Want more financial success? These three things are holding you back

Today, I’m sharing real advice I’ve given real clients that have helped them move towards a happier, healthier financial life.

“You can’t rate yourself a three in your performance review and then expect a bonus.”

Something I commonly see holding people back from making more money is not being able to fully own and properly communicate the value they bring to the table.

There is often an internal conflict between wanting to be better compensated – but also, not wanting to seem conceited, and not wanting to be too forward in their self-promotion.

Many of us have been taught to “let your work do the talking.” We hope that if we work hard enough, people will eventually see our value.

This can lead to over-working for years, without recognition or reward – hoping that one day, your time will come. Meanwhile, you watch people less qualified, less skilled, less experienced than yourself, getting ahead. It’s confusing and frustrating.

Here’s the mindset shift that helps my clients: self-promotion isn’t about boasting. It’s about letting your value and your work impact more people. Ironically, it’s about focusing less on yourself, and more on what’s possible for the people who can be touched by your work.

Think about your favourite artist, or a brand that has touched your life. Imagine if they’d been too scared to put their work out there for fear of what people might say. If you really believe in the value you offer – it’s a loss to the world, if you’re too shy to promote it.

“Money is everywhere. Everyone you interact with has a problem they’d pay to solve.”

Most of us have been trained to think of making money in very constrained ways. You get a job, and get paid by an employer, or you create a product/service and sell that to someone.

But let’s just step back and look at the bigger picture. What is money, really? Money is used to exchange value. That’s all. It was really designed to be a better form of bartering.

Now, value is entirely subjective. Two people can have an entirely different view on what is good value for money. This is a good thing. It means there is room for you to be creative. It means that whatever value you want to bring to the market-place – there’s probably someone out there who is willing to pay for it, if you can find them and package it in the right way.

Here’s an exercise I get clients to do to help them stretch their mental muscles around money. Whenever you’re in a public space, look around at all the people and think about the collective money in that space.

If you’re in a park, in a work meeting, in a café – look arou