Underearning is when you earn less than you need or desire despite wanting it to be otherwise. It includes emotional and physical deprivation. It stems from low self-esteem and low self-worth.
Many underearners feel bad about charging for their work so they volunteer or just accept tips and or insufficient trade-offs.
Many underearners have a dysfunctional relationship with wealth, power, and money. Usually, this began somewhere in the earliest formative years. Some false notions about wealth stuck in their mind and they’ve been making decisions about money based on this self-destructive idea about money.
Some signs of underearning include feeling trapped, disempowered to do anything about their condition. Underearners underestimate their worth, self-sabotage, are usually codependent on others, crave and long for comfort, live in financial chaos and vagueness, have difficulty knowing what success means, and may have negative opinions of wealthy people.
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Here are a few things you can do to stop underearning and begin to build wealth.
Get honest with yourself. Read a few books about underearning. Take the self-tests. Find out if you are behaving as an underearner. Quit pretending that it is not a serious problem that can be put off until later, or worse, put off until you finish helping others achieve their dreams while yours go stagnant.
Make a decision to do something about your situation. Get uncomfortable. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is insanity. Don’t expect anyone else is going to do the heavy lifting for you. You will have to be the one who makes the changes. There will be internal work on your ideas about money and external work on how you go about conducting your interactions with others. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
You’ll have to stretch yourself into new behaviors. You’ll have to be willing to face real fears. Some people in your inner circle may not approve of your new self-care and self-love. It will be easy to just give up and accept that things will never get better. They will get better but it will come with real growing pains.
Build a community of believers around you. Surround yourself with mentors and cheerleaders who are not afraid of seeing you grow. There are people who know that your growth is no threat to their growth. There are coaches, mentors, professors, teachers, pastors, and others who will want to see you succeed. It is important that you get close to people who are already successful with money. This too will force you out of your comfort zone.
You will also have to learn how to respect and appreciate money. Just because you make a lot of money does not mean you will hold on to any. Many people adjust their lifestyles to meet their new, higher incomes and thus end up with no more wealth than when they were earning less. Respecting money means that you treat it with care. Appreciating money means you learn how to make it work for you by placing it in the best position for it to make more money for you. Being careless and carefree with money simply because you are making more will only lead to more unhappiness.
Lastly, if you recognize yourself as an underearner, I implore you to take it seriously. Don’t wait for decades to pass you by before finally making yourself important enough to take care of you. You are the only one guaranteed to be with you through the good times and bad and you are the only one who will be with you until the end. Make certain you are investing in you for the long run. You deserve it.
