Sometimes it turns out to change the relationship with money without special psychotherapeutic work. But often, despite all the insights and discoveries in family history, habitual patterns continue to lie in wait for us. And we understand that we have stepped on the same rake again, because the old “encoding” inside us has not yet been rewritten.

“We are making attempts to live in a new way, but the scenario has remained the same,” says Stanislav Efremov. – If a person “cannot be spent”, then it will be possible to arrange a holiday and a pleasant life only through strength and great resistance. Is it possible to rejoice through strength? Imagine that such a person decided to do something new and went on vacation. And he will sit at the resort, calculate how many chickens can be bought with the money from this trip, not find a place for himself, try to work on vacation (this scenario is often combined with workaholism). As a result: I spent the money, I didn’t get any pleasure, and the script can only get stronger from this. ”

But what happens if, according to the script and personal attitudes, “being rich is dangerous”?

“In this case, you can expect covert sabotage from yourself. After all, our caring subconscious believes that it saves our lives, and will go to great lengths for this. As a result, we risk getting into a minor accident, giving money into bad debt, going on a very expensive trip, buying a very expensive bag, and in general, surrendering to shopping in full. Changing the scenario with the help of psychotherapy and certain techniques is more reliable and effective, the expert believes.

“The script is easy to imagine as a subpersonality living in our head. And with this subpersonality, you can do the following: send it “to retire” with gratitude and recognition of its merits. After all, usually the script appears as a saving model of behavior for our ancestors in difficult situations. Here it is important to understand how exactly the script saved the lives of ancestors and whether there was any benefit from it in our lives. Once, during a psychodrama session, I worked with the scenario “You can’t spend it – you will die of hunger,” recalls Stanislav Efremov. “I divided and presented him as two subpersonalities. One was responsible for a reasonable economy of resources, and the client found it useful and wanted to leave it unchanged. But the second part did not allow me to live to the fullest, relax even for a minute and allow myself a little joy. We worked with her.

It turned out that this subpersonality can shift the focus of its attention. She stopped scolding him for his “wastefulness” and turned her attention to this person’s debtors: after all, it is necessary to return what is possible, and continue to control who can be lent and who can’t. She also determined whether it was worth working without an advance payment, to what level the price could be lowered in negotiations with the customer, and where it was worth stopping so as not to work at a loss.

But what will take the place of the previous scenario? After all, we can’t live without rules, can we? You can replace a rigid script with a set of different role models of behavior. You can understand the goals related to finances: what and why we need spending, income and savings. You can begin to manage the choice of a behavior model that is suitable at one time or another and activate it.

“The main difference is that the script is a lifelong rigid program that drives us like a deep rut in the road that we can’t get out of without help. And the role model is different possibilities of movement, like turning right or left. Here we ourselves control where to turn and when to stop,” explains Stanislav Efremov.

Psychotherapy will help you get out of the rut and pick up a set of useful role models.

Step 4: Bypass the Blocks

A few simple tools will help bypass the “money” blocks.

Personal accounting. Keeping written or electronic personal accounting is a very useful tool that will not only introduce a system and planning into our financial picture of the world, but also allow us to analyze what and how we spend money on. It is almost impossible to remember every little thing you buy. But accounting for how much money we receive and how much we spend gives a clear picture of the movement of cash flows.

“We often wonder: why did I buy this? When and on what did I spend this amount? Next time we will think hard, deciding to purchase some next “necessary” thing, ”says Stanislav Efremov. If we write down all the necessary mandatory payments in advance, then we will not find ourselves at the end of the month with a rent debt or unpaid Internet. This means we have less to worry about.

We measure in a new way. If we have a spending block, let’s calculate how much we earn per minute, hour and day. Let’s measure the cost of some nice thing not in rubles, but in minutes.

“For example, let a “super-expensive” cactus cost not 500 rubles, but 15 minutes of my working time. I can’t give 500 rubles for pampering. I can do 15 minutes. Such a cunning maneuver allows us to see that we, saving 20% ​​of a check in a hypermarket, spend almost three hours on a trip to it, which, translated into money, will more than cover the saved funds. So maybe it was worth buying everything in a convenience store, and spending three hours on something else or earning, say, 6 thousand rubles for them?

A similar example with a taxi: let’s say the trip costs 400 rubles, but it saves 50 minutes, for which we can earn 2000 rubles, so it’s profitable? For someone, a trick that saves from wastefulness can be the transfer of all finances to a bank card, if paper money does not want to linger in the wallet. It is important to leave the card at home and never pay with it.

“An effective tool can be selected for each block and for each scenario,” the expert concludes.