The provided text explores the author’s perspective on the deeply ingrained, often conflicted, and frequently taboo relationship that people have with money. Here’s a breakdown of the key themes and points:
**1. Money as a Taboo Topic:**
* The author compares money to sex, calling both “Topics That Totally Freak People Out.” * Both subjects are loaded, evoke shame, and people are often “never supposed to talk about it because it’s inappropriate, dirty, not so classy.” * Despite the shame, people secretly desire and fantasize about both.
**2. The Internal Conflict Around Money:**
* People exhibit a duality: “love money, hate money, obsess over money, ignore money, resent money, hoard money, crave money, bad-mouth money.” * This internal struggle leads to shame and weirdness around discussing or even acknowledging financial desires or realities.
**3. Personal Struggle and Denial:**
* The author admits to their own past financial difficulties, describing a life as a freelance writer marked by constant scrambling for work, low pay, and a general lack of financial planning. * They describe living in denial, choosing to “work harder, complain more, and just, you know, hope that I’d somehow magically start raking in the dough.” * This denial was fueled by a belief system: “money is evil, rich people are gross.” * The author recounts periods of hopelessness, feeling stuck, and wallowing in ignorance about how to improve their situation, even to the point of living in a converted garage and fearing mediocrity.
**4. The Promise of Transformation:**
* The text presents a message of hope: “The good news is if you, like most people, have a troubled or conflicted relationship with money, you have the ability to heal it, transform it, and become such awesome pals with money that you wake up one day to find yourself standing in the middle of the life you’ve always wanted to live.” * The author claims to have personally undergone this transformation, changing their financial reality by making conscious, powerful choices, focusing on what matters, and “ensmartening” themselves about money.
**In essence, the author argues that many people have an unhealthy, shame-filled, and conflicted relationship with money, often stemming from societal taboos and personal beliefs. However, this relationship is not fixed and can be healed and transformed through awareness, conscious choices, and a proactive approach, which the author intends to guide the reader towards.**
You have one glorious and brief shot at being the you that is you on Planet Earth, and the power to create whatever reality you desire. Why not be the biggest, happiest, most generous, and fully realized humanoid you can be? After some forty-plus years of scraping by, I finally could no longer bear hearing myself say my mantras of choice, “I can’t afford it” and “I don’t know what I want to do,” or to continue living in places so crappy and small that I could sit on the toilet, answer the door, and fry an egg all at the same time. (It was like living on a boat. Or in a toadstool.) I could no longer sit back and watch all these other people out there kicking butt, making great money doing what they loved, treating their pals to fancy dinners, donating more than five bucks and a thank-you note to charities they loved, traveling the world in luxury, wearing shoes that no stranger had worn before—basically living the life I wanted to live.
I was just as smart, talented, charming, well groomed . . . What the hell was my problem? What was I waiting for? No matter how much I complained or freaked out or tried to convince myself that my present rickety life was as good as it could, should, or would get, deep down I knew I was meant for, and wanted, bigger things. I’d get all excited hearing about someone’s cool job as a globe-trotting journalist or hanging out at someone’s beachfront house and think, This! This could be me! And instead of using that excitement to propel myself into action, I immediately started talking myself out of going for it. Well,
I have nothing well written enough to show that I could be a good journalist. And I’m not entirely sure that’s what I want to do. Plus, I have a cat. I could never travel the world and leave Mister Biggins behind. Even though staying stuck where I was felt easier and less risky than putting myself out there, it also
felt awful.
I felt like I was letting myself down, being a wimp, holding back, denying myself a whole lot of awesomeness, snoring my way through life. Because, basically, I was. The knowledge that I could be doing so much better, but wasn’t, finally became so unbearable that I got off my butt and made the hell-bent-for-glory decision to get over my fear and loathing of money and figure out how to make some. And to let myself do it in a way that maybe wasn’t perfect, but that at least felt sort of right, instead of clinging to the easy out of being unsure. There was no thunderclap “aha” moment; I didn’t narrowly escape dying in a grease fire or get dumped by the love of my life for being such a loser or have some big “snap out of it!” epiphany.
I just suddenly couldn’t take listening to myself complain anymore. I just finally woke up. Which is how the desire to make massive change kicks in for most people. The leaps I had to take to catapult myself out of my safe little reality were often terrifying and hugely confronting. For example, I invested alarming amounts of money in putting an online business together: taking courses, hiring mentors, building a Web site, getting headshots taken by someone other than my right arm, etc.
I risked looking like an idiot and a fraud because this new business of mine was all about coaching other writers and I’d never coached other writers before. I risked losing the aforementioned alarming amounts of money on building an online business because I knew not one thing about running online businesses. Or off-line businesses for that matter. Even telling people that I had a damn business felt ridiculous. It felt pretend, like I was just playing office until someone busted me: Just kidding! Sorry! I don’t really know what I’m doing!