“One year ago I sold a piece of land and received nearly one million dollars. I decided to fix up my house and invest the rest of the money. I ended up investing in some business ventures that didn’t succeed, and now I’m broke again. I believe that money always multiplies for some people, but not for me, because I always fail when I try to make money.”

Over the years, I have done extensive research on the topic of financial achievement. My quest has been to discover why it is that some people make a lot of money and attain personal success, while the great majority of the world merely struggles to get by financially.

Is it a special gene that some people possess that allows them to be wealthy, or is it left to the goddess of luck to determine who makes it and who doesn’t?

In all my research there has been one constant idea that is repeated over and over again: it is the power of your thoughts that determines the level of your success in life. In fact it has been said that truly wealthy people think differently than poor and middle class people do.

In their book How To Think Like a Millionaire, authors Mark Fisher and Marc Allen state that wealth is a state of mind. They declare that because the mind is capable of anything, we have to begin by being rich in mind before we can become rich in life, and successful in mind before we can be successful in life. “The key to success lies in the proper use of the subconscious mind,” they reveal. “There is a common theme through all success stories -a positive inner attitude.”

So if we can all simply think our way to being fabulously wealthy, why don’t we all just do it, as the famous shoe campaign says?

According to Fisher and Allen, “it’s one thing to tell people that they must believe in success and fortune and want it passionately.” The reality is that most people are “paralyzed by bad experiences and appear to be completely incapable of cultivating a will to power.”

The problem is that if your mind is programmed to be unmotivated, fearful, uncertain and passive, you will not be physically able to carry out all the actions necessary for financial success. However, the good news according to Fisher and Allen is that “by discovering the mechanisms and power of the subconscious mind, anyone can overcome these obstacles.”

Fisher and Allen point out that “the subconscious, not outside circumstances, is responsible for an individual’s success or failure.” One way to train the subconscious to accept a pathway for success is by altering our negative beliefs about ourselves. “Most of us hold beliefs that limit our ability to create what we really want,” they note.

“The more common one is the belief in our powerlessness – our inability to bring into being all the things we really care about. The other belief centers on unworthiness – that we do not deserve to have what we truly want.”

Want to learn how to ‘think and grow rich’? CLICK HERE!

Negative beliefs usually stem from past experiences in childhood, from parents, teachers, the media and friends. Young minds easily absorb negative suggestions, expanding like sponges to retain the harmful thoughts, until the subconscious accepts these to be reality. We’re also guilty of poisoning our own minds with thoughts like: “I’m not smart enough to make money,” “Everything I do fails,” “I’m such a loser.”

The strange thing is that words don’t even have to be true for the mind to accept it, as our minds cannot distinguish between fact and fiction.

According to Allen and Fisher, our subconscious mind doesn’t have to hold us back forever, as positive affirmations repeated regularly can eventually destroy negative programming. By gradually feeding our brains with the right information, we will get rid of the thoughts that are limiting our financial and personal success.

Fisher and Allen declare that in order for affirmations to be fully effective they should be brief – a short precise statement that’s easy to remember; and positive – they should not contain any negative words. So instead of saying, “I’m not poor anymore,” where the brain is still hearing the word ‘poor’, you should affirm, “I’m creating more wealth, day by day.”

Here are the steps, as advised by Fisher and Allen, to carry out positive mental reinforcement:

1.     Write down your powerful affirmation. For example, “I earn J$200,000 every month working in a career I love.”
2.     Make affirmations for characteristics that you would like to strengthen in yourself. For example “I am confident.”
3.     Repeat these affirmations throughout the day. Try to have a meditation session when you are totally relaxed, and repeat your affirmations over several minutes.

Eventually, you will begin to accept these words as your new reality, and you will have started to re-wire your brain for financial and personal success.