Freelance Your Way to Freedom

23Seeing Yourself as a Financially Free Person

When you understand that your self‐worth is not determined by your net worth, then you'll have financial freedom.

— Suze Orman

You are what you think. Everything you have in your life right now started as a thought in your brain. You either chose to act on that thought or not. You either chose to believe you could act on that thought or not. Philosophers for thousands of years have known and written about this. For example, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius penned, “A man's life is what his thoughts make of it.” Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “A man is what he thinks about all day long” (Itani 2020).

This mindset hack will change your life in everything that you do. But for the purposes of this chapter, we are going to talk about shifting your mindset into one where you comfortably see yourself not only as a financially free person—but as someone who deserves financial freedom.

A very common side effect from years of piled‐on trauma, criticisms, and improperly placed blame and/or doubt can leave people feeling that they are not deserving of wealth, much less success. We come to believe all the negative things we have been told we are throughout our lives. The people who have blamed or doubted us make us feel that we are not deserving of anything good. It's a very normal psychological response that most people must wrestle with when shifting into a money mindset. Do not feel bad about yourself if you feel a mental abundance roadblock. ...