One of the most interesting aspects of life is the disparity between knowing what you need to do in order to have the life you want and actually doing those things. This conversation always leads back to the concept referred to as “Be – Do – Have”.

For those of you who are aware of this conundrum of sorts, you understand that the BE part has to come first. The question has always been, “How to you GET to the BE part?”

It’s much like the question of the chicken and the egg. Which did come first? It’s one of those answers our brains often freak out about. Like thinking about the immenseness of the Universe. Does it have an end or doesn’t it? And if it does, where is it and what comes next? Our brains just want to climb under the safety of a warm, down comforter and not think about it any more!

Let’s explore this ‘Be, Do, Have’ thing. Let’s put on our pristine white scientist cloak and tuck our loose hair in one of those fashionable hair-nets and look at it under the magnifying glass as if we’ve never heard of it before. And perhaps you haven’t.

Let’s apply this to your life’s financial situation. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s say you are $10,000 in debt, have a decent job making $4000 a month and have expenses of $3850 a month. You have no savings, $5,000 in a retirement account from a previous employer and are in a state of frustration at this situation. You feel lost, hopeless and overwhelmed with your seeming inability to ‘get ahead’ and all you want is to be financially free someday.

This is actually a common situation in the United States even though a person in this position would be considered very rich in many parts of the world. Regardless, this is you and you want to change the situation. But how?

Be, Do, Have. But you’re thinking, “Wait, first I have to HAVE the money before I can BE anything or DO anything with the money!” Ah, this is where the thinking goes awry. But in a way, it does make sense. How can you possibly BE rich without the money? If this concept is new to you, hang on. It will become crystal clear under that microscope in just a bit.

What if, instead, you learned what BEING a millionaire looked like? What if you studied the habits of millionaires and started incorporating those habits into your daily life? What if you learned how millionaires thought and started thinking those thoughts instead of the thoughts you’ve been thinking all these years? Would it make a difference?

It makes all the difference in the world. We’ve all heard the stories of lottery winners who lose all of their winnings, and more. Why does this happen if they have millions of dollars coming in? Ask yourself this simple question: Why didn’t they have money BEFORE they were millionaires?

The simple answer is that they didn’t know HOW to be millionaires; they didn’t understand the thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and habits of wealthy people. They knew how to think like a poor or middle class person. So, when they got all that money, they continued to think like, and have habits of a poor or middle class person and there you go. They are out of money quicker than they are out of life to live it with.

You see, before anything shifts OUTSIDE of you, you have to choose to shift what’s INSIDE of you. And in order for that to happen you need several things and those things are sometimes described using the acronym ADKAR.

The first things that must happen for anything in your life to change is AWARENESS; an awareness that something in your life isn’t working and must be altered to get a more desirable result. Once you have that awareness, the next step is to have a DESIRE to change the situation.

There’s a saying that goes like this…People don’t change until the pain of change is greater than the pain of staying the same.

After you’ve discovered an awareness that something needs changing and you develop the desire to change it, you must then seek the KNOWLEDGE you need in order to make the change you wish to make. The best part is that once you are in this place mentally and emotionally, the knowledge you need seems to seek you! It is everywhere. It’s as if you willed it to you. Surprise! You did. Just by starting to think it, it started to come. Seem too good to be true? Have you heard of the movies, The Secret or What The Bleep Do We know? These movies are based on the idea that our thinking makes it so. Napoleon Hill, the author of one of the best read success books, Think and Grow Rich, said it this way…Thoughts are Things. Try it. What do you have to lose?

Now you have the knowledge. What next? You must take ACTION and this is where people get hung up and where the BE, DO, HAVE concept enters back into the picture. You see, a wealthy person who is BEING a wealthy person, naturally does the things he or she must do in order to get and stay wealthy. You must learn to BE the wealthy person before you will BE the wealthy person. And now it gets a little muddy under our microscope for just a little while. Sometimes, before you have the beingness of that wealthy person ingrained in your cells, you just have to DO what they do until it comes naturally.

I suspect you are really confused now. Stay with it…confusion is a great state to be in. It tells you that you’re on to something new and exiting.

You see, the more you DO what a wealthy person does, the easier it becomes to continue to DO those things and, before you even notice, you are BEING the wealthy person naturally and you don’t have to stop and consider what the next, right, supportive action that will lead you right to what you wanted, and where you wanted to be, in the first place. This is when it all becomes second nature and you don’t have a clue why you thought it was so hard to begin with when you were still BEING that poor or middle class person.

To finish the process, you find yourself, sometimes quicker than you ever imagined possible, at the RESULT you were after. Congratulations. Now you can HAVE all those things in life that you’ve dreamed possible. The fact is that you just made them possible by BEING the type of person that lives that kind of life.

Let’s review the ADKAR process: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Action and Results. It takes the really complicated idea of changing your life and lays it right out there in simple steps you can follow, if you want to change something badly enough.

Which takes us back to the very initial question: How do you go from knowing you want to get somewhere in your life to actually being there? Now you know. Use the ADKAR formula, sprinkle in a lot of Be, Do, Have along the way, season with laughter, stop along the way to celebrate your progress and viola’, you have the life you want. Good luck with it. Oh, and the Results at the end? That would be Your Life. Enjoy.

Elisabeth Donati is the owner of Creative Wealth Intl., LLC and creator of Camp Millionaire, a unique and effective financial intelligence program for kids and teens and Creative Wealth for Women, a workshop designed with the special financial needs of women in mind. She is an expert in teaching the basic financial principles people need in a way that is engaging, empowering and fun. For more information, visit http://www.innerwealthpublishing.com.

She is the author of the only financial parenting book parents need, The Ultimate Allowance, available at http://www.ultimateallowancebook.com.

Please feel free to email her at: elisabethdonati@gmail.com or give her a call at 805-957-1024.

If someone sent you this article and you’d like to read more interesting tips, trick and philosophy on money and life, sign up today for Elisabeth’s FREE Weekly E-Zine, Financial Wisdom with a Twist and FREE monthly teleseminars at UltimateAllowanceBook.com.