What are the hidden costs of your Money Ghosts?

Your deeply rooted, unconscious beliefs about money are feeding you a narrative about yourself that limits your impact.

But if you are a leader, your job is to make an impact––on your team, organization, clients, and community.

That's why I decided, a few weeks ago, to focus on this concept of Money Ghosts to continue to support leaders, particularly creative ones, in business.

Money Ghosts, an origin story

Your beliefs and ideas about money were formed between the ages of 3 and 7, a Cambridge University research study found out.

Now, picture the scene: there goes little you, with your adult of choice, to the supermarket. All those beautiful boxes, so many colors, so much promise of paradise.

That thing (a toy, a treat, a coloring book) screams at you from the shelf. You have to have it. You need to have it. You feel empty without it. You envision how happy you'll be once you have it. You know it in your bones: you need it, and you need it now.

So, you ask your caregiver, "please, please, please?"

And they say, "no!" And they say it with a tone, or adding a back-handed comment because it's hard for them to say a neutral "no."

But you don't know anything about that. The only thing you know is that you can't have that thing that you know would make you happy. And you're so unhappy right now. And it's your caregiver who's denying you your happiness. And because you trust your caregiver, you know they must have a good reason.

They say it's because "money doesn't grow on trees," or they complain that you're "always asking!" Or, as my mother used to say, "parece que te ha hecho la boca un fraile" [Spanish for 'it looks like a monk made your mouth'].

What your Money Ghosts taught you

Those responses, in your young, impressionable brain, weren't about them or their financial situation–you didn't even know what a financial situation was. They were information about you.

You didn't think, "This adult is educating me on how to be a conscious spender because they want me to use money responsibly when I grow up."

You thought things like, "One more time I forgot that money doesn't grow on trees–how can I be so stupid?" Or "I'm bad because I'm always asking, which visibly causes so much pain in my [adult in charge]." Or, "if she says it like that, monks must be very annoying, and now I'm being like a monk, so I'm annoying."

Your brain gave you those thoughts to help you survive your childhood so that you could become an adult and have your own children. Because its only concern was, "if your caregiver rejects you because you're annoying, you'll die." So you learned to stay small and do things that the adults around you approved of.

Those learned patterns of self-limiting behavior are what I call "money ghosts."

There are 12 of them, and I'll be bringing them all up in upcoming articles.

What are your Money Ghosts?

For now, I want to leave you with a few questions.

Thinking about your own money ghosts today, what do you think they're costing you?

In what ways do you think they're limiting your ability to lead?

How are they curtailing your visibility and ability to have an impact?

How do you feel they're preventing you from being your full, rich, and impactful self?

I help creative leaders to live full lives by helping them bust the money ghosts that are holding them back.