In our family, we had a cousin Willy. Cousin Willy was an alcoholic, but no one ever said anything about it. At least not to his face. Everyone just pretended that there was no problem… including cousin Willy. I think many families have a cousin Willy, or two.
Alcohol is a drug, as is nicotine, food, heroin, sexual deviation, abuse, chocolate. Drugs become addictions when the substance or desire for the object has more power than our willpower… when we can no longer say ‘No’ to its power.
When something has more power over us, than we have over it, then it is an addiction. When people are addicted they often go into denial and pretend it does not have power over them. The more they pretend it has no power, the more power the addiction has.
Money is a drug. It is a drug because it has the power to make us feel good when we receive it, to feel terrible when we lose it, to worry if we think we don’t have enough of it, and to spend our lives, as slaves, working for it.
When something has more power over us, than we have over it, then it is an addiction.
Personally, I’ve never understood people when they say, “I’m not interested in money” ..and then trot off to work; or go back to school to learn skills for a higher paying job; or ask for a raise; or sign their life away at the bank, taking out a loan. Saying, “I’m not interested in money” is not much different than cousin Willy hiding his empty vodka bottles in the bottom of the rubbish bin.
Like it or not, money is an essential part of modern life. Money was not that important when we were back in the Agrarian Age because the farm could provide much of our life support without money. The land would provide water, vegetables, chickens, eggs, milk, meat, and other support items essential for life. Today, try raising chickens in your two bedroom flat. Today, even water costs money.
So instead of giving money more power than it deserves over your life, I recommend saying:
“Money is important to me,”..and begin to learn about the actual subject.
The more you learn about something, the more power you have over it.
Today, money wields incredible power. It affects virtually every aspect of our lives. It affects the food we eat, the houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the vacations we take, our health care, our educational standards, often who we marry, and our future. More and more I hear medical doctors saying that the stress from money problems is one of the greatest reasons for ill health and unhappiness today. I heard a health practitioner call it, “cancer of the wallet”.
So please do not use money’s power against you by pretending it has no power. Instead, learn about it and use it’s power in your favour. The first step in any drug recovery program is to admit the addiction. Shed some truth on the subject and then the saying, “The truth shall set your free” begins to come true. I’ve never understood people when they say “I’m not interested in money.”
The second step is begin your education about money. A great place to start is by reading or re-reading ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. The principles in that book have withstood the test of time, and it’s an important book in anyone’s library. The reason I say it’s important is because its title is not Work Hard and Grow Rich, or Borrow Money and Grow Rich, which is what most people seem to do in today’s world. People do those things and wonder why they’ve become slaves to money… and your life is much too important to spend it working for money.
The primary reason I spend a little bit of every day studying the subject of money is because I recognise and respect money’s powerful involvement in my life. I study the subject regularly because I always want to have more power over money than it has over me. I want to tell money what to do, rather than have it dictate to me how to live my life.
And I love the lifestyle that money buys. I love my beautiful home, nice clothes, fast cars, fancy hotels, first class travel, and great food. I just do not want I never wanted to do what my parents did… to spend my life worrying about how to pay for that lifestyle… or hating people that do enjoy that lifestyle. So, I admit that I love the finer things of life that money buys, but I want that lifestyle without the damage that comes from excessive debt, worry, and hours of hard work, that the lack of education and the denial about money’s power.
Most of all, I never wanted to do what my parents did, which was to spend the best years of their lives working hard for money, trying to live below their means scrimping and saving, buying cheap things, getting further into debt, all the while, “I’m not interested in money.”
Saying that and going off to work every day is no different than cousin Willy hiding his empty bottles. I recommend a little education about money… for education has the power to set us free and allow us to live our lives the way we want to live them.
