This Week’s Power Topic – How to Raise Children To Be Rich – Teams? Coworkers?

I was just reading over this wikiHow article on how to raise children to be rich, which is pretty neat because it stirs up some some great personal questions about how you were raised as well as your own personal beliefs. The interesting thing though, is that it is very similar to motivating and inspiring teams and coworkers. It’s what psychologists call “social proof”. When we don’t know how to act in a certain situation, or don’t know what to believe when it comes to a huge topic like money, we look too others to model and imitate. Looking at my own beliefs about money I can almost hear the voice of my parents. saying it, as that old tape plays in my mind. If I had a choice is that what I would choose? Definitely not!

But true to Ivan Pavlov, and His dog (below) it’s usually a raction rather than critical thinking. That is…unless you consciously decide Before hand what things mean to you and then condition that with small repetitive steps. Who is deciding how you deal with money, parents, advisers, neighbor? What is your modus operandi, save, spend, hoard, invest, donate? Where does that come from?

Most imporantly, everything you do communicates something; to your children, to the people that work with/for you, to the people that do business with you. Even though it can sometimes be hard to discuss, the message usually still comes across. I’ve heard people talk about how money doesn’t really matter (even in commercial real estate), but the truth is that money ALWAYS matters. Everybody is happy when times are good, but how do you react when things nose dive, or even plateau and become stagnate? How do you treat the situation & people, are you trusting that it’s going to work out, that everything happens for a reason, that “within difficulty lies opportunity”, that you trust in yourself or your team or your business to find the problem and work with it? OR do you deny it, get defensive/attacking, controlling, stingy? Everyone has had experience with both, on the giving and the receiving sides.

Bottom line is that confidence and trust have to go together. Confidence comes from memories of being able to take action in the past to create your desires (money, relationships, sport performance, etc). These memories are called references which essentially give you the fuel to keep the fire burning. But if you think about it, you also have to have trust or rather faith. That you can continue to produce good results in the future. It’s not hard to see that

Success always has to come from the inside out. It has to start on the inside. You can’t consistently dupe people into taking your path if you don’t follow your own path. Which begs to show that if the people you influence don’t believe they can create wealth, then it’s a good indication that you might not either.

If you want to inspire others, if you want to be an authentic leader, whether it’s your children, coworkers, team or customers (to believe in your brand); you have to be AT LEAST as confident, trusting, and inspired about creating that mind set yourself first. After all you can’t give away what you don’t have.

So this week I challenge you to notice your own habits and feelings when it comes to money, especially with it being Holiday season! I’m going to write about some examples that I notice. Feel free to email me with some of your own or just post it here =).