Do You Actually Want To Have More Money?

Without a doubt the biggest driver in our world today is money. It’s the driving force behind legislation, business, and humanitarian work. It’s the source of so much greed and corruption. And it’s the one thing people think they need to be happier.

Evolutionarily, our unconscious desire for money is a proxy for a deeper need: To secure resources for ourselves and loved ones. Our minds have evolved to engage in behaviors that ensure we have the food, water, and safety we need to survive. This translates into our modern world where having money ensures we’ll be able to access everything we’ll need to stay alive, and the more we have, the more we can count on it.

It’s a desire that runs deep: If I were to ask people across the world, “I have $100,000… Do you want it?” you’d be hard pressed to find someone who says no. And that’s for this exact reason - money can do a lot for people.

But the point I want to highlight today is - People don’t actually want money… They want what it provides for them. 

Money is a currency which means it’s a vehicle for exchanging value. Money itself is pretty valueless, but what it can get for you is worth everything. And when someone says they want to have more money, that’s not what they actually want: 

-They want the security that comes with having money. 

-They want the freedom to not have to do things they don’t enjoy, or spend time in ways they don’t want to, to acquire it. 

-They want the pleasure of buying things and experiences that bring them happiness. 

-They want the opportunity to be more aggressive in the ways they invest in building a team and acquiring the tools they need to maximize their personal mission.

But the thing is, there are other paths to acquiring these things. Money is not the ‘end all be all’. It’s one of the impact vehicles we have available to us whose utility is obvious and most easily understood. It’s worth investing in the other pathways, especially when your personal finances aren’t the biggest constraint to you getting what you want.

That’s partly my story. In a different line of work, I know I could be making a lot more money. There are things I do every day that I could be getting paid for. But I choose to do them anyway because they help me access what I actually want - a sense of fulfillment and meaning in my life building up projects that I believe in.

Money is important, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not everything. And really money is just a mechanism for getting what you really want, and my encouragement is to explore acquiring those things more directly.

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