Think back to when you first started working and earning money. For a lot of people, their first jobs started as a teenager with babysitting, cutting lawns, paper routes, etc. The tail end of the baby boomers are now in their mid to late fifties so that means you’ve been working and earning money for over 40 years. For others, they have been working in one way or another for over 50 years.
The question I ask is this, can money buy happiness? Most people believe that money cannot buy happiness. We all know people or have heard stories about people who had more money than could possibly be spent in two lifetimes, but who were completely miserable. Think about it, since you’ve been 13 years old, you have spent a substantial portion of your life earning, saving, protecting, investing and worrying about money, something you already know won’t make you happy.
So, when you see people working harder and harder to attain something that is unattainable, it is not hard to see why so few people have an enduring peace of mind. As opposed to that, so often you see people becoming more and more frustrated, resigned and cynical.
So how do we get ourselves out of this downward vicious cycle? You identify or discover something more valuable than money, something that you have a limitless capacity to generate and experience regardless of how much money you have or do not have? So, what do you value more than money? Could it be love, freedom, peace, generosity, compassion, security, etc.? How much money does it take to be generous or express love?
Instead of putting most of your time and effort toward accumulating money, what if you used your time, effort, energy, talent and maybe even your money to pursue something you find way more valuable and fulfilling – love, peace, joy, generosity, compassion, etc.? What if as a result of discovering you had an unlimited capacity to produce in abundance what you find most fulfilling in life, you completely altered your relationship with money? What would be possible if your experience of money transformed to one, where you went from there is never enough to where you always had more than enough?
Is it possible you would then discover and experience true peace of mind?