Karl Barth
Dear Friend,
Can you lose money gracefully?
Do you negotiate over money playfully?
Can you ask for money without guilt or emotional threats?
Could you maintain your humanity with a few dollars to your name?
Could you maintain your humanity in the possession of great wealth?
I am not known as a Bible-thumper or a little old church lady but this Matthew 18:3 quote has been on my mind for decades, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
One of this thought's practical applications is your relationship with money. Treat money with the gravitas of a life-and-death issue and, whether you have stockpiles of that stuff or you are broke, your enjoyment of money and your relationships in the context of money is limited. Serious matters don't lighten up by adding zeroes to the equation.
On the other hand, if you soar through your monetary experiences in life on your sense of humor--even gallows humor, if nothing else will do--you will be better off and happier, rain or shine. Viktor Frankl trained fellow death camp inmates in Auschwitz how to be graceful and apply humor under the most horrifying circumstances. What Mr. Frankl accomplished while facing torture and death, I am confident you can practice in the face of financial adversity as well, with only $30 left in your pocket for instance.
People don't get to control their lives. A pimple on your nose never shows up at the right time and it will not do you the favor and vanish on schedule. It would be nice if all went like clockwork. Here is problem A, and you just have to respond with solution B. Done. No, not all problems can be solved. Some issues have a solution but it can take months and even years longer than you may have planned.
What if it is more important to experience a problem rather than solve it? What if the problem is a person? What if the problem you "have" (it has you, does it not?) deserves your gratitude and not the attitude of an addict or an executioner to get rid of it asap? Could it be that the urge to control stems from the fear of mystery that life continues to be, parallel to all technical accomplishments and scientific research?
I don't like problems either but no matter how many you will solve, there will be plenty of new ones. I promise. The wealthy have as many problems as the broke do. It's not common knowledge but the rich have significantly more money related problems than so-called poor people. Sheer ignorance makes people believe that more money automatically translates to less money problems. That is pure superstition. If you don't believe me, try it: get rich, and then drop me a line whether it proves to be all it's cracked up to be.
The Number One reason people don't have the money they desire is the emotional baggage they attach to this phenomenon. There are endless expectations of what money is, supposedly, and what it is not, of how different it must be to have lots of it compared to not having enough, about how much easier life would be with money than without. Ask Robin Williams how that played out for him. Or Jim Carrey, or Nicolas Cage, or Ted Turner, or Lindsay Lohan and tens of thousands of people who had to learn the hard way that paper with ink printed on it cannot have the power to turn unpleasant emotions into enjoyable ones. Well, the coveted non-commodity fame is nothing to make peeps happy, either.
Money is easiest to acquire when it is entirely meaningless. You can ask for it without hidden emotional threats or false promises when it means as much to you as marbles did in the sandlot. Even less than that. When money is hardly more than colorful paper in your perception and you have dropped any and all projections about its alleged powers. "Would you be so kind and pass the broccoli, please?" You don't hesitate to say that at any dinner table until you get the broccoli, and you don't get cotton mouth or sweaty palms over asking for what you want.
The meaning of money, whatever that describes for you, is the very reason not to have as much as you desire. The meaning of money prevents you from asking for it with ease, again and again and again. When you drop the meaning of it, the fear of asking for money disappears. You don't have as much money as you want because you are afraid to ask for more. You are afraid of being perceived as materialistic, crude and yes, greedy. Meaning. Lose the meaning and you can ask for money all day long.
Unless people lighten up about money--whether they possess boatloads of it or they stare into an abyss of debt makes no difference--life will be a somber place. Money can't help. Now, money doesn't hurt and I wish you'd get more, much more of it than you have now. But please, laugh first and laugh often! Mostly about yourself and how silly life can be. The greed I am talking about is the joy you are experiencing about being you.
Newborn babies are adored by many adults. Babies don't perform. They just are. They eat, they pee, they sleep, they cry, they giggle. People think that's adorable and they love to serve these little Gods in diapers. Perhaps you aren't magnetically adorable like the average infant because you are not highly pleasing to yourself by simply being. You may believe you have to cultivate strengths and use them to perform first, before you deserve to receive positive attention of any kind.
The hoops we believe we have to jump through, the contortions we think we must master, and the warped mind games we eagerly adopt are what's between us as struggling adults and a child who is loved and cherished by all for no reason other than for being present. I have observed elation in the face of a person who is holding a baby on her arm. If you feel anything other than elated while being engaged in your daily affairs, perhaps you are after something that you can gain only by recognizing that you are no less than an individual in whose presence people can feel and have felt bliss. Some time ago, they did. What should stop others from feeling elated again in your presence? You? Yes, by torturing your poor brain about the things you ought to do, so others will want to be with you and bring more money. Except, that thorny route doesn't work too well.
The first thing there is for you to do is..... nothing. Be. Be pleasing to yourself. Take a bath, perhaps, and a nap. Then, maybe, you wish to do something. Consult your to-do-list, go shopping, smoke pot, or take the garbage out? No! It could be that you wish to do something of utmost simplicity. Take a walk. Squint into the sun. Invent the perpetuum mobile. As I said, something simple.
Be kind, be gentle, be graceful with yourself. Enjoy a carefree moment of being. New ideas will spring from there and new joys cannot be averted. Perhaps even fresh and crisp new federal reserve bank notes, legal tender. Don't forget about money's tender character!
Good day,
Egbert
P.S.: For Fun and Profit, order my "Money Seminar: Industrial Strength." A deck of 52 Mini-Poker Cards plus 2 Jokers. Of course you may play Poker with it--and possibly win or, well, lose money--but it is meant to raise your awareness for your personal relationship with money. This is Money Psychology at its best and you'll benefit from having it in your pocket wherever you go. I promise, you and your Poker friends have never looked at money from this angle before. Send $29 to egbertsukop@gmail.com via PayPal, make sure you leave your mailing address, and I'll get a deck for you printed. Since it'll be shipped from Hong Kong, it'll take about 2 - 3 weeks to arrive.
Money is neither cause of nor solution to your money problems.
Oh, and visit EndWages.com too!
"When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid."
Maxim Gorky (1868 - 1936)
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