The ABC of Money Money Money

The other day I was looking at my wealth dynamics profile – wealth dynamics is a school of thought proposed by Roger Hamilton based on an ancient Chinese model of personality types. It's quite involved so if you want to know more about it click here. Anyway part of the assessment process required me to explore what motivates me. I was enthusiastically doing this when I suddenly realised that actually, I'm not motivated by money. That's not that I don't wish to have money or that I don't enjoy spending it and accumulating the stuff you can buy with it. (And believe me when I tell you I have got lots of stuff.) However, money isn't the reason for my existence and it is not the reason why I get up in the morning, or the reason that I'm in business or the reason I create things and do the things I do. What drives me is a burning desire to create something different and better than the world we have today.

I mentioned this to my coach (everyone should have a coach irrespective of how secure and balance and successful they consider themselves to be. A fresh pair of eyes on your ego is always worth having; and if you are at the other end of the spectrum those “fresh eyes” can be an objective mirror to reflect your true self). My coach suggested that perhaps I have some limiting beliefs or lack mentality around money which might create a barrier in terms of me acquiring money. To explore whether or not this was the case she set me the task of doing a brainstorm around the words money and wealth.

What this exercise brought up for me is not that I am negative about money itself, but I have a real struggle with the belief systems that makes the accumulation of “it” more important than anything else; especially other people. For “it” you can substitute the word money, or power, or food, or land, or whatever measure you wish to use to represent the resources one needs to sustain one's existence here on Earth.

My analysis of the way in which people relate to money suggests there are three belief systems or attitudes to the accumulation of resources, aka money, operation in the world and I've labelled them A B C:

A: I do not like you. I do not care about you. What you need is none of my concern. You are not like me. You are not important. If I have to kill you or hurt you to have what I want then so be it.

B: I know you are like me; I realise that we are both human and would like to have and need the same things. However, there isn't enough for both of us. The more you have the less there is for me. I would give you some but then what about me. I don't want to hurt you and I won't unless you get in the way of me having what I want. This is not cruel of me; I will love you when and if I can. You understand that don’t you? You would do the same if you were in my shoes.

C: I love you. We are not separate, we are one. Whatever I do for you I am really doing for myself. I love you because loving you means loving me. I can't really do one without the other. If we need the same thing then I'm happy for you to have it even if it means I don't have any because your well-being is my highest concern I would give it all up to you in an instant without question. There is no meaning unless we all thrive together. I cannot see my needs as greater than yours. My mission is to make sure that what I do is good for all, does no harm and serves both me and you. I trust that there is more than enough for all.

If everyone in the world chose to operate as an A we would have mutually assured destruction. If everybody chose to operate as a B we would have more of what we have now, winners and losers. But what if everybody chose to aspire to be a C?

In reality we will always have a mixture of As, Bs and Cs, at least for the foreseeable future. Unlearning our beliefs and drivers is a process not a destination. My relationship with money stems from a desire to hold the vision of C: compassion, contentment, completeness.

What do you think? Is it possible to have a world dominated by Cs? I keep hearing that capitalism, which seems to be the B mentality, is the most efficient mechanism for distributing resources and creating value, but is it? Clearly we will always need to exchange value in a marketplace, but is there a conversation to be started about how this could be done with a lot more C focused transactions? I'd love to know your thoughts.