Money Can't Save You

As long as money is here, you can choose to think like, oh, it's good and I want it, or you can choose to think it's bad and I'm gonna want it secretly but actually I'm gonna try to avoid it. Or you can say, wow, this is the way this system works, and how do I use it and accept the constraints of it in a way that allow me to be even more creative than I would be without it?

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life We want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Today we're going to talk about money. Now, money is a really sticky subject. It's very emotional for a lot of people, and people have all kinds of projections and misconceptions around it, and it can be a really tricky subject. We're going to break this up into two episodes. The first episode, we're going to talk about a common misconception that people have, which is that money is our savior and that if we just had more of it, it would solve all of our problems. In the second episode, we're going to go into the opposite misconception, which is that money is evil and the cause of all of our problems and that it should be avoided at all costs. So Joe, to get started, what makes people have different ideas of what money is?

I think it's because nobody knows what money is. There's one level in which you can look at money and say it's a complete illusion, right? It's an agreement that a whole bunch of people made and said this thing has value. And it has value because a lot of people say that it has value. And then on another level, money is this thing that buys you stuff that you want. It's a great tool for creation and/or a great tool for manifesting things. But I don't think really— very few of us understand what money is. I know that the deeper I look into money, the more that I see about it, the more I understand it, the less I realize I truly know what it is.

Hmm. So what is not money that people think it is? What is money not?

Yeah, that's a great question. What is money not? Well, I think the thing that people subconsciously think it is, is money is love or money is power or money is their father's love or their mother's love or— and I think That is the subconscious misinterpretation of money that gets— that creates a lot of confusion for people. I remember this one time when I was in, out of all places, El Salvador, and I was in a hammock and I was reading about how WhatsApp had gone public. And this is back a while ago when I was a venture capitalist. And the story was how this massive success happened with this small investment and how there was this one venture capitalist who had kind of parted ways with his company just so that he could invest in this. And I remember it just hit me like a gut punch in the stomach. And I immediately stopped and said, "Oh, what is this feeling?" And I closed my eyes and I just traced the feeling back to the first time that I felt it. And I remember like, "Oh man, I've made money a surrogate for my father's love." I had, you know, had a relationship with my father early on where his love was not something that I could get easily. And so money had become this thing that I couldn't get easily. And the promise of money, like the promise of my father's love, was something that would make me whole again, or at least I thought it would. And it wasn't my first iteration with money. I mean, my first iteration with money was that money was evil. And that was also when I was really angry at my father. So it's like I started to draw the— I started to put points together to realize that my relationship with money, and then I discovered most other people I meet, their relationship with money often follows a pattern of their relationship with the love of their parents, or the relationship of love with authority, or their relationship of of something important in their early childhood and that money has become a surrogate for whatever relationship that is.

Hmm. What are some other things that money can become a surrogate for?

Like I said, relationship with authority, relationship with parents. It can, in that aspect, and there's another aspect, money can become a surrogate for security. Money can become a surrogate for community. Money can become a surrogate for power. Or empowerment, money can become a surrogate for experience itself.

Yeah, it seems like one thing that can happen is that we can sort of build this belief that once we have enough money, we'll be able to solve not only our problems, but other people's problems around us, and then end up in some really weird relationship dynamics with those people.

Yeah.

As a result.

Yeah, and it goes both ways too, right? That we can start accumulating enough money where people around us think that they can, they can get their problem solved through the money that we have. And that usually breeds a lot of distrust.

So how can we tell if the difference between a healthy relationship with money and earning money, finding value in our work, finding value in what we do, and having enough to have our needs met, and how do we tell the difference between that and sort of this hungry ghost aspect of using money as a surrogate for something that money can never fill.

Yeah, the interesting thing is that the mind can tell us that we don't have enough money all the time, and there's always evidence for it. I remember at this one point when I was doing this practice, a gratitude practice every day about what I did have, because I was constantly thinking about what I didn't have. And this is like, I don't know, early 30s or something. And I started to just be everyday appreciative for extended period of time of the things that I did have. And I saw my whole world and aspect of money change. And one day I was driving a car and I had had contact with like 2 or 3 billionaires in my life at that point. And I was driving the car, my thought process turned to how I needed more money or, you know, some sort of coveting, some sort of something like that. And I thought to myself, "Oh, you know, the billionaires I know, they think this way too. I'm a billionaire." It was such a strange thought, like it's nonsensical, but it was just like, "Oh, I have the same reality as a billionaire." No matter how much money they have or how little money I have, we're both walking around the world having the same thought process. So it's really hard to use the mind to feel like you have enough money. But, and logically, if you want to use the mind to find out if you have enough money, if you are alive right now and you're well fed and you have a home over your— then on some level you have enough money. There's this crazy lie that says, "I don't have enough money because X, Y, and Z." But enough money is that you have your basic needs met is enough money. If you don't have your basic needs met, then there's a pretty good argument that you don't have enough money. So logically, the whole thing can be deconstructed pretty quickly. The other way you think about money is, "Oh, if I have enough money, then I get what I want, whatever that thing is that I want." When nobody can do that because money can't actually supply everything that you want. So in that way, you'll never have enough money. So what's really clear is for you to have a, intellectually, if you're gonna have a relationship with money that's peaceful, it's really important to be able to separate what you want from money and money being only one avenue to get there.

Yeah, I can see a relation to this in business where there can be a belief, you know, even as revenues are increasing, that you just need more money to be able to, you know, you need to be able to meet this opportunity or solve that need or, you know, saturate some market. And we could always be living in that story. In our personal life, it could be, you know, I just need a house with an office and a desk so I can do my writing. You know, I need quiet space. I need X, Y, Z. And then once we become attached to something that we've gotten, then we need that and we can't imagine not having it. So then we need to continue to have that baseline amount of money. And so that seems to be part of this, like this treadmill of feeling like what I have is not enough and what I really need is the next thing, ergo, I need more money.

Yeah, right. And this is a really natural human condition. Not the needing more money, The more money piece is just something that's— it's the way that our modern society turns the story around the basic human condition. And there's something basic in the human condition that says, "Oh, there's something more I can be doing. There's something more I can achieve. There's something that I should be doing so that I'm safe." It's just, if you ever look at mice, they're the same way. They don't have the thought process behind it potentially. Most likely. But they do have kind of this like get up and go, like, "Oh, I gotta do something, I gotta do something, I gotta do something." And the way that our society works is that money is the most obvious way to do something. And when you can flip that switch, when you can say, "Oh, it's not resources, it's resourcefulness that I need," then everything can open up. Just the idea that you need money to do something is a limiting belief system. You know, there's people who started their businesses from nothing. So what did they need to start their business? Apparently nothing. And there's other people who very wisely say, "Oh, you know, being capitalized is a really important part of my business, so I'm gonna go out and get a whole bunch of money because it's important for growing my business." And both of those two things can be a very sane approach, but when it becomes insane is when you think resources will solve for resourcefulness. It'll never work. And I've walked into so many companies and so many homes with so many people who think that resources will make a difference, and it doesn't. I mean, you look at all the lottery winners and they have the resources, but it doesn't make a difference and it's gone soon. And then you see people who have nothing and they're resourceful and they get the things that they're after in the world. But life isn't set up for us to get everything we want. And definitely money isn't set up, you know, at its basic construct. It's set up to be deficient, meaning that the monetary system that we have is basically— it can't— the amount of money out there can't pay for the interest on top of it that is out there. So there's always a shortage of it. The system is built that way. Just as our internal system is built that way, meaning that we as human beings have a tendency to, like, almost a natural urge to feel like there's something that we have to do and something more that we have to accomplish. And what's really weird is if you meet somebody who doesn't have that, there's kind of one of two options. One, they're depressed, or they've become acquiescent. And in another way, there's a fewer number of them that actually are quite at peace. They've done a lot of work to really feel into that discomfort and to channel it in a different direction.

Hmm. Yeah. That reminds me of sort of this, there's this neurobiological aspect of loss aversion where when we experience a loss, we experience it as like twice as intense as an equal gain. Which sort of biases us towards always wanting to gain more. So it sounds like what you're describing as this gratitude practice kind of gets beneath the root of that. The more that you are able to appreciate what you have, the less you're stuck in the treadmill, which then means you're less in fear because you start to see more of the possible solution space than just the ones that money would, like the opportunities that money would open up for you.

Correct. And I think there's another aspect to that, which is just as interesting, which is if we motivate ourself in the world through fear, then we're very scared to let go of the fear because then we think we'll be unmotivated, right? So a lot of people, if they really deeply confront that kind of itch that they can never scratch, they're scared to lose it because they're scared that they'll, you know, be a couch potato drinking beer. And what's really interesting is where does action come from if it doesn't come from that fear? Where does action come from if you feel secure?

Yeah, that seems related to how a lot of our, you know, our activities that we might intrinsically enjoy can get wrapped up in money, and we might think that they're not worth doing if we're not getting paid, or we might, we might not feel like we're going to have value ascribed to us by society if nobody's willing to pay us for the thing that we want to do.

Or vice versa. I know plenty of artists who lose their desire to be an artist when they're getting paid for it. It completely changes their whole enjoyment of the activity once they're getting paid. It puts a pressure on them and then they feel like they have to perform and then the having to perform takes all the joy out.

Yeah, because once you start depending upon what you're doing to make money, then you're going to start forming the thing you do to be doing it in a way that gets money. So you're going to be more critical of your performance and more critical in this like market aspect of what people are willing to pay for, rather than letting what is flowing through you to just freely flow.

I'm not sure if that's even the healthiest version, to just let what's naturally moving through you to freely flow. Meaning, Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. That's some crazy constraint. That is some crazy, like, oh my God, I have to make everything fit into this 10-syllable blah, blah, blah. And yet accepting that constraint, it increased the creativity. Or I think about Michelangelo and painting the top of the Sistine Chapel, one of the holiest places on the planet. And what does he paint? He paints, you know, man, God reaching with all of his might to touch man, to be in connection with man, and man kind of laid back, not even willing to lift a finger. What a commentary to say, like, humans aren't even willing to lift a finger. Maybe even the people here in this church, right, are not even willing to lift a finger to touch God. And how do you get away with doing that, right? How do you get away with painting this on the top of the— getting paid to paint this on the top of the Sistine and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Cristine Chappell, it's like, right, like on some level, seeing the constraints of money is freedom. And if you learn how to work within those constraints, it creates creativity that's amazing. And so as long as money is here, you can choose to think like, oh, it's good and I want it, or you can choose to think it's bad and I'm gonna want it secretly, but actually I'm gonna try to avoid it. Or you can say, wow, this is the way the system works and how do I, use it and accept the constraints of it in a way that allow me to be even more creative than I would be without it.

How can we accept the way the system works and continue to work in it to our benefit while being conscious of any systemic, you know, like any inbuilt, like I guess you could say injustice in the system, injustice or just like inefficiencies or just like without buying into that the way the system works is the optimal way we could have a financial system.

That's a great question. So by no means am I saying, okay, we should all just accept the way that the system works and not move to change it. What I'm saying more precisely is that it's very healthy to accept the way that the system works, even if you want to change it. It's very much like if you're interacting with another human, like you can not accept the way that they work, or you can accept the way that they work, even if you're asking them to be different, even if you are approaching them in a way that is gonna get a response that you don't want. Like asking somebody to be different, asking something to be different instead of accepting them is a very inefficient path to having people transform or money transform or the system to transform. Right? If I'm like, screw you, this shouldn't work, fuck you, do this thing, like, why aren't you doing this thing? That's not a really great way to get you to change. Right? If it's more like, I love you and I accept you and this makes me uncomfortable and I would prefer that we interact in this way, that's like a far more effective way to do it. And it takes a lot less out of me. And it's the same way with changing a society. Acceptance somehow is conflated as acceptance means that I am not gonna draw boundaries or I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask for things to change or I'm not gonna do things to change it. Acceptance is, this is how it is at this moment. And I'm not gonna fight how it is in this moment. I'm going to work to change it for the next moment is 100% possible with the acceptance.

Right, right. So something else you kind of touched on there was how this affects interpersonal relationships. And so I'm curious how having a concept for money, and we're talking right now about the particular concept of money is good and that it's going to solve all of our problems. How does that get in the way of our relationships and the way that we view each other and like, you know, the shame that we might approach a relationship with or the judgment or admiration?

Money is the kinkiest thing on the planet. It's like, man, I, at least on the West Coast, you can sit down and you can ask somebody about their sexual preferences, what's going on there, like what kind of things they like. And they're more likely to tell you about that stuff than they are going to tell you about their credit card debt or how much they make. It is the kinkiest thing. And it's an incredible cause of disconnection in ourselves and others, right? To admit that you're poor or to admit that you're rich, both have a certain level of shame in them that make it so people don't even communicate that stuff. People get really uncomfortable. I'm very open with my money situation. Oh, this is how much I made, this is what I've done, with friends. And it's just, you can just see the discomfort. It doesn't stop me, but you can see the discomfort on their face. It's just not something that we want to talk about because it brings up feelings of disconnection and shame in everybody. It is the kinkiest thing right now on the planet is money. It's amazing. And really, it's just— I mean, the system is not benign by any stretch, but it's a tool with pluses and minuses, and it's a tool that can be changed. And yet it has become like a god or deity in the world. It's an amazing thing. And I even hesitate to say all that stuff because then it's like somebody whose mind is like, "Money is bad," they'll just hook onto that and go, "Oh yeah, money, see, people make it a deity." Like, you can't— getting a rich man into heaven is like getting a camel through the eye of a needle. And in my world, it's not a rich man or a poor man that has a hard time finding joy. It's a person who's focused on money, whether it be, "If I get more of it, I'll be happy," or, "I'm unhappy because I don't have it," or, "Money is bad." It's just whatever— whenever money becomes the conscious or unconscious driver of things, it's very hard to find joy or You know, which is how I'm translating heaven.

Yeah. Yeah. You pointed to a lot of the shame that's around money, like the shame of having money and the shame of not having money, the shame of, you know, not having earned money that you have in some particular way that you feel makes you deserve it. But then there's also on the other side, there's like pride and there can be pride to having a lot of money and then building a self-concept around that. There can also be pride to having no money and sort of flexing on that.

There's just no— what's the difference between somebody having pride around their around their money situation, whatever it be, and somebody having shame around it. To me, those are two sides of the same coin. There's an empowerment stance around money, which is like, oh, I will be me no matter what the money situation is. And I will do, I will have my freedom because I do, no matter what the money situation is. That's an empowerment thing. And if that's the state, if that's the stance, internal stance, not faked, but actually owned, then what happens to your pride or your shame around money?

Kind of closing in on this segment on money being good, that concept of money being good. I'm curious, you pointed earlier to how you can change the system if you work within the system, recognize that the system is there, maybe not working entirely within it, but recognizing that this system exists and that you navigate the system and you can get your needs met and then you can change the system. How has the system changed you in that journey?

Yeah, I mean, I do think the system has changed me and I don't think I can even point to all the ways that it has. I think that's a really hard— I don't think I could fully understand the ramifications of all the ways that the monetary system has changed me. What's fascinating about that question for me is, you know, I'm raising two girls and I want to raise them with a healthy relationship around money. And part of what I want to teach them is that the money is always here when you need it. And that attitude is the best way to make sure that money is always here when you need it. Also to respect money, to see it as a powerful force, man-made or otherwise, it's a powerful force in the world and to give it its due respect. And also to see the cosmic joke of money and to just see that it's like a representation of human consciousness and that how money flows is very much like how human consciousness flows. The stock market is, in a weird way, it's kind of the mental outlook of a portion of our society and the way that a portion of our society feels. Like, I'm pretty confident if you took all the caffeine out of all the major cities that we would have a financial depression. The stock market would go down. So it's just this really fascinating thing, and I want them to experience it the same way you would experience a flower or a cactus or any landscape, but not to feel like it has power over them and to be a victim to it or to hate it or to love it. Love it in the way of greed, not love it in the way of having love for it the way you might be able to have love for a flower or a tree. And so to some degree, like, I feel like all that's healthy. And on another degree, you know, it is a system in our world that— and any system in our world affects the way that we think. It doesn't matter if it's the architecture that we live in. And it's really hard to be able to determine how that architecture affects our consciousness. You know, I see people with a ton of money and there's kind of ways that they start doing things that are more about their own entertainment. Typically, they get out of touch, obviously, with people who don't have that level of money, just like people who are really poor are out of touch with the issues of somebody who's really wealthy. So there's some of those obvious things, right? Like, to this day, I will spend a part of every week going and interacting with people who I would not normally interact with. And sometimes those people are homeless, and sometimes those people are very poor, and sometimes those people are very wealthy, just so that I can constantly feel how different perspectives live and to be a part of that. But I don't think I can really say specifically with any kind of integrity, all the ways in which money affects me. And what's also interesting to me is that what I've noticed is that as my relationship with myself changes, my relationship with money naturally changes too. So the more that I can love myself, the more that I love money as it is. The more that I feel empowered, the more I feel empowered with money. The more that I am grateful, the more I have an attitude of gratitude with my money. The more that I feel being of service is a joy, the more I'm of service with my money. So it's just a really fascinating thing of like, is it a reflection or is it the engineer or how is it both? What's that dance? And I, you know, I've never lived without it, so I can't— I'm a fish in water. I can't see what it's done. Yeah.

Well, thank you, Joe. That wraps up this segment and keep listening for the following segment. Um, the belief that money is bad. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.