133 – May 13
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.”—Sophie Tucker
Your wildest dreams come true: You pick the winning numbers in the lottery and suddenly you are a millionaire!
Now what? What do you do first?
There was a study several years ago that determined the top three things that most winners did—and nearly 90 percent did all of these three things. I will list them for you in reverse order, a la David Letterman:
#3. They buy a new car.
#2. They take a trip. If they were married with children, they go to Walt Disney World in Florida. If they are married without children or single, they go to Hawaii.
#1. The very first thing they all do is say, “This isn’t going to change me.”
That one fearful statement, “This isn’t going to change me,” rang in my consciousness like a clarion call. To me, this is stark evidence that most people have a negative picture of what having money will do to them. Many people in our society grow up with the idea that “dirty money” or “filthy lucre” will somehow corrupt them—that they will become arrogant or miserly and lose all their friends.
A nationwide study conducted by the AARP in 2000 showed that the majority of people believed that “lots of money makes people greedy and insensitive.” How are you going to let money in your life if you think having it will make you a bad person? Doesn’t it make sense that if you thought money was a powerful force for good and that having an abundance of money would mean you could make large contributions to worthy causes, that a lottery winner would say instead, “This is really going to change me for the better”?
Today’s Affirmation:
“The more money I get, the more money I share.”
If you think that having a lot of money will make you a bad person, your internal sense of integrity is probably not going to allow it into your life. You need to change your attitude about having money and being rich if you want more abundance in your life. Make a list of positive things you would do with money if you were wealthy. Why not decide that money will make you a better person?
