The toughest prison in the world has no locks or keys. It’s the prison of the mind that we must truly fear because our thoughts can keep us enslaved better than any fortress constructed of steel and concrete.
These thoughts and beliefs can silence our opinions, bury our ambitions and cage our dreams. How many times have people told themselves:
No use trying, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Becoming financially independent just isn’t for people like me.
I was born with nothing, raised with nothing and I’ll probably die with nothing.
I’ll never become wealthy because I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
I’ll never strike it rich because it takes money to make money.
Unfortunately, these limiting beliefs bind us like cold, hard iron shackles to mediocrity. In the process, financial freedom becomes a mirage as we become accustomed to the daily struggles to make ends meet. Worst yet, some of us do find the path to financial freedom but allow our inner beliefs to sabotage our success. We end up squandering our hard-earned financial fruits, subconsciously validating our belief that we weren’t deserving of money in the first place.
Yet, reality tells a different story. We all have every single thing we need right in front of us to achieve financial success.
A friend of mine—a physician born in Nigeria and trained in the U.S.—once confided in me how amazed he was at how blessed he found Americans. “You have free schools and even buses to take you to school if you live too far away,” he remarked incredulously before expounding on a laundry list of other advantages, including libraries, Internet access and a stable political system. “You all take so much for granted. Just consider the simple fact that, unlike in my country, you have electricity that stays on 24 hours per day,” he exclaimed.
Perhaps that’s why immigrants so often arrive to this country with nothing other than the clothes on their backs but, within a decade or so, have achieved financial success. But, it’s not just immigrants. Others have broken the shackles of limiting beliefs to achieve their financial dreams.
According to a recent 2016 Bank of America study, 77 percent of high-net individuals (with a net worth of at least $3 million) came from middle class or lower backgrounds with 19 percent of those individuals having grown up in poverty.
African American author and success coach Dennis Kimbro uncovered similar findings while studying more than 500 black millionaires for his book, The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires. He discovered that most black millionaires have lived in poverty at some point during their lives. The average income of the parents of black millionaires, according to Kimbro, turned out to be a meager $10,000 to $20,000 year.
These realities shed the light of truth on many of our limiting beliefs. We have been imprisoned with falsehoods created by our own minds. As Kimbro and others have pointed out, where you started doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. Plenty of people have turned poverty into financial success. It happens every day.
The poor do become rich.
Financially independence is for people like you.
Just because you were born with nothing doesn’t mean you can’t create a life of abundance.
You don’t need to be born into wealth to create wealth.
You don’t necessarily need money to make money, just ideas, passion and perseverance.
You have every single thing you need right in front of you to change your life. But you must start by crushing your limiting beliefs.
BMWK, what limiting beliefs are holding you back?