We all have limiting beliefs about wealth. In an effort to collectively squash them, I figured I would share mine, along with a plan to get rid of them. So here goes:

• Motherhood holds me back.
• I am less valuable to the workforce as a mother.
• I cannot be the breadwinner in my family because I am the mother.
• I have to choose between career and motherhood.

Clearly these things are not true but they swim around in my head, seeding doubt when opportunities arise. So today I want to share how I am going to lobotomize my brain of these limiting beliefs and expand my wealth consciousness! Join me in doing the same!

I am currently reading a book called A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Gikandi. He writes extensively about a concept called wealth consciousness. Allow me to quote:

“Wealth consciousness is simply the expansion of your consciousness and awareness into the wealthy parts of your self. That is why all you need to increase your wealth consciousness is within you already. You are already wealthy, but you have been taught to choose not to experience your wealth. This insight changes everything.”

He teaches that our own limiting beliefs limit our potential for wealth. Most of us do this but truly wealthy people do not. They pick their limiting beliefs off of themselves like lint from a sweater. You don’t go here. Off you go. 

Where do limiting beliefs come from? Anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps your parents were always reminding you of what you could not afford. Perhaps you have been fired and learned to believe that you are not worthy or capable. Perhaps you believe that you are not in charge of your career or creative enough to carve out your own path.

Last fall I taught a class in the Seton Hall department of communications. Looking at these students, I remembered myself as a journalism student, hearing professors say things like this:

• There are no jobs in journalism anymore. 
• Journalism pays nothing. 
• It’s really competitive and you may have to move to somewhere undesirable to get started. 

One day I asked my students how many of them had heard messages like this from educators. They ALL raised their hands. Even though I expected this, I was still pissed! Why would we put this on young people!? Why are there educators inflicting their own limiting beliefs on students!? What is more valuable: teaching them about limitations or teaching them to create their lives around limitations?

I can pinpoint where my limiting beliefs about career and motherhood came from. In the four years since I left my full-time job at CNET, I have had countless interviews, auditions, rejections. It’s pretty normal in my line of work but it never happened to me before I was a mother so I begun to believe that it was my family choices were the cause. It never occurred to me that I could create my own path until my husband encouraged me to do so. Thank goodness for him!

Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, I started writing this blog about personal finance. I had pitched the idea to several networks and no one bit so I created my own way. Then I was hired as the host of Code Forward on MSNBC. I started to see my path full of opportunities instead of brick walls.

Meanwhile, I am still proud of the kind of mother that I am and the choices I make. I am showing myself every single day that motherhood is NOT a limitation. It does not make my goals obsolete. On the contrary, it gives them more meaning!

While I was busy accepting this limiting belief about motherhood, I stopped dreaming for myself. I became solely-focused on the kids and this created frustration with my personal goals. Gikandi writes this and it feels as if he wrote it just for me:

“A major reason why people lose wealth is that their goals diminish and their images fade. Sometimes this happens when something new comes into your life, and you forget the original passion that made you wealthy in the first place. This new thing may be the birth of a child, the finding of a love partner, the achievement of comfort… None of these things are ‘bad’ but it is good to know and keep in mind that, if you ever find yourself ‘going down,’ reexamine your goals and mental images. That is a powerful start to finding out what is happening in your life, for life is images of the mind expressed.”

When my daughter was born and my son was a toddler and I had no “big breaks,” I was in a cycle of wealth UNconsciousness. I believed that my choices as a mother limited my earning potential. I received rejections as a result of these beliefs. I set no goals as a result. But let me be plain:

I AM DONE WITH THAT SHITTY CYCLE!

I want to be an awesome mother AND an awesome broadcaster, writer, speaker. These roles are not mutually exclusive. They simply take creativity and vision to fully express themselves together.

Once you have identified your limiting beliefs, the next challenge is to tune them out when you hear or see them reenforced by others. That is something I am working on and for the sake of your wealth, you should too.

Let me end with this: You are not only as valuable as your paycheck. Your wealth is not reflected in the life you lead now. Your wealth is limitless. I believe this about you and I believe this about me. We all possess the ability to expand our lives if we just delete the thoughts that keep us back.

I hope this post helped you to read as much as it helped me to write. If you’d like to share, I welcome your experience of limiting wealth consciousness. I will read them, respond to you, and then DELETE them from my inbox as a symbolic gesture of collectively DELETING them forever!

Thank you for going on this journey with me. If you have read this far, we have made a connection and that connection feeds me to keep going. Thank you, friend.