Is It About the Money, or Not?

Darren at Problogger wrote up a post Would you blog differently if you had money which alerted me, actually, to the fact that my client Anne Wayman had written a post Would you still write if you had a million dollars.

I think the money is a red herring, actually. I won’t say that money doesn’t make a difference, because it does. I’ve been struggling miserably, miserably, and I’ve also done quite well, thank you, at different times, and having the money in the bank is definitely a nice thing.

But, the transition point between not having much money and having money was where the learning was. Because it wasn’t like money showed up and the stress went away.

Instead, I worked with my own money issues, and as my judgements and beliefs about money disappeared, I was willing to learn more about money and business, which then helped things to shift.

A few years back my wife Holly said to me: “Mark, it’s been about a month since you’ve had a money panic attack.”

And it was just shortly after she said that, that we noticed our financial situation started to change.

Magic? I don’t think so. law of attraction? Not really. It was more my spiritual sense of ease in my own heart enabled me to approach life and business and money from a place of security, not from a place of neediness. And so I was able to make different choices, and take different actions.

And things changed.

I think this dynamic is a big struggle for most people- even those who have wealth, but still feel insecure about their future (which is many, many people.)

I believe what Anne and Darren are asking is, at heart, a spiritual question, because it has to do with this concept of security. And while money in the bank does provide a tremendous sense of relief (I’ve both had it and not had it, and yes, it does make a difference.)

And yet, insecurity is always available to us, whether or not we have money.

I would ask the question this way:
– Would you work your business differently if you weren’t secure in yourself?

Or, yet another way, to ask Einstein’s famous question: “Is the universe a safe place, or isn’t it?” If you feel in your heart that you are cared-for, no matter what the outside circumstances, you are going to be able withstand the winds of change, whether it’s fickle advertisers, or what have you.

And, most people who can find this sense of security in themselves find what you find, it seems, Darren: that they do well, because their confidence provides a ‘shelter from the storm’ in some sense, to the people who come to listen to them.

What do you think?