Money. The relationship many people have with money is strange, to say the least. Just now, as I started saying the word “money,” I found a coin (10 Thai Bath btw) – a funny coincidence. For many, this topic is forbidden, complex, uncomfortable. For some, it’s mystified or taboo.
It all depends on the environment you grew up in. In my case, there wasn’t a strict prohibition on talking about money, but it wasn’t really discussed either because everything seemed simple enough. Money was earned at work, spent outside of work, and was never excessive. That’s basically all we knew about money, and I didn’t have much other information.
When we talked about serious wealth, about rich people, the conversations typically revolved around how you couldn’t become wealthy honestly. You either had to be someone’s son or daughter – someone influential or already wealthy – or have connections that gave you access to resources. The next option? Be a criminal, cheat people, somehow earn money dishonestly. These were the only ways I knew to make a lot of money, which I’d always wanted since childhood. But the only answer I got to my question sounded something like this: impossible for normal people.
We’re incredibly lucky to live in the internet era, in the information age, when we have access to an enormous amount of information, including about people who make money and the methods they use. We can find this information ourselves and draw our own conclusions.
This wasn’t possible during my childhood. I had to take people at their word. I couldn’t read about it anywhere except in mass media, newspapers, or on television – but TV didn’t have podcasts hosted by dollar millionaires, and newspapers didn’t write about money in useful ways. The articles about wealthy people were typically gossip about their connections and other rumors that didn’t really relate to their wealth. There was simply no information.
A recent Bankrate survey revealed something shocking but not surprising: over 60% of Americans feel more uncomfortable talking about money than politics or religion. Only 38% would share their bank balance with friends or family. This silence is basically programmed into us.
But what if we could reprogram our relationship with money? What if everything you’ve been taught about wealth is actually holding you back from the financial freedom you desire? Let’s explore how to break free from these limiting beliefs and create a new financial reality.
The Hidden Money Operating System
Money attitudes are deeply rooted in our upbringing, culture, and social norms – often in ways we don’t consciously realize. Think of it as an operating system running in the background of your mind, silently determining every financial decision you make.
Growing up, I understood that to achieve financial security, I needed to follow the “safe” path – get a job with a guaranteed salary that would allow me to survive. This was always my fallback plan, a place I could land if everything else failed. And that’s exactly what happened.
Today we’re talking more about attitudes toward money, why many families even prohibit discussions about it. It’s considered sacred, unacceptable, and all this comes from upbringing, religion, and the culture in which you develop, where there are certain rules about how to relate to money.
In some cultures, money is considered sinful; in others, it’s taboo. Typically, these beliefs are passed down from generation to generation. And since these basic religious or cultural principles generally aren’t questioned but simply accepted as given, questions about why we relate to money in a particular way don’t arise.
There are certain cultures where, conversely, the attitude toward money from early childhood is formulated in exactly the opposite way, where money is a measure of value, and you can and should earn this money if you bring value to your community – for example, Jewish families. If you were born there, you’re very lucky because you have a healthy attitude toward money.
If not, you’ll have to do the work yourself to unravel the ball of negative attitudes and wrap new ones that you’ll need to live with. There’s no sense in denying the importance of money or turning away from it because our society, in which we now live and develop, is based on money.
Some might say that money can’t buy happiness, that happiness isn’t in money, or that there are many things you can’t buy with money. I fundamentally disagree. In modern society, you can buy absolutely everything with money.
You can literally buy yourself a new body, you can buy yourself health if you know who and where to approach. Today you can even buy yourself mobility, for instance, if your body is paralyzed. This isn’t some sci-fi; it’s quite practical.
As strange as it sounds, you can buy love. Yes, maybe at first it will be somewhat artificial, but if you put effort into developing the relationship, it’s quite possible that you can build a healthy relationship from it, even if it was previously based on money.
And if not, then these are transactional relationships, exactly the same as any other type of relationship where you give something, acquire something.
I actually have a whole article around that topic, if want to argue with me about it, read it first: “Money Buys Everything (Despite What They Tell You): The Uncomfortable Truth About Modern Freedom”.
The idea that happiness isn’t in money is actually a belief that practice shows isn’t true.
First, as soon as I started to have money, as soon as I began to have a certain safety cushion of savings, I started to become much calmer and happier because now I don’t have to think about how I’ll pay bills.
If I have a certain reserve for several months of life ahead, I feel calm, and I can focus on other things that actually bring this happiness. Yes, the mere presence of money in your account may not make you happy, but the state you acquire from having this money in your account quite brings happiness, pleasure, and shifts the focus of attention from money to other things that are the basis of happiness, good mood, calmness, absence of stress, and everything related to it.
And finally, with money, you can acquire what will make you happy, and in such a ratio as you need. If travel makes you happy, for instance, it’s your inner need, then having a lot of money, you can travel freely, live wherever you want, you can buy yourself citizenship in countries that allow you to travel without borders, without getting visas, without extra hassle.
Mark Twain flipped conventional wisdom on its head when he said,
“The lack of money is the root of all evil”
– a striking contrast to the biblical warning about money being evil. Twain recognized that poverty and financial insecurity, not wealth itself, cause much of life’s misery.
This perspective is supported by modern research. A 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association found that about 40% of people said money worries caused them more stress than work, politics, or even global events. On the flip side, the Financial Health Network discovered that 75% of Americans who consider themselves financially secure also rate their mental health as “excellent” or “very good.”
So now I don’t understand all these negative attitudes toward money, except that it’s more from ignorance because if you don’t know how to handle money, how to earn it, then for you it’s a closed, taboo topic because you simply don’t have information about something else, and you only have these negative attitudes on which your relationship is based.
It can be directed in another direction and flip all these attitudes, which I recommend doing first.
Reprogramming Your Money Mindset
The first step to changing this whole thing is to write out your negative attitudes toward money that you have. I’ve done this exercise several times throughout my life and noticed that they change over time, that is, some attitudes eventually go away, and some come to replace them.
Therefore, it’s more effective to do this exercise in such a way that you write out all the negative attitudes and then replace them with positive ones. That is, literally a table in two columns, where first on the left you write the negative attitude, on the right you write how you want to remake it.
For example, “happiness isn’t in money” → “with money, you can buy what brings me happiness.” You can even do better with specific examples to visualize it more realistically, so the picture is clearer for the conscious and subconscious.
You can do this with just the second column, simply writing down positive attitudes that will eventually replace the negative ones, but in this case, you’ll need to look at them more often, remind yourself of them, and make sure they settle in and take root in your subconscious.
Step 1: Identify Your Negative Money Beliefs
So, let’s start by examining the beliefs that might be holding you back. These typically manifest as automatic thoughts that arise whenever money is mentioned, write them down in the left column of the table:
- “Rich people must have done something unethical to acquire wealth”
- “Money is the root of all evil”
- “I’m not good with money”
- “Money and spirituality don’t mix”
- “It’s selfish to want more when others have less”
- “I don’t deserve to be wealthy”
For each negative belief, create a positive counter-statement in a second column of the table:
- “Many wealthy people created value and solved problems for others”
- “Money is neutral – it amplifies who I already am”
- “I’m learning to manage money effectively”
- “Money can be used for spiritual growth and helping others”
- “My financial success can inspire and help others”
- “I deserve prosperity when I create value for others”
Here’s the critical part that many don’t understand: You don’t need to do anything special with this table after creating it. As I explained in my article “A Hidden Superpower You Possess: How To Use Your Subconscious To Solve The Hardest Problems In Your Life,” your subconscious remembers everything. Just the act of writing these beliefs down once embeds the information in your subconscious, which will process it automatically.
You can also just focus on the positive column if you prefer, simply writing down the positive attitudes that will eventually replace the negative ones. In this case, you’ll need to look at them occasionally to remind yourself, ensuring they settle in and take root in your subconscious. The subconscious mind is incredibly powerful – it will work on these new beliefs even when you’re not consciously thinking about them.
Step 2: Reset Your Emotional Triggers
The next point is trigger focus. That is, considering everything said above, what was laid down by culture, society, other people in the mind regarding money, it immediately automatically pops up. That is, it’s such a trigger that pulls related attitudes from the subconscious.
And our task is to shift this trigger again. That is, if you have a focus on something else, for example, on those counter-attitudes that we wrote down in the first exercise, it’s quite real that now your focus will shift to them after a certain trigger, rather than to these negative attitudes that you have.
How does human thinking work? It has a tendency toward negativity, so most media is built on such a negative emotional charge and helps you emotionally trigger if the news is negative.
This, I think, is understandable without any argumentation that it’s not very good from the perspective of emotional health and stress resistance, but it works flawlessly.
If you can pay attention to how I, for example, write my content, it’s often tied to such a negative key, I start with that. Why? Because it attracts attention, it triggers something, it excites emotions inside the body. Again, why? Because you feel a threat to your existence, but not in the real world, as if, for example, a wild animal were in front of you that you need to run from or defend against, but the existence of your ego.
Whenever money comes up, what’s your first emotional response? Anxiety? Shame? Fear?
These are your triggers, and they need to be reset. Here’s how:
- Notice when money discussions trigger negative emotions
- Pause and take a deep breath
- Consciously bring to mind your new belief
- Repeat this process consistently until the new response becomes automatic
A fascinating study at MIT showed that financial stress literally impairs cognitive performance because so much mental energy goes toward worrying about money. When that burden is lifted, cognitive capacity rebounds and people are freer to pursue life satisfaction.
Step 3: Understand Income Quadrants
Now let’s talk about the attitude toward business. All these things I said earlier about how money can only be earned dishonestly, by deceiving someone, or by being a relative of someone already wealthy, or by leveraging some connections. It’s all not true. And in the world, there’s a huge number of examples that don’t just prove otherwise, they’re a completely different story. And I personally know many acquaintances who from absolute zero build a business, earn excellent money for an excellent lifestyle, do it without any initial connections, capital, and inheritance, which, of course, is also a great option. And if you have it, then it’s actually a sin not to use it. And if there’s such an opportunity, use it, why not? But if not, if you’re just an ordinary person who doesn’t have such a privilege, then today the only way you can earn money, and at the same time control it, is through business.
There are also investments, of course. Here I recommend, in general, to understand these concepts precisely from the perspective of basic understanding, how investments work, what business is, and what actually distinguishes a businessman from an investor. There’s also such an entrepreneur who spends his time himself, and a worker who spends his time earning money for other people.
This is the cash flow quadrant according to Robert Kiyosaki, where in his books “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and “Cashflow Quadrant” he elaborates on this topic in a very accessible and simple language. I recommend reading it. These books helped me put everything in perspective and made me understand that I want to be in the businessman quadrant and, later, the investor. Because investments are a good thing, and indeed you can start with them right away, but provided that you live in a developed country, and you have access to borrowed money, which you can use to immediately acquire income-generating assets, for example, real estate. And this is, by the way, a good loan, which will bring you more money, even more than you’ll be repaying on this loan, will make you richer, and, accordingly, your asset also grows in value. This, by the way, is another point that’s also important to understand. But we’re talking about business.
To break free from the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, you need to understand Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant, which explains four ways people earn money:
- Employee (E): Works for someone else, trading time for money
- Self-Employed (S): Owns a job, not a business (still trading time for money)
- Business Owner (B): Owns a system that generates money without constant personal involvement
- Investor (I): Money works to create more money
The path to financial freedom typically involves moving from the left side (E and S) to the right side (B and I) of the quadrant. This doesn’t mean quitting your job immediately – your employment can be a “backup airfield” while you build your business or investment portfolio.
As I discovered, this framework clearly explained why some people achieve financial independence while others remain stuck despite working hard.
Step 4: Build Your Value Exchange System
Business is a system that allows you to extract profit in a controlled way. And the goal of any business is to extract profit. It is some kind of system that consists of several elements. We’ve broken down these elements many times, but the point is that it’s a system of exchanging values, when you create some value for your consumer, and in return receive another value in the equivalent of money, or in the equivalent of another resource, which you can exchange for money yourself. And your task is to make sure that the value you give costs you less in monetary equivalent than the one you receive in exchange for this value.
And then the question arises about how to build this business. And I believe that one of the best options, and one that’s available to most people, is a personality business, or a one-person business, which I also talk about a lot (read my recent article “The One-Person Brand Blueprint: Standing Out In The Digital Economy”).
One of the most accessible paths to wealth creation in today’s digital economy is building a one-person business. With the internet, you don’t need large startup capital, connections, or inheritance to begin creating value and receiving payment.
The formula is simple yet powerful:
- Identify a problem you can solve or a desire you can fulfill
- Create a solution that costs you less to deliver than what people will pay for it
- Build systems to deliver this solution efficiently and repeatedly
This value exchange is the essence of ethical business. You’re not taking from others; you’re creating something valuable and being compensated fairly for it. The more value you create, the more wealth you can accumulate – a virtuous cycle that benefits both you and those you serve.
For digital nomads especially, the one-person business offers unprecedented freedom. You can operate from anywhere with internet access, serve clients globally, and scale through digital products that sell while you sleep.
Step 5: Create Financial Security First
Then, having the ability to earn money through business, you can calmly move to the investor quadrant, buy yourself assets, invest in real estate, and in everything that you consider necessary to earn more passively on your money.
Before pursuing aggressive growth, establish what I a safety cushion – enough savings to cover several months of expenses. This isn’t just practical advice, but buying yourself a psychological freedom.
As I experienced personally, once I built this financial buffer, something remarkable happened: my stress levels dropped dramatically, and my creativity and risk tolerance increased. I no longer had to think constantly about how to pay bills. This mental space allowed me to focus on opportunities rather than threats.
This safety cushion serves as the foundation for wealth building. From this secure position, you can begin taking calculated risks with your business or investments without the paralyzing fear of destitution if something doesn’t work out as planned.
Start by saving just 10% of your income automatically. As this cushion grows, you’ll feel a growing sense of calm and clarity that will compound your ability to make smart financial moves.
The Path to Financial Freedom
The journey to financial freedom isn’t just about tactics and strategies – it’s primarily about transforming your relationship with wealth at the deepest level. The limiting beliefs you carry about money aren’t your fault, but they are your responsibility to change.
As Seneca wisely observed,
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
This ancient wisdom reminds us that our mindset determines our wealth more than our circumstances. A person with an abundance mindset can create opportunities where others see none.
Throughout this article, we’ve examined how to identify and replace negative money beliefs, reset emotional triggers, understand income quadrants, build a value-based business, and create financial security. Each step builds upon the previous one, creating a comprehensive system for financial transformation.
But knowledge without action is merely entertainment. The true test is implementation:
- Today, write out your negative money beliefs and their positive alternatives
- This week, notice your emotional triggers around money and practice the reset technique
- This month, identify which quadrant you’re in and take one step toward the Business or Investor quadrant
- Within 90 days, start a small value-exchange experiment – sell something that solves a problem
- Within 6 months, build your first safety cushion, even if it’s just one month of expenses
Remember that financial freedom is about having options. It’s about the freedom to say no to what doesn’t serve you and yes to what fulfills you. It’s about creating impact rather than just income.
Your relationship with money is waiting to be rewritten. The pen is in your hand.