I’ve done my share of it. Spirit-driven and service-oriented women are especially likely to make money wrong.

We have stories we grew up with, that came from religions, that we absorbed from our culture. Money is the root of all evil. It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Rich people are selfish and greedy. Caring about money makes me a bad person. I can’t be a spiritual person and be wealthy.

Here’s one of mine I uncovered last year: If I make a lot of money, I’ll no longer be an artist. (This is of a piece with the mentality that if I go for lots of money as an artist, I’m “selling out.”) That was really holding me back!

There are plenty more of them, too. Some people believe that we need to get rid of money entirely and have a “gift economy” where people give and receive freely, sharing and taking care of each other.

If you’re making money wrong, you won’t allow yourself to get much of it, which means you won’t be working with (serving) many people. Your impact in the world will be small.

What is money, really? It’s a medium of exchange. The coins and pieces of paper don’t have any value in and of themselves. They have value because we say they do, and because everyone agrees. We give it in exchange for things and services.

Money makes it easier for us than if we had to exchange actual stuff for everything. This is the barter or trade system. It works well if you want chickens and your client wants to trade you her chickens for your services. It breaks down when you don’t want chickens and that’s all she has to barter with. (You also don’t want to have to take her chickens, then trade them for something else you really do want, because you have no place to keep chickens in the meantime.)

If you got chickens for your services, would the chickens then be “the root of all evil?” Of course not.

Money gives us a medium to make that exchange. Your client gets money from other people for her chickens, then she uses the money to pay for your services. You can then use that money to exchange for all kinds of other things, including chickens if you want them.

There is, of course, a reason we have these ideas that money is bad. People, businesses and governments sometimes do horrible things in the name of profit. When we start thinking that the most important thing in the world is more and more money, we’re in trouble. When money becomes an end in itself, we’re in trouble.

If we get into that mindset, no matter how much money we have, it will never be enough. When profit is the supreme motive, we get the unsustainable economic practices we have now that are creating a planet we can’t continue to live on.

But does money actually have the capability to MAKE us become greedy? Can it change us? It can skew our thinking, but when we are conscious about how we do money, it can’t make us into someone we’re not.

What if money were actually part of your spiritual path? As a spirit-driven entrepreneur who longs to make a difference in the world, money is actually a representation of how much love & service you’re giving in the world.

My mentor is fond of saying, “How we do money is how we do everything.” If you do money in integrity with your values and desire for a better world, making fabulous money can truly be part of your spiritual path.

Economic theories and policies have led us astray with their beliefs (untested, by the way) that people are innately selfish and materialistic, and when individuals act selfishly, we’ll end up with the best society possible. The state of our planet shows how wrong this approach is. The new field of behavioral economics is demonstrating through experiments  that people are more motivated by altruism and fairness than the “old” economists thought.

I’m not motivated by making money, per se. I’m motivated by what I can DO with money. For me, part of what I want to do with money is contribute more to making the world a better place. When I create money goals for my business, that is part of what drives me – in addition to my desire to help my clients succeed with their transformational businesses (so we can all change the world), and to have enough money to live comfortably.

How much is enough? I want to have enough money so I can meet all my wants and needs, help my kids, travel, and save for retirement. My wants and needs don’t include multiple mansions & cars, or rooms full of clothes, or tons of jewelry. They DO include occasional luxuries and being able to buy things of high quality. And, as I mentioned, contributing to causes I care about. “Enough” may look different for you.

If you stop making money wrong and align with money as a force for good, what will shift for you? With money as part of your spiritual path, what changes will you make in your business and your life?

As we reconnect money to ethics, health, and the wellbeing of our planet, WAHOO! Look out – we are going to have a world that works for all of us.

I’d love to support you.
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