If I say, “Don’t think about a purple elephant,” what do you immediately think about? Well, the same thing goes for your financial situation. If you are constantly brooding over why you don’t have the level of money you want, then that becomes your entire focus. You dwell on, you nurse and rehearse your financial difficulties. We all have that tendency.

But take careful note: That’s the path to blocking what we really want. And we are all guilty of that to some degree. Read below what Kris Hallbom and Armand D’Alo, financial consultants and NLP practitioners, write on their blog,

www.nlpco.com/library/personal-growth/money-finance/#ixzz4ck6AxvmE:

“Instead of focusing on what is possible, many people spend a lot of time thinking about what they don’t have. An interesting pattern develops in which they become angry or resentful over their situation, which creates more limitations and barriers in their lives. It’s so much easier to get ahead in life when you’re coming from a peaceful state of mind, versus an angry or resentful frame of mind. The first step in helping a person is to explore the nature of their issue.”

NLP or neurolinguistic progamming is the study of getting results through understanding how your internal mind works. And it is also the study of getting results. And if you are constantly thinking about the fact that you don’t have money, you are not getting results.

So it’s time to try another approach.

Think about something that you want, and all of the possibilities that you have to achieve it.

Now if you say something like, “I want more money” or “I want to be rich”, that is a little too vague. If you narrow it down to, say, a 50 per cent pay increase in order to speed up your savings towards a down payment on a house, then you are planting the seed in your mind.

So then, with a firm goal in mind, you can say, “What is possible?” Can you see how your mind starts to scan for specific possibilities for the (a) 50 per cent pay increase and (b) saving for a down payment on a house?

What is really happening is that your mind is now working TOWARDS a specific goal rather than running AWAY from an uncomfortable situation such as the lack of money. And, essentially, that is how you get results.

I would say that many of us, including yours truly, have difficulty pinpointing the specific goals we want to achieve rather than constantly avoiding them.

Hallbom and D’Alo write, “Money is merely energy, and its movement like energy is one of flow; energy out encourages energy in. When we block that flow mentally with our beliefs, then like a dam on a river the flow reduces to a trickle and sometimes can even stop. Anyway, it’s not really money as such that we want to focus on, it’s more the idea of prosperity that holds the key. All too often people get caught up in the opposite mindset; they function from a LACK mentality, and it is these thought processes and sheer negative focus that inhibit the flow of money to you. Changing your beliefs will change your focus, and prosperity will surely follow.”

Changing your focus takes some work. We say it all the time in this column. Reach out to a licensed financial advisor and start working with a financial coach. And, of course, attend workshops and conferences that help you to live a Fabulous Life where your focus will be on achieving what you really want out of life.

Host of the upcoming #FabulousLifeConference, Dennise Williams, MBA (Banking & Finance) is a journalist, TV producer, certified practitioner NLP coach, and has 15 years’ experience in the financial services industry. You can see more of her work at www.youtube.com/financiallyfocused and reach her at financiallyfocusedtv@gmail.com.