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When I was 12 years old, I had a whopping $200 worth of savings in the bank. It was money I’d been given as gifts throughout my childhood.
One day my big brother, who was 17 at the time, asked me if he could borrow that $200.
If I lent it to him, he said he’d pay me back $250 within a couple of months.
Even at 12, I figured this was a pretty good return on investment. That’s a 25 percent return! So, obviously, I said yes.
He was true to his word. He paid me back in instalments, and within a couple of months he’d paid back the whole $200 plus the $50 agreed return.
The thing is… none of it went back into my bank account.
I took the instalments he gave me in cash, and I went straight down to the arcade and put every cent through a pinball machine.
I got pretty good at pinball… but I had nothing else apart from that dubious skill to show for it at the end.
I no longer had the $200, nor the extra $50.
Here are the subconscious beliefs I installed at the tender age of 12 as a result of that experience:
1) I’m a good investor.
2) I can NOT be trusted with liquid cash!
It’s amazing how these two beliefs continued to play out for pretty much all of my adult life!
I’ve invested in plenty of things, and I’ve done well with many of my investments from a capital gain perspective. Meaning: I’ve invested in things that have gone up in value. Sometimes, by a lot.
And yet…
I can see now that I’ve always heavily favoured investments that – even though they go up in value – don’t throw off a lot of cash in the process.
When I do have a lot of cash lying around (for example, from selling an investment asset) I’ll often find ways to either tie it up in investments again so I can’t access it easily… or give it away to charity… or lend it out to friends (which I don’t recommend, by the way, and I’ve promised myself I’ll stop doing that!)
In my own life, I live reasonably frugally and I have set things up so I don’t have a huge amount of cash available to me at any given time.
It turns out… that’s because I haven’t trusted myself with cash.
I only reprogrammed this old subconscious belief recently! It came as a bit of a shock to me, to find this block lurking beneath the surface of my mind.
You know what I had to tell my brain?
“Hey! I’m a responsible adult and I can be trusted to be responsible with cash.
Sure I can!
Even though I made an immature choice (which was fun at the time!) when I was 12 years old… that does NOT mean that I can’t ever be responsible with money.
I’m not that kid anymore.”
I had to reprogram the two beliefs that I’d installed when I was 12 because they were constraining me in an unhelpful way. I overwrote them with new beliefs that give me the freedom to access an abundance of liquid cash if I want to.
I did that reprogramming using the same techniques for belief reprogramming that I use with my private coaching clients.
I now believe that I can be trusted with money, and Abundance, in all its forms. Whether the form is liquid cash, or less liquid assets – either way, I can be trusted with money.
And, even if I did choose to put a bunch of money through a pinball machine now… as an adult, as long as that’s a conscious choice and I have fun doing it, then that’s okay too!
I get to choose how I want to use my Abundance.
(Even though it’s probably not going to be pinball LOL).
So let me ask you: Do you trust yourself with money?
To YOUR Abundance,
Julie Ann Cairns
P.S. The journey towards unlimited Abundance is an inner journey that’s constantly unfolding. To this day, I’m still scanning my behaviours and looking for patterns. When I spot a pattern, I try to ask myself: “Hmmm… why am I doing that?”
Not with judgement, but with true curiosity. Because if it’s a pattern that I don’t want to continue to experience, then identifying and surfacing the pattern is the first step towards changing it.
(There are 3 Key Steps to belief change, and I cover what they are in this podcast interview: https://theabundancecode.com/blog/audio-3-easy-steps-massive-shift/ )
P.P.S. If this post has helped you, I’d love to hear about that! Shoot me a quick email with your thoughts and reflections, to theteam@theabundancecode.com
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