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As a financial life planner, I’ve got more than a little interest in mindset.
Because mindset is what ultimately determines your attitude and approach to the myriad of challenges you’ll face over your lifetime.
In your financial life, your money mindset has been carefully erected from early childhood. That’s because we take in what we hear and see from our parents and create a belief system around money and what is “normal.”
What we don’t always get is that sometimes, our beliefs and our “normal” work completely against our values and best interests. But what you may not realize is that your mindset is absolutely changeable.
And the right mindset will change not only YOUR life, but can influence those around you.
So it was with great relish that I devoured “The Code Of The Extraordinary Mind” (Rodale 2016), that carries the idea of mindset to a whole new level.
Author Vishen Lakhiani (the founder of Mindvalley), states that our beliefs are constructed from our “Culturescape”—that our culture and living situation teach us that following “the rules” provides safety and acceptance.
But he argues that the only rules we SHOULD be accepting as truths are the absolutes: fire is hot, water is wet, we need air to breath. Beyond indisputable facts, the Culturescape’s bulls**t rules—or “Brules”—are EXACTLY what we need to question to become who we were meant to be.
A few Brules you may have heard along the way: you need to go to college to guarantee success; you must marry within your religion or ethnicity; you can only be successful by working hard 24/7.
If you’ve been drilled with these beliefs, they become your mindset and will limit the scope of your thinking and experience. Challenging these installed ideas can be frightening if you’ve not done it before—it can feel tantamount to challenging your parents and the authority figures in your society. It pushes hard against our universal need to belong and presses on our internal insecurities.
But if you can successfully push back and question these “Brules”, there are a multitude of possibilities and growth opportunities just waiting for you to break free.
The “Code” is a how-to book that shows you how to examine your mindset, offering options and opportunities to alter your beliefs to lead you to a more fulfilling, meaningful and values-based life.
It shows you that you are not stuck being who you are, but that a better version is available if you’re willing to open your mind to the possibilities.
Think about the last time you made a significant change.
Chances are, it was sparked by something that was deeply unsatisfying.
Maybe you committed to get in shape and lose twenty pounds. Or you decided you were done living with debt collectors calling constantly. Perhaps you chucked working for a big company to start your own business.
You challenged your beliefs and created a new path to change—you worked into a better, more authentically satisfying version of you. You changed how you see yourself in relation to the world around you—you changed your mindset.
Those mindset alterations allowed you to make substantial changes in your life that brought you greater joy and meaning.
It’s all in your mindset. It’s the key to a better you, a better life and yes, a better world.