Money Masturbation Mindset – The Art of Thinking Money Doesn’t Matter

The Art of Thinking Money Doesn’t Matter

Yup, another blog title to capture the heart of America. Sex and Money. Unless of course masturbation isn’t exactly sex, but I digress already.

The point of this post? There are two really:

1. To address the reasons we bullshit ourselves around money.
2. To open our minds to the idea of tying money into our highest values so we can accomplish more of what we want out of life. This way instead of seeing money as a hurdle we wield it as a tool.

Now before you think I’m evil and feel I’m saying money is above all else, I want to be clear:

This post is about consciously valuing money.

I’ve done a lot of work with people over the past 17 years and I’ve come to the conclusion the general public mentally masturbates around the concept of money. By mentally masturbate I mean they say money is important and they want more of it in their lives but they do and say so many things that contradict themselves and keep money out of their lives.

They use language like:

• The rich keep get’n richer and the poor keep get’n poorer
• The little guy just can’t get ahead these days
• The lottery is up to 125 Million this week, I better play!
• Money isn’t that important
• How can you make any money in this economy

I’m going to push the envelope on this subject because well, I’m just gonna.

Money, Motivation and Inspiration

I’ve come to the conclusion that everything surrounding motivation vs inspiration ties directly back to our core values. Our core values drive our behaviors. If we want to change our behavior we need to consciously identify or re-evaluate our values.

You need to know yourself.

1. Inspiration is when you take action on things that matter most to you. No one needs to tell you to do it.
2. Motivation is when you need outside influence to get you to do something that isn’t important to you.

What we value most in life we act upon and requires no outside motivation. I believe it really is that simple.

Again it’s important to know yourself and what you hold most valuable in your mind. Even if that means acknowledging consciously that money isn’t that important.  That also means to stop bitching about life circumstances where money is involved or a lack there of.

If you find yourself going into resistance from reading this post, then something about it goes against your highest values. No sweat, just attempt to stay open for a bit longer. If it resonates with you and you find it making sense, then it resonates with your highest values.

If you say you want more money in your savings but you don’t have it, it’s probably because saving money isn’t something you value as highly as whatever it is you did spend your money on.

Now don’t let that piss you off. (Or do)  I’m not projecting my value of money onto those that don’t value it highly. I’m just stating what seems to me, is a fact. If you want to keep mentally masturbating around the subject be my guest. But if you say you want more money in your life but are doing everything but, then you may want to crack open a can of consciousness and read further.

Intention + mechanism= Result

If it’s your intention to save more money, you’ll find the mechanism in which to do it. You will save however little you can in the beginning, even it’s just $5.00 a month. This is exercising your savings muscle.

You can gauge your intension ultimately by your results. If you said 5 years ago you’d have $10,000 in savings today but you don’t, then it wasn’t really your intension. Just look at your result. Harsh but fair assessment.

You ended up spending money on things that were more important to you and higher on your values list. This isn’t right or wrong, good or bad it just is what it is. You’ll just want to take responsibility as to why it happened and begin to wake up and take conscious action towards linking saving money to your highest value and cause.

For all I know the person who didn’t save the $10,000 had a child that needed emergency surgery and they didn’t have insurance. THAT is much more important to them. This situation is the case the vast amount of people.

Let’s face facts, we desire instant gratification as human beings so the money is spent on whatever provides us that in the moment. Again, it’s just important to not bullshit yourself on what’s in your highest values.

How could you get to the root of why you don’t have more money in your life?

• Want to blame it on the economy?
• Want to blame it on the president?
• Want to blame it on the fact we’re losing jobs at an alarming rate in the U.S.?
• Want to blame it on how you were raised?
• Want to blame it on something outside of yourself?
• Let me guess, I don’t know your circumstances right?

Good luck with all that. Those are not the answer but seem to be the easiest and fastest for people to grab onto. Stop watching TV.

My misbegotten beliefs around money have ran deep and narrow. Ranging from, “there’s nothing more important,” to “it doesn’t matter at all,” to telling myself, “it does matter,” but deep down I believed I didn’t deserve it because of guilt I was carrying.

It is possible to have a balanced perspective around money.

I have yet to find someone who wouldn’t like to have a little (or a lot) more money in their lives and ultimately for these reasons:

• To have nice things in order to make life more comfortable for ourselves or others
• To make things in life easier for ourselves or others
• To have new experiences
• To help people close to us and/or close to our causes

I of course could get into other reasons like status or significance, to attract the opposite sex or to get sex etc. but so far I’ve only had one person tell me truthfully that these are things that matter to them. It seems many people want to pretend that money isn’t important.

You can read deeper into the reality of consumerism and it’s relationship to status and sex by reading the book Spent- Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. Good read to understand how we’re driven by status and sex as well as how we’re having gas poured on it by the advertising & marketing efforts of companies.

The more we hold others in a higher light than ourselves like, athletes, actors and sexy people in beer commercials, the more we try to own their values and attempt to live our lives by them. No quicker way to frustration than by attempting to live via other peoples values.

“Know thyself, be thyself.”-Ancient Greek aphorism

There is a lot of wisdom in that quote.

To know yourself is to be conscious of what you value most, whatever that may be to you. When your thoughts, actions and words consciously align with your highest values you’re are acting in integrity.

You have begun to awaken from the human dream.

How To Value Money

“Money is something that is important but it’s not that important.”

Imagine if you said something like this to your spouse, girlfriend, your mom or your brother?

“Your important but not that important.”

How long do you think that relationship would last?

Not long.

The same thing can be said about money. If you don’t value it, it won’t stick around long. You’ll continue to struggle month after month spending what you do have on things that are more important. You’ll continue to go work for it, spend it and go work for it some more.

This is when you find your business becomes stagnant or you find yourself with more month at the end of the money. There isn’t any bigger vision for you to move towards. So what does it matter right? Your current values are being met and as long as they are you’ll continue to stay where you’re at financially.

When you look at your relationship with money it goes back to your core values around it. If you don’t value it very highly there’s a good chance you won’t keep much of it, much less grow it.

If you want to grow your money into wealth you have to link money to the things that are highest on your values list. This is how you find the inspiration rather than the motivation to build wealth.

You can link building wealth to how it supports your highest values.

Here’s an example. List how growing your money into wealth would contribute to your family or your health if those are two of your highest values:

• When you create more wealth could you provide more amazing experiences for your family?
• Could you go on amazing vacations, provide some of the very best education for your children or secretly surprise your spouse with a 2 week get away to a private retreat?
• What would growing your wealth do to contribute to the family?
• When you create more wealth could you eat better quality food, take better care of body, get massages once or twice a week and exercise?
• When you create wealth could you contribute financially to greater causes than just yourself or a bigger vision? What would that be and what would it look like?

Any one of these could be a reason to put wealth at the top of your list. When you can identify your top 3 core values and link creating wealth to any one of them and how it will help you meet that core value, you’ll find yourself inspired to do the steps required. You will start saving some of your money, you will start a business, you will begin reading about  good wealth building principles, studying wealthy people etc.

Until you begin to find a cause that’s bigger than yourself you’ll probably just stay comfortable or uncomfortable and make excuses as to why it’s not your fault.

The size of your horizon you see dictates:

1. The amount responsibility you’ll take on
2. Action you’ll take
3. And effort you’ll invest

So think BIG. Don’t just think big, but think of how it supports what you value most.

A perfect example is Tim Brownson and John P. Strelecky from How to Be Rich and Happy. Their goal is to give away 1 million copies of their book:
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One Goal,

“I think I can speak for both uf us Tony and say it’s ‘Legacy’ with (in my case) a bit of ‘Significance’ thrown in. We both want to leave the place better than we left it and what better way than by positively impacting the lives of 1,000,000,000 people?”

Your Values Mission

I’m not going to get into values exercises and tying them into your mission here, although I believe they are extremely important. (I’m over 2000 words already) But I wanted to give you some food for thought.

Over the past 10 years I’ve had people tell me they wanted to start with my home based business and I’d ask they why. Nine out of ten times they would say, “To make more money.”

“Then sell crack,” I’d say, “That’ll make you more money. A good bit of money from what I understand.”

After they looked at me like I had a 3rd eye, I’d let them off the hook and would say, “Listen, your business has to be about more than just making money.” Sure I know you want more money but why, for what and what will the money support?”

“What greater cause is the money and your efforts going to contribute to? You have to be contributing to something bigger than yourself.”

Linking the money generating activities like to their their highest values was paramount for any long term success. Activities like prospecting, cold calling and going to training’s aren’t exactly what they want to do. But we had to tie those activities into what they valued most. Otherwise I found hardly anyone would do what it took to generate a successful business.

So the goal here is this. If you do want your desired lifestyle (which requires loads more money in your life) you’ll want to link your highest values to the activities that generate wealth.

Put it this way, you’re contributing a lot more to the world if you can buy the forrest as apposed to strapping yourself to a tree to save it from being chopped down.

1. Identify your top 5 core values
2. Identify a cause bigger than yourself that is congruent to those highest values
3. Align yourself with that cause
4. Put together a plan of action to the desired outcome

Just don’t tell me money isn’t important to you. I’ll know you’re lying to yourself.

Maybe you’re scared of the responsibility that comes with having a lot of money. I get that as an underlying belief too. I know it’s been one of mine. I can man up and say it. I can say I haven’t had something big to wrap my arms around and it’s one reason this post is probably just as much for me as it may be for anyone reading it.

Maybe you don’t believe what you have to offer is valuable?

This goes much deeper. One reason many don’t allow wealth into their life is that they don’t believe you’re worthy of it. They are carrying guilt around that says, “I’m not good enough or I have to pay the price before I can be worthy of money.” That’s come up for a lot of folks I’m coaching and in many cases they aren’t even conscious of it.

I know this is a taboo subject. You may have some values around the topic that I seem to be dancing all over but I’m not. I have though, purposely left some holes in this post for discussion. Plus the fact I’ve already written nearly 2500 words. However there’s a lot more to discuss around this subject.

Leave your comments below in the comments section. I’m totally ready for a conversation around this if you are. Also share this post on Twitter, Facebook or just email it to someone you think it may resonate with.