Creating abundance is probably the hottest topic across the internet. Whether you're looking to start a business from your home computer or trying to payoff your mortgage in time to retire with comfort, everyone seems interested in how to get more money. There are personal growth and spiritual growth lessons involved in creating wealth that have been oversimplified. Most people have issues around money that cause them to block themselves from actually creating a life of wealth and abundance. A major piece of changing one's self talk is in stating positive affirmations. However, without hard work and a bit of old fashioned elbow grease, affirmations are worthless.

First off, let's look at why we even need affirmations. Many of us were taught that money is the root of all evil. The real quote should read, "The love of money is the root of all evil." Yes, greed is the real topic, not the amount of money in one's bank account. For whatever reason the lesson about greed has been taught all wrong and people think that money in and of itself is evil. Money is simply a means for barter, a trade system. I'll trade you a chicken for a new dress. We agree to swap paper money or coins that create the equivalent of the trade so as not to have to haul chickens and dresses around with us. Money is just a means of creating trades. It's also a way to save up for later. I'll give you a chicken today, but I want apples when you harvest them from your trees this fall. Money can be accumulated towards a larger deal. I've worked all year making shoes for the entire village so that they'll all come help me build my new house this summer. Saying that money is the root of all evil is like saying that trading goods and services is evil. Trading is trading, it's cooperation in a numeric format. Nothing more nothing less.

Another concept that many of us have to unlearn is the idea that it's really difficult to earn a living or it's really hard to amass any kind of wealth. Personally, I hear my father telling me throughout my childhood that "Things are a lot harder when you get out into the real world." Truth be known, nothing in my life has been as difficult as my childhood was. For the first fifteen years after I left my dad's home, I had to work really hard at making every penny because that's what I thought was the grown up way of doing it. I have a friend who was raised on the exact opposite mindset. He was encouraged as a child that he was completely capable of making money with or without any fancy college degrees and such. The result is that he's always had money and it flows in and out of his hands pretty freely. He even built a business from the ground up on his first try because it never dawned on him that he was supposed to fail and struggle.

Our belief systems around money definitely matter. What we think about ourselves and money is more powerful than many people realize. Most kids raised in wealthy families are not only taught how to make money, but also there's an underlying belief that they'll naturally carry on the family tradition. Most kids raised in poverty are taught nothing whatsoever about how to amass wealth and are conditioned to believe that they'll never be rich anyway. Those are the extremes. Most of us are somewhere in the middle and so is our perceived earning potential.

Take some time and seriously dig through your thoughts about money. What were you taught? What was role modeled to you? Facing your self-limiting thoughts will help you to stop letting them run your life. You will have to work overtime guarding your every thought as you proceed down the trail towards a life of abundance. A big piece of that will involve stating affirmations. It is a method of changing the computer program running in your brain. Let's say that your original software was designed to believe that there isn't enough wealth to go around and therefore it's going to be next to impossible for you to get your hands on any of it. You want to upgrade to a newer program that helps you to manifest more money in your life. Unfortunately, the human brain doesn't allow a program to be erased once it's put in place. So, you're going to have to put an overriding program overtop of the original flawed program. Every time the old program starts babbling about scarcity and the lack of money to be found, you have to immediately tell your brain to stop and play the new program that believes that there is more than enough to go around. You do that by telling yourself positive affirmations. Force your mind to really see tangible proof that there is enough money in the world for you to live the life that you dream of.

Affirmations are amazing and powerful, but all by themselves, they aren't going to do you a bit of good. Very few self-made millionaires did it be sitting in the lotus position stating to the cosmos that their bank account was magically growing all by itself. You still have to get up and do something. Sell something. Give away a service. Teach something. Make people feel something. Build something. Yes, you ought to pick something that you love doing because it'll be easier to become really good at it. Nobody wants to be an expert in a topic that bores them to death. It's kind of like that story of the little engine trying to drag itself up over the hill, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." At the same time, he was working harder then he ever had in his entire life. Do that.

Copyright 2006, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow's Edge