00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 740 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hi, my name is Aaron Walker, I'm president and founder of the mastermind playbook. You know, masterminds are a great way to intentionally grow yourself and invest in others. And one way to be inspired to serve others well is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my good friend,
00:00:27 Scott Mader And you're deliberate and intentional about it. You can say, what are the two things what's not fitting together? What's the old meat and the old behavior, and what's the new meat and the new behavior. What's my new belief. And how is this thing going to be in alignment with my new actions and by taking action, you eliminate the dissonance,
00:00:55 but you also make the change welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your treasures.
00:01:35 I talk with you about what cognitive dissonance is. I share why it can affect your money in a number of different ways. And I give you some tips on what you can do about it. As we talk about stewarding your treasures. Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dime, it turns out you can.
00:01:57 All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. So on Tuesday, I talked a little bit about what cognitive dissonance is, but just to remind you,
00:02:22 in case you either forgot, or you didn't listen to Tuesday's episode, cognitive dissonances, that feeling we get when our beliefs, our ideas, our actions, or what we see in the world gets out of alignment with each other. If we think of ourselves as healthy, but then we behave in ways that aren't healthy. If, if we see ourselves as being,
00:02:46 you know, a frugal person, but then we waste money and our brain doesn't like it. When things are out of alignment, we don't enjoy that feeling. Cognitive dissonance creates stress in our body and our minds. And because of it, that the theory goes that we try to reduce that stress. We try to believe and bring our belief chief at our action into alignment.
00:03:13 And in theory, you can do that by a few different ways, right? You can change your actions. You can change what you do. You can change your beliefs. You can change what you believe, or you can reduce the stress by simply ignoring things, being out of alignment. I simply, instead of recognizing it or paying attention to it,
00:03:34 you just gloss over it and you can do that by creating sort of stories of explanation for yourself. It's not that you're not healthy. It's that you're yes, you, you eat too much junk food or you eat too much fast food, but that's because you're really, really busy. And the truth is that you do other things to help yourself healthy.
00:03:55 You know, you go to the doctor once a year or you walk at least a few times every week. Well, actually it's probably every month, but you know, you, you exercise. So you, you basically just kind of change the story in your head to bring it into alignment. You don't actually change your belief and start thinking of yourself as not being healthy.
00:04:15 You don't change your action and start thinking of yourself and doing things that help you behave in a healthier way and bring them into alignment that way. So the same thing happens with our money. See, oftentimes people come to me for help with money. They come to me as a coach and they say the one of the first things most people will say,
00:04:36 well, there's a few. One of them is you've probably never seen a situation as bad as mine. And if you stop and think for a minute, if you're coming to somebody who works with people on money, and you say that recognize that I've worked with well over a thousand clients, only one of them has had the worst situation that I've ever seen only.
00:04:58 So statistically, the odds of you being that one are pretty small. And in fact, most people, they say that, and the truth is it's not even close to true. The truth is often their situation's not that bad. And that's one of the things that I have to begin to dissuade them because the truth is that is one of those things that could create cognitive dissonance.
00:05:21 Because if you believe your situation is hopeless and bad, then you're going to act as if it's hopeless and bad. You create some of the negativity because you want to bring your belief and your action into alignment. Very few people act out of alignment with that and create that cognitive dissonance. That's one of the reasons that coaching helps people change because we recognize that we're going to create that discomfort.
00:05:49 We're going to create that stress. We're going to create cognitive dissonance. It's going to happen. And we help coach the person through it. We help them reduce the cognitive dissonance by changing their belief and their action at the same time. This is why when we're working on money, it's not just about the budget or the tools, or how do you update your spending?
00:06:13 It's actually much more about your behavior because the math part is sixth grade math. You know how to do a budget. You know how to make a plan. What you don't know how to do is help yourself live on it. It shows up in other ways, too, people will say, you know, I am a spender. I'm somebody who spends a lot of money.
00:06:39 I read, do you do retail therapy? I often can't find ways to cut back. You know, we've cut our budget as far as we can. Our alternatively let's look at the income side. You know, if you see yourself as somebody who makes $50,000 a year, then even if there's an opportunity that you're fully qualified for that's at 70 or 80 or a hundred thousand dollars a year,
00:07:05 you often won't even apply for it because you see yourself as capped out at 50 or maybe 60,000. That's as much as you can push your belief. That's as much as you can push yourself, you don't see yourself as someone who can earn a great deal of money. And because you don't see yourself that way, you don't look for opportunities that create that income.
00:07:29 And if you don't create those opportunities, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. See, that's one of the problems with living a life without cognitive dissonance. It's one of the reasons why, oftentimes we have to create some of that. There's a good side to cognitive dissonance too, because if you examine them, this is what you can do about it.
00:07:53 If you begin to feel that discomfort often the way we reduce that discomfort is we go back to our old behaviors because our old behaviors aren't in alignment. When we're trying to make a change, we're by definition, we're creating something new. It's going to be out of alignment. It's going to create cognitive dissonance. And when you recognize that and you're deliberate and intentional about it,
00:08:16 you can say, what are the two things what's not fitting together? What's the old me and the old behavior. And what's the new me and the new behavior. What's my new belief. And how is this thing going to be in alignment with my new actions? And by taking action, you eliminate the dissonance, but you also make the change. And this is really how we can make improvements on our money.
00:08:40 It's not about a budget. It's not about a tool. It's about how the tools and the behaviors fit together. If you don't believe yourself to be someone who can start a business, but yet you want to, you're never going to start a business help. If you see yourself as somebody who's never going to get out of debt, then guess what?
00:09:01 You're going to be in debt for the rest of your life. If you see yourself as someone who's never going to be able to afford to own a home, then that's true, but you can change these beliefs and these actions and bring them into alignment in a successful way. And that's one of the things that I love to do as a coach. Hope this helps.
00:09:25 And thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively, listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of treasures, you can sign up for our treasures tips by going to inspired stewardship.com/treasures
00:10:03 or text in the U S four four two two two treasures tips. And we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact.