Why some ENFPs are broke?

Why Some ENFPs Are Broke

Table of Contents

“Many times people will choose to blame something else rather than to accept the choices they have made.”

One of the biggest issues that can affect ENFPs, whether it’s in your health, relationship, your career and business, well…your lifestyle overall is money issues.

How you view money…

How you think of wealth…

And ultimately what effect that ends up having on your life.

One of the great things about us ENFPs is we have this need for justice and fairness.

We want things to be just and so when we see this big, evil banker getting a $30 million bonus after they were bailed out by the government or HSBC laundering money for the drug cartels and not getting in trouble for it, it can annoy us, to say the least.

But here’s one of the problems with this.

We tend to overgeneralize.

Not just us ENFPs, but all people. So we see a couple of bad examples and then we generalize that. This has happened to me for quite a while and I know this happens to many ENFPs.

We can develop this belief that money is bad, money is evil, and what effect is that going to have on our lives?

If you believe that money is bad, what are the odds that you’re going to have enough money and be really wealthy?

Probably not very high.

So for the same reason you’ve probably never met someone who believes all members of the opposite sex are evil, liars and terrible – and also has a really happy good relationship, right?

It doesn’t happen.

So why do we have these biases towards money and towards wealth?

ENFP & Money, Money, Money Biases

The first thing is the media.

I know I love to hate on the media – always, but the media tends to highlight the evil rich person. It’s one of those stories that everyone loves to read. Reading about this person who’s stolen money or who had some scam or whatever and especially who never got in trouble for it.

The second reason is we often get it from parents or friends or teachers or other people around us. It’s because people like to test where they are at.

If someone doesn’t have as much money as they would like to have, they have two choices:

They can admit that they made certain choices. They took certain approaches in life that led to having less money.
They can make money bad, they can make rich people bad and they can justify where they’re at by making the other side wrong.

People do this all the time. We look at our results and our behavior and we have a choice of accepting our own choices or putting that off on external factors.

Many times people will choose to blame something else rather than to accept the choices they have made.

And of course, there’s a population bias by definition: There will always be fewer wealthy people, then non-wealthy people. That’s just how it works. If everyone were wealthy, it wouldn’t be called wealthy. It would be called normal. This means the majority of people around you are likely not wealthy.

That also means that a lot of them are probably going to have some kind of justifications around where they’re at and perhaps put blame on other people and create these sorts of beliefs around money. That money is bad, money is evil, which is why a lot of people you talk to who have really negative beliefs around money got that from their parents.

Now, I could digress here into some really long ENFP rant, because you do have these cases where you have a really wealthy family and their daughter hates money because Daddy has lots of money, and therefore, she’s a hippie who hates money with the trust fund.

You also have a lot of people who grew up really poor and who want as much money as possible.

So it does become quite complicated in terms of where your views on money come from.

But that’s not what’s important right now.

What’s really important is to identify and get clear about what you really think about wealth and about money.

What views do you have?

Think about that for a few seconds or a few minutes.

How do you actually feel about money and wealth and people who are successful?

Now – and I know this doesn’t apply to everyone – if you feel like you’re in a state where you do not have as much money or resources as you would like to have, if you’re really honest with yourself, you have three options.

Option #1: B&B

The first is the B&B and this is not exactly what I would recommend. This is being broke and bitter.

If you want more money than you have, but you continue to believe that money is bad and rich people are bad, then not only you’re going to be broke, but you’re going to be bitter – and that is not a person anyone wants to be around.

You’ll probably create a cycle that just makes things worse and worse for you.

Option #2: Broke, But Happy as F!

The second option is to be broke, but happy as f! because you accept being broke.

And you decide that’s the choice you want to make.

We all decide the type of life we want to have, whether we want to be a traveling hippie or an entrepreneur who bounces around the world or whether we want to go work on Wall Street and make as much money as we can to make up for whatever hole we have inside of ourselves.

That’s ultimately a choice we all have and it’s not for any of us to judge. Ultimately, people are wired differently and it’s not really up for us to judge although, clearly, I have a little judgment.

Now, because that’s the choices people make, where you can get in a lot of trouble is if you’re simultaneously playing the comparison game.

So you’re looking at what you’ve accumulated in terms of resources, and you compare yourself to someone who is a Wall-Street-whoever, who’s working 100 hours a week and has dedicated themselves – their entire life purpose is to make as much money as possible and your purpose is to travel and play music and connect with people and have interesting stories.

But in the back of your mind, maybe because of your parents or how you grew up, you’re still comparing yourself to those other people. And yes, I’m totally psychoanalyzing myself with this completely.

So you’re playing this comparison game where you’re comparing yourself to people who are completely dedicated, they’re killing their bodies with stress, they’re working way too hard. They probably have pretty crappy relationships based on the amount of hours they work, and yet – you’re comparing your income to theirs. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s where you can end up with bitterness.

The key for the second option here is to accept what you want out of life.

To say: “Hey, here’s what I really want. Here’s what I’m going to be happy with.”

And make sure that that’s accurate for you. Don’t lie to yourself here.

Then stop playing the comparison game.

Stop being bitter towards other people.

Just do your own thing, run your own race.

Option #3: Change Your Views Around Money

The third option might be to change your views around money.

Maybe reading this post you’ve realized that you picked up some beliefs around money from someone in your childhood that really isn’t someone you should be picking up beliefs around money from.

Maybe realize that around money, in many cases, there are some scam artists and some bs out there, but in many cases, money is an indicator of work of contribution of what we’re doing.

This isn’t always true, of course, but if you are an entrepreneur, if you are someone working for yourself, money is a measurement of how much you’re doing, how much you’re contributing to other people, because people generally pay you for what you do and what you give to them.

So if you’re not getting a lot of money, you’re probably not contributing nearly as much as you could, so maybe part of that belief resonates with you and you think – you know what? I’m going to try this out.

How To Change Your Beliefs About Money

I have a couple of tips for you that can help change your beliefs around money and they’re especially helpful if perhaps you’re in a moment of scarcity.

I’ve been there.

I’ve been to the point where, when I would go to a coffee shop or a 711 and buy a coffee, when I put my debit card on the machine, I would be worried about whether it would be approved for the $3 coffee and for years, I carried that nervousness with me.

No matter how much money was in my bank account, even today, when the thing clicks and is approved when I’m buying something on card, I’m always like:

“Whooh, okay!”

That’s how much it stuck with me.

So if you are in a rougher spot there’s one approach that was shared with me, which is an awesome way to change your wiring and this unconscious feeling of being broke and not having enough. To change this feeling of scarcity.

Scarcity is one of the worst feelings we can have. It completely destroys our ability to dream bigger and to be creative.

I think it also makes us treat other people horribly.

Tip #1: Carry $100-$500 Around With You – Always

Carry around $500 or $100 if you cannot come up with $500 now – no matter what – carry it around with you always, but don’t spend it.

No matter what, when you’re out, like just get an extra hundred dollars, save some money for a little bit.

Maybe you adjust this to your own country, depending on what $100 would be.

The point of this is that if you always have $100 with you, you don’t ever have to spend it, but you’re always now making a choice. So when you go into a store, it’s not “I can’t have that.” – it’s “I choose not to buy it.”

You’re always making a choice.

And I’m telling you: If you carry around a decent sum of money and you choose not to spend it, but you now have the feeling like you could if you wanted to, you are not broke, you’re just choosing to keep that money – it will rewire your associations with money so quickly.

It will have a massively positive impact.

Tip#2: Change Your Sources of Information

The second thing I recommend doing in terms of changing some money biases is changing your sources of information.

Start reading autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs. One that I could not recommend enough is “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight. Here’s a guy who built his entire company from the ground up, he’s very wealthy and did so giving value, did so following a passion of his and it’s honestly just a great book.

Books like that, books by Richard Branson I tend to really love as well!

Find people who have earned a lot of money, but did so by contributing value and trying to make the world a better place.

Elon Musk, again, might be another example as well.

Find people who are wealthy but got that way trying to do good things and trying to make things better for the world and you’ll probably find that:

Yeah, all of these people probably have the odd skeleton here or there. We all make the odd bad choices. I think Richard Branson smuggled in records at one point and did some time in jail. We all make the odd bad choices, but you’ll probably find that if you actually look for the good instead of taking this evil media bias, you’ll probably find that a lot of wealthy people have contributed a ton.

They have done their best to make the world a better place, even though it’s usually tied, they’re not going out trying to be philanthropist necessarily, at least not initially.

You do have people like Bill Gates, but they’re going out there trying to build a business and trying to make something better like the running shoe or the airline experience.

But in the process, they make the world a better place.

They create jobs.

They contribute to other people’s lives and get wealthy.

I would highly recommend just looking for more positive sources of information. Generally, media is not a great place to be spending your time anyhow. And this is especially true if you find yourself feeling scarcity, feeling worried, and feeling like you don’t have enough.

That’s what the media thrives off of, so I would really recommend putting down the BuzzFeed, Fox News, and the Huffington Post, in exchange for some audio books, some real books.

Maybe things like that might massively change your views of the world and lead to a much happier, more prosperous life.

Now if you’re brave enough, in the comments below share:

What’s one or two of your beliefs around money that you got growing up?

And ideally, where you live as well, what country you’re from, because that might be a really cool way for us to see the beliefs of ENFPs and how we might be impacted by where we grew up.

P.S. I’m hosting a few events for us fellow ENFPs this year in Canada and Europe. You can learn more about the events here:
https://www.dreamsaroundtheworld.com/events/

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