Read Zen Habit’s The 10 Key Actions That Finally Got Me Out of Debt; or, Why Living Frugally is Only Part of the Solution.

Read Getting Rich Slowly’s Free at Last! Saying Good-Bye to 20 Years of Debt.

As I was looking at the sun shining through the treetops, something Paul McKenna wrote in his book I Can Make You Rich sprang to my mind.

Getting Rich Is an Inside Job

Over the last twenty years I have had access to many high achievers and I have been amazed at how some are able to truly enjoy their wealth while others remain trapped by their own limited thinking…

At the time of my writing this, Mariah Carey is worth over $100 million – yet in a recent interview she said that sometimes she still feels financially insecure…

I hope by now you are beginning to realize that having a lot of money will never be enough to make you rich. It is the quality of your thoughts that will ultimately create the quality of your life.

For a pittance of what I make in Singapore, I could live very comfortably in Chiang Dao. I wondered what the locals thought of the difference between us. I wondered if they thought I lived in paradise; with high-rise buildings and big, shiny shops everywhere.

I wondered if they recognized the riches they had that I didn’t have back home; the beautiful forests and rivers around them, fresh mountain air and a working day free from impossible deadlines.

I realized that no matter where and how you were, you can feel rich just by recognizing the blessings you already enjoy. It’s a richness that has nothing to do with the numbers in your bank, but everything to do with the richness of your soul.

Do you feel rich?

Then I got to wondering about difficulties at work. Why was it that something I could have finished in much less time took much longer for me to complete – and why was it such a struggle to get it done?

I decided to turn to Lesson Eight of Allen’s book; ‘Discover Your Core Beliefs and Change Them’. After just 10 minutes of soul-searching, I was shocked to discover what I did.

Change Your Beliefs About Money Or Sabotage Your Financial Wealth

After doing some reflection, I discovered I had these unconscious beliefs about money:

1) The more money I want, the harder I have to work.

2) If I really want to make a lot of money, I must have an immense amount of knowledge and skills.

3) I don’t deserve to make more than I do now.

Writing these beliefs down brought home how they were sabotaging my financial success. It even felt ridiculous because I knew people who worked very little and made very much, who didn’t know more than I did and made much more than I do. And I certainly deserve as much as anyone else to make as much money as I wanted!

It was clear I had to change my beliefs about money or I would never be able to achieve the level of financial wealth I desire.

Beliefs – Why Are They Such A Big Deal Anyway?

Your beliefs are the filter towards how you see the world. Like the mental patient I talked about in my ‘Warning: Are You Trapped in a Thought Virus?‘ post who believed he was a corpse despite evidence to the contrary, our beliefs filter what we see, hear and accept.

Imagine you held the belief that people were rotten to the core and they were all out to get you, would you experience life differently than if you were to believe that people are basically decent and will help you if given a chance?

6 Easy Steps to Change Your Beliefs

I knew I had to change my beliefs fast about money fast – or I would always be broke and working hard for it. These are the 6 steps I took to change my beliefs.

1) Identify your limiting beliefs.

You can’t change your beliefs if you don’t know what they are. Write down an exhaustive list of what you believe about money. If you don’t have any limiting beliefs about money, congratulations – you’re done and you should be doing nicely for yourself. If not, use the following steps to deal with each belief one at a time.

2) What’s the worst that could happen to you if this belief were true?

Investigate this belief to the core – what do you believe is the worst that could happen to you if this belief were absolutely true? Write down your worst fears, by facing them you break down their power. The more painful you make this 2nd step the easier it will be to change your belief.

3) Ask yourself if this belief is always true?

Answer these 3 questions to start breaking your belief down;

i. Is this belief always true?

ii. Is it true for everyone?

iii. Has there ever been a time when it wasn’t true?

4) What would be an empowering alternative to this belief?

Create an empowering alternative to this belief. State it positively, in the form of affirmations. For example, for my 3 limiting beliefs I wrote down:

i. I am making even more profits while working even less.

ii. I am making even more profits now with the wealth of knowledge & skills I already have.

iii. More and more wealth flows into my life because I richly deserve an abundance of it.

5) What’s the best that could happen to you if your new empowering belief was true?

Dream big with this one. Write down all the good changes that would happen in your life if your new belief was true. The more fun and pleasurable you make this answer the more your mind will be drawn towards your new belief.

6) Place your new beliefs in a place you’ll see often.

Place your new beliefs in a place you’ll see often, pasted on the mirror, in your wallet or on your desktop. You can also write your new beliefs down or say them aloud to yourself for a week, or ideally for 30 days.

I’d bet you wouldn’t, but that’s what a lot of people are doing; not with the money they win, but the money they make.

I don’t often write about wealth as I’m not that wealthy in financial terms, but lately it’s surprised me how often my friends do the exact opposite of what nearly every financial planning book advises; they spend first, and save later.

First Rule Of Creating Wealth

There’s nothing truer about being rich than what a friend told me once; you’re only as rich as you spend. If you make a million but spend a million, you’ve still made nothing (If you make a million but spend two, you’re in trouble!).

That’s why the first rule of creating wealth made so much sense to me when I first heard it. Instead of paying for your bills, clothes, outings, widgets and gadgets first, you pay yourself first.

Which is the opposite of what most people do; but consider that a lot of people are hardly cash-rich and are in credit card debt, maybe it’s a good idea not to join them!

How Much Should You Save?

Most every book I’ve read advises that you start with 10% of what you make. Whatever you make, the moment you get it, you immediately pay yourself first with 10%; put it away in the bank and it’s yours.

If you can’t make 10%, start with a smaller amount first, but the sooner you start, the more you’ll begin to have.

I can personally guarantee that after you watch that amount in your bank account accumulate, you’ll won’t stop at just 10%. After a while, saving your money can become fun, even addictive!

How To Create Financial Wealth

While I’m not an expert on financial matters, here are a few bloggers who are:

Free Money Finance

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Adam Khoo’s Philosophies & Investing Insights

And I recommend my friend Adam Khoo’s Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires course; he made his first million by the tender age of 27 so I guess he knows what he’s talking about

Whoa! Nice! Woo hoo extra motivation to continue with the Million Dollar Experiment.

If this is the first time you’re visiting, I’m talking about the increase in the number of ads that are currently showing on-site. Making money from online advertising is something I’ve been wondering about since I started reading about pro-blogging and the amounts that the bigger professional blogger sites can pull in…how do they do it? Starting and running the Life Coaches Blog is part of the test and measure to find out how this model works.

When I first surfed Steve Pavlina’s blog, I thought that this guy sure has a lot of ads on his site! But when I read his announcement that he made over $4700 in income from it in a month, 98% of which from advertising I realized, of course! Why not? After all, he’s doing something extremely important, he’s asking for the sale and he’s making it easy for the client to buy (in this case making it easy for them to click).

I’ve thought about increasing the number of ads in the past but always stopped myself because I figured it might be seen as too money-grubbing from our readers, intrusive to the reading, and just plain fugly.

But doing the Million Dollar Experiment, and further provoked by Steve’s post Open Your Money Doors, made me think that if I want to make more money, then I need to ask for more money. If I want to make the sale, I have to ask for it. And the easier I could make it for people to buy, the easier it would be to sell.

And I wondered if the belief I had that if I were to add more ads then readers would be turned off even though we were still writing good content was a limiting belief that was holding me back. Who knows, maybe some of you will still stay with us even though we’ve gone ad-crazy!

But why ads? I wanted to create a space for us Life Coaches to discuss, share and develop the many tools and tricks we’ve learnt and created through our collective coaching experiences (over 1000 people together), and share them with people who would find them useful in improving their daily lives. And as you can read from our content, we haven’t held anything back.

At the same time, I also wanted to create extra value for the Life Coaches, like Steve mentions in his Overcoming Limiting Financial Beliefs post, I wanted to bring in value for the value we create. At this moment this site isn’t making a lot of money, which is a tad disappointing but, like we say, I take responsibility for my results.

And an action towards change is the addition of more ads. At the very least, my goal is to make enough money to cover the hosting costs so this site supports itself and we can continue to have a platform to share.

I’m curious, how do you feel about the ads? Now that I’ve gone on a limb to test and measure, are my limiting beliefs proven true or do you have a different take on it?