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:
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2)
You can either think about money and wealth on the same scale as your Earthly parents, or you can do things radically differently and think like your heavenly father.
WARNING: When I say “rebelling,” I mean the POSITIVE rebel, not the NEGATIVE rebel. I warn you not to let resistance against your parent’s principles, alone, be your motivation to break the pattern of your financial blueprint. Rebelling for the wrong motivation won’t lead to wealth.
You don’t want to get rich- you just want to recoil against your broke, sometimes un-spiritual, parents or feel superior to them. Instead, all of us ‘Godpreneurs’ must rebel against the enemy that has our behavior captive to the way our parents thought. If we rebel against our parents, the thought is still there, and we’d be fighting the wrong enemy.
Even if we put a lot of effort into our businesses, and earn some money, we’ll probably lose it quickly because we haven’t worked thoroughly on our mindset to break the chains that internalized the money blueprint in us.
As ‘Godpreneurs,’ if we believe anything is possible with God, then anything is possible when God provides us with more money to manage.
We’ll all have a facile time making money due to our motivation is to be free from the thoughts of the enemy by holding on to the possibilities of God!
Godpreneur Rule: We ‘Godpreneurs’ can identify and turn from our family’s mindset on money, and acknowledge that God wants us to take on His new mindset for our business’ profit.
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
A Christian entrepreneur’s book summary of the New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.
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