How To Improve Your Money Mindset
Do you ever feel stressed or anxious when you think about your finances? Scared to open your bills? Struggle to keep or attract money?
Hey sis! You’re not alone with this.
Many people struggle with negative beliefs and attitudes about money. These deeply ingrained beliefs, stemming from your family of origin or society at large, can significantly impact your overall financial success.
This is especially important to consider if you’re starting your own business. At it’s core, entrepreneurship is about making money. If you have money mindset issues, then you will have to learn how to heal them in order to find success.
The good news is that you can learn to develop a more positive money mindset. This will empower you to make better financial decisions and reach your financial goals.
I want you to know that even if financial freedom seems like a distant dream right now, you can still heal and cultivate a healthy relationship to money. But to make it a little easier, here’s a guide to show you how.
What Is Money Mindset and Why Does It Matter?
Your money mindset is the collection of beliefs, thoughts, and feelings you have about money. These ideas and feeling shape how you handle money, and affect everything from earning, saving, spending and investing.
A healthy money mindset will help you:
- Feel responsible for your money (no more avoiding your bank balance!
- Feel confident about your financial future
- Be better able to negotiate higher salaries or charge more in your business
- Make informed financial decisions and know how to invest
- Be able to set and achieve financial goals (both long-term and short-term)
- Have a healthy relationship with money (no more money anxiety or fear!)
14 Signs You Might Have a Poor (or Scarcity) Money Mindset
- You constantly worry about not having enough money.
- You avoid looking at your bank statements or bills.
- Sometimes you’re at the cashier praying your purchase will go through.
- You have a lot of credit card debt & no plan to repay it.
- You consistently overspend and/or underearn.
- OR you make a decent salary but don’t spend anything because you’re paranoid you’ll get fired or not be able to make any more money.
- You struggle to talk about money with friends or family.
- You have a job or business that pays less than what you would like.
- You feel helpless to change your money situation.
- You feel deep shame about your lack of money.
- You don’t feel smart or worthy enough to deserve financial success.
- You’re a business owner but you also spend a lot of time helping some people for free, in your Instagram DMs/email, etc.
- You have issues with negotiating raises, making investments, or charging your worth.
- You secretly (or not-so-secretly) hope to win the lottery or have someone else (husband/family) solve all your money problems.
How To Improve Your Money Mindset
1. Heal Your Money Shame and Trauma
The number one reason why you struggle with making or keeping money? It’s money shame and trauma.
This is something we almost all suffer from. Money is a hugely emotionally charged topic and our society has programmed us with many toxic capitalist beliefs. For example: thinking that poor or homeless people are lazy. In many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we’ve all been taught that rich people equals good and poor people equals bad.
So that also means that if you are struggling with money, you probably have a lot of shame about it. (No one wants to be “bad”, right?) Even though we seldom share our bank account balances with the world, we are programmed deeply enough to judge ourselves for being stupid, lazy, worthless, etc.
I’m going to guess you have generalized shame about how much money you earn or have in your bank account along with some very painful money memories (ie. growing up poor, making money “mistakes” like investing in scam crypto or lending money that you never got back, etc.)
There’s a lot to unpack here.
First, it’s important to understand that while capitalism is very arguably evil, money is neutral. Having more or less of it does not change your inherent worth. Ever.
Second, there are many societal issues around money that are out of your control. You don’t have to feel shame around those either, nor do you have to let them dictate your future with money.
Finally, everyone makes financial mistakes. Just because money is such a taboo topic, you might feel like you’re the only sucker/failure with money. And that’s just not true. But whether or not you keep making progress towards creating a better financial future is a decision only you can make. (In other words, it’s time to forgive yourself already and move on!)
2. Strengthen Your Nervous System
If you struggle with money, you probably have some trauma responses that need addressing. Your trauma responses are controlled by your nervous system.
So think about it: when you feel stressed out by money, what do you tend to do? Fight, flight, freeze or fawn?
Here’s a quick overview:
Fight = Overworking
Flight = Underspending or Inability To Spend Your Money
Freeze = Avoidance
Fawn = Offering Freebies or Discounts/ Buying Stuff For Other People
When your trauma responses have kicked in, it’s important to note that your lizard (primitive) brain is in control–not your conscious planning brain. This is one of the reasons it’s so hard to change your financial situation! When your brain is in panic mode, you literally lose contact with the logical and planning parts of your brain.
Understanding your dominant financial trauma response is important for three different reasons:
It’s useful to notice your dominant trauma response around money so that you can notice when you’re going into it.
You can also do specific nervous system exercises to calm yourself down when you notice you’re stressed.
Finally, you can make nervous system calming exercises a priority to keep yourself in better nervous system health in general. This will help you to calm down faster in the moment!
My Financial Trauma Story
I often joke that my 20s were one giant trauma response. But it’s very true, especially when it came down to money or career.
Personally, I dealt with my money trauma by trying to avoid it. I found money (and even corporate life) so painful that I tried to opt-out. (Note: don’t try this at home!)
These days, I know that avoiding behaviors are my signal that something is wrong. While my money trauma is something I am still working on healing, I make sure that I’m always taking positive steps towards learning and improving my money mindset.
3. Challenge Your Limiting or Negative Money Beliefs
Your beliefs about money have a huge impact on your financial results. In other words, if you think that there’s simply no possible way for a girl like you to make loads of money, then you probably will avoid any money making actions–which on perpetuates this lie created by your brain!
Your thoughts create your feelings create your actions create your results.
If you want to learn more about how to challenge your limiting beliefs, check out this post on how to change beliefs with CBT.
4. Take Control of Your Finances
Okay, sis! Take a deep breath and look at your bank statements. It’s crucial to have a real and true understanding of your current financial situation.
If you go into panic mode, do something to soothe your nervous system: deep breathing, cold ice pack on the neck, go for a brisk walk around the block. Don’t let your body control what you do! Commit to creating a new pattern with money, right now.
Starting from today, make it a priority to track your monthly income and expenses. From here, you can then create a budget, and develop a financial plan. (More below!)
I know no one loves to hear the word budget. But if you’re struggling with money, a budget is one of the only ways to help yourself in that initial first steps. Understanding what’s coming in vs going out is crucial.
5. Set SMART Financial Goals
Goals (of any kind) should use the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Here’s a few questions to help you do that:
- How much do you want to make?
- What’s the time frame for this goal?
- How do you plan to make that? What steps/actions do you need to take?
- Do you feel like you’re capable of doing that? If not, what’s your plan to improve your mindset or feelings about money?
Commit and write it all down so that you know where you want to steer your financial ship.
6. Set A Few Big Audacious Financial Goals
While small achievable money goals are important, it’s also important to dream big too. And I mean audacious big. Scary big!
Many women I’ve worked with over the years struggle with this. They don’t have audacious money goals because they don’t feel like they’re even allowed to dream that big. But that’s cutting them off from abundance before they’ve even tried.
Let’s combat this tendency to under-aim and make sure you have some big money goals too!
Start thinking about who you would be and how you spend your money if you had a lot of it. Who’s your Inner Rich Girl? What’s your Ideal Rich Life? What do you want to work towards? And how much money would that mean? (Monthly, annually, in the bank, etc.)
7. Learn About Money
No one is born understanding money. It’s something you have to learn. However, many women think that because they don’t already know about money that it means they’re not good at it. Not true!
Just like you had to learn how to drive a car, you can learn how to make money and take care of your money. It doesn’t happen in five minutes but it will happen if you make learning about money a priority.
Podcasts are perfect for this! They’re an easy way to listen while you’re on the go. It might not seem like listening to an episode here or there will do much. But over time, tuning in will have a positive effect on your money knowledge and confidence.
A few of my favorite podcasts and books on this topic:
8. Find A Money Mindset Coach or Financial Mentor
Humans are very monkey see, monkey do. While I’m not going to blame your poor family or friends for your financial situation, it’s also smart to open your social net a little wider. Just talking with or being around people who are financially successful or abundant can be a real boon to your money mindset.
If you’re an entrepreneur, that might mean going to in-person networking events or joining a master mind so that you can meet other people who are expanding their money mindset.
You can also try to find those people in real life as friends. However, that’s not available to everyone!
But not to worry. You can still get the benefits of being around people with a better money mindset by paying them. Investing in yourself a financial mentor or money mindset coach will help you to truly dig in and find your individual money shame stories and limiting beliefs. It will also help that monkey mind of yours to see to believe.
9. Find A Purpose For Your Money
In money manifestation, I teach that having a purpose for your money is important. It’s hard to get excited to manifest $1000. But if you know what you want to use that money for, it becomes a lot easier!
The same principle applies to changing your money mindset. Economists estimate that only 8 percent of the world’s currency exists as physical cash. That also means most money exists as zeros in a database. Again, even though this is real currency, money is also an abstract concept. It can be very difficult to wrap your mind around that!
So the more important question is: what do you want to do with your money? You already imagined your Rich Girl Life. Now think a little bit bigger. How do you want to give back? Support your friends and family? Support charities or create communities?
Money isn’t just for you. It also flows through you. You receive it and decide where to put it next. That’s power!
For many people, thinking about amazing things to do for our community and planet offers real motivation to make more of it.
Do you struggle with money trauma? What’s your money mindset like? Did this guide inspire you to improve your money mindset?
Final Thoughts About Improving Your Money Mindset
As always, be gentle with yourself! Changing your money mindset takes time and effort. You’ve got a lot of old patterns and beliefs to overcome. But your financial success will be worth it! So cheers to that babe!


PS Looking for more? You might also want to check out this post about how to sell without feeling gross, or common abundance blocks for entrepreneurs.
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