No Limits Ladies.com

I was reading Brian Tracy’s The Psychology Of Selling (yeah on a bit of a Brian Tracy binge) and loved his bit on earning thresholds.

“Psychologists have found that you can never earn 10 percent more or less than your self-concept level of income. If you earn 10 percent more than you think you are entitled to, you will immediately engage in compensating behaviors to get rid of the money… If you earn 10 percent or more below your self-concept level of income, you will engage in scrambling behaviors.”

I wish I could say that this does not apply to me. Unfortunately, that would be lying.

When the hubby and I got married, we had a discussion on what would be our goal for earnings (excluding investment income). I figured out a number and wrote it down.

We hustled to get our earnings (back then mostly salaries) up to that level. We job jumped, we asked for raises, we invested in our knowledge, we took some career risks.

Once we hit that salary level, we coasted.

Then I decided to semi-retire (take summers off to write and start new ventures). We didn’t want to touch our investment income (hey, you never know when we might need it more…) but with me off for 4 months out of a year, we would fall below our earnings target.

So what did we do? We hustled. The hubby got a professional designation that bumped him into a new salary bracket. He also moved more into the ever lucrative pure sales. Within a few months, we were back at our salary goal.

I know, I know, dumbness. Why didn’t we do this before and invest the difference?

So look at your self-concept level of income. What figure do you have in your mind? Try raising that figure by 10 to 20%.