Money Mentor Emily Wilcox Explains How to Improve Your Money Mindset

The popular book The Secret advises that you can change your life by simply changing how you look at things. Positive thoughts attract positive outcomes, while negative thoughts perpetuate negative results. Many financial advisors are taking the same approach to money.

Money mentor and business coach Emily Wilcox believes that how you think and feel about money dictates how easy or hard it will be for you to receive and accumulate wealth.

“The subconscious brain controls more than 95 percent of our thoughts, so even if we consciously think ‘I deserve a raise,” our subconscious may think ‘I’m not really that special, so why would they give me more money,’” Wilcox tells Market Realist.

Wilcox defines negative thoughts about money as “wounds.” There are six distinct categories of money wounds, she says. The wounds are:

• Money Shame Wound – believing you aren't worthy of money

• Evil Money Wound – the belief that having a lot of money will make you bad or that being rich goes against your morals

• Money Trust Wound – distrusting yourself with money

• Hard Money Wound – thinking you must work harder to make more money

• Safe Money Wound – feeling unsafe without a sizeable cushion of money

• Disappearing Money Wound – a distrust of money because it always seems to be leaving you

Your money wounds may be subconscious thoughts that were shaped by events in your past or your childhood, according to Wilcox. For example, if you lost $10 from a birthday card when you were a child and your dad kept reminding you afterward to be more careful with your money, you may grow up believing that you aren’t good with money.

To change your negative beliefs about money, Wilcox suggests thinking about money as a neutral resource like oxygen. The shift from a negative belief to a neutral one is easier to achieve than going straight from negative to positive, she says.

“Money is neutral. It is a neutral resource like oxygen. So any guilt, shame, or unworthiness that comes up is an inherited belief that can be changed,” Wilcox says. “You weren’t born into the world thinking you didn’t deserve that much oxygen … just like you weren’t born into the world thinking you didn’t deserve money.”

Wilcox says doing inner child healing, guided visualizations, and self-hypnosis can be powerful techniques to permanently shift your negative beliefs. You should also let go of cultural influences on how you spend money, she says. Society may make you feel that mortgage debt is good and credit card debt is bad, but those beliefs aren’t yours, they’re inherited, Wilcox says.

Diagnosing what your money wounds are is the first step to understanding and addressing the negative thought patterns around money that are impacting your life, Wilcox says. She provides a free quiz on her website that can help you discover what money wounds are blocking you.

“You’re in a lifelong relationship with money — so putting in the love and effort will pay off tremendously over time. We wouldn’t expect to fix marital problems in a day, so don’t put that pressure on your relationship with money either. It takes time, but it’s so worth it,” Wilcox says.