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 world WANTS us to meet its needs, and there are so many needs to be met, there’s no reason why every person couldn’t find at least 10 or more perfect positions that they could fill. …Positions that interest them and provide a steady opportunity for them to grow. A place where they can easily work their way into that top 10 or even 5 percent for that chosen field. And when you get into that top percentage, you’re going to be one of those lucky people who not only enjoy their job, but also get paid very well for doing it.
And what does it mean to be “paid” well? Is there a level that you should just “settle” for? Is there a point where you’re just becoming greedy if you continue to want more? In a word: NO. As long as you realize you’re going to have to increase the value of what you contribute in some way, there’s nothing greedy at all about striving to increase your income. (Whether that’s emotional income or financial income or intellectual income, you name it.) As a matter of fact, the world benefits tremendously from people who want more and are willing to contribute more in order to get it.
GREED is wanting more than you’ve earned…lying, stealing cheating, or misleading other people in order to get what you want. If you’re willing to go out and earn what you want by contributing more, that isn’t greedy at all…and as a matter of fact as I’ve already stated, the whole world benefits as a direct result of that ambition.
Still, some are going to argue that there should be limits on how much a person should be able to earn. …All I have to say about that is; I guess if there’s a limit on how much you’re allowed to contribute then by all means there should be a limit on how much you earn. But if there isn’t…if you’re allowed to keep meeting the needs of the world in some way, the natural order of things, the “balance” of that contribution is earnings. To say there should be one without the other is ridiculous, it’s like saying there should be night without day, or there should be an up without a down.
Remember, we decide what we want to do and then the people who want what we’ve got to offer decide what it’s worth.
Lets take the professional athlete for instance: When I used to run a bar, uhh, if I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody COMPLAINING about how much money a professional athlete made, my tip jar would of, uh, overflowed onto the floor. You know, you’d hear them; “5 million a year for playing baseball, that’s insane!”
Well, they say that because they don’t have a good understanding of how earning money actually works. They think to themselves; “you know, I bust my butt 60 hours a week and that job he’s doing is easy, there’s no way he should make a 100 times more than me.”
Well, do yourself a favor and get it out of your head that the only way for you to make more money is to work harder or longer. Nothing could be further from the truth. It all boils down to what your contribution is worth to the person or persons who are paying you for it.
Don’t let yourself get caught in that trap of thinking if you want to double what you’re making, then you’re going to have to work twice as many hours to do it. Instead, try thinking about how you could earn what you earn now in half as much time. That’s when you really open the door to huge increases in what you earn. Or, if you’d rather, that’s when you open the door to huge increases in your leisure time.
But back to our $5 million dollar baseball player, the only reason he’s being paid that is because the person who’s paying him that, the owner, believes that the player is going to help deliver him a winning season.
…Now, knowing that a winning season is literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars; don’t you think it’s worth it to the guy signing the check, the owner, to get that player on board? Of course it is. That player is bringing something to the table that the owner is eager to purchase.
And the same rule applies when you provide a product or service to a large group of people (instead of just getting one big check from a single source.)
The people buying that particular product in mass are doing so because they want it…they’d rather have the product than the dollars it cost them to buy it.
If you write a book and 1000 people buy it for $20 a copy, you’re going to generate $20,000. If you write a book that 10 million people buy, you generate $200 Million dollars.
Obviously there’s a HUGE difference in how much the person who wrote the book earned, but there’s no difference to the consumer…it has no effect on what the next guy is going to get for his $20. In the end, the total receipts add up to what the world (1 person at a time) was willing to pay for that particular contribution. …The concept of people paying what its worth to them remains.
As we become more, we contribute more…as that happens, we position ourselves to earn more. It’s a natural cycle of growth, and it begins with us.
Many have been led to believe that earning money is a purely selfish exercise. But hopefully, it’s easy enough to see that this is not the case. As a matter of fact, an argument could be made that the opposite is true. Those who lawfully acquire money do so by contribution, they do so by meeting the needs of other people. While those who earn nothing, contribute nothing and only tend to drain the resources of those around them. 1
In this light, we can shift our focus to where it belongs. You’ve heard the word over 20 times already, but just in case you missed it, the word is: Contribution. If we focus on increasing the value of our contribution, (by constantly improving ourselves and what we have to offer) then the rewards will take care of themselves.
Yes, of course there are people who get rich by exploiting others…Yes, there are questionable corporations and governments that might not be acting in the best interests of people. But that’s not who you are…and that’s not what you’re looking to do.
When you improve the quality of your life, it’s going to happen because you committed yourself to continually improving the quality of your contribution. And in the end, because of that choice, both you and the world will become richer…both you and the world will benefit because you made the decision to do that.
1. I'm not suggesting some people don't do VERY important work for little or no pay...I'm referring here to those who "attach themselves" to the system and milk it for whatever they can get...those who DO little or nothing to contribute and yet expect the world in return.
