Change Your Thinking! 5 Mentality Shifts Wealthy People Live By to Achieve Financial Freedom

Written By Brian Tracy | Financial Success | July 13th, 2012 | 9 Comments »

One of the most important responsibilities you have to yourself and your loved ones is for you to achieve your own financial freedom over the course of your working lifetime.

In order to achieve financial freedom, it is absolutely essential that you change your thinking in several specific ways. Financial freedom is terribly important to you, for every part of your life, including even how long you live.

Financial Freedom by Design

The first mental shift is from financial freedom by accident to financial freedom by design.  Financial freedom must be the center piece of all your work and external activities.  Achieving financial freedom must not be something that happens in a random or haphazard way. It must be something that you specifically think about, define, and plan for continuously. It must become a part of your entire world view.

Today, just as you design your dream house, you must design your financial future.  You must think long term, many years down the road, and make an absolutely clear decision that you are going to achieve specific financial goals on a time table, year by year until you reach the point where you never have to work again unless you want to.

Wealthy People Think in Terms of Prosperity

Another mental shift you have to make in achieving financial freedom is from a survival consciousness to a prosperity consciousness.  Most people are locked into a survival consciousness.  They are worried, guarded and careful about money.

Wealthy people think in terms of prosperity rather than survival. They move from limitation thinking to abundance thinking. Wealthy people look upon the world around them as being full of opportunities to acquire and keep the money and they are constantly looking for ways to do it. They look at every new product and process, every technological market or breakthrough, as a possible opportunity to prosper in some way. Instead of thinking about how little they have, wealthy people are thinking about how much they want to acquire.

Change Your Thinking from Security to Opportunity

Another shift in thinking is from security thoughts to opportunity thoughts.  You don’t achieve financial freedom by playing it safe.  You become financially independent by leading the field.  This doesn’t mean that you risk your money or throw it around.  It means that you are willing to move out of your comfort zone and to try something new and different before everyone else starts trying or doing it.  I have met countless salespeople and businessmen around the country who changed their entire lives by recognizing an opportunity and taking action on it before the vast majority of people woke up to it.  By the time the dust had settled they were well established and had made more money in three or four years than they might have made in 30 or 40 years doing something else in an established field.

Change Your Thinking from Spending to Saving

Another mental shift you must make to achieve financial freedom is to change your thinking from spending to saving.  W. Clement Stone said that, “If you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you.”  We grow up from a young age spending everything we can get our hands on and a little bit more besides.  The average young married couple in America spends 110% of their income, making up the difference with credit and loans from their families.  With this attitude and approach to life, especially when it becomes a habit, their ability to save, accumulate, and acquire wealth is almost zero.

In study after study on financial independence, it is generally agreed by every expert that you have to save approximately 20% to 30% of your income if you want to finally reach the point where you have enough money so that you’d never have to worry about it again.  The wonderful thing is that, once you begin saving more and more of your income off the top, and living on the rest, you will find that you experience no discomfort at all.  You become quite comfortable living on a lesser amount.

Change Your Thinking from Hoping to Doing

Financial accumulation requires you to change your thinking from wishing and hoping to thinking and doing.  Don’t talk to anyone else about your plans and your activities.  Begin to accumulate money quietly and confidentially.  Once you begin putting it away, don’t ever let anyone know how much you have.  Refuse to engage about conversations about money or to tell anyone about your financial accumulation account.  There is something about keeping your plans and processes secret that gives them strength and power and causes them to work even more effectively for you.  You will find that wealthy people never talk to others about their money.  They are extremely private.  Wealthy people have learned over time that the more secretive they are, the more effective they seem to be in acquiring and keeping ever greater amounts of money.

The road to financial freedom is and has always been the miracle of compound interest.  When you begin putting money away and then investing it carefully to build a financial estate, the miracle of compound interest clicks in.  As you begin to move toward financial freedom, slowly at first, but then faster and faster as the years pass, you will feel absolutely wonderful about yourself.

Thank you for reading this article on how to change your thinking to achieve financial freedom and learn from other wealthy people. If you have any other tips, please share and comment below!

Connect with Brian on Google +

Tags: change your thinking, financial freedom, Wealthy people

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2012 at 8:07 am and is filed under Financial Success.