The Identity Factor

Posted On: 2005-10-04
Length: 14:39

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Hi this is Joan and this is episode 3 of The Prosperity Show. And it's really good to be here today. Our main site is prosperityplace.com where you can find lots of information about how to improve your relationship with money and yourself. In the first two shows we covered two of the main theories that we often promote at prosperityplace.com. And today we're going to do a third one, and with the completion of this, then we can really move forward and start making some really positive and pro-active suggestions for you to do, so you can actually make changes in your financial position. In the first and second episodes we talked about what money is and we looked at how it's really about relationships. How you deal with yourself and the world around you. In the second one we talked about how you create your financial situation with your thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors. And in today's I'd look at something I call the identity factor, which is the thing that I think keeps people from moving forward. A lot of you who are listening to this today have probably been on some level of the path of self improvement for some time. Or even if you've just been flirting with it, you've tried to make changes. You may have tried to lose weight, stop smoking, any one of a number of things, and you move forward just a little bit, and then you start, what people call sabotaging yourself and not doing anything that you know you ought to be doing, and you kind of stay stuck where you are. I often wonder why this happens. Why, when people really want to change their lives and opportunities for doing that come along, why they resist the change. And so over the years I've come to believe that we have this thing that I call the identity factor, which is a mechanism inside that kind of kicks in when you start making significant change. Because who you are, as we said before, is a habit. And it's who you are, who you perceive yourself to be, how you perceive your place in the world. And when you start making changes, that identity, that place in the world, who you are, is actually threatened. And to make matters worse, as you start changing, it begins to change your position in your peer group and your family of origin. One of the reasons that people are afraid to change financially is because when they do, it really does affect their relationship with their peers. You probably know that you have in your peer group, people you hang out with, they're either the same as you financially, or your in a higher bracket than they are, or a lower bracket, but there's a position you have in your peer group...