Most people don’t understand that their income level or debt amount isn’t good or bad, it’s just a number. After creating a budget people are usually unhappy with their net income (income less expenses). Often times they have a negative net income, or just enough to pay the bills or not as much as they want.

This realization is often followed by thoughts such as “I don’t make enough money,” or “I’ll never get out of debt,” or “I’m never going to be able to make this work.”

In reality one’s net income is just a number. A negative net income of $1,000 (meaning you spend $1,000 more than you make) isn’t good or bad, it’s just a number. It’s nothing more than a number until you have a thought about it, and the thought you have will shape your financial future.

The same applies to debt. If you have $100,000 or $200,000 or $500,000 in debt, it’s not good or bad, not until you assign it a meaning.

Again, your income amount or debt level isn’t good or bad, low or high, it’s just a number.

How Can This Be

Let me use a hypothetical college basketball came to illustrate. Let’s assume the game is between two long-time rivals, both teams are really good and, in the run up to the actual game, it’s received a lot of press. The game is fun to watch with all the players doing well and several lead changes. At the end of the game team A beats team B with a score of 75-70.

That score, 75-70, is just a number and doesn’t mean anything until you assign it a meaning. Team A is going to think it’s a great number. They are going to think things like: “I knew we could do it! We worked so hard for this. I’m so happy!” 

Team B will obviously have different thoughts such as; “If we’d only done ‘X’ we could have won. We tried so hard, I can’t believe this. Why can’t we ever catch a break. I’m so disappointed in myself. This sucks!”

The score didn’t change, it’s neutral. It means nothing until we assign a thought to it. Can you now see that your income and debt levels aren’t good or bad, that they are just a number?

Why Does this Matter

It matters because YOUR THOUGHTS DRIVE YOUR ACTIONS which drive your results. Our thoughts create motivation or unmotivation to take action.

If you have a thought like “I’ll never have enough to pay my bills.” It’s unlikely you’ll get motivated to take action to change the situation. In essence you’ve already given up, why even try if you’re “never going to have enough?” I wouldn’t. 

What about this thought, “I didn’t have enough to pay all my bills last month but this month I’m going to find enough to pay just one more. I’ll keep doing that until I have enough.” It recognizes the situation but gives hope and motivates you to take positive action.

How Do I Change My Thoughts?

You can’t just start thinking a new thought and expect to get results. The thought has to be one that you truly believe. Most people have had so many negative thoughts about money, and have thought them for so long, that they have a hard time differentiating their thoughts from facts.

I have another podcast on changing your thoughts which you can listen to here.  Or you can download my worksheet which outlines the five steps to creating new thoughts.