As we slide into another quarter, some of us are filled with a sense of duty to re-cap, re-visit and re-vamp our desires and intentions. We look to improve the various spheres of our lives: family/friends, work/career, health and money/finances.

In terms of improving our financial health, we find ourselves saying, "I'll try to create this...." or, "When I make this amount of money, I will...", or "If only I had this...I could do this...". We often attribute our ability to have to the result of the actions of others (such as a prospective client, a spouse or partner or even good or bad luck). In other words, rarely do we sit back and say, "I am fully responsible for what I have or don't have today."

T. Harv Eker, in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth, declares:

"A lack of money is never, ever, ever a problem. A lack of money is simply a symptom of what is going on underneath...What's going on here is that the real problem cannot be changed in the "printout," the physical world; it can only be changed in the "program," the mental, emotional, and spiritual worlds. Money is a result, wealth is a result, health is a result, illness is a result, your weight is a result. We live in a world of cause and effect."

If we are to hold this as a "truism", what does this really mean for us in day-to-day terms? How can we understand what is our programming in order to modify and change it?

As Dr. Phil loves to say, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge!" So for the sake of acknowledgment, consider the following guidelines to help you achieve some clarity on this point:

1. Recall what you've heard about money (eg. from parents in childhood-eg. "money doesn't grow on trees", or," we can't afford this", "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer").

2. Recall what you've seen around money (the influences of how people dealt and behaved with money).

3. Recall what your emotional experiences about money have been (a feeling that has been left with you around money from one or many incidents).

The next steps in this process require some patience and introspection. Once you've begun to become aware, you can then ask, "How have these thoughts and beliefs affected my life so far in terms of the decisions I have made?" You can then begin to challenge these emotionally-charged beliefs with more thought-out, common-sense perspectives. Only then can you train yourself to disassociate from the old views with empowering declarations and intentional, logical actions.

Remember, as T. Harv Eker puts it, "Nothing has meaning except for the meaning you give it".