This One Simple Exercise Tells You What You Really Believe about Money

9 questions to remove negative blocks preventing success.

When I first learned about this exercise, I thought, “Bonkers!” there is no way this will tell me anything about my relationship with money.

I was in a how-to-communicate-more-effectively-for-your-relationship class, hosted at my house, with my then-husband. A ten-week course that promised to make our marriage stable and connected again.

The marriage didn’t make it, but my relationship with myself and money improved.

If you are willing to have an open mind for the next few minutes, you can change your relationship with money.

Not right away, but this exercise will pinpoint areas you need to work on, once you know where the disconnect lies, it’s much easier to have the money you want.

Step One — Have an open mind.

This exercise may sound woo-woo to some, like something only practiced in a state like California (that’s where I happily live, the birthplace of Esalen, Haight-Ashbury, and The Grateful Dead), where anything goes, we have a “live and let live” mentality here. But this exercise works anywhere you reside.

And just because we do stuff like this in California, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work or have merit. Open your mind to the possibility that you don’t know what you don’t know.

Step Two — Make a pendulum.

You need to make a simple pendulum with weight, like a paperclip and a string, or what I grabbed, a key and dental floss from my bathroom.

Use anything that will make a pendulum. It doesn’t have to be fancy.

Step Three — Get comfortable.

Hold the pendulum in front of you in a comfortable place, about four inches from your chest, let the key hang in front of your abdomen. It is better to stand.

Step Four — Swing the pendulum.

Allow the pendulum to swing to and from your body, out and back, out and back. From your navel away from you, perpendicular to your body.

Once it is swinging, say aloud, “this is yes, this is yes.”

Do this a few times and then stop the pendulum from swinging.

Step Five — Swing it sideways.

Swing it gently sideways, horizontally to the body — hip to hip — and say aloud, “this is no, this is no.”

Once again, say it aloud a few times. Stop it from swinging.

Step Six — Swing it clockwise.

Hold it center again and swing it clockwise and say, “this is I don’t know, this is I don’t know.” It doesn’t have to be a huge swing, just a little circle clockwise.

Say it a few times and then stop it from swinging.

Step Seven — Test.

Hold it in front of you and let it be still and then say, “show me yes, show me yes.” The hand holding the string doesn’t move, it is still. You aren’t swinging it. It should move on its own.

Watch what happens.

One of two things will happen.

For most of us, the pendulum should have started swinging front to back, showing you “yes,” as you programmed it to earlier.

Some of you may get the opposite reaction, and it will swing side to side.

If your pendulum swings side to side when you say, “show me yes,” that will be your yes. It simply means that your left brain isn’t talking to your right brain clearly enough right now.

Mine swings front and back as I told it to do at the beginning of the exercise, as will happen for most of you. If you experience it moving another direction, accept that as your “yes.”

Step Eight — Test.

Hold the pendulum in front of you again, make it still and do the same thing with “show me no, show me now.” While keeping your hand still. The pendulum will begin to move.

If you got a “no” as you programmed it (side to side swinging), that is your no.

Now take a break.

Go get a glass of water or go to the bathroom. Do pushups. Do something different for a few minutes.

Come back and do the whole thing again steps 1 through 8 — this is yes, this is no, this is I don’t know. Do the entire second part again. Show me yes, show me no, show me I don’t know.

For the majority of you, these steps will go smoothly, and the pendulum will cooperate.

Step Nine — One more quick test.

While keeping the hand holding the pendulum still, tell the pendulum (always aloud), “my name is X (use your real name)” to make sure the pendulum shows you yes and is programmed correctly.

Then give yourself a false name and say aloud, “my name is Elon Musk,” and see what you get, it should give you no (left to right swinging).

By this time, it should be working correctly because you have trained your machine (your neural net) to make it so.

NEURAL NETWORKS. In the brain, a typical neuron collects signals from others through a host of fine structures called dendrites. … When a neuron receives excitatory input that is sufficiently large compared with its inhibitory input, it sends a spike of electrical activity (an action potential) down its axon.

How can this be?

Your mind — neural net — is the most phenomenal machine in the world, it has limitless capacities and is easily programmed.

All that the previous steps prove is how easy it is to program your brain — your neural network — which is evidence of how extremely sensitive your mind is to suggestion.

Imagine as a child you receive negative input from parents, peers, society. If we were first told two plus two is five, your machine thinks two plus two is five until it is corrected.

If you were taught that you’re not good enough, well, that message is buried deep in there as a piece of the machine. The machine is very easily programmed.

When we ask the following questions, the pendulum will tell you what your programming around money really is and in what areas you need to change the programming.

You can use the pendulum with any subject, but I wouldn’t.

It isn’t something to do lightly, nor is it to be used to ask questions like, “will I win the lottery?”

It isn’t psychic, it’s reflective of your deep-seated beliefs you may not be aware of, but are stopping you from success.

It is a powerful tool. When you ask it a question, you need to be in alignment with your true self, not something many have experience being all the time; thus, the reason for the beginning steps and the statements to follow.

Step Ten — We are going to learn about our inner programming with money.

Grab your pendulum, and let’s start the exercise to free you from negative beliefs around money.

Here is a series of statements to determine your money mindset.

You will say each statement aloud while holding your hand still in front of your chest, danging the pendulum. After it moves in a definite direction, note whether your pendulum gave you a yes, no, or I don’t know.

This will tell you how you really feel about money, how your machine has been programmed, and what beliefs you carry.

These statements will allow you to find the blocks preventing you from acquiring the money you want. Yes, no, or maybe.

When you have your answer, write down the statement and write down the answer.

Once you know the answers, you will know what blocks to work on changing.

Go slow. Take a few minutes with each statement.

Say the statement a few times before you note your response the pendulum gives — yes, no, or not sure, before you move on to the next statement, concentrate on the statement you’re on.

1. Money is a really good thing.
2. Having vast amounts of money is a really good thing.
3. I specifically deserve to have a lot of money.
4. There’s probably something wrong with anyone who has a lot of money.
5. There’s too little money in the world for me to get a good portion of it.
6. Obtaining money is always some kind of struggle.
7. If I’m struggling for money, it means I’m not good enough, and there is probably something wrong with me.
8. People who have money are better than those who don’t.
9. I’m guilty of my own lack of abundance.

We all have charges around money — positive, negative, or neutral. Money is just energy. The universe — which runs on energy/vibration — doesn’t know five cents from five million dollars. It is all the same.

Some of us have huge charges around money; issues from society, parents, and other factors — topics like survival issues, money as image, status, respect — all kinds of stuff.

The idea of money has toxicity surrounding it in many elements of our culture.

We lie about it, pretend we have more than we do, we buy things we can’t afford, try to keep up with the Joneses by charging a lifestyle we don’t have the money to sustain, cars we can’t afford, a private education for our children that’s out of our budget.

We manipulate when it comes to money, we lie to spouses, friends, and family about money.

Underneath all of that is a great deal of attitude about money.

Some are, “there’s something wrong with you if you have money,” “you’re better than me because you have so much more money,” or, “there’s something wrong with me if I don’t have money.” These are just the common themes.

There are many more.

They are negative programs that end up running us.

You can attach specific wrongs around so many elements surrounding money, ideas that come at us, how our parents dealt with and talked about money has a lasting impact.

These programs, or energic fields, run us in specific quiet ways. You have a relationship with money — an energetic field surrounding how you feel about money — even if they are not conscious of it.

You want to find out what they are. So you can change them.

If you have a negative charge around money, clear and clean them up now. Get them out of the way, so these negative beliefs are not blocking your real self from manifesting what you really want and deserve.

My answers to the statements.

1. Yes (emphatic swinging of the pendulum).
2. YES (a large amount of swinging back and forth).
3. Yes
4. Yes (small amount of swinging, slowly). ***
5. No
6. No
7. No
8. No
9. No

***The only negative charge I had was on statement #4, that’s the one I need to work on.

I don’t believe on a conscious level people who have vast amounts of money are bad.

If you ask me if I thought people who have a lot of money have something wrong with them, I would give you an emphatic No! But somewhere that notion got programmed, and I didn’t realize I held that belief as part of my matrix.

I have a pretty healthy relationship with money, it wasn’t as good a few years ago.

When I first did this exercise, I had a negative charge on three of the statements, but I’ve been improving them consciously. And now, I only have a negative charge on statement four.

The turn around.

Once you identify your deep-seated relationship with money, what your negative programming looks like, you can do a positive affirmation on it.

Even though I did not know this consciously — I was unaware I held this negative belief — my machine was running on the sub-conscious thought that, “There’s probably something wrong with anyone who has a lot of money.”

To reverse this negative belief, I can say to myself a few times a day, “There is nothing wrong with someone just because they have a ton of money.”

A turn around.

Now aware, I can do something to change it. I can change it by recognizing it as a false belief and manifest a different reality.

I can tell myself, ‘Oprah has a ton of money, I don’t think there is anything bad about Oprah.’ I don’t know Oprah personally, but I’m fairly sure Oprah is a good person. She does a lot of good with her wealth. I know this.

The same goes for Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott. She received billions in her divorce settlement, making her one of the world’s wealthiest women.

Recently, she gave much of her wealth away to causes I believe in to aid marginalized people in our society who have been systematically beaten down and economically and politically thwarted through systematic racism and sexism.

The previous belief my mind was running on isn’t true, there is nothing wrong with someone just because they have a ton of money. Just because someone has gobs of money, doesn’t mean they’re a bad person.

Tell the reverse to yourself daily, put it up on the wall, read it. Persistence in changing any negative belief takes care of the negative belief. Your mind has to be disciplined, but it’s possible to change it.

The more you give authority and own what is healthy about you (for me answers to the statements 1–9, excluding #4), the more your trauma side is reduced.

Even though I was programmed to believe anyone with a lot of money must have something wrong with them, I’m reversing that negative belief. It is just a false belief I picked up somewhere (no big deal), and I’m going to manifest from my true self all the comfort and money I desire, letting go of this one negative belief will help me do so.

When we know better, we do better. Know thyself. Knowledge is power.

Keep working at it to reprogram the machine. It isn’t hard. It takes persistence, not a struggle.

The more you own and give authority to what is healthy about yourself, the healthy choices you make, the more your trauma side is reduced.

There is nothing you can do that is better for you than to give authority to your healthy self and stay out of your traumatized self.

On the financial side, that means to be in alignment with your financial success.

Identify those things where if you held that belief (like number 4 for me), it clearly could not serve you.

It isn’t serving me, it hasn’t served me, and if I continue to believe it, it won’t serve me.

It won’t serve you to carry the belief that people are better than or worse than you because they have money. Get rid of that belief. It doesn’t serve you to have the belief that money is scarce and is a struggle to obtain. “The universe is abundant” is a more productive belief to carry because it’s true.

The universe is abundant.

The pendulum exercise helps you identify your best way to manifest the money that aligns with your true self. To feel comfortable and safe and to be doing what you want to do in life.

There is no separation between having the life you want, having the money you want, and being who you truly are.

You can have it all.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.