The way you think about money can have a huge impact on your ability to generate wealth. That is why having the right approach is the first thing on your checklist. Here are five typical signs which indicate whether someone has a poverty mindset or not.
As is the case with most psychological problems, different people may have different mental issues. But, If any one of the following descriptions matches your own, you have the poverty mentality, or you’re at great risk of developing it.
1. You Lack Ambition
People who fail to achieve a fulfilling life have very few dreams and goals.
So if you:
- Don’t plan for a better and prosperous future
- Find it difficult to picture yourself in a better life
- Feel contented with whatever life throws at you
- And often nurture your lack of urgency towards personal development
Then you may very well have a poverty mentality.
The reasons for lacking ambition may be of many kinds like:
- Low self-esteem
- Bitter childhood experience
But the result may be the same: you end up capping your potential, which results in replicating your previous negative patterns.
2. You are Pessimistic and self-pitying.
Frankly, we all find it very difficult to cope with past life failures and shortcomings that everyone carries. It is perfectly normal to feel sad, stressed, or angry at some point in time.
All these emotions can help you to motivate for:
- Learning from your mistakes
- Getting back up
- And doing things in a better way to achieve better results
As Winston Churchill has rightly said:
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
A typical attribute of poverty mentality is feeling helpless and self-Pity. You may find yourself feeling “Why Me” very often, viewing yourself as a victim who has no power over circumstances. Moreover, you’re likely to be more pessimistic, expecting negative outcomes from every venture.
3. You are a deeply Jealous Person.
When experts compare the rich with the poverty mentality, they notice a major differentiating factor between the two which is Jealousy.
People having a poverty mentality are commonly found to be jealous of successful people instead of being inspired. They may continuously compare themselves to others with the desire to gain what they have, believing that they don’t deserve it.
If you have a rooted poverty mindset, you may find a reason to be jealous of everyone you meet. This may eventually result in you investing more of your efforts and energies towards the negative emotion of jealousy instead of personal development.
Since we are all humans and we all feel jealous at times. But a person fails to appreciate the abundance in life if jealousy drives his emotional life.
4. You Make Your Decisions based on Fear.
Fear drives the mindset of a person who has a poverty mentality. So, even if you’re doing a mundane task, you feel like you’re in a difficult or troubling situation in which your options and ability to act are very limited. This means that you focus more on trying not to fail instead of concentrating on the fruits of success.
Moreover, it is medically proved that a fearful mind puts extra strain on the body causing it to generate more stress hormones. Meaning, you become prone to falling into a constant depression cycle and hardly even sparing a positive thought for yourself.
5. You Focus on what you don’t have instead of What you Do Have.
You naturally focus on the things you don’t have while trying to break the cycle of poverty mentality. This is because of the lack of those things you are looking for those things.
But, this way of thinking itself is a characteristic of a poverty mentality. Most of the time, it is also coupled with the jealousy factor. Because when you think of what you lack, the very next thing that comes into your mind is the people who have it all. However, this way of thinking introduces more of the negativity you are trying to get rid of.
Related Article:
- Breaking the Poverty Cycle in 8 Steps
- What is Poverty Mindset? and How do People Acquire it?
- Important Lessons from the Book, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- How to get Financial Freedom: Self-Made Millionaires Approach towards Saving Money
- Financial Freedom In 7 Steps: My Formula For Happiness And Wealth