5 Reasons Why You’re Broke

“I’ve never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.”

Mike Todd

Yesterday, my friend called me. I answered quickly since I hadn’t heard from him in a while. We used to talk all the time, but recently he’s been distant. That’s why when I saw the phone ringing and saw it was him, I picked it up right away.

But as soon as I answered, I knew something was wrong. He wasn’t his usual self. I could just sense it.

“Hey”, he said in a monotonous tone. His breath was sharp and his voice hollow.

“John! What’s up man?” I replied, emphatically.

“Not much,” he said. I could hear something was off.

“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately. “You okay?”

There was a long pause… Heavy breathing…

He sniffled before he tried to speak. But he lost his words. “Robert, I… I just can’t… take…”

My mind raced. What could’ve happened? Should I dig deeper and ask? Clearly, he’s calling me for a reason.

“Okay, take a few deep breaths. Just relax. Tell me what’s going on.” I was using my radio voice. The deep, understanding tone seemed to set him at ease.

“I just can’t believe this happened. I should’ve seen the signs. Why didn’t I do something before it got this bad…” His voice trailed off again.

“John, what is it? Just tell me…” I felt awful but I was also dying with suspense. This was one of the nicest guys I knew and one of my closest friends.

“I lost it all. All of it,” he said. “Oh God, what have I done?”

I love John dearly. But I’ve always known he had demons. And this one demon came back to haunt him. He’d gambled all of his money away and he was now totally and completely broke and penniless. With no way to support hs young family, he realized it was the end of the road.

Why You’re Broke Right Now

I talk about my friend John because it’s something close to home. But I’ve certainly not been immune from battling an addiction. I allowed partying to create my demise. It wasn’t gambling. It was drugs and alcohol for me. Of course, these are extreme situations.

Still, so much of the world battle their addictions. One after another, the problems are far and wide. Whether it’s gambling, sex, drugs, alcohol, overspending, or something else, the reason most people are broke is that they allow their bad habits to get the best of them.

That doesn’t mean that addiction is the only cause of poverty or simply going broke. There are so many reasons why. I only use extreme situations to illuminate the darker side of things. Those are easier to spot. But the point is this. Your non-conscious behavior is keeping you trapped in the same perpetual cycles.

I know that’s a blanket statement. But hear me out. The human mind has both the conscious side (the side that gives you self-awareness and creativity) and the non-conscious side (which is mostly everything else). The problem is that 95% of everything you think, say and do is controlled by the non-conscious side of your mind.

Understanding The Non-Conscious Mind

The answer to the reason why you do anything in life resides in the non-conscious (subconscious) mind. Figure that out and you solve all of your life’s problems. Okay, maybe not all of them. But certainly a whole lot of them. Why’s that? It’s because your deepest, darkest desires reside right there.

Now, here’s the thing. Life is just one big illusion. I’m not joking. What you think is reality isn’t actually reality. You only need to look at quantum physics and non-local interaction (spooky action) as examples. I won’t get too deep into this stuff. But my point is that what you think is real, is not.

Everything is made up. It’s all in the mind. And the quality of your made-up life has everything to do with what resides in your non-conscious mind. When you can tap into that, you can quickly upgrade the quality of your illusion of reality.

Meaning, the reason you’re broke, overweight, out of shape, depressed, single, or what have you, has everything to do with what’s happening in your non-conscious mind. So how do you tap into this mystical wonder that we all possess?

1. You Haven’t Set Goals The Right Way

To understand what’s going on beneath the proverbial hood, you have to dig deep into who you are. To do this, you have to start by setting goals the right way. The right way invokes going deep into the reasons why you want the things you want.

Because let’s face it, big goals are great, right? But how often do we throw our hands up in the air and give up when the going gets tough? Still, there are other times when nothing stands in our way when we truly want something. So what gives?

Ever want something so badly and you were so adamant about it that no matter what anyone else said or any past reasoning or belief that you couldn’t do it sprang up, it didn’t get in your way? It’s pretty powerful, isn’t it? We’ve all experienced this in one form or another.

The trick is to uses this reasoning to go deep into your mind. Remember, most of what happens to you is the result of the non-conscious mind, which is incredibly powerful. So you have to use your self-awareness and creativity to carve a path that your non-conscious mind will follow.

Finding Your “Why”

To do this, use the SMART or SMARTER goal setting methods. These entail setting meaningful goals. When you decide what a goal means to you, it will help you achieve it. For example, if you’re broke and you want to be rich, start a business, or earn a certain amount of money, what does that mean to you?

Flimsy reasons will not get you far. These are just superficial or surface-level. If you want to make money because you want to buy a flashy car or a bigger house, it won’t give you the drive to keep going. You have to go deeper than that.

Keep asking yourself why you want something until the question equals the answer. For example, if you say you want to have a $1 million net worth because you want to have a big house to live in, why do you want that? Maybe it’s because you want your kids to grow up in a nice home.

Go Deeper…

Well, why do you want your kids to grow up in a nice home? Maybe that’s because you grew up in a small home and your whole family was crammed into one or two rooms. And you want your kids to have more space. Okay, why though?

Maybe because in a larger home they’ll have more things to do to be more creative or run around, maybe have a nice backyard. Okay, so why does that matter? Maybe because if your kids have a bigger home, you can do more things together and you can spend more time with them.

Okay, why do you want to spend more time with them? Maybe because your parents never spent much time with you because they were always working. So, why is that important? Because you want your kids to feel loved. Ding ding ding. There it is. Love.

Usually, your deep-rooted reason will invoke love. It’s at the core of who you are. Sometimes it might be freedom or security, but if you keep drilling down, it usually equates to love. Find that reason and focus deeply on it if you want to keep going.

2. Your Bad Habits Are Holding You Back

Look, if you have bad habits that are holding you back, it will be hard to emerge from the sea of an abyss. You’ll continue to drown because bad habits are so powerful. In the 7-day discipline challenge, I talk about a method called micro-changes to help eliminate bad habits.

Micro-changes are small, incremental things that you do to alter your behavior. Think about it like a rubber band. What happens when you pull a rubber band back hard enough? It either snaps back or breaks, right? Well, your habits are very similar to that.

When you try to go cold turkey, you usually fail and end up right back where you started. Sometimes it’s even worse than when you started. That’s the rubber-band effect taking place. And it’s incredibly powerful. With micro-changes, you’re incrementing and notching up.

Here’s how this works. Take the one thing that you want to change about your life. Whatever it is, big or small. If you’re broke and you know it’s because you overspend or you drink with your buddies every weekend, you have to change it slowly.

First, make sure you set those empowering goals. Next, you have to alter your behavior slowly. Pull the rubber band back gently. If you were to hold a rubber band in place between two objects, stretched out for a long period (like days or weeks), what happens over time?

When you come back, the rubber band is now larger. It was slowly stretched and not snapped back violently. Habits are the same way. You have to change them slowly if you really want to make life-long lasting changes.

3. You’re Exchanging Your Time For Money

Okay, here’s the thing. Time is your biggest enemy. Why? Because they’re not making more of it. And when you directly exchange your time for money, you have little time to focus on the things that count. You only have 24 hours in a given day. That’s it.

No matter how rich (or broke) you are, whether your a man or a woman, live on a farm or in a big city, or whatever else, you have no more time than the next person. The billionaire and the pauper each have the same amount of time. The difference is that they use their time in starkly varying ways.

When you work for someone else, you’re exchanging your time for money. They’re guaranteeing you an income in exchange for your time. The trouble is that most of the time it’s never enough money, right? You usually only have enough for the essentials, and that’s it, right?

What you have to do is find a way you can earn money without exchanging your time for it in direct proportion. This is not easy, but it is very possible for just about anyone from all walks of life thanks to this lovely thing called the internet.

When you’re dealing with passive income, it usually means you’re doing a bunch of work on the front-end before you ever make any money. I know it’s hard sometimes to push through. But if your reasons are strong enough, you’ll find a way to do it.

If you’re serious about doing something online, I invite you to join the Freedom Warrior Secrets master class and learn how you can sell simple everyday products on Amazon. Click here to check out the free master class (you can thank me later).

4. You Take On Too Much Debt

Keeping up with the so-called Joneses is a very real thing around much of the world. You want what others want. Plain and simple, right? But the problem is that when you do this you end up taking on too much debt to pay for things you can’t really afford.

“Too many people are buying things they can’t afford, with money that they don’t have… to impress people that they don’t like!” Isn’t that a truth bomb dished out by the famed Will Smith? Certainly, it should ring true to you if you’re broke right now.

Stop caring about what others think because it’s forcing you to take on too much debt. Instead of buying things, focus on experiences. They last longer. And if you do want to buy more things (and experiences) then start earning more money.

You cannot borrow your way out of the poor house. Trust me, it’s not possible. You have to earn enough to not only keep from going totally broke, but also to ensure that you have enough to thrive. Because, after all, human beings weren’t just made to survive. We were made to thrive.

5. You Lack Self-Discipline

If you’re broke, you have to face the music. You lack self-discipline. Discipline is the bridge between your goals and accomplishments. And if you’re lacking it, you’ll have a hard time accomplishing much. That’s the truth, right?

But that doesn’t mean you should feel bad about it. What you should do is work tirelessly to create more self-discipline. Use your self-awareness to drag you out of the negative loops. If you’re overspending, find ways to become aware and stop it.

If you’re simply living above your means, find a way to either make more money or spend less. It’s straightforward. What isn’t straightforward is worrying about what others think. That’s usually why we don’t adjust our behavior (you can thank your trusty ego for that).

Wrangle in your self-discipline by focusing on the small daily actions you can take to change your life. It won’t happen overnight. But it will happen over time as long as you’re committed enough to it. Remember, being broke is just a mindset and you have the power to change that.

The question is, will you…?