On the road to wealth, a vital step is getting oneself into the mentality and energetically into the space of being successful, whether that success is represented by a million rand monthly income or a holiday home in the Bahamas.

I often touch on the fact that our culture and society tends to enforce the idea that wealth and being rich is wrong. We throw around terms like “filthy rich” and “dirty money” and “root of all evil” even while seven-eights of the country are purchasing lottery tickets every Saturday. As long as we have a subconscious belief that being rich is bad, we will continuously sabotage our efforts to attain said riches.

Pay attention to the messages spewed forth in the media, by your friends and family, your boss and colleagues, the books you may read, the shows you may watch. How many of them show rich folk as boring or evil or sulky and contrast those images with adventurous, happy, pleasant poor or middle-class folk?

An example that was brought up tonight was Titanic. None of the first class patrons seem to have much fun, being very prim and proper, with the exception of Kate Winslet’s character who seeks out the “pleasures” of the lower decks. At a subconscious level, regular watchers of this movie will absorb the “fact” that once you’re rich, there’s no fun any more.

Of course, you only have to look around you to see that the truth contradicts this but movies have a powerful influence on us. We’re more likely to believe something shown on a tv show or film than what may be actually around us, simply because tv shows and films add so much glamour to what they portray.

There are a good few shows and movies that send us the opposite message but they are, comparatively, few and far between. If you want to be successful, if you want to be rich in terms of having lots of money, make that your internal reality first. Remember that it is good to be rich. If you still don’t believe that, look at the likes of Richard Branson or Will Smith. They live a much more adventurous and full life than most for their hefty bank balance.

Read more books that encourage this mindset. Acres of Diamonds is a good example, emphasizing not only the possibility but also your right to be rich. Grab hold of it and kick-start your subconscious mind into believing that the richer you are, the better you are. Not than anyone else. Just better.