“When I win the lottery, I’m going to…………” 

One of my clients today related a dream about winning the lottery and imagined what she would do if money were no issue in her life. It started me thinking about money and how it preoccupies so many of us so much of the time — myself included. And yet I have seen clients with what I consider true abundance feel like they don’t have enough, and people with not much consider themselves truly rich. Ironically, this latter group often attracts exactly what they need or want in their lives, with money having very little to do with it. I find this to be a very interesting phenomenon.

As I delved into the subject further, I learned from a fellow coach who advises clients on creating prosperity that we tend to go through our lives with childlike assignments to money. She explained that while most of our childhood impressions and questions get clarified by teachers, parents, etc. as we grow older, money and money matters rarely get such rational clarification. Instead (she pointed out), money is often imbued with emotional themes of deprivation, envy, and longing, e.g., “we can’t get that — it’s too expensive”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “they’re rich — they don’t have a care”, “maybe when our ship comes in…”, etc. So I began to see how we might have skewed impressions about money and whether we have enough or not.

I looked at my own childhood. My parents had very different thoughts about money and fought about it all the time. From my childhood vantage point, I came to believe that money causes fights and disharmony in families and for many years I did everything I could to avoid the subject of money, such as not keeping track of it or spending it the moment I earned it. I seemed to want to get it away from me because (I imagined) maybe if it was away from me it would not wreak havoc on the harmony I craved. The irony is that it actually did the opposite. I lived for too many years having it drain me of precious energy. I would worry about how to get more, whether I could pay my bills this month, and why I was always looking at an empty bank account. Somehow it was comfortable to have my husband be the one in charge of “money” (thus removing the stress), but there was conflict and it ultimately became clear to me what my belief was and that I could do something about it.

How was money talked about in your home growing up? Was it talked about at all? What meaning do you assign to money? For instance, do you believe there will never be enough, always just enough, or plenty? The prosperity coach recommends that her clients examine what messages they heard as children and consider saying different things about it. Here’s one example: I have a business owner client who for a decade made the same amount every year. Because she truly believed she would only earn “enough”, that’s all she did earn. Once she became aware of her limiting belief, she changed it and doubled her annual income in one year.

So lots of money may be out there for us all — not necessarily in the form of winning lottery tickets, but in becoming conscious of what you say and believe about it. Two excellent books on the subject are “The Energy of Money” by Maria Nemeth and “Transforming Your Relationship with Money” by Joe Dominguez.

Persephone Zill is a Business and Life Strategy Coach. She works with clients who seek transformational change in their careers and in their lives. Her background includes guiding several hundred women entrepreneurs to turn their dreams into functioning businesses at the American Woman’s Economic Development Corporation (AWED) in New York City and she is the Co-Leader of the Westchester/Rockland County Chapter of the International Coach Federation (ICF).