Why People Get Stuck Financially

In the last Prosperity Quick Tip, I mentioned the Identity Factor, which I believe is the main reason that most people find it difficult to significantly alter their financial position. And those who do move up the financial ladder often find themselves just as uncomfortable emotionally in their new positions as they were before.

Making significant life changes can be a triple threat:

• A threat to your personal identity (not a "treat" as I mistakenly wrote last issue)
• A threat to your position in your peer group
• A threat to your position in your family of origin.

Making major changes will stimulate new responses from the world around you. You know how to respond the what you usually create. You have to learn how to respond as conditions change.

For example, when I moved to Santa Fe, I had $200, a computer, and a few cartons of belongings. I fit right in with the locals here who struggle financially. As I moved up, people treated me differently. In order to feel like I was part of the group, I had to find new points of commonality so I could feel connected. Not only did my sense of myself change–and that was sometimes confusing–my position in my peer group also changed.

And years before as I worked to eliminate the rescue dramas I often went through with my family, I had to find new ways of interacting with them on a meaningful level. And they weren’t always ready to change along with me.

So in order to effectively institute long-range changes, you have to be willing to work through the resistance to change that is the natural result of the triple threat. It’s so much easier to go back to being who you were than to move forward into who you are becoming.

As you alter your financial position, your peer group WILL change, and so will many of your relationships, whether you want them to or not.

Are you ready for that? You can get ready by starting to reach out now to new people and participating in new activities. Ask yourself how your life will be different when your financial position changes. Institute some of those changes now.

This Identity Factor piece is probably the deepest and most important one you’ll deal with as you work to build a more prosperous identity.

For more information:
The audio: Creating a New Financial Identity

Exercises in Build Your Money Muscles all have references to the Identity Factor and how to overcome its limiting effects.