The Sins of The Fathers …
Welcome back!
One of the main ways that kids learn about money and business is from watching their parents, and listening to them talk. Often, what they listen to most is not the carefully planned teaching conversations their parents have with them – it’s the conversations that take place between adults when kids don’t even appear to be listening.
I remember learning as a child that sales is horrible. It’s a horrible thing to do, done by horrible people, in horrible ways.
Now do you think my father ever sat me down and said those things directly to me?
Of course not.
I picked that up from listening to what he said to my mother about sales and salespeople. Even more important than the words he used, I listened to the emotional tone of what he was saying.
At one stage in his career he was forced to work in sales, and he was miserable the whole time. He spent every Saturday in bed with a migraine headache, recovering from his awful week “in sales”. At other times, we were making a major family purchase, like furniture or a car, and he had things to say about the salespeople as we left the showroom. They will say anything to get a sale, I heard; they are all liars.
As you can imagine, having such negative attitudes about sales caused me some problems when I started out in business for myself!
My point is that we all pass on our beliefs to our kids, whether we intend to or not. If those beliefs are limiting, your kids will have to work doubly, triply hard, as I did, to reprogram themselves, before they can succeed.
You can give your kids a giant head start in the game of life if you deliberately explore and take apart any limiting beliefs of your own, while your kids are still young.
In the “Resources” section of the Cash-Smart Kids Members Area (www.cash-smart-kids.com) is a comprehensive checklist of limiting beliefs about money and business. You can give yourself a quick once-over, choose your favourite (or least favourite) limiting belief, and then simply apply one of the dozens of available self-help processes for shifting limiting beliefs. Repeat as many times as you choose ….
