Monday, September 5, 2011

Change your attitude towards money

If you don’t change the way you think about money, you’ll never have enough of it. Contrary to what people may tell you, poverty is not a virtue. This means that if you want to be rich, you will be. But for this to happen, you need to think rich, act rich, feel rich and, instead of being a slave to money, learn to see it as your servant.

Start seeing money for what it really is: a symbol of exchange, representing beauty, comfort, prosperity and freedom from want.

Most importantly, be convinced of the following: you were born to succeed, to triumph over adversity, to develop all the divine abilities and resources that lie dormant within you. And know that you can find a simple solution to all your money problems, by applying the rules of prosperity revealed in this book from this moment onwards.

As you read these lines you may well be saying to yourself: I want to have more money… I deserve a higher salary than the one I earn… I don’t have enough money to do all the things I want, etc.

Allow me to repeat: the reason most people are short of money (whether it comes from work, luck or the lottery) is that they scorn it, either openly or silently. Deep down they believe that poverty is a virtue; this is generally due to their early upbringing, (childhood, school) superstition or a mistaken interpretation of the religious scriptures.

But whatever way you look at it, God did not want us to live in a hovel or go hungry. His creations never ended in failure, whether he was creating a star, an ant or a blade of grass.

Many people repel money because of an absolutely ridiculous reason: they despise it because it is "dirty", or they think "the love of money is the root of all evil". Consciously or not, that’s what they think; their behaviour in everyday life reflects their negative state of mind.

If you say that money perverts, or that it’s the cause of much wrong-doing, you can’t possibly mean that money is intrinsically evil. It’s the way we acquire money and the way we spend it that may be either good or bad.

Money, people say, is unwholesome because it is such a powerful object of envy it can drive men to do wrong and even commit serious crime: people steal and kill to get it.
What’s clear is that the danger starts from the moment money becomes the sole purpose of our existence, to the exclusion of everything else. But even then, it’s not the money that’s dangerous: we forget that mankind did not wait for the arrival of money to start killing or stealing. Prehistoric man stole fire, the spoils of the hunt, women…

These days, money isn’t the only culprit involved in the misdeeds committed in the world: some men resort to violence over a woman, while others are prepared to betray a friend for political or ideological reasons or spread malicious rumours about a work colleague to oust him and take his place or even, in some countries, kill for religious reasons without a second thought.

It’s not money or politics or ideology or work or religion that is at fault, but rather it is an individual’s lack of moral values that leads him to forget to respect the life and wellbeing of his neighbour. We can put our money to good use or we can use it to inflict harm.

Money is, in this regard, no different from the natural elements or manmade inventions that can, in the same way, be used for good or for destructive ends. Fire, for example, can serve to protect us from the cold, to prepare our food…or to burn down a building.

Prehistoric man hunted for his own survival. The hunt, along with food and reproduction, was one of the three basic life functions. These days, human awareness had developed and life is very different. Each of us has become a specialist in a very specific area, work has taken the place of the hunt and money, symbol of exchange, the equivalent of work, now represents the spoils of the prehistoric hunt.

When money is suddenly in short supply, or perhaps suddenly over-abundant, it can have a seriously destabilising impact, just the same as if we starve ourselves or overeat. If money is a person’s sole motivation in life, a lack of it, or a profusion of it, can ultimately be harmful; they are vulnerable, forced to confront themselves. Excessive amounts of money can cause a man to fall into greed, laxity, vice or drugs. That’s why people often say that money alone can’t make us happy.

So money in itself is not dirty, or bad, or dangerous. It’s only people who, poorly structured on the spiritual level, are a danger to themselves. Money is a symbol, it is what you want it to be: it is your mind that gives it its true nature. If your mind does not give it meaning, it will have no meaning, it is you who makes it good or bad depending on the circumstances and opportunities.

It’s important to understand that the mind wields a sort of "magic" where money is concerned: ultimately it’s your own mind that gives it its "quality". It’s you who gives life to this money-symbol since it is you who decides its purpose and use.

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