You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth

by Jen Sincero

Time wasted rationalizing the mediocre could be time spent creating the magnificent.

I see it over and over, the kicking and screaming about how, at the end of the day, what’s most important is spending time with those you love, gazing at sunsets, rejoicing in the laughter of frolicking children, helping old ladies cross the street, and other things money can’t buy, and I won’t argue, but I will ask this: Why the hell does this come up when we discuss the making of money? When did it become an either/or situation? If you partake in the pursuit of wealth, it’s not like you shall never again attend a family barbecue, hug a puppy, or tiptoe through the tulips. In fact, if you do it correctly, you’ll be able to afford to spend even more time on such merriments. And do it in style! Not to mention pay for the gas to put in your car to get to the family barbecue, buy the hot dogs, show up wearing clothes, and marvel at Uncle Carl’s famous card tricks unfettered by thoughts of your crushing debt or how you’re going to hit him up for a loan to cover your rent this month as soon as he’s had a few beers.

Everybody arrives on this planet with unique desires, gifts, and talents, and as you journey through life, your job is to discover what yours are, to nurture them and to bloom into the most authentic, gleeful, and badassiest version of yourself. In order to do this, as a human being in modern society on Planet Earth, you must be rich. And let me clarify what I mean by rich lest you think I’m saying your life is worthless unless it involves a mansion and a yacht: RICH: Able to afford all the things and experiences required to fully experience your most authentic life.

A healthy desire for wealth is not greed, it’s a desire for life.

Staying broke because you fear it’s gross to be rich or that you don’t deserve money or that you getting rich somehow prohibits someone else from getting rich too is all rooted in lack. Lack is the state of being you’re in when you believe you’re in need of, when you believe that what you desire doesn’t exist, when your outlook on life is a glass with a hole in the bottom as opposed to a glass half full. A lack mindset believes that there’s not enough to go around, that you’re not good enough or worthy enough to flourish, that the money you spend may never make its way back to you, etc. Pigging out on money and things and experiences is also based in fear and lack—fear of never having enough, fear of not being secure, fear of being unlovable, trying to fill a bottomless hole in your heart. Nothing in excess is healthy: Gluttony is just as devastating as is anorexia. You denying yourself your heart’s desires is not noble, it’s a waste of some damn good desires. And it denies the world our only opportunity to bask in more of you.

One of the best things you can do is get rich. Because of the way our world is structured, money and power are intertwined, so if you want to help make a positive change, money is one of the most effective tools you can use to do it. Yes, you can donate your time, organize, protest, lobby, alert the masses, post incensed rants on Facebook, but you will be much more effective if you have the energy, options, and freedom that come with not being in financial struggle, not to mention the resources to spend however you see fit. Instead of complaining and freaking out about the power-mongering, greed-obsessed fatheads who are perpetrating such harm on the planet, and handing them even more power by staying broke because you don’t want to be like them, why not focus yourself on getting rich instead so you can make a big difference? You can do some really cool stuff with money; don’t let the jerks who give it a bad name ruin it for you.

You cannot give what you do not have, so if you want to help others you have to take care of yourself first.

This is why they always tell you on airplanes that you have to put your oxygen mask on first before you help someone else with theirs. They have to remind us of this because it’s counterintuitive—unless you are a sociopath, it’s your nature to help. Few things light up the human heart like helping/bringing joy to others. Trust in the fact that when you’re...

I’ma go ahead and say it out loud (join me, won’t you?): I love money. There’s no need for explanations or apologies. I also love pizza and I can say that without tacking on a bunch of disclaimers: I love pizza, but, you know, it’s not everything. Spending time with people you love and being of service are important too. Let’s take back the word “money” and decriminalize it, because until you do, you aren’t going to be terribly motivated to let yourself make much.

Start paying attention to any disparaging comments that may fly out of your mouth, or your mind, when it comes to rich folk, because if you plan on becoming one of them it’s gonna be a whole lot easier if you actually approve of who you’re becoming.

Our “realities” are make-believe—whatever we make ourselves believe, we experience.

Meanwhile, beneath the surface, if you believe that struggling is more noble than succeeding because that’s what your parents taught you, and that everyone who loves you as you used to be will judge and abandon you when you’re rich, your subconscious self might attempt to “protect” you by suddenly getting the flu, by picking fights with people who can help you, by inspiring you to procrastinate, make terrible investments, drink your face off the night before (or morning of) an important meeting, etc.

The walls of your comfort zone are lovingly decorated with your lifelong collection of favorite excuses.

When you don’t investigate what’s going on with your words, thoughts, and beliefs, you risk stumbling through life on autopilot. You may, for example, automatically assume that your beliefs are founded in your own truths rather than perhaps the truths of your parents and/or the people around you. Or that your words accurately express your beliefs, instead of being mindless regurgitations of stuff you’ve heard before or proof that you have a lousy handle on vocabulary.

Yes, our world is full of unspeakable horrors and injustices born out of the things people do for money, but the wrongdoing is caused by the perpetrators, not the money. It’s like deciding cars are intrinsically evil because people turn into obscenity-hurling jackasses behind the wheel or that vegetable peelers are hateful just because you sliced your finger open with one once. Money, cars, and vegetable peelers are also conduits for great joy, tasty adventures, and they all make excellent wedding gifts.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

It’s all about the energy of exchange. I learned so much about this back in the day when I’d give my pals the friend discount/freebie for my coaching services. Devaluing my work gave them an easy excuse to devalue their efforts: They had no incentive to rise to the occasion and really push themselves because they literally weren’t invested. I ended up doing all of us a disservice by lowering the frequency around the money instead of demanding we all put on our big people pants and pony up. These “favors” were a big fat waste of time for everyone involved and could have been avoided if I hadn’t come from a place of feeling weird and shamey about charging my friends.

Additionally, two words we need to be particularly stealth about sniffing out are the words “I know.”* Nothing slams the door on further investigation and radical action faster than Yeah, I know it’s important to be aware of my thoughts. No need to explain—next topic! They’re very sneaky words because we tend to think we’re rather impressive for knowing things, when in reality, no matter how much we “know,” there are always more sides to the story, giant leaps of faith, and an infinite number of questions that could massively expand our awareness. Especially in the realm of self-helpery, where we often need to hear things over and over and over before they click, it’s critical to stay wide-eyed and wondering.

When you focus on your past, you are blind to your present.

We are feeling creatures, we are meant to experience, not deny, our emotions. Ergo, it’s not about being all yippy skippy every moment of every day and never ever feeling sad or angry or freaked out. Expecting yourself to feel only positive emotions is not only impossible, but will most likely make you feel like a failure instead of like a normal human. Feel what you feel, have a temper tantrum, shake your fist in the air and curse thy enemy’s name, lie facedown in your driveway and weep, let your emotions live large and then . . . make the decision to move on. It’s when we wallow in our negative emotions that we let them hold us back. Experiencing them, however, is healthy and critical to releasing them.

To my great horror, I also became one of those unforgivably cheesy salespeople hocking their stuff online. I knew that supersmart online marketers had tested the methods I was using over and over, and that I was making money right away because I was following their wise lead but . . . why did it have to involve, among many other horrifying things, posting on the World Wide Web for all to see, a sales banner with a big picture of me on it, looking professional and oh so together in my business casuals? I begged my coach to tell me there was another way to do things, and she just looked at me and asked, “Do you want to be broke and cool or rich and cheesy?”

If, instead of taking a leap of faith, I’d focused on my fear of wasting my money, of looking like a boob, of not yet seeing how those meetings would lead to me getting rich, I very possibly would be writing a book on Ten Easy Tips for Declaring Bankruptcy instead of a book on how to get rich.

Faith requires patience. All seeds have a gestation period and it’s up to the Universe, not us, how long that period is. Getting all uptight and freaked out doesn’t make it go any faster.

I have a million e-mails to answer and I have to pick up the kids and make dinner and I have to apply for a loan for my new business—I am never going to get it all done! becomes, post investigation: The e-mails will take forty-five minutes to answer because there are actually twelve of them, not a million, dinner takes thirty minutes to throw together, I can get my neighbor to pick up the kids, and I’ll have plenty of time to fill out my loan application. Oh. Certainly there are some times when we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, but I promise you, the majority of your overwhelm can be set at ease by getting some clarity.

Being around confident, wealth-positive people whom you respect gives you permission to believe there is abundance available to you too. No matter how impossible a situation may seem, a superconfident person who believes in something without a doubt is a force of nature that can inspire you to reach great heights.

In direct sales/networking marketing, it is very easy to believe in a hoarder mentality—meaning, “I better hoard my knowledge/information/contacts, because if I share it, someone will compete against me.” I teach abundance mentality. This is 100 percent about believing that there is enough business for all, and that the Universe will reward you for putting good out there.

Make two new high-vibe friends. Get clear on the specifics of what they’re like and how they make you feel and write these things down. Then, using the suggestions in this chapter, make a conscious effort to find high-frequency, wealth-conscious people to surround yourself with. Have faith and gratitude that they exist, do everything you can think of to find them, and know that they are out there looking for you too. Start a mastermind group with one or two people. Meet over the phone once a week, give each person a specific amount of time to brainstorm and focus on their goals for getting rich (fifteen or thirty minutes usually) before moving on to the other person. Do this only with high-vibe, ass-kicking people!

We’re taught that if we keep working harder, somehow the money will come. If this was true, all rich people would be bloodshot and gasping for air instead of sailing around on yachts. When we focus on the money instead of working ourselves to death, and get mighty clear about how much we desire to make and what we can do differently in order to make it happen, we open the door to new freedoms.

Get good at sales. Sorry, but if you’re in business, you’re in the business of sales, cuz without sales, you ain’t got no business. Take courses, discover the parts about sales that you’re good at (it goes deeper than you think), practice, get good at the skill sets, and stop saying how much you love everything about your business except the sales part.

Learn all about your industry and find out if people are making more money doing what you do somewhere else. If so, do all the things listed in number 5 below and get yourself a job at another company that pays better.

Seize the stepping-stones. If the job you’re looking for is taking awhile to find you, take the job that leads you closer. It may not be totally perfect, but if it gets you into the world you want to be in—e.g., being the assistant to an agent if you want to be an agent, working in an ad agency as a secretary if you want to be a copywriter, working at a restaurant in the fashion district of your city if you want to get into fashion, anything that will put you in contact with the people you want to meet and/or the skill set you need to learn—jump on it. Learn everything you can, meet as many people as you can meet, keep your eye on the prize, and do your best.

Hem not, haw not. Take action on your desires right now. You must head down your path to riches with a sense of urgency or else you’ll fall prey to distractions, laziness, limiting beliefs, procrastination, binge watching TV shows. Work with diligent focus and grateful expectation, do all you can every day to the best of your ability, remember that the sooner you achieve your financial goals, the longer you get to spend on Earth basking in your riches.

Don’t wait until you’re confident—that’s like waiting until you lose the extra five pounds before you’ll let yourself go on vacation—just do it. The more you push yourself to do the things you’re scared to do, the stronger your confidence muscle will become.

When you have a crappy attitude, it’s usually because you want attention, to be heard, for other people to consider your needs first and foremost: I was wronged! That guy cut me off! This is hard! It’s unfair! Feel sorry for me! Feel my pain! When you choose freedom and happiness over wanting to be right or to be seen, you win. Get out of victim mode, remember everyone is just as obsessed with themselves and their own feelings as you are with yours, and stop taking everything personally.

We tend to hold on to resentment because we feel like the nitwit who wronged us doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Meanwhile, the only person being punished by your resentment is you. Forgiveness is about you deserving peace, not necessarily about others deserving your forgiveness. You are allowing nasty thoughts of nasty things to take up precious space in your mind. If you love yourself, you’ll end your own torture and let it go.

Go out of your way every day to do at least three nice things for people. Also, when you’re about to be not nice, breathe, pause, and make a different choice.

Talk about ideas, not other people

Identify with the new habit. I’m a successful person who gets stuff done, not someone who screws around on Facebook.