Jen Sincero | mastery.fm

Leaping Into the Glorious Unknown

When you change who you’re being, you’re basically killing off your old identity, which completely freaks your subconscious self out. Change hurls you into the unknown and puts you at risk for all sorts of loss and, of course, all sorts of unthinkable awesomeness, which is why it brings your biggest fears to the surface.

Your [subconscious] is desperately trying to keep you in a safe, known space, otherwise known as your comfort zone, but if the truths you’re running your life on no longer fit who you’re becoming, it’s like trying to squeeze into the snow pants you wore as a kid when you’re thirty-six years old. Not so comfy after all. Yet we do it all the time because even though they cut off our circulation and hold us back from who we so desperately want to become, the puffy pants are familiar, cozy, and feel safer than trying on an outfit that we’ve never worn before. We are so attached to the unhelpful familiar, in fact, that we will spend our valuable, very finite time here on Earth crafting excuses to keep ourselves right where we are, instead of leaping into the glorious unkonwn and growing into who we’re really meant to be.

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Wealth Mindset

CNBC interview with Jen Sincero:

It was around this time when she “just finally woke up,” she writes, and made the decision to “get over my fear and loathing of money and figure out how to make some.”

The first thing she changed was her mindset.

If you want to build wealth, you have to start by telling yourself it’s OK, Sincero says: “One of the biggest obstacles to making lots of money is not a lack of good ideas or opportunities or time, or that we’re too slovenly or stupid. It’s that we refuse to give ourselves permission to become rich.”

After all, it can feel awkward to admit that you have that ambition — but it’s necessary.

You have to agree “to get really, really, really uncomfortable. Over and over again,” writes Sincero. “You must not only admit to desiring, and commit to creating, wealth but, most important, you must allow yourself to do so.”

And:

“Back in the day, I realized that one of the things I said all the time was, ‘I can’t afford it.’ That was sort of my mantra,” Sincero tells Make It. She didn’t start building wealth until she changed her mantra to “money flows to me easily and freely.”

“So every time I wanted to say, ‘I can’t afford it,’ I forced myself to say, ‘Money flows to me easily and freely,’ which seemed a little bit bananas,” she admits. “But what it did was it made me feel better — it was way more fun to say that than ‘I can’t afford it.’ And, it also forced me to shift my focus to be like, ‘OK, are there ways that money does flow to me easily and freely?’”

Changing her modes of thinking helped her change her reality, she says: “Once you shift your focus off of proving that, ‘I can’t afford it because I am Jen Sincero and I am broke,’ to proving that my money flows to me easily and freely, you open yourself up to the ways to make the new mantra true.”

And:

“Get into the emotional state of what it would feel like when you do make that money and get really excited about it and make it a non-negotiable goal that you make that money.”

And, she says, you have to commit: “When you really want to change something about your life, you’ve got to go about it with this hell-bent-for-glory attitude. You just can’t kind of, sort of want to make some more money. If you’re serious about it, you’ve got to do the work, get very specific about your goals and get in the emotional state to achieve them.”

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What Story Are You Living?

Jen Sincero / You Are a Badass audiobook

Jen Sincero, from You Are a Badass:

We pretty much don’t ever do anything that we don’t benefit from in some way, be it in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. If you’re perpetuating something dismal in your life because of some dopey story, there’s definitely something about it that you’re getting off on.

Let’s say, for example, that your story is that you’re depressed. Chances are pretty good that even though it feels awful, when you feel awful you don’t have to work hard or do the laundry or go to the gym. It also feels very familiar and cozy and comfortable. It gets you attention. People come in and check on you and sometimes bring food. It gives you something to talk about. It allows you to not try too hard or move forward and face possible failure. It lets you drink beer for breakfast.

Let’s say your story is that you can’t make money. By staying broke, you get to be right. You get to be a victim, which makes you dependent on other people and gets you attention. Other people will offer to pay. You don’t have to take responsibility. You get to give up before you start and avoid possible failure. If things in your life fall far below the mediocre scale, you get to blame other people and circumstances instead of taking risks to change it because you can’t afford to take risks.

Let’s say your story is that you stink at relationships. You get your freedom. You don’t have to commit and can keep looking for the greener grass on the other side. You don’t have to risk getting hurt by being vulnerable. You get to complain about always being single and get sympathy. You get the whole bed to yourself, never have to compromise, and don’t have to shave unless it’s summer.

We don’t realize it, but we’re making the perks we get from perpetuating our stories more important than getting the things we really want because it’s familiar territory, it’s what we’re comfy with and we’re scared to let it go. If we’ve been depressed or victimized or whatever since childhood, we trick ourselves into believing that it’s really who we are as adults in order to continue reaping “the rewards.” It’s how we survived as kids, but it doesn’t serve us anymore so we need to get rid of it or we’ll just keep creating more of it.

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