No, I’m not talking about the whimsical changing of your mind about what movie to go see tonight. In this article, and subsequent articles we are going to review the concepts found in T. Harv Eker’s "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind." We are going to look at his principles as they could apply to building your referral marketing business. Though Eker’s practical advice is rooted in traditional business, they apply equally to building a substantial team of peer distributors.

Everything begins with our thoughts. But where do our thoughts come from? Eker reminds us that our thoughts come from our childhood programming. What we experience on the physical level of our lives actually is a result of our mental, emotional and spiritual energies. From a very early age, maybe from the day we were born, all these energies create who we are. Much of that is on the sub-conscious level. If we are to create the financial success that we desire, we must examine the money blueprint created by our past programming. We must work on the inner world if we want to change our outer world.

If you want to be successful, rich and happy, you will have to start observing your thoughts very carefully to discover your money blueprint. The reason is that your thoughts originate from the "files of information" stored in the file cabinets of your subconscious mind. These files come from early childhood experiences, some positive, some not so positive. Specifically, they come from conditioning in three primary ways: 1) verbal programming (what you heard when you were young); 2) modeling (what you saw when you were young); and 3) specific incidents (what you experienced when you were young).

The key to changing your financial blueprint is to change or eliminate your non-supportive programming. First, you must become aware of the three types of childhood conditioning affecting you today. Write down all the statements you heard about money, wealth and rich people; notice the ways you are modeling your parents habits regarding money and wealth; and finally try to think of specific emotional experiences you had as a child around money. Second, write down how you believe those statements affected your financial life; how did that modeling create ways you treat money; and did your emotional experiences create lasting responses to the idea of becoming rich? Third, you must begin to disassociate from those ways of thinking and feeling.Now you have a choice to take different actions and create your own money blueprint. And lastly, you must recondition your old ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. You must create new habits that will create a new money blueprint that you choose.

This is going to require some homework. You are going to have to spend some time with yourself and a pad of paper. Begin to watch yourself, your thoughts, your reactions, your habits. Observe your fears and your beliefs. Begin to become conscious of your underlying programming running most of your daily chores. Habits are good if they support us, but bad if they keep us from growing ourselves and our businesses.

In the next series of articles on this topic of changing your money blueprint, we are going to examine the 17 principles as explained by Eker. Once you take stock of where you are now, you can define where you want to go and who you want to become. Remember, your income can only grow to the extent that you do. The 17 principles will help us to begin thinking and acting like the rich people do.