Money is the Root of All Evil: The Danger of Demonizing Wealth

Have you ever heard this one, that money is the root of all evil? Do you believe that to be true? Maybe you are living more nuanced and think that the love of money is the root of all evil. Remember, Occupy Wall Street. Remember the 1%? Well, that’s where we got the 1%. I don’t think we talk about Occupy Wall Street much anymore. But we certainly spent a lot of time talking about the 1%. And I think my perception is that there are a lot of people out there who are demonizing wealth. We’re demonizing the pursuit of wealth, or demonizing this money. And looking at the billionaire class or affluent people or rich people as as this this other group, this nefarious group of people. And I don’t know that we’ve thought this all the way through, I don’t know that if this is behavior that you’re engaged in, or thoughts that you’re having, that you’ve thought it all the way through, or maybe you have thought or all the way through. Either way, I don’t think it’s a positive thing. In fact, I think it’s a really, really negative thing can be one of the most dangerous things that we’re doing to ourselves. But more so to to young people, who are impressionable, and learning. And if all they hear constantly is demonizing wealth, and how money is bad, and everything I’ve just been talking about, that has an impact, and it has an effect. And it’s just not true. It’s just not true. A lot of a lot of what people are talking about is is fictitious, it’s false. You know, and I think it’s really important to talk a lot about think about keeping things in perspective, your place in the world, understanding what our place in the world is. Because the reality is that half the earth’s population, half the human beings on this on Earth, live on less than $5.50 a day. So you technically are the 1%. If you’re making over like $50,000 a year, $40,000 a year, that puts you in the 1%. So context, Nuance perspective, it’s really, really an important thing. And here’s another really important statistic to keep in mind about wealthy people is that 80% of new millionaires are first generation. So that means that 80% of the new millionaires, which there’s a lot becoming millionaires every day, all the time that they received zero inheritance from their parents or anybody else, that they started just like you and worked hard, or got lucky or whatever, but became a millionaire, here in the United States, on their own, through their own work. So I think that that is a really, really, really important thing to keep in mind. Because one of the things, one of the reasons we demonize is the perception or the narrative that people are are getting ahead somehow nefariously and that they are extracting wealth at the, from other people and victimizing other people. And that’s just not the case. But here’s the real danger. The real danger is, we all have an operating system, just like our phones have an operating system that’s running 24/7 365 days a year, it’s making a lot of decisions in our behalf. We make 10s of 1000s of decisions every day. And we don’t make those consciously, because obviously, we’re making 10s of 1000s decisions, we wouldn’t be able to operate, we just be focused on just yes or no right or left kind of a thing. It’s our operating system. It’s our subconscious mind. It’s our beliefs that are making those decisions on our behalf. And a lot of that wiring was given to us between the ages of zero and you know, six or seven when we were kids. And then we pick up the rest of it along the way, as we interact with things, the things we’re taught in school, that just our personal experience, and that goes to form what we believe to be true about the world. So if it is our belief, that money is bad, that money is the root of all evil, are that love of money is the root of all evil. I can almost guarantee that you’re going to have a hard time with money that your relationship with money is going To be difficult, can almost guarantee that and why wouldn’t it be any more than if you thought that you were somebody who was bad at relationships, then you’re probably going to be bad at relationships, if you think that you’re bad at money, or that you don’t ever want to be good at money, because that would make you a bad person. Well, that is for sure. 100% going to limit your ultimate financial potential. And I’m by no means advocating that you try and get rich or that money is good, or that being wealthy is good, or that being poor is bad. I don’t think that money is not either, it’s neither good, nor is it bad. It’s just money. And I don’t advocate for loving it, I advocate for being good at it, I advocate for having enough so that you’re financially secure, and that you don’t need to worry about it anymore. But that’s not what we’re doing at all. Two thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, that means they’re broke. And this was me, I spent the majority of my 20s living paycheck to paycheck, just not paying close attention to my finances, credit card debt, just interacting with money poorly. And that’s when I sort of pop my head up and like why, why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over again, it’s because the way that I was wired my operating system, my beliefs about money, were flawed. So when we have these flawed beliefs, or limiting beliefs, that’s probably the right term that we’re searching for when we have limiting beliefs about money, whether we don’t think we’re good at it, or we think that having it as bad or the pursuit of it is bad. It’s just going to prevent us from becoming potentially financially secure, and then one day becoming financially prosperous. So the next time you are you catch yourself, because how do you know? How do we know if you have limiting beliefs about money, while the next time you read an article about the 1%, or billionaires or whatever it might be, and you’re triggered by it. But if we’re triggered by that’s evidence that we have a negative belief about the thing. So try and then pull that thread and figure out where it leads you. Like, why, where and how did I get these beliefs about money? Why am I interacting with money the way that I am? Because I’m not just standing on a soapbox yelling, stop doing this. Well, like that’s, that’s exactly what I’m doing. And I’m not doing it for the sake of doing it. I’m doing it because I want you to have a healthy and positive relationship with money. I want you to get clear on what you want. What you want your financial life to look like. And I want it to be good. If you want financial peace of mind, that’s that’s what I want for you to you want just to stop worrying about money, like 77% of us do. We have stress and anxiety about money. That’s what I want for you. If you want to get rich well, that that’s that’s great, too. You want to become a millionaire. Awesome. The point is, you are perfectly capable of becoming a millionaire. You You are perfectly capable of becoming a millionaire. It’s possible. It’s pretty actually straightforward. Just need to be able to save money. So that was something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. And in terms of values and money. I think that there’s a really, really important differentiation, one or two things. Either you actually want to be wealthy or you want to appear to be wealthy. And that’s a whole nother conversation that we won’t get into. People hate wealth so much. When why do we spend so much money making ourselves appear to be wealthy at the expense of actually becoming wealthy. So, again, success is available to everyone success is available to you financial success is available to you. The resources are everywhere. And I think it’s really, really important that you do your best to maximize your potential in every aspect of life, particularly with money because it touches so many different parts of our lives. Remember, do your part by doing your best