Could your mindset be keeping you from financial success? A defeated or negative mindset keeps many from even trying to become successful and derails others who get so far and then give up or become discouraged.

You have to recognize the negative mindset you may have unwittingly developed over the years. It involves negative thoughts and actions that make you feel unworthy of getting paid and praised for what you do.

Some people may be satisfied with just getting by. If they have enough money to pay the bills and a bit left over to see a movie, then they’re perfectly happy being left with the daydreams of success rather than true, monetary success.

You have to learn how you can manipulate your mindset to stop complaining and get moving toward the goals and opportunities that will help you cultivate an abundant mindset rather than one that will lead you nowhere.

Recognize Negative Mindset Traits You May Foster

You may recognize negative mindset traits in others more than yourself because you’re used to your own rhetoric. Think about the times you’ve been around super negative people who focus on the bad rather than the good and drag you on a downward spiral right along with them.

They’re certainly not fun to be around and it’s doubtful they’re very productive – negative people usually aren’t. If you find yourself with a negative mindset that’s keeping you from reaching your goals, look at your own thought patterns.

Thoughts such as, “I’ll never succeed like that person,” “I know I’m going to fail,” and “I have no confidence or experience” will set the stage for failure before you even begin. Why should anyone be willing to pay you for guidance when you don’t even trust yourself?

Because of that low self-worth and negative thinking, you may not be willing to invest in your future by taking time to research or to pay someone who can help you learn to succeed. You tend to flounder in your own self-pity.

Another negative mindset trait to be aware of is focusing on what you don’t have rather than what can happen if you take the reins of your own path to success and begin to move forward.

Rather than being confident and secure in the career you’ve chosen, you may fear the outcome so much that you never begin or waste time wallowing in despair rather than finding hope for the future.

You become a victim rather than fighting for what you deserve. Some negative mindset problems begin with the past. If you can’t let go of a painful situation that happened in the past, you may have difficulty finding success.

This is a typical example of thinking with so much negativity that you can’t be productive and build for the future. Another negative mindset trait is when you feel plagued with guilt rather than feeling good about what you’ve accomplished.

Let go of the blame and become more compassionate toward yourself. Focus instead on making a positive impact on the lives of others. Your negative mindset can’t last long when you harbor a positive outlook on life.

Consider What Wealth Mentality You’re Lacking

What’s holding you back? If you daydream about wealth or success more than you take action to get it, you’re lacking something in your mindset. Learning to develop a go-getter attitude and working on replacing negativity with positivity may finally put you on the path to success.

Financial success isn’t achieved by daydreaming, but by actually setting goals and working toward them. If you have no goals, it’s unlikely that the financial freedom you desire will ever happen.

After you define your wealth goals, the steps to achieve them should be at the forefront of your mind. You wouldn’t think of building a home without plans – and you can’t succeed at building wealth without plans.

Stop thinking survival and start thinking in terms of building wealth. Many people have the mindset of simply surviving from paycheck to paycheck. Wealthy people are more focused on building prosperity and meeting goals for their future.

A fearful wealth mentality is also detrimental to your future success. If you focus on keeping your money safe, you’ll likely miss any opportunity that may come your way. That doesn’t mean you need to be reckless with your dollars, but you do need to be willing to take risks when good opportunities present themselves.

Don’t simply hope for success – work towards it. When you change your thinking from wishing to doing, you’ll automatically begin to accumulate two things – self-confidence and money.

Make sure you save some money for a rainy day. Don’t spend everything you make, but invest it wisely to build your financial empire. If you know you’re not very astute when it comes to money matters, get a financial advisor to help you sort things out.

Another mental attitude that limits your wealth is to think you don’t have enough money to attempt to make it grow. One way to overcome it is to stop spending money on non-necessities.

Make it a game to see how much money you can save out of a paycheck rather than running up bills that keep you poor. Thinking you don’t have enough time to devote to building wealth is another belief that limits your future success.

Sure, it’s difficult to juggle work, kids, friends, family and everything else in your life. But carving out some time to devote to your goals is essential to any success you might be working toward.

Mainly – believe in yourself and trust that you can make it happen. Do things to build the confidence necessary to see wealth and abundance results and you’ll soon begin to see that developing a mindset of success can really make it happen.

Leveling Up Your Money Mindset

As you cultivate an abundant money mindset, remember the old saying, “Shoot for the moon and land among the stars.” Even if you don’t reach the moon, playing among the stars isn’t a bad place to be.

The point is to aim big, think big and never think that you’re asking for too much. Even 7-figures aren’t that far away from where you can be if you set your mind to it. Expand the mentality from “having enough to pay bills,” to “what would I do with an extra $1K or $5K per month?”

If you’ve had a past full of financial failures, forgive yourself and start over with a better plan and more enthusiasm for what you’re doing now. Forgiving yourself will help you let go of the behavior patterns of the past and create new patterns of abundance.

As you’re going through the process of forgiving yourself for past failures, begin to change your personal story in your mind and in what you do – especially in the area of money.

Change your thought patterns from “broke” to “wealth” and you’ll soon see how your inner thoughts and feelings affect the reality you’re living. Planning a good budget will keep you focused and knowing exactly where your money is and where it’s going.

Surround yourself with people and things that create positive energy. Get rid of clutter like old memories that hold you back. Assess your lifestyle and figure out what you can do to make it happier, better and more abundant.

Begin to add soothing things and positive people – change your surroundings to that which creates a feeling of wealth and abundance. You don’t have to live a life a luxury to feel rich – but you do have to be happy with your life and how you’re living it.

If you look around and always take note of what you lack rather than what you have, your wealth mindset will be negative. But when you look at your surroundings and feel grateful for what you’ve already been blessed with, you’ll be able to attract even more abundance.

Open your mind to new opportunities and new ways of doing things. If you don’t like your present income, think about how you can change it. Even if you’ve reached the top rung of your job, there are other ways to make money.

When you become aware of what others are doing to create abundance and how you could change your current lifestyle and make things happen for you, the creative ideas will flow and you’ll find your way to wealth through cultivating an abundant money mindset.

Backup Plans Are for Those Planning to Fail

You may be surprised to learn that successful people never make backup plans. That’s because it’s not in their thoughts or vocabulary to fail. Backup plans tend to put failure in your mind rather than help you succeed with your first choice.

It’s a big “if” that doesn’t need to be there. It takes time to make plans, and the more time you’re putting into a backup plan, the less time you’ll spend on your dreams and goals.

Your backup plan will become your true reality and you’ll never realize what you might have done with your original plan for success. Another reason to steer clear of backup plans is that they decrease your desire to be or remain motivated.

A backup plan becomes your safety net if you haven’t risked everything on your plan for success. It might be an easier and safer path for you to take, but it won’t get you to the pinnacle of success you want.

The best and only way to succeed is to focus completely on the exact achievement you want to accomplish. Anything else is a waste of time and can sap your energy and take away your future options.

When you work hard at formulating and crafting Plan A, you won’t need a Plan B as a backup. You may face some obstacles along the way, but as long as you’re working hard to make Plan A a reality, that’s where your focus will be and that’s where you’ll succeed.

So what if Plan A doesn’t work out? Maybe you wanted to be in the NFL, practiced as much as you could, but luck just didn’t find you (and that would need quite a bit of luck). When you know in your heart of hearts that you tried your best and you didn’t give up because of fear of failure, it’s much easier to begin a new path to another type of success.

Don’t use a backup plan as an excuse to fail. It’s easy to take the alternate route when things get tough or you begin to doubt yourself. But without a backup plan, you don’t have a choice. You have to move forward.

Simply keep pushing onward with the original plan for as long as you can. Perhaps all you need to do is adjust your plans or tweak them to fit the present situation. As long as you’re going forward, you will succeed.

Where Is Your Mental Energy Best Spent to Attract Wealth?

When Michael Phelps competed (and won) in the Olympics, he was truly focused on the task at hand. An interesting note to the swim competition is that Phelps’s closest competitor was caught in a picture turning his head and focusing his attention on Phelps during the swim rather than on what he had to do to beat him.

Phelps’s competitor lost focus because he was more interested in how Phelps was doing. Losing focus on your ultimate goals and plans for success is a sure way to lose the momentum you’ve built and slip back into failure mode.

Attracting wealth is best accomplished by focusing all of your attention on a plan that you’ve formulated and set goals for and that you know will work when carried out systematically.

You’ve seen what happens to those who seem to concentrate on complaints. They use Facebook, blogs or other social media means to complain about real or imagined obstacles that have kept them from achieving success.

Nothing gets done when you’re in the mode of complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. Wealth can only happen when your mental energy is focused on your plan for success and how you’ll achieve it.

If you have trouble focusing, try to figure out where the problem lies. Do you have many interruptions when trying to work or tend to check emails or Facebook posts too often? Take a measured look at why you may have trouble focusing on getting work done and then do something about it.

All of your mental energy should be spent on attracting wealth. That means the negative thoughts of failure – either imagined or those from the past – must be eradicated from your thought process.

It may take some practice to use your mental powers to focus on cultivating an abundant money mindset, but the payoff will be the success you’ll realize when everything comes together and becomes a reality.