What is Money to you?
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” Ayn Rand
Speaking about money is something that makes many people feel uncomfortable. Society has done its best to vilify the topic, and the growing amount of inequality is adding fuel to the fire. Many people hold the following statements to be true:
You need a certain minimum amount of money to be happy.
With money, you are secure and provide for your existence.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Money comes when you give it away.
Money is not important...but it makes life easier.
The truth is that money could mean something very different to me than it does to you. In the end, money means whatever you project on it. Unfortunately, most of our projections are subconscious rather than conscious.
When we believe "Money is what I need to feel secure", you have created for yourself a loop through which you will always be chasing a feeling you cannot grasp. You have tied your sense of security to a piece of paper, metal or a cryptographic signature.
Chasing money is like trying to running after happiness. If buying things made us permanently happy, many of us would be ecstatic about their life today. The truth of the matter is quite the inverse.
For the longest time as an entrepreneur, I believed that the amount of money I made would give me this status or recognition. The more I chased that goal, the further it seemed to flutter away.
When I switched my mindset and used money as a tool through which I could create the things I wanted to see in the world, strangely, the easier I was able to make money.
While I understand that this is coming from a privileged position, it wasn't long ago when I remember losing all the money I had made. Changing the desired outcome from being a purely monetary one to something bigger helped me clarify the destination and remove thoughts that had held me back.