Forget What Your Parents Taught You About Money and Business
Updated: Apr 25, 2021
My parents aren’t entrepreneurs; they are middle-class Americans that chose to work for the public sector. Dad’s retired from the Army and from teaching high school in Miami, and mom has also put in over two decades of public work for the Army.
But THEIR parents were both entrepreneurs. My mother’s side owned a convenience store. My father’s side was in the auto repair business. What I learned later on in my thirties was that both sides of the family had failing businesses.
Neither accumulated the wealth needed to pass along to the next generation (my parents). So how do you think that affected their decision NOT to start their own business? And, how do you think it affected the way they brought me up? They urged me to get an education and seek a stable job, preferably with the Army.
Money is guaranteed, and retirement plans run themselves, so you don’t have to put much thought into wealth building, and to get rich, you can just live comfortably while avoiding the pains you saw your parents go through.
God designed our minds like computers. By his design, the most important programs were installed in childhood- the patterns anchored within us are based on our earliest impressions. The things we heard our parents repeatedly saying about money as children are permanently saved in our minds, forming our ideas that end up determining the way we think about money later in life. Sayings like “Money is the root of all evil;” [misquoting 1 Timothy 6:10 on purpose] “Money doesn’t grow on trees;” and “You can’t buy happiness” were ingrained in our minds as money blueprints, thus forming our opinion on wealth.
These were told to us over and over because our parental figures thought they were “protecting” us from something negative they experienced in their lives.
Since our parents influence our behavior mostly when we’re young, there are only one of two possible ways to deal with their ideas about money and fortune:
Identify with and accept them
Rebel and reject them
The Bible says: