Brandon Hatton, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) Accelerator member in Miami, founded Conscious Wealth to provide wealth management services that help people live with purpose and create impact.
Brandon is on a quest to build a conscious wealth movement at scale, so he created Conscious Wealth Living to provide actionable tools for people to heal their relationship with money, facilitate healthy intergenerational dialogues about money, and overall help individuals and families find confidence in having enough money.
When we think of money, we think of all the things we can do with it. What is all too often overlooked is what we have lost in the pursuit of it. Nature dictates that destruction is always synonymous with creation. I argue something is always destroyed when wealth is created.
Individuals with financial assets have something that most people in the world don't have – money. The good news is that we can actually use that money to heal ourselves from the destruction that the acquisition of it created in the first place.
The healing begins with a mindset shift – from scarcity to abundance. At the root of a scarcity mindset is fear, which makes people constantly anxious about money even when they have more than enough.
They often feel utterly consumed by competition and comparison, and the constant feeling of needing more leaves them stuck in an endless cycle of guilt, desire, and shame.
In particular, entrepreneurs tend to live for the future; their deep sense of ambition has them always chasing the next accomplishment, even when they have achieved levels of success they once only dreamed of.
It is not uncommon for them to abide by the rule that "bigger is always better": bigger teams, bigger exits, and most importantly, bigger revenues. So entrepreneurs will continue to work harder and longer to reach those goals, but this hard work doesn't lead to what they really want to achieve: a life of security.
Your relationship with money – and therefore your relationship with your business – doesn't have to be based on scarcity. You can shift your mindset to one of abundance, meaning your decisions, or indecisions, are no longer coming from a place of fear.
To do so, you must first embrace a fact that can be difficult for many entrepreneurs to believe: There is an abundance of opportunities, resources, and wealth available to you right now. The tricky part is seeing yourself as worthy of that prosperity.
Being financially successful cannot make you emotionally or spiritually whole; that kind of happiness is only achieved when you truly understand your relationship with money and therefore, the world at large.
To that end, here are a few tips to help you change your relationship with money from a place of scarcity to that of abundance:
1. Examine your subconscious beliefs around money
What I like to call your "Money Memory" is shaped before you ever even hold money in your hands. These long-held, often limiting beliefs are influenced by the financial behaviors of parents or caregivers in early childhood.
So ask yourself a few questions: How do you spend money? How do you earn it, how do you save it, and how do you give it away?
Evaluating this highlight reel of your lifetime of experiences or interactions with money will reveal your Money Memory and allow you to confront and transform your negative beliefs.
2. Consider who you are without your money (and your business)
If you have plenty of money but find that you are using more energy to protect possessions instead of preserving your personal relationships, your money is likely getting in the way of what really matters.
Connection to others is necessary to discover who we are and who we could be – we never really understand ourselves in isolation. If you have lost sight of the abundance around you, then you can never be truly wealthy.
3. Figure out what is "enough"
Not in terms of your finances alone, but what is enough to make you feel truly fulfilled. It's easy to lose track of this when you fall into a materialistic competition with the people around you.
A huge part of financial planning is considering how much money you might need in retirement, yet you will never be able to narrow down that number until you figure out what it means to truly enjoy life, even when you are still heading your business.
So consider this: Do you have a number in your head that you need to accumulate before you feel safe? What is that number based on? How do you define what it means to be "wealthy"? Is that attainable?
Adopting a mindset of abundance not only frees you from the fear of scarcity but also allows you to see money as a tool for a greater impact. With this perspective, you are better able to align your financial decisions with your values and purpose.
Money becomes not the goal itself but a means to invest in your vision for your family, community, and even society at large. An abundance mindset is about making the world a better place; it is an avenue in which you can strengthen your commitment to living a more purposeful and intentional life.
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