Much Ado About Money

Alright, welcome back 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 am Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host, Joe Hudson. Early on, we did a couple of episodes on money, and we've gotten a lot of questions since then, people wanting to go deeper on that topic. And the other day you were telling some people about your story with money, and there was a lot of components to that that I found really fascinating. And I'd really love to just go deeper into that on this episode.

That sounds awesome.

So tell me about your experience with money.

So I'm just going to go sequentially and feel free to, if you remember anything, or just drop any questions in. Sequentially, the first thing that happened was that I was raised in a family where money was really important, like status and having the right car. And my dad, you know, he grew up, I think, as a lot of people do, they grew up without enough. His mom grew up in the Depression, he was born in the Depression. And so having money was really an important thing. And so he he cared about money and it— and as a, as a kid, it always felt like he cared more about money than he did about me. And so I saw like the deep urge for the Cadillac and, and making sure that the house was blah, blah, blah and everything, you know, and that they had the Rolex watch and all that stuff. And, and somehow or another, my brain interpreted that as like money is a more important thing than me. And so in my brain, what happened was money became bad. Money was the thing that took my dad's love away from me. Money was the thing that took people out of presence, out of, you know, being there with their kids. Money was this thing that was to be chased after. And I was like, "But I'm right here. What do you need to chase after?" Was pretty much the emotional experience for me as a kid around money.

Before you move on there, how much did you also maybe paradoxically take on that, the belief, the water you were swimming in that we don't have enough money, money is important? To what extent was that sort of a—

That's a great point. Yeah, both were taken on. Both were taken on. So there was a part of me that wanted money and wanting to have enough of it. And there was a part of me that money was bad and I was rejecting it. So it was absolutely a push and pull. Thing. I didn't really want the money when I was— excuse me— I didn't really want the money when I was younger, but that desire for the money kicked in for sure by the time I was in my 20s. But the money was bad, that kicked in 13. And so that's what I was in touch with, was that the money was bad by 13 years old. And I just— anybody with money was bad, really rich people were bad, the guy in the Porsche was a prick. Like, it was— that That was my experience. Money was something that took you away from anything that was important in life and you were vapid if you had money. And so that's really how I was walking through life in my teens and in my 20s.

And what did that do to your development with that lens coloring your experience? What—

It kept money away from me.

What path did that take you on?

It kept money away from me and it kept it away in two ways. One of the ways it kept it away from me was because I would naturally get a lot of money thrown at me. I remember, you know, I graduated from college and then I worked in a fishery and then in Alaska and then I taught in Head Start and then I was like, oh, let's make some money. And, you know, I found a job in investment banking and seriously within 3 16 months or something like that, I was making enormous amounts of money and I was like, "This is bad," and I quit.

And yet you were attracted to investment banking. So the other side of that paradox was active.

Exactly, exactly, right? It was a push-pull in my system. And I found my head wanting the money and thinking that the money was freedom. Like if I had enough money, I could be free. And I had that whole thought process happening, which would become illuminated later. And at the same time, I was like, money's bad. All these people in investment banking, all they care about is making more money, da da da. So I was in a situation where I was pushing and pulling against myself, and I was constantly finding proof that it was bad. So I went into, investment banking. And I was like, this is horrible. You know, this is all bad. And then I chased art, and it was like 7 years later or something like that, I realized they were the same thing. And so this amazing recognition that it was just like, everything I saw was just shaded by money is bad. And, and I, and I, anything that I saw that was bad that related to money, what money was the cause of it. You know, if there was a rich person who was acting like an ass, it wasn't they're an asshole who happens to be rich. It was money makes that person act like an asshole. So I was constantly finding the proof of it.

Yeah. And what did that, what did that do for you emotionally to continuously find more proof that money was bad? What did that protect you from feeling, for example?

My wanting for it and the fact that, I mean, part of it was I was bad for wanting money and I wanted money. And so there was like that. That constant fight actually more than anything prevented me from my joy and my, and my ease.

So it was almost a way of proving that you were bad.

Absolutely.

Proving that the aspect of you that wanted money was bad.

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, in my 20s, I was constantly self-abusive. I hadn't really— it wasn't even until like 24 or 25 that I realized that I had a critical voice in the head that was abusing me. Right. So So that's that. And so everything that I had was a fight, and this was particularly probably one of the biggest fights I was in with myself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so as we talked about in your story, you started to recognize around that time that you had this voice in your head. How did spirituality and your, your self-exploration journey play into this?

Yeah, so yeah, I, any spiritual teacher that had anything to do with money, any development teacher that had anything to do with money, they were corrupt and crappy. Right? So it was like, my first thing to do was a 10-day meditation retreat. And I only went because the person was like, you can't pay. This is donated to you. You can't— it has to— you have to assume it's a gift. If you want to donate afterwards, fine. But you have to— you can't pay for this. I was like, okay, that's real.

The irony is that is actually very much defined about money. Much about money to be like, you cannot pay.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But in my head it was just like, oh, they're not doing it for the money, therefore they can be trusted. And I mean, I remember like somebody who became one of my, you know, really favorite teachers. I was at the— looking at their book and in the back of the book there was a picture of them and I was like, oh, they're trying to get notoriety and fame and money. And so they can't be a good teacher. Because there's a picture of them on the back of the book. Like, it got like that deep in my system. Anybody doing any— it didn't— I couldn't conceive of the fact that their picture was on the book because they wanted people to be able to connect, or their picture was on the book because they wanted to present themselves as a real human, not as a, you know, some fantasy that people could project on. Or— and so it was just, they had a picture, therefore they must be interested in fame and money, and therefore I couldn't trust him as a teacher. And so I— so there's a linkage here with fame too, power, fame, any kind of like cachet, notoriety, status, anything around status. Status.

Got it.

Because to me, my father's quest for money was all about status. So any version of that, you know, and, and that's, that's— Mary, money just started, started being You know, money was a representation of anything I projected onto it. So, and so spirituality was the opposite of it. Whatever, whatever I had this idea of what spirituality was, which was interestingly to find out later that the beginning approaches of my spirituality were all about status. It was all about, you know, being like perfect in some way, right? And And so, yeah, I just—

How much are you creating a hierarchy of status of which teachers are the most—

Exactly.

Not statusy.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I couldn't see any of that at the time. So that's what happened. And then somewhere along the line, I don't remember where this came, but somewhere along the line, I was more and more in touch with the fact that I wanted money. And I think that happened because I lived without it. I lived without it for like close to a decade, I like went into debt so I could sit and meditate. And I, but I would worry about money. And, but I wouldn't do anything for money or I'd like work for a week every month just to have enough money to be able to pay the bills. But I was still going into debt. And so as the money thing got tighter and tighter, I wanted it more and more, it became more and more this thing that was supposed to give me freedom. And somehow or another, I started to practice having gratitude for money and doing a gratitude practice every day for 10 minutes a day. And I did it with Tara.

And what did that look like?

It was literally being grateful for what I did have. And so the concept was at the time, I can't remember if I made like, did this on my own, but the concept was that I'm constantly thinking about what I don't have. And what happens if I constantly think about what I do have? How does that change things? If I stop thinking about the lack and I start thinking about— this was the original idea— if I start thinking about all that, all that I do have, how does that change the way I look at everything? Because I was just looking at everything like I didn't— there wasn't enough. And And so I just, every day, 10 minutes a day, we would sit and just be grateful for everything. Oh, look, we have a working car. Oh, we had food today, whatever it was. And it was always around stuff that like resources, money could get us. And we just did it. And literally, whatever it was, this is like '30s. It was literally like 6 months later, there was just more, there was a ton of money in our account. In our world. And what I thought was a ton of money at the time. And, and it was, it was like, in that gratitude practice, I started seeing all the opportunities. I started seeing what was right and how to grow it instead of what was wrong and how to fix it. I could see all these opportunities that came and, and I could see that they were everywhere. I remember In that process, at some point, I could look out and I just saw that everything— somebody made money on everything I was looking at. I was living in LA at the time and it was just like, oh, that concrete, 20 people made money on that concrete. You know, that road light, the electricity that it brings to the road light, the paint on the road light. I could just see like everywhere I looked, there was ways people were making money. Money was money was so available. It was all over. It was like endless. And I had never seen that before. I thought that there was a shortage of it. I thought— I believed that there was not enough of it and that you had to fight for it instead of like, holy crap, this is just like— this is like walking through a jungle of money and finances. You just have to like reach up and pick stuff off. And so that gratitude really, really helped. With that experience. And, and, and so that's when money started to flow into my life, like, just comfortably, easily. And it was— I think it was like 6 or 8 months from starting that practice to, like, being completely out of debt, making a living doing art, happy. And we're like, oh, let's have a kid. And, like, because I wasn't worried about money, it was just like that practice was a real big life changer for me.

So one thing I'm noticing here is that you went from all that debt through this gratitude practice, maybe perhaps something that was dismantled there was this, the idea that status and money was gonna get you love.

Yeah, it wasn't so much that like money to be loved, I hadn't figured that out yet. What I figured out was that money was something you could be grateful for, so it could be good. It could be something that you appreciate. And I figured out there was a ton of it. There is a holy crap ton of money out there. And it's like walking through a jungle of money and all you have to do is like just pick off the trees. And those were the two things that that practice really helped with me. And that's when the money door started opening up for me.

Yeah, and it's just fascinating for me that you didn't go back to investment banking where you had been making money before to get the money.

No, no, no.

You went into the arts?

At that point, I'd been— at this point, I was focusing on trying to make money as an artist for an extended period of time. And I had that moment of recognition that, oh, the thing that I was running towards in the art was the same thing I was running away from in investment banking. It was the same crap as far as like soul-killing and for the kinds of— the kind of art I wanted to do. And then all of a sudden, this new form of art just appeared as I started started appreciating all of a sudden opportunities. And I started doing large-scale video art installations. It just happened and I just loved it and it just started occurring. And so money was just, just became this thing. And I also started educating myself on money at that point. It was the first time that I was just like, oh, I'm so fascinated. What the hell is this thing that I was completely not attuned to at all? You know, like that I had rejected in so many ways, so many ways, like from friends and family and just so many ways I had rejected money. I was like, what is this thing that I'm rejecting? And then I started educating myself on it.

Yeah. So I'm hearing that you kind of dropped into view around the topic of money.

That's right.

And started to have the wonder and the curiosity to learn more about it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's what happened.

And see the dynamics around you.

Yeah. And then the next thing happened in that world. I, I ended up running across 2 or 3, 2 that I remember, billionaires at the time. And they were, you know, both of them had inherited their wealth. And I met both of them through art and, and through my passion for the environment. And, and, um, and And I remember driving, the next big experience I had was I remember driving my car and thinking about how I didn't have enough. And in that moment, I was like, I thought of the two billionaires and I'm like, they are also right now probably thinking they don't have enough. 'Cause I knew 'em and I knew even if they would've like logically said, I have enough money, their minds were constantly going to what they didn't have. And I was like, oh, I'm a fucking billionaire, you know? And I saw that there's people on the earth, like if you're some of the poorest people in America, you're in the top 1% in the world. I'm like, there's people on earth who are like, how could that dude be unhappy and think he doesn't have enough when he can like go to a restaurant and buy a pupusa, you know? Or, you know, like what is going on? And I just saw the whole thing. This like the shackle of thinking that I didn't have enough. And in that I'm like, oh, I'm the same as a billionaire. There's no difference really. I mean, like, yeah, perhaps they can like rent a jet and, or buy a jet and I can't. But my reality is either I have a ton or I have nothing or I don't have enough. And it doesn't really matter how much you actually have. I mean, within a level of, you know, if you can feed yourself or, you know, put yourself in a safe environment. And so that was amazing. And in that recognition came another recognition, which is it's really expensive to be poor, was this other thing. It's like, I was really good at being poor. I figured out a way to do a whole bunch of things with no money. You know, I found my way down the Grand Canyon on a 14-day trip, and I found a way to, buy musical equipment when I wanted to do that. And I found ways to do stuff, but it took a lot of time. It took a lot of time. And it was like, oh, I'm spending a lot of money or a lot of time to be poor. And so it was just an interesting recognition that same time that it was like, oh, it's expensive to be poor if you're fighting against abundance, which is what I was doing. That was another really big moment for me.

So let's drill in on that a little bit more. So what I, what I kind of heard there is that because you had closed off a lot of your potential reality of ways that you might actually make money and pay for the thing, instead you would go through a more energetically and time-expensive process in order to save the money or do the thing while still being able to push money away.

Right, right, right.

And you're describing that as being expensive.

Yeah, like, so instead of, oh, I'm gonna do shit that I really love, make money so that I can buy other stuff that I really want to do, I would do a whole bunch of shit to like cajole my way into a situation, none of which I wanted to do, none of which was creating the reality I wanted to see on Earth, so that I could get down the Grand Canyon, you know. And so, so that's what I mean by expensive. It was like, it meant that my— I was spending my energy by avoiding money. I was spending my energy in a way that wasn't fully aligned with who I was. And so that, that's what I mean by expensive. And that actually started— hit really home when I read this book, it was called The Soul of Money. And I remember it wasn't written in a great way. Like it was kind of There were some issues, like I was annoyed reading it, but the ideas were really quite priceless in it. And I ended up meeting the woman, her name was Lynne Twist, and later in life. And the two things were that like money is just an ex— the main thesis behind the book was that money is a neutral thing that can be aligned with who you are and not aligned with who you are. And if you can express money, if you can use money to be an expression of who you are and what you want in the world, then money is a wonderful thing. And if you are controlled or ruled by money, then it's a whole different thing. And she had some really great stories in that book. And I remember one of the ones that was— that hit me really hard at the time, but it didn't really hit till later, was this story. It was like near the end of the book. It was this— it was like this Amazon tribe or something. And they said, if you're here to help us, no thank you. But if you're— if we're here to work together for our mutual freedom, let's get to work. And that, I remember that like stuck with me. That was like a seed that planted that didn't sprout till much later around money. But the thing that sprouted right away was, oh, I, money doesn't, I don't work for money, money works for me. Money, the job for my job is to make sure that money is an expression of what I want to see in the world. And so that was, that was like the first big crack in how I saw money. Just as like, I no longer saw money as something that was solid. I saw money as the thing in which I projected onto it.

Yeah, and I could see that also applying to the peripheral around money, the status, the fame, social capital, which is a really great term relating to money capital. Yeah, yeah, that's another thing that can be, you know, you can, you can build or use that within or out of alignment with yourself. And that's really what this a lot of the work comes down to is how in alignment as an expression of yourself is whatever it is you're relating to, whatever you're relating to it.

Yeah, yeah. And that was the first time that I got to really see it as, as projection too, right? Which means like, I, that was at that moment that I could see, oh, I projected it was bad and so it was bad. I could project that it's anything. But, and what I noticed is that everybody had a different projection around money and it And it related not to money at all. It was just the way that we would project our past traumas on our current lovers or our mom and dad on our lovers. I just saw, all of a sudden I saw, oh, money is just this thing, like an authority figure or anything, a famous person, it's just there to catch our projections. It's gonna give us freedom. No, it's not. You can project it, you can, you know, uh, it's gonna give me safety, it's gonna give me blah blah blah blah blah. It's like all of that, I just saw all the projections on it. I'm like, money is what you make it to be. And that, and that, that, that's what really hit in that moment for me.

Yeah, so if you were to trace some of those projections back the way that we do with projections as something that we're not owning in ourself, what does that What does that do for this part of your journey?

Yeah, so for me, my personal level of projection, what I found out as I kind of presented a little bit earlier was that I used the same, the beginning of the recognition was I was presenting the same thing into spirituality. So at this point in my spirituality, I was chasing enlightenment. I was trying to have that moment of awakening. And I realized that like, oh, I'm projecting onto money, I'm projecting onto that at the same time. It was like, if I'm good enough, if I breathe enough, if I eat the right thing, if I like have a calm enough mind, if I da da da, then I can have money, then I can be in life. I had this idea that like it took competence to be rich. And it's just like, I now met a lot of rich people. I can tell you a shit ton of people aren't competent. And it's the same. It's like this stuff isn't earned. You know, money is not always earned. It can be earned. Awakening is not always earned either. Like it can also be a gift. And it doesn't work the way that we're told that it works. And it doesn't mean that you don't have to be conscious. I don't, I don't mean to say that like hard work is bad or earning something is bad or that it's not necessary. What I mean to say is I had set up hurdle after hurdle after hurdle after hurdle that was required, some level of competence, some perfection, something that I had to do so that I could get what I wanted. And this is the— and those were all my projections. And when that fell apart, it became really clear. It's like, oh, all those hurdles I've made for myself so that I can become wealthy, awakened, happy— it's all bullshit. It's like, whatever I want to find can be found right now in this moment.

Yeah. And that speaks—

whatever I think money can give me, I can find right now in this moment. All the really important stuff.

Yeah, speaks to sort of a common cultural belief system of that it wasn't really worth it unless I worked hard for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, like if, if there is, if awakening or if, if money can just come to me or if, if I can just have enough or I can just feel the enoughness right now, then it's just, that's just worthless. I can push that aside and then get to the hard work of getting the thing that's really the gold, right?

Exactly. And you're right, it's like— and, and in awakening circles, they'll talk about it as like, you know, you've always been awake, there's nothing you have to do for it. And you're like, shut up, what? Like, okay, I'm just gonna go meditate some more, you know? Like, you don't, you don't say that out loud because that'd be very non-spiritual of you, but that's what's actually happening, you know? You're like, you know, your mind's like, okay, yeah, yeah, I got that, so how do I get there? You know, that that whole thing. And it was the same with money. And, and that, and that I saw that those two projections were really the same projection, that both of them were going to be avenues. Both money and awakening was going to be avenues to my happiness. And that there was no avenue to my happiness. There was no avenue to my peace. There was no avenue to my joy. It was right here.

Or making them— making your happiness or your peace or your joy contingent on those things, which makes it conditional.

Correct.

And sets it up so you don't get to have it.

Yeah, exactly. And when that recognition happened, then all of a sudden the fear of money, the fear that came with money went away. Oh my God, what if I don't get a job? What if I don't have it? What if I don't have, what if I go homeless? What if I, all that just kind of dissipated.

How much was the fear of money like a fear of getting what you want or a fear of actually letting yourself have the joy, have the enoughness?

Yeah, it was all that. That's what it was. Yeah, for sure. The fear of joy, the pleasure anxiety, lots of words for it. That's what it was. Yeah. And the other thing that happened at this moment was that that's when I saw money less as something that had to be earned. It was less material and it was more energetic. It was more how you really, it was more like a person, right? You walk into a bar and you're trying to pick up somebody, it's less about how you look and it's more about your attitude that you're carrying with you. And if you walk into a sales thing, it's less about like, you know, it's less about what you're selling and more about how you hold yourself when you sell. And, and so it was the same thing. All of a sudden I saw money as that, like money my relationship with money was how I reacted with it. And so the way that I treated money is the way that money— it was going to determine how my— how money was going to treat me. And so it was the first time that it became— I saw it more as like an energetic exchange. And then it just kind of builds on itself, just like taking care— like, it's the same thing with like food. It's like how I— my relationship with food is going to be my— how my food treats me, or you know, exercise or body. It's the same thought process. It just becomes more of an energetic exchange at that point.

Yeah, there's something that brings up— there's, there's a lot of kind of points we've hit in this conversation.

Yeah.

That, for example, like the kind of the abundance mindset, the gratitude around money, and the energetic exchange that I sometimes see described or used in terms— in ways that can be bypassy, like, oh yeah, like imagining if like I'm running a business and, you know, people are buying cell phones, they go to the store and we're like, it's an energetic exchange. You're not, you know, it's not about paying money for your cell phone plan. It's about an energetic exchange. And there's like a reality to that. But there's also like, I don't want to be like piling on anybody who might use that term here in their work. Right. Yeah. I think, I think there's something really beautiful about recognizing what it is. And I'm also just curious to kind of dig into where some of these recognitions that you had, where do you see them kind of going to the other side of the pendulum? And how do you— what experience do you have with kind of grounding that into—

I think you describe it well, which is like if you're trying to use that as a way to bypass an emotional fear, like, or any emotional complexity, then you're like, then you're fooling yourself. When I say energetic exchange, I think the most perfect example of this was, you know, it was about this time when I started working as a philanthropist and I was, you know, giving away millions of dollars for this family. And it's when I realized like, oh, there's like giving away money is destructive. Like, it's like there has to be an exchange. There has to be. And this is actually where that thing came in. If you're here to help me, no thank you. If you're here for us to work together for our mutual freedom, let's get to work. That's what I mean by energetic exchange. What I mean to say is it has to be like a good relationship has to require that both people are giving and receiving, that there is an exchange happening. It's not all one way. All one way creates toxicity. And that's what I saw. I saw that like, oh, this thing is like, it needs flow, it needs movement, it needs to go in both directions. Otherwise it's a buildup one way or another, right? It either becomes toxic because you, you have so much of it in the wrong way, or it becomes toxic because you don't have enough of it. But it's like the exchange is just not That's what I mean by it.

Yeah, I guess one of the things that comes up for me there is that like money is really something that represents— it's a, it's an intermediary that represents the energetic exchange.

Yeah.

In society. And if you just pour a bunch of money on something, sometimes it'll just totally wash out the signal of what was actually being exchanged and what structures existed. Sometimes those structures were unfair or in some kind of out of balance. But also sometimes you just totally wipe out a structure.

Yeah, that's right.

And then you're starting from no man's land or something. No, starting from some kind of like lost territory and have to rebuild the structure, which can be good. Can be productive and also can be destructive.

Yeah.

Depending on the timescale.

You know, it was about this time, I think, when I heard this person tell me had this thing said, if you pay off somebody else's credit card debt without them asking, you will incur their debt, but you won't relieve it. Meaning that, like, it was— it's the same thing. It wasn't about money in particular. He used this particular thing. He was talking about if you go in and you try to help somebody without them asking for the help, without them participating in it, you are going to take on that burden, but you're not going to relieve them of that burden. And that's the same thing with money.

And what do you mean by not relieve that burden? Like, they're still gonna feel the burden? They still have the debt.

They still have the debt. Yeah, they still have it.

The belief systems around it, the, the feeling of not having dignity or something. Is that, is that kind of what you're pointing to?

I mean, it's, it's very much like, uh, like most people who won the lottery 2 years later have no money and wish they had never won the lottery.

Hmm.

That's, that's like the typical thing. So it's a— it's— there has to be an energetic exchange for there to be transformation that lasts. You know, there's huge trillions of dollars have gone to help people that have gone completely to waste. Typically what I saw in nonprofit land was that was because it was out of guilt and out of— A, it was out of guilt and it was also not in exchange. It's like, "We're here to help you so that we can feel good about ourselves." If you're here to help us, no thank you. If we're here to work together for our mutual freedom—

Which is a starting point of disconnection if you're—

Correct.

If you're doing something to actually just change your own internal state, then you're not actually in connection with where the money's going and what you're doing with it.

Right. And that's, so that's why when I—

Thank you all for the support.

Yeah. And that's why when I say if you're using any of this thought process as an emotional bypass, it like all, like for me, my journey with money has always been going into the pain, has always been going into the discomfort. All this stuff that I learned was by going into the discomfort of money. It wasn't trying to escape it. Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in the spirit of not escaping it, I'd love to go back to kind of where you, where this initial relationship with money was imprinted and a lot of it coming from your dad. And so how does, how does this journey then relate to, or how has it revealed your relationship with your dad?

Yeah. So, yeah, so cool. Cause that's really literally the next thing that happened. I was, I think I was doing venture at this point, and this is kind of where it all kind of just came together. All of what I had learned had come together at this moment. And I'm in El Salvador for spring break, and my wife and daughter have to leave because somebody died. And I'm sitting there in a hammock, and I read this news of WhatsApp, which is basically this venture capitalist tried to get their venture team to invest in WhatsApp. They wouldn't, so they invested their own money. They invested like half a million or a million dollars, something like that. Guy worked at Sequoia, I think. And a year later he's a billionaire. Like, it was just, it just was like, it was one of those like massive success stories really, really quickly. And when I read it, it felt like someone punched me in the gut just fucking hit me as hard as they could. And the guy had a visceral somatic reaction of just like, oh. And for whatever reason, through grace, immediately I was like, what is that feeling? What— when did I feel that feeling for the first time? I closed my eyes, I went into my body. I did not think about it. I let my body trace it back to the very first time. And I was like, Oh, that's me trying to get my dad's love. And it was at that moment I realized my entire relationship with money has been a projection of me trying to get my dad's love. The whole thing. There wasn't— it was bad. I wanted it, but I didn't want it at the same time. There wasn't enough of it. You know, like all the whole thing. I was just like, whoa. I just bawled. I just sat in this hammock awkwardly, bawled in this public pool for a while, semi-public pool for a while. And it just like something, my whole body, my whole system had changed. And all of a sudden money was a tool. Money for the first time was just something that was, that I could use. It was the first time that I fully felt like, "Oh, money works for me. I don't work for money." in a way that was just like fully embodied. And at that point on, money has always just come incredibly easy. But more importantly, I remember, so it was shortly after that that I started deciding to coach folks, 'cause I was like, "Oh yeah, I don't need to be a venture capitalist." And I started to coach some folks. I remember two of the people who wanted coaching, two of the first four people who wanted coaching were both incredibly wealthy folks, people who I had come into contact somewhat recently. And they were both, if they weren't billionaires, they were really close. And I would go through this process with each of them. And the process, I called it the Happy Money Game. And what we would do was I would say, okay, I will coach you for one session. You have to reciprocate in some way. I don't care if you give me a million dollars or you put a million dollars into my kids' college fund, or if you give a dollar to a homeless person. Don't care. Just want you to reciprocate in a way that feels right for you. And then if you wanna work with me and I wanna work with you, we will play the happy money game, which was an exchange of proposals. And the person who had a proposal that worked for both people won. So it would be like, I think you should, I should pay you $500 an hour. And my response would be like, that doesn't, $500 an hour doesn't, you know, guarantee that you're gonna show up and do the work. So I'm not interested in $500 an hour. So I propose, you know, whatever, $10,000 an hour. And that, that would be the exchange that went back. And forth. With one of those two people, our financial agreement was, I will not take any money from you. Refuse to take any money because that person's particular situation was that they bought everything. They had money and they had had it for so long that they could buy anything. And so the only way that the relationship could have trust for me was that he couldn't buy me. And so I worked with this person for quite a long time for no money. The other person, it was, you're gonna pay me an exorbitant— the problem there was that he had a hard time dedicating to things. Like, he'd— commitment, he'd all, you know, very scattered. Super brilliant, very scattered. So that was, you're gonna pay me some enormous amount of money, or at least what I thought was enormous at the time. And then enormous amount of money and then if you do not do the work, then you're gonna pay me twice the money. And you're going to— if I recall correctly, it was— and you're gonna send me a recording, 5-minute recording, every day for 30 days telling me that you love yourself. And if you don't do that, then you're gonna pay me triple the money. That was the relationship. And so money just became this tool of like, how do I use money as one more tool to help people in their transformation, which is what I cared about, which is what was in alignment with me. And that's when money— I could not do that until that moment of seeing through money and what it was and what I had made out of it, that like the ultimate projection for me around money.

Yeah, I love how like in, in the first case you described, this person in, in the pattern of buying everything always had a reason to believe it wasn't real, always had a reason to believe they didn't deserve it, always had a belief, a reason to separate themselves from it because, oh, I bought this. Especially if it's something interpersonal like coaching.

You don't love me. And then the second, you're not committed to me. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. Right.

And then the second one around the commitment, it was like, okay, great. You're gonna win either way because either you're gonna stay in the coaching and be committed to the coaching, Or the agreement is that you're going to go through, you know, your joy anxiety.

Yeah, exactly.

Of like, of giving yourself love or at least experiencing your resistance to doing so.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was playing against this particular person's thing of like winning. He was incredibly smart. He loved winning. So I set up a situation where the only way he could win is to do the work.

Yeah, because I see it as winning the other way too. He just had to do— he was winning in a different way because, yes, yeah, it was set up to bring him through the work.

But for him, the way he— because of like the entrepreneur and what he did, the way he saw winning and losing was through money, right? So he— him creating a billion or multi-billion dollar company wasn't about like, I've, I've made money. It was like, look, I won. You know, he would be the person who was tracking like, I sold my company with 37% ownership and this person sold their company at 35% ownership. I won, you know. And so it was just the scorecard. And so there was just, I was just building a game for him through the money. And that was when I, that's when I just saw, oh, money is this thing that is just one more tool towards awakening. Because that's what I'm interested in, you know. So that, that was, that was kind of the thing. And then the only thing that's really happened since then that was, which is interesting, is, you know, now I don't play happy money game with clients. And there's some aspect that, that creates some sadness, um, because it's— but I don't have— because the money, the, the game that I'm playing now for transformation is so much bigger. It's like, how do I use money in different, you know, masterclass and clients and everything so that I can make this as a, make it so that people who want it have it available at least in some way, right? So if you look at the way that my business, yeah, my business runs right now, our business runs right now is, It's like there's more and more revenue every year, but not really any more net. It's more and more gross because we're just taking all the money that we make and put it into ways of like, you know, supporting the community or growing the capacity for people to find it or to— So I'm still interested in the transformation, but it's become less about how do I help one person transform with money and How do I use money as a tool for doing this with one person? And it's turned into, how do I use money as a tool for doing this with as many people as possible? As long as that just stays in joy, like, scale isn't the most important thing by any stretch for me. But when it comes to money, that's what it's— that's the game I'm playing with it. So that's been really interesting too, because it's like there's this weird way in which money has become even less personal. It's like it— less— it's less about an individual thing and it's more about a systemic thing. So that's been really interesting for me as well, and I, and I, I'm sure it'll continue to change.

Yeah, that comes back to the alignment piece for me. Like, as, as I've been going through my journey with, with money and with this work, I find, as you described, money gets easier And also one of the ways that it gets easier is that I'm holding myself to less money standards about like what I'm supposed to be, like what would be successful of me. And it's more about like money becomes easier because it's actually just like the concept of working with it is the concept and the experience of it is more in alignment with what I actually want to be doing with my time in my life and how I want to be experiencing it, which is—

Yeah.

A lot of the projection around money being the thing that will fill the void falls away.

Yeah, yeah. Or can supply anything that you might think fills the void, right? Yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, that was really fun episode. Yeah, thanks.

I enjoyed it.

Thanks for, thanks for, thanks for making that happen.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you everybody for listening. Uh, yeah. Tune in in a couple weeks for our next episode. We don't know what it's on yet, but we'll find out. If you had any epiphanies or questions, hit us up on Twitter @artofacomp, and you can also just reach out to us via email or contact form at artofaccomplishment.com. Awesome. All right, see you next time.

Bye.