 Now that we've shattered some classic money myths, it's time for us to begin really rewiring our consciousness and putting ourselves into a place where we can start opening to making money and getting to that place where you never have to worry about it again. Let us begin with a psychological experiment that describes how we view money in relationship with value in the world today. In this particular experiment, people were asked to judge five different glasses of wine presented at various prices from $5 to $90. Before drinking, participants were told how much each bottle of wine cost. After tasting them all, the participants generally agreed that the most expensive wine was their favorite and the cheaper ones were their least. Now, maybe you saw this coming, but it was later revealed that the wine presented as a $90 bottle and the wine presented as a $10 bottle were actually the same drink. That means that in the mind of the taste testers, the price tag itself changed their perception and gave them a better or worse experience. Not only did participants report enjoying the same wine with a higher price tag more, they even had increased activation in regions of their brain hypothesized to be associated with pleasure. This study teaches us a few valuable lessons. One, it would seem, is that the more you pay for something, the more you tend to value it. This is commonly reflected in an analogy about books. If someone just gives you a book randomly, you're less likely to read it and you're personally invested in buying it. We can also see this with wedding rings in society today. You might be familiar with the fact that diamonds aren't actually very rare, but they have a long history of being marketed as if they were, so they could be sold for very outlandish prices. Because of this perception of value around them though, a wedding ring that costs $10,000 versus one that costs only $100 says a lot to the young couple due to the value that's been attached to it. Now, I'm not saying that it's a good thing that big diamonds are sold for thousands, but rather, if we can recognize the relationship between price and personal value, we can make better choices about what we spend our money on. Actually, let's stay on the wedding rings for just one more minute because this is relevant. The first recorded evidence of a wedding ring concept actually appears to have come from ancient Egypt over 3,000 years ago. The writings depict couples presenting each other with braided rings fashioned from hemp or reeds, which would eventually be replaced with bands of either leather, bone, or ivory. The more expensive the material, the more love was believed to be shown. The hieroglyphs show that Egyptians believed that the rings symbolized undying commitment and eternal love between the couple because the circle has no beginning or end with the center opening symbolizing a door to the future. The reason I'm sharing this is that we have this curious tradition that would take an individual's love and demonstrate it with the symbolism of both the ring and its material, physical value and worth in a monetary sense. However, we must always remember that the money doesn't buy love and that even in the Egyptian tradition the love came first and the ring was a reflection of the love. While the material and its value played a part it was more of a psychological trick, if anything, giving couples a sense of feeling that their love was indicated by the worth of the material of the ring. This is significant because it's not so much the dollar value that's necessarily important but how much something is worth to you personally. For some people a thousand dollars is a lot of money an astronomical amount. For others that same thousand dollars is not worth very much at all. So we each have a different identification with our perception of value and this is important to identify if we want to shift that at all. On that subject let's look at value in another way. From the perception of the service provider in the case of someone who is offering a product or service having a higher price tag is actually the best possible choice because it will allow for a higher quality of service. For example let's compare going out for a premium dinner versus the drive-thru at McDonald's. There's an entirely different kind of experience here and the environment itself will most certainly play a part in how you feel personally about the experience not to mention the quality of the food the cleanliness of the environment the atmosphere, everything. I don't want to say that it's always best to go with the most expensive route especially if it's unnecessary in that particular situation. In truth, sometimes premium is better and other times it's better to just let all that go. For example, it's like the difference between a fancy trip on a cruise around the Caribbean or a camping trip to a beautiful place a few hour drive from home. Now in this thought experiment notice what happens in your mind when we look at these two options. For people who can't afford a luxury cruise experience to immediately start judging it as negative because it's out of one's reach. And if you're someone who is for lack of a better word fully loaded how do you feel about camping? And I don't mean glamping. I mean a tent and a fire and just being in the rawness of nature. Does the experience feel beneath you? These two potentials could both be wonderful but our perception and relationship with money indicate how we approach the options we have in our lives and more importantly how we feel about them. In my life, I once had a friend who absolutely hated Apple computers. Apple was the worst he would declare and list off all of the ways that Max sucked and why Windows was superior in every way. He was very passionate about this subject however after several long conversations eventually the truth came out. He hated Apple products because he couldn't afford them because of the MacBook. Well he'd probably love it. The hate and disdain that he felt towards this physical product actually had nothing to do with the product at all. It was all about his own sense of value and self worth and the negative relationship that he had with money. So the question then becomes how do we shift this? How do we transform our relationship evolve our mindset when it comes to money? The first stage in wealth transformation is to recognize our limitations and if we have fixed beliefs about who we are and what we're capable of or not capable of we'll have to break these down if we are to evolve beyond them. We can't break free without calling out our blockages. True transformation begins within and that's where we must start. Speaking to this further the most widespread disease of our time may very well be icantitis. It is contracted by many of us early in life from our elders and peers. In fact society has made a song of it and I know reason but it's heard everywhere. I can't because I'm poor I can't because I'm sick I can't because I do not have ability I can't because there's no opportunity or perhaps I'm just very, very old and so on and so forth. Few people use more than a small part of the tremendous God power within but you can alter the pattern of the icant tune and in fact you must. No progress in the realization of prosperity unless you do so. This calls for knowing, really knowing that you are a spiritual being living in a limitless universe endowed with the whole potential energy flow of the cosmos. If you believe I'm an average sort of person then you will create an average sort of life. Let go of icant and begin to identify yourself as the living enterprise of the infinite one. You are not an average person you are you a unique individualization of the universal creative process affirm for yourself now I can because I am. So are you ready to make some money? Or perhaps you need a bit more time affirming the cosmic power within you. Well if so, that's great because it looks like we're out of time for this episode. I'll wrap it up with a fun quote and I'll see you next week to go much deeper. You can only become truly accomplished with something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.