How to design your own personal money mantra for manifesting wealth in 2022

Personal finance TikTok (#MoneyTok) has a lot of fun mantras and songs for manifesting money. Maybe you’ve seen some of the more popular ones, like this chant by @Kingsoon4774, this verse by @Alexarosecarlin and this ‘$Money Mantra$’ song by Moonlight Scorpio.

These mantras are great and all, but they only speak generally to the common desire for having more money. A mantra is even more powerful when it speaks directly to your personal life and struggles.

Mantras are powerful tools that can help anyone overcome resistance or negative emotions. A mantra does not have to be a Sanskrit phrase from an ancient sutra or even a thought-provoking quote from a great philosopher. It can be a phrase or any set of words that has resonated with you in some way before.

Whatever it is, if it stood out to you before, it probably has some significance to you personally or spiritually. That’s all you need to know — the rest will come from repeating it, analyzing it, and discovering what the phrase reveals about yourself.

This article will help you develop your very own money mantra that is tailored to help you advance your financial goals and overcome money insecurities. I will share a story about how I developed my own money mantra to illustrate how I came up with it.

My money mantra: “Want-less”

A mantra is like poetry: the same words can mean one thing to someone and a completely different thing to someone else. Even with your personal mantra, the same phrase can mean one thing one day and another thing the next. That’s how you know you’ve found a powerful mantra: it feels like its meaning morphs to apply to new challenges.

Let me give you an example of a really simple mantra that I have developed to help me overcome money anxiety or insecurity.

My main money mantra (“want-less”) actually has very little to do with money. Instead, it is about reminding myself of my control over my desires.

When I use my mantra, I am trying to remind myself that by wanting less (or fewer things) there is less reason to desire more money. Want-less is both an injunction to myself and an adjective. I am telling myself literally to want less and declaring that “I AM want-less” (without want).

My mantra puts me in the headspace of imagining having no desires for anything more than I already have. If I have no desires, I ask myself, why would I need to worry about having more money?

5 steps to creating your very own money mantra

These steps can be done on your own or with another person. An outside observer may be able to reveal things about yourself that are harder for you to see; however, make sure they are someone who you trust and know will not be judgemental. Personal finance can be a delicate topic that requires vulnerability.

Step 1: Determine what you really want

You may say, “I want more money.” That’s great. Me too. But what you really want are the things that you would buy with that money.

Money is nothing on its own. Money is just what we exchange for the things we want in life. So when you say, “I want more money,” you are really saying, “I want more money in order to be able to exchange it for other things that I really want but that are too numerous and vague to tell.”

A yearning for more money is actually an undetermined desire for something that money could buy or provide.

So imagine your life with unlimited money, then envision what that life looks like — what are you wearing, what do you own, where do you live, who are you with, what new privileges do you have, etc? Those things are what you really want.

Step 2: Dig deeper

Now pick the biggest, most-important feeling thing of your filthy rich fantasy, then ask yourself why you want that thing. Then keep asking ‘why do I want that?’ and responding with an ‘I want…’ statement until you can’t anymore. Like this example:

“I want to live in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills.” Why?

“Because the people I see on TV who live there are all so beautiful and successful.” Why do I want that?

“Because I want to look beautiful or successful.” Why do I want that?

“Because I want other people to be envious of my lifestyle like I am of the people I see on TV.”

In this hypothetical, this person discovered that the heart of the reason they want to live in a big mansion in Beverly Hills is that they want others to be envious of their lifestyle. This is not a very flattering desire, but at least it’s honest.

You will find that not every desire will end up like this. You may find that some reveal more noble ambitions, like maybe your devotion to your family (“I want my parents to live a comfortable, stress-free life”) or a commitment to a great cause (“I want to be able to contribute to organizations that are working to save the planet.”)

The point is that both the more honorable desires and the more shameful ones are all mixed together when we say, “I want more money.” We don’t know which are which until we dig deeper.

Step 3: Is that me?

After we’ve dug deeper, we get to decide how we feel about what we’ve revealed.

Look at the deep desires you’ve revealed and ask yourself, “Is that me?” or “Is that who I want to be?”

Looking at the example above, if you said something like, “I want others to be jealous of my lifestyle,” you might not like how that makes you look. If you decide, “that isn’t me” or “that’s not the kind of person I want to be,” then you get to revise what you desire.

Step 4: Swap it out

If you don’t like it, change it! If you hate the idea of having a big mansion just so you can rub it in other people’s noses, ask yourself what you would rather have, then swap it out.

We want to adjust that negative desire until it becomes harmonious with who you are and the person you want to become.

Instead of having the ability to be snooty, maybe you want the ability to provide a comfortable shelter for your family. Then with that in mind, you can revise your desire to be wanting a house with plenty of room, a sizable yard for your gorgeous shepherd named ‘Penelope’ and a guest house in the back for your mom to live in… in Beverly Hills.

I don’t know. It could be anything! Whatever it is, make sure it feels better than whatever came before.

Now we are super close to finding your very own money mantra. Final step.

Step 5: Acknowledge the change. There’s your mantra.

Remember in math class when they talked about finding the ‘Delta,’ the Greek letter used to denote the change in some variable. We’re looking for the Delta — we’re looking for what quality of your desire changed in order to make it more harmonious with who you are and the person you want to become.

Using our example, your desire changed from “wanting to show off” to “wanting to provide for and protect [your family].” How would you describe that Delta (change)?

I would describe it as “moving from selfish-ness to selfless-ness” or “valuing the people close to me over strangers” or “choosing to disregard status symbols (mansions) over practical solutions (a house).”

Some potential mantras that could come from those statements are:

“I choose self-lessness over selfishness.”

“The opinions of strangers mean nothing to me compared to the regard of my family.”

“A mansion is just a fancy word for a big house.”

Not bad! There are so many interpretations possible, but one or a handful of these that you come up with could become a mantra that is meaningful to you.

When you pick one that feels right, it becomes a tool in your self-help toolkit that you can apply again and again when some desire doesn’t feel right or is making you anxious. It is a reminder of what is truly important to you, so you can quickly get yourself back into a self-assured headspace.

For instance, let’s pretend that the mantra “A manson is just a fancy word for a big house” really resonates with you. If one day you find yourself feeling insecure about not being able to afford the super-sexy looking new Ford Bronco that your neighbor just rolled up in, you can tell yourself, “A mansion is just a fancy word for a big house,” and remind yourself that you value practical solutions over expensive ones.

Then, I don’t know about you, but I would feel cooler than my neighbor with the sexy new Bronco because I get to see all the advantages of my values, like how I don’t have a car loan payment to deal with or how my car probably gets better gas mileage.

You get what I’m trying to say! I’m better off with a mantra that speaks directly to my insecurities and struggles because it helps me become the person I want to become, instead of someone others want me to become.

The accumulation of money is not a noble pursuit, unless it is in service of your purpose and your values.

This is a personal finance article of Zeneration Wealth — a platform for empowering Gen Z and beyond with new ideas of financial wealth and well being. As a community, we are creating a new paradigm of success. If you have your own thoughts on these topics, feel free to reply to this post to keep the conversation going.

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