A New Week | Sept 27th, 2021
We don't have relationships with money, we have relationships with people
Growing up, money meant two things: drama and freedom.
When I was a kid, there was a lot of conflict, greed, stress. Money was divisive. It caused fights. My extended family comes from wealth and yet there was always such emptiness.
There is something to be said about how busy people can become when they define their legacy based on who walks away with the most.
Because of such uncomfortable childhood experiences with money, I decided at the age of 16 that I didn't want to have any economic dependency on others - I needed to earn my own money and live on my own terms. This decision helped me start early down a path of realizing big and small dreams of seeing the world, studying abroad in the Netherlands, Italy, and Asia; building a family on the pillars of a remote lifestyle and deep daily connection. My ability to earn money has given me the freedom to build and live life the way I'v wanted to, at every step.
Though my negative childhood memories about money have sometimes caused me to feel repelled by the topic, they also helped me discover very honestly how much I need and how much I don't need. They helped me to realize the marginal utility of another dollar or euro earned compared to the relationships I might risk (and yes...I've risked and even lost relationships because of money on this journey).
Money is no marker of status, ambition, or self-worth for me. The more I've learned about myself, my inner magic, my calling, my love for love, my pursuit of belonging vs financial gain, the more I've realized how destructive it is to strive for more material accumulation at the expense of your life. Such pursuit closes me off to connection, to asking for help, to offering support, to learning new things.
Once we have met our basic needs, and have moved up our hierarchy of needs, we are meant to move beyond money as a transactional medium and into money as a meaningful, sacred exchange of trust. This is how I build my coaching business.
I don't have a rigid number in mind when clients ask how much my services cost. I always ask: "What does your personal economy look like these days? Here is what I need at a min and max to build my business and support my family." I don't give anything away for free, I have a solid minimum amount of money I need to make things work, but I don't make people uncomfortable about the investment they need to make to grow themselves, and often offer other programs or interventions if we can't find that magic number in the middle.
I give it all away. I have no secrets. I don't have a relationship with money, I have a relationship with the people in my life, with nature, with my children’s needs, our goals to impact more people. This is my life enterprise. And my life enterprise needs money as fuel to grow and thrive, support my family and impact more people. There is no limit to this.
A few months ago I started telling my clients that my next financial goal is to earn enough so Ted can take a sabbatical from his job at a high-growth startup to just focus on himself, sleep, sports, nature, and integrating some of the things he learned over the past few years. Just to get back to his team with full batteries. This is a goal that uses money as a way to deepen my involvement in life.
Whatever you are able to take away from this, I'd ask you to rewire your relationship to money into a relationship with abundance and see what else you see happening for yourself.
Would love to hear your stories, too.
What resonates?
PS: I’ve recently shared this story on my social media channels and received many messages from others who told me about their relationship with money, their inability to go beyond numeric measures of success, or their difficulty finding joy once they realized that they have enough of it. I want to highlight that it is our responsibility as leaders of privilege - basic needs being met by a long shot - to evolve beyond the success measure a capitalistic environments provides us. The rich-poor gap across the globe is increasing annually and so we need to ask: What am I doing to break the systemic cycles of this inequality.