5 Mental Barriers to our Financial Success.

I wrote a piece for BlackWallet titled “The Importance of Financial Literacy in our Community and 5 Mental Barriers to our Success”. For the full write up click here.

The following are the 5 mental barriers I discuss in the longform write up. Feel free to share and comment additional barriers you believe exist.

1. Generational Curses — It’s a term we toss around quite a lot lately but what does it mean? I believe generational curses refer to settling for behaviors and mentalities unconsciously passed down from generation to generation. These behaviors and beliefs may apply to anything from relationships to education but act as a barrier most notably in the realm of personal finance.
2. The Fear of success — It’s easier to retract into what we know than to venture into the responsibilities of the unknown. We won’t put ourselves into situations where we can win simply because we’re afraid of losing. Learning to persist in spite of fear is crucial to our success as there will be many times we are told no, knocked down or experience failure on our journey to attaining it.
3. Self-fulfilling Prophecies — There are two kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies. One where you do what others expect of you and one where you do what you expect of yourself. With media depictions of the black community being less than positive, the bar is set pretty low around what is expected of your success. Meeting that bar and stopping there maintains the illusion that you have accomplished something while discouraging you from pursuing much more simply because in your eyes and in the eyes of others you “made it”.
4. The Poverty Mindset — This is a phrase tossed around a lot in the financial communities and speaks to this idea of scarcity or that there will never be enough. Leveraging the fear that resources (like money) can or will run out is a brilliant sales and marketing tactic that encourages people to go out and buy more of the things they don’t need for fear of missing out or going without. It signals that if I have it you cannot, discouraging us from working collaboratively and encouraging unhealthy competition and envy between us. Understanding that currency flows (like a current) and needs to continue flowing is a helpful analogy in understanding how money works.
5. A limiting Mindset — Speaks to mental barriers and restrictions to what you can personally achieve. I believe wholeheartedly that ALL things are possible and that anything I want I can attain. Imagine instilling that confidence and belief into all of the children of our community around making and controlling our money. Imagine those children disregarding what is portrayed in the media, working through fear, breaking generational curses, and rejecting the poverty mindset simply because they believe they can achieve anything and everything.