How to Use the Subconscious Mind to Make More Money

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "You Are a Badass at Making Money" by Jen Sincero. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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How does your subconscious affect your financial success? How can you use the subconscious mind to your advantage?

If you address the beliefs that are holding you back from wealth, then nothing will stop you from making more money. One of the ways to do this is to tap into your subconscious mind and evaluate how it’s affecting the way you think about money.

Discover how to use the subconscious mind for your own financial gain.

Money and the Subconscious Self

To begin changing your unhelpful views of money and learn how to use the subconscious mind for your own benefit, You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero argues that you must address your subconscious thoughts first—those that you’re not actively aware of, but that still influence your behavior. You likely have positive conscious views about money—namely that your life would be better with more of it—but your subconscious views might reflect a different story.

You’re born without any inherent views on money, but as you grow up, your life experiences and the beliefs of the people who surround you impact you. Your subconscious catalogs these influences before you’re old enough to understand their nuances and contexts, and they become subconscious values that guide your behavior into adulthood.

For example, say you grew up in a low-income household, but you had an uncle who made a lot of money and lived a lavish lifestyle. You often overheard your parents talking about how your uncle was selfish and didn’t want to spend time with your family after he achieved financial success. Therefore, you grew up viewing wealth as something that drives people apart and changes people’s personalities, and you subconsciously avoid accumulating wealth as an adult.

(Shortform note: In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins describes these beliefs we develop from external influences as values. He states that social pressure reinforces the values imparted to us by our parents, culture, teachers, and friends as we grow up. When our actions align with the values of the people around us, those people reward us with social approval, encouragement, or other forms of reinforcement. When our actions go against their values, they punish, exclude, or ignore us. This conditioning ensures that the values stay with us into adulthood.)

The Origins of Levels of Consciousness

Our modern understanding of the mind’s different levels of consciousness largely derives from the ideas of Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In contrast to Sincero’s subconscious versus conscious dichotomy, Freud split the mind into three levels: conscious, preconscious (or subconscious), and unconscious. Freud argued that the unconscious mind contains feelings, thoughts, memories, and desires that are beyond our current awareness. It holds things we find difficult to accept or address, such as internal conflicts and fears.

The preconscious is still outside of our awareness, but it holds things that we could bring into our conscious mind. It acts as a gateway between the unconscious and conscious minds. Finally, the conscious mind is full of the desires, thoughts, memories, and feelings we’re aware of. We can think and talk about these contents rationally.

Two Things to Understand About the Subconscious

Sincero states that there are two things to understand about the subconscious before you can change your underlying beliefs about money.

First, your subconscious is always seeking to protect you from perceived danger. It pushes you to stay in the same circumstances (even if they don’t serve you) because it feels safer, and you’re likely afraid to take chances and risk failure. Additionally, your subconscious will fight to keep you from doing things that go against it. Making big life changes that contradict your subconscious beliefs about money may trigger a lot of fear. For instance, if you subconsciously think wealth is bad and you’re offered a high-paying job, you might be afraid to take it even if there’s no obvious risk involved.

Second, you’re likely unaware that your subconscious views exist. This means that your subconscious gets to control your behavior unnoticed, preventing you from growing and changing. Unless you become aware of your subconscious beliefs, you may continue acting against your conscious beliefs without knowing why or how to stop.

For instance, suppose you have a conscious view that you want to save money and invest it in a profitable venture. However, your subconscious view is that money is the root of all evil and that wealthy people are greedy and selfish. As a result, you may find yourself sabotaging your own efforts to save money and invest it without realizing why. You may overspend, procrastinate, or make poor investment decisions, all because of your subconscious beliefs about money.

How the Subconscious Pushes Us to Blame Others for Our Problems

Our subconscious mind also protects us by encouraging us to blame our problems on external circumstances instead of taking accountability for them. It’s difficult for us to accept that we’re responsible for bad things that happen to us (or to other people). Therefore, the subconscious makes us feel like bad situations are something happening to us instead of something we’re causing. For example, if you never have enough money to put away in your savings, your subconscious may tell you that it’s because you’re unlucky and life is too expensive. In reality, your subconscious is helping you avoid the hard truth that you spend your money on unnecessary things, like streaming services you don’t use or countless dinners out.

It feels safer to blame things outside of ourselves because accepting that we’re responsible for something bad happening may threaten our sense of self as competent, good, or rational. creating mental discomfort. Further, if we’re blaming external factors, we’re not considering the role of our subconscious, so we’re still conforming to it. We have no motivation to interrogate any hidden beliefs that may be prompting our actions.

How to Rework Subconscious Views About Money

To avoid letting your negative subconscious views about money rule your financial life, Sincero suggests practicing this exercise:

Step #1: Identify an unhelpful subconscious view. For example, an unhelpful belief from our earlier scenario was that wealth changes people for the worse.

Step #2: Interrogate this view. For example, you might ask, “Does money itself change a person’s personality?” or “Can money help people make positive changes?”

Step #3: Write down answers to these questions. For example, for the first question, you might say, “No, money itself doesn’t change people. It can bring up aspects of people’s personalities that they didn’t show before, but it doesn’t create new personalities.” For the second question, your answer could be, “Yes, money can allow people to relax and spend more time with their family and friends because they don’t have to work as much. This is a positive change.”

Step #4: Write a positive, empowering statement based on what you discover from your inquiries. Speak it out loud so you can feel its emotional effect. For example, your new statement could be, “I decide how money helps me grow and change.”

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques for Combating Negative Thoughts

Sincero’s process for reworking subconscious thought processes aligns with two commonly used practices for reframing negative thought patterns in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). First, her method of interrogating negative views through questioning is often used by therapists and teachers to reveal, examine, and deconstruct hidden beliefs or thought processes. Typically, this method involves a dialogue between two or more people, but Sincero suggests that you create a dialogue between your conscious self and your subconscious self.

The technique likely derives from Socratic questioning, a practice first developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Socratic questioning involves asking a sequence of questions in an open-ended format.

Sincero’s process also reflects the CBT technique of reframing negative thoughts. This technique involves three steps: First, you have to notice the unhelpful thought, as Sincero instructs at the beginning of her process. To do this, it’s helpful to know some common types of negative thoughts. For example, you might think of certain situations as all bad instead of seeing the silver lining. Or, you may expect the worst-case scenario in every situation.

Once you learn some of your unhelpful thought patterns, CBT advises that you practice noticing and naming them whenever they arise. When you notice these thoughts, don’t just accept them—check them by examining the facts of the situation (perhaps through Socratic questioning). Finally, reframe the thought from something negative to something neutral or positive. This is similar to Sincero’s final step of writing an empowering statement and speaking it aloud.

How to Use the Subconscious Mind to Make More Money