The first step to financial strength: understanding your personal finanancial psyche.

People are so incredibly complex and diverse that there is no good way to sum up people as a whole. Every person has their own thoughts, feelings, personality, genetics, upbringing which all play a collective role in the construction of our psyche. Many of our outwardly expressed traits represent the core of who we are. These need not necessarily be changed in order to achieve financial wellness, though they should be understood and be in our control.

Environmental factors mold the other component of our financial personality. These have been impressed upon us and may not necessarily reflect who we are or who we wish to be. Our major environmental influence is our parents and family life; though you may not want to accept it, your personality is much a product of your parents example. Financially, their example was reflected in their expressed opinion of money; expressed both verbally and physically.

Your family will have conditioned you with both good and bad opinions. Which is good and which is bad is abstract and totally dependent on your goals in life and the basis for comparison. The point is that we need not accept the conditioning of our family and parents as what is right for us. Neither should we wholly accept the opinions of any "authority", for though they may be right for one, every situation is different.

What you should do, however, is think about the opinions you currently have and why you have those opinions. Do you feel that money is evil? Could this be because your mother hung a plaque in the entryway that said 'money is the root of all evil'? Do you hate the IRS? Could it because with every paycheck your father would rant about how much money the government was 'stealing' from his check, or how much food they were taking off your table. What are your current conceptions about money? Are they positive conceptions or negative. Ultimately you should formulate your own opinions about money keeping in mind that if you have a negative opinion of money, you are more likely to avoid it. If you believe that only bad people have money, you will want to get rid of it, either by spending it, or giving it away. Well there is a big difference between earned and hard earned and the difference is not in being earned.

You will ultimately do with your money that which makes you happy, this is the nature of people, but in deciding what makes you happy, remember that a negative opinion of money will negatively impact your attraction of it.