This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Tina.
I’ve set goals before and I’ve hit them. But then I always seem to fall back to where I was before. Like I’ll hit a new income level and then something happens—an expense, a slow month, whatever—and I’m right back where I started. How do I make the growth permanent instead of temporary?
You fell back because you hit your financial set point and your subconscious pulled you back to what’s familiar.
This is exactly what I’ve talked about before around the financial set point. You can push beyond it temporarily through effort and willpower. But if you don’t change the set point itself—if you don’t change your self-image—you’ll always get pulled back.
Think about it like a thermostat. If your thermostat is set at 68 degrees and the temperature goes up to 75, what happens? The air conditioning kicks in and pulls it back down to 68.
Your financial set point works the same way. If it’s set at $5,000 a month and you push yourself to $8,000, your subconscious goes “This isn’t right, this isn’t safe, this isn’t who we are” and it creates circumstances that pull you back down.
An unexpected expense. A client leaves. You get sick and can’t work. Something always happens to bring you back to your set point.
The way you make growth permanent is you raise the set point itself. You change your self-image to match the new level. You become the person who naturally operates at that level, not the person who’s straining to reach it.
When $8,000 a month becomes normal to you, when it’s just who you are, not something you’re trying to achieve, then your subconscious stops fighting it. And you stay there.
But if you’re still identified as a $5,000-a-month person who temporarily made $8,000, you’ll always go back to $5,000.
Change the identity, not just the behavior. That’s how you make it permanent.
