What about Money?

 

Is there anything else in the world that so many people love and hate (and misunderstand) all at the same time? …Probably not.

 

There’s a lot of misconceptions about what money is, how to get it, and how much we should be allowed to have. So hopefully this chapter is going to clear up some of those misconceptions and provide a fresh new outlook on this very important part of our lives.

 

Whatever problems there may be with things being “hard for us to reach” because of their cost in dollars, without money those same things would be even harder for us to get our hands on.

 

For instance, if you chose working at a gas station for your profession (which is something I myself once did) you can find an employer who needs your services. Through that employment you can exchange what they pay you for other things.  For instance you can make a car payment, you can pay your rent, you can buy food or whatever… …but without that medium of money, it would be very hard to gain the same benefits from that job. I doubt anyone would have given me a place to stay, a car to drive, and food each day just for working an 8 hour shift selling gas, gum and cigarettes.

 

The point is, without money as a medium, it would be much harder for the people in a society to benefit from one another.  That old cliché that money is the root of all evil just is not fair.

 

Greed and deceit and lust for power over others, now that’s another story. Money is what we get in exchange for what we contribute. When people try to bypass that through force or theft, the fault lies with them, not the thing they’re trying to steal.

 

Now I mentioned “contribution” because it’s an extremely important word with regard to what we end up earning. It leads me to the next point, which really is one of the great truths of working in a free society:

 

We decide what it is that we want to do and then the world decides what that’s worth.

 

As long as we have the power to shape what we contribute, then we have the power to shape what we receive in return.

 

If we’re not happy with what the world is willing to pay us for what we’re contributing, then it’s our responsibility to either increase the value of that contribution in some way or develop the ability to do something else completely. ---Take some time and research other lines of work that maybe we’re interested in doing or find something that traditionally is worth more than the going rate of what we’re doing now. But we should always remember that picking something JUST BECAUSE it pays more is not the best idea. There’s plenty of financial rewards in every profession, the key is to get good at what you’re doing…and as we already know, it’s much easier to get good at things that we truly enjoy doing.

 

But going back to how we earn money for just a minute. Understanding that we’re actually being rewarded for our contribution clears up the mystery of how to increase what we earn. It’s simple: Increase the value of what we offer. Either by further developing our talent and abilities where we are right now, or by choosing to make a different contribution all together. Sometimes it’s just a matter of “contributing” the exact same thing we’re doing right now, only to different people. People who can make more use of it and because so are willing to pay more for what we offer.

The excerpt above is from The 1-Hour Guide to Successful Thinking. To access the complete program (Transcript, Audio Files and Workbook) please purchase either the PDF version or the Kindle version.