Affirmations can play an important role in attracting more wealth and abundance IF they're used correctly! Unfortunately, in many cases, affirmations don't really work - and the reason has to do with the level of faith we put into them.

Do you really believe your affirmations? That's the question you really need to answer.

There are several ways to test your level of belief around your affirmations. One exercise you can try is to rate yourself out of 10 on a series of affirmations to see whether you actually believe them. The process for doing this would be:

1. Say the affirmation out loud
2. Score yourself out of ten in terms of how true or achievable the affirmation feels (note: this is a believability score rather than a measure of how much you want the outcome).

For each affirmation, a low score would indicate that you carry some resistance towards achieving your own goals. This may also lead you to make incorrect assumptions - for example, that you aren’t meant...

Have you ever thought about how your early money memories might impact your life? I'm specifically referring to an early interaction with money that left a big impression on you. If you're not sure what I mean or why it matters, what I'm describing here is a process where the interactions you have with money when you're really young, form part of what's called your earliest money paradigm.  

This paradigm shapes everything about your interaction with the world around money and these ideas get solidified when we're really young. So I'd like you to try and go back, and see if you can remember your earliest interaction with money because these events can have a huge impact on your life.  When these money interactions go unchallenged, especially if you've had a negative interaction with money,  then they start to form part of your money paradigm. This means you carry beliefs about money that show up in your money patterns as you're growing up and...

In this article, I'm going to share 10 powerful affirmations that you can use to attract more wealth and abundance.

I will call out from the outset that this isn't your typical feel-good affirmations post. I'm actually going to give you these affirmations, but with a very specific purpose and it's probably not what you think.

So first up, I thought I would actually explain what an affirmation is because not everyone might be familiar with the term. So, let's start with the official definition of an affirmation from the dictionary: an affirmation is to affirm that something is true.

Now there's a big problem here. Straight away, alarm bells went off and I just remembered my English teacher saying, "You can't use the word you're trying to define in the definition." So, that kind of breaks that rule and is not overly helpful if you don't know what an affirmation is.

So another way I can explain what an affirmation is, is that it's like stating a declaration - and stating that you...

Toxic money is when money is owed to you in some shape or form. In some cases, you feel like you were cheated out of the money, or it is something that you rely on but you have to pay a price for receiving that type of money. So even when you finally get the money it usually feels like there's some kind of a battle around it as well, because it hasn't been received in a good way, or in some cases you don't receive it at all. Toxic money doesn't apply to everyone, however, if you do feel this concept applies to you, pay close attention because it can hold you back in all the other types of relationships with money.

Here are some patterns of toxic money :  

• Being Owed Money
  This could apply to a lot of people for example when someone lends money to a friend or a family member. Being owed money is not the problem, but the emotions that come around it, are. Suppose that someone owes you something and they haven't paid it back after a long time, every time you see them you're...

Expenses, which is the fifth type of money, is something to be mindful of if you want to have a great relationship with money and a great money mindset.

Generally, there are two broad types of expenses. Necessities, i.e. your bills, housing, utilities, clothes, food, etc.  the essentials in life.

The other kind of expenses are considered luxuries; even though they may not include luxury brands. This segment comprises anything beyond necessities. Your mobile phone, designer clothing, holidays, are all good examples since you don’t need these to survive.

On a social level, we can say that what we spend on is a reflection of how we want to fit into society. It becomes a status symbol.

What's interesting about expenses is that they do tend to go up as your income goes up. Have you noticed this for yourself?  

For a lot of people, it often means moving into a better house, getting a better car, buying nicer clothes or going on holidays if you didn't do that before.

...

Do you deliberately set any income goals for yourself? Maybe for the year? Is there a specific amount of money that you're going after whether that's in your career or in your business?

When I talk to people about income goals, usually I find that there are two major types of challenges when it comes to setting effective income goals.

The first one is that some people don't actually set any goals at all. When you don't set a goal, you end up having a default goal which is usually somebody else's goal. A good example of this is corporate jobs.  A lot of people say “I just ended up here”, or “I landed in this job”, and often that's why. It's because of the absence of having clear goals, specifically an income goal.

By not setting a clear goal, you are actually imposing a ceiling on your income and earning capability.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Do you aspire to be the head of your department? It's not that if you're an accountant you need to...

This article is part of the Money Mindset series where I've been talking about your relationship with money, and in particular around the six types of money.

So far we've covered savings, debt, and today we're going to talk about income.

When it comes to income, I like to dive right in because this one is best tackled on a practical level.

Take a few seconds to think about your income. How much do you earn? When do you get paid? Is it monthly? Or every other week?

We typically refer to income from a job, but it can also be from your business.

What I want you to do is to think about your income, it doesn't have to be exact, just something close. Visualise that number. Picture when that money comes in, when it hits your bank account, try to see that figure.

What I want you to take note of is whether any feelings are coming up around the visualisation of that amount of money.

The reason I'm asking you to do that is when it comes to income, particularly if it is a salary...

We’re continuing with our Types of Money series, and today is all about debt.

If you missed the last post about savings, you can read all about it here.

Why is debt such an important component of your relationship with money? 

Talking about debt is actually one of my favourite topics because I love helping people break free from the crippling feeling of being in debt.

If you do have some debt, touching on this topic might make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. If it does, it just means it's triggering something within you.

Debt can be this deep dark secret you feel you've got to keep from the world. Like a dark cloud that hangs over you all the time and no matter what you do, you are constantly reminded it’s there.

The silver lining here is that if you can clearly identify a problem, name it, and talk about it in a healthy way, then you're really on the right track to being able to solve it.

Bad Debt Vs Good Debt

You might have come across terms...

Savings is an important aspect of your relationship with money. You may earn a lot of money, but if you don't have a strong money mindset, you may not actually save any of it. You may spend everything that you earn and potentially even have debt around that, too. For that reason, saving is a good indication of the strength of your relationship with money.

I want you to keep in mind that we all have what's called a mind-body connection around savings. What this means is that you currently have certain beliefs around savings and you also have certain feelings and emotions about savings.

A good way to find out what those feelings and beliefs are is by answering a few quick questions: 

1.  How much do you have currently in savings?
   Make a mental note of that.
   
   
2. How much would you like to have in savings?
   And particularly note if there's a gap between what you have and what you'd like to have.
   
   
3. The third part is, based on where you are right now, so you know, your current level...

One of the questions I get a lot from people as a coach is around whether or not people have a good money mindset. Many people think that if they can resonate with concepts like “abundance” then it means they have a good money mindset. And while abundance is a great thing to focus on, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a great mindset around money.

Whenever I'm talking about money, I really like to get into the specifics. When I’m coaching my clients, we don't focus on concepts like abundance. Instead, we get down to the nitty-gritty of it and actually talk about the different types of money.

Today want to give you a quick intro into six types of money that I actually focus on.

Later this week I will go into each of these types of money in more detail.

The first type of money is savings. Can you save money? Have you ever been able to save money? And how do you feel when you think about saving money?

The idea of savings might make you feel...