Want to improve your health or personal finances?
Consider outside influences on health and wealth. In other words, messages received from others that have influenced your personal habits.
Think about your first memory of food. Was it a pleasant experience? What do you remember the most?
Now try to remember your first experience with money. Again, what do you remember and how does it make you feel?
Our emotions and childhood experiences can influence our health and personal financial behaviors all through our lives. We develop beliefs about health, eating, physical activity, and handling money from our family and our surrounding culture. Influences include friends and neighbors, advertising slogans, and religion.
We might eat the same foods or manage money like our parents did or we may decide to do the exact opposite, such as not smoking in a family of smokers. Either way, your parents or others have had an influence on how you think and act.
These childhood messages having staying power. This is because people tend to repeat them without thinking them through.
Negative messages can hinder us from improving our health and wealth. Positive messages can motivate us to continue what we are doing or make additional changes. Once you understand the origins of your outside influences about health and money, it is often easier to make behavior changes.
People can change how they think and what they do if they realize that there is a better way to live their life. Try turning outside negative messages into more positive health and financial messages.
For example, a negative health message might be “I can’t control my bad family health history.” So how do you turn this negative health message into a positive one? Through positive reframing.
Here’s an example: “I can improve my health by eating well, being active, and seeing my doctor regularly.”
Notice the difference between the two messages. The positive health message puts you in charge of your own destiny.
A negative personal finance message might be “money is the root of all evil.” Again, you can turn this negative financial message into a positive one through positive reframing. For example, “Money is a resource for health and wealth and can be used to do good things for my family and others.”
Ready to get started on the path to good health and increased wealth? Consider outside influences on health and wealth and reframe negative messages into positive ones, when necessary.
