It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it.
Bob: She works hard for the money…daah daan, daah daan. So hard for it honey…buh dum, buh dum. She works hard for money…so you better treat her right…. Dun dun da da dun—okay. That was, that was a song that I heard at a Disney land. I think it was a new year's celebration or commemoration or something that we watched. I was in Germany as a little kid and we were sitting there and we were watching this. There was only one channel in English at the time. And so this was broadcast and my parents were recording it on our, on our VHS player. Yes, we did grow up with VHS cassette tapes. And my first radio was actually had an eight track player in it and, and a record player and the actual radio tuner. So yes, and then a cassette tape player as well. So I had like the, the mega ultra-one. It was the size of a desktop, it was enormous. But there you have it…Yes, I'm dating myself. [01:39.4]
We had this and we were watching this Disneyland special and as we were watching this Disneyland special, that song came on at the end and they were dressed up in their…their Disneyland costumes and I don't, Donna summer or some, I don't remember who the singer was. And she was singing it and it was this exciting song and it was a big celebration and whatnot. And I still to this day kind of have flashes in my memory, visual depictions, however reliable those are, as we've talked about with memory, visual depictions of this. And that song alone actually very, very accurately describes the way that people think about money. And I want to unpack this for you today because being alive and free means more than just being alive and free from addiction or depression or, or emotional stuff. It means being alive and free from all things so that no matter what your circumstances you had, can choose what you want to do without any emotional repercussions about it because you're free to make whatever choice you want with total acceptance of whatever comes after that. [02:42.6]
Money has become a God in today's society. So much so that if a person, I've had this happen with me myself, I've done this with people have come to me and, and done this so and I've watched it happen with other, they will literally go and say, I was praying for an answer and I saw your advertisement or I saw this thing and it came into my life just at the right moment in time and I feel like this is an answer to prayer. These are people that go on and they are faithful people and they pray for stuff and they get an answer to prayer and it shows up in their life. Just at the moment that they are looking for it. ‘Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find’, these are the phrases in Christian scripture and probably another scripture that I'm not as familiar with, although the Tao Te Ching, not as much a Buddhist scripture sutras. [03:38.6]
I'm not as, I'm not so sure about that, but definitely scription Christian scripture and they get their answer and then the moment somebody says it's going to cost you this much, even if it's only like 10 bucks, the persons like, “Wow, I don't know.” And often they're like, “I'm… I need to pray about it to see if that's something that God wants me to do.” And they've turned a definite internal knowledge that they just got an answer to their prayer into no money answered it for me and I care more about my money than I do about actually receiving the answer that I got to my prayer. I've done this and so I am not exempt from this. I have literally been praying for something. The opportunity came and I used my pocket book as an excuse to stay where I was and not accept the opportunity that I was given when I was praying for it sometimes. [04:35.2]
When I was looking desperately for it, when I could see by all means that this was the answer that I needed and I still used money, I don't have enough money to do it. The reality is everybody listening to this podcast has a way to make the money to do pretty much anything that they want as long as it's not a massive leap. But even that might be possible. I had at a certain point when I finally got over this to a certain extent, and it still rolls me, I can't say that money doesn't ruin my life sometimes. It still does to a certain extent— Way… Way less, but it still does to a certain extent. And there were times when I'd need something and I asked my parents for help and they're like, “Sorry, you know, we don't want to help you with that.” And so then I'd go and ask perfect strangers for help and I would get funding from people that they didn't even want to pay me back or sometimes I'd have to get a loan and pay something back or sometimes I'd have to use a credit card…. “Oh no Bob a credit card..Yes! a credit card.”[05:29.9]
What's a credit card guys? A credit card is literally a short term loan. People are okay with loans that they're paying back over time, but for some reason credit card, no, because there's a big taboo about credit cards in society and if you’re abusing them, using them poorly, it's no different than using a loan poorly. That's just dumb, but a credit card, especially the ones that are like 0% APR for 15 months or something, that's like someone walking into your life and saying, “You know what? I believe in you. You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”
You'll keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Sorry, had to digress. Someone comes in and says, “You seem a decent fellow. I want to help you out in your life. I want to give you an opportunity to do something. Here's an amount of money…You can use it all you want. And the only thing I ask is that you pay me back within 15 months, I won't even charge you any interest. It's just cause I believe in you.” That's what a credit report is. It's a bunch of people deciding whether or not you're trustworthy and they can give you some money. Do they benefit off the back end? Absolutely. Sure —100% , no problem there. Does a person who's just giving you money out of the goodness of their heart benefit? Absolutely — 100%, they get the benefit of feeling like they're giving to you. [06:45.1]
People love to give money…They do! And we're gonna get into that here in a little bit. So with the credit report or credit cards they’re the same thing, someone wants, that just happens to be a bank and their motives for giving your money may not always be, Oh, you seem a decent fellow, I believe in your cause or your mission. It just may be. Look, you seem like someone worth lending money out to you and I know that if I lend you money that you're more likely to use services in the future. And if you use my services in the future, I might be able to start to make a percentage off of it. Even if you're paying everything back, what's happened? Well, they're getting to use certain amounts of funds in order for their own investments and everything else. So credit card companies always benefit from it. [07:23.3]
Yes. And so a 15 month 0% APR intro credit card is nothing more than that. And too many people like credit cards are evil and so they'll not do it. Now obviously if you're just doing that to go do something dumb in your life and invest in something you're just going to be done with later and not have a job and not find a way to pay it back, well then yeah, that's going to sink you into a hole, always be wise. But if you're going to use fear of credit cards to control your life, what's going to happen? That means you're going to have to save up for everything. Nothing wrong with that. It's just a different approach and as you save up what's going to happen, you are not going to be able to take certain opportunities because you don't have cash flow.
Your cash is going into a savings account. Then when you pay it out, you've depleted the savings account. You still don't have cashflow and if another opportunity comes, you have to wait to save up for that. Not a problem. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if you love operating that way. It just limits cashflow, limits opportunities you could be taking now in the hopes that just because you want the experience of saving up and then paying it off and saving up and pay it off, probably because someone told you that that's the way to do things and in some countries that is the only option you have. In the U S debt is kind of a thing and so we use it and use it wisely. Every business on the planet uses debt left and right because it allows them leeway to have continuous cash flow and money in their bank instead of, well, I don't have any money, so if an emergency comes, I just spent all my savings on this thing and so now I can't deal with an emergency. [08:54.7]
“Cashflow is King”, some people will say, and it's an important thing to be aware of, that was a digression. We're talking about money controlling your life. Will it did control my life for a long time and I would literally not choose the opportunities that were in front of me because I didn't have money in the bank. Opportunities to help me learn how to run a business better so I could make money, meaning…Hey, I'm going to be able to run a business better, which means that within six months I'll have made all this money back and then I'll continue making more money for the rest of my life. Is it worth it for me to go into a credit for instance, for this? I was literally not making those decisions because of the amount of money I had in the bank. Even though I felt in my heart this is exactly what I need to do. [09:36.63]
I could see it. This is the answer that I need. I could feel everything about it. I would still turn it down because I was so afraid of money. Well, it turns out that how we think about money is really cemented early on in life and your mind, your hippocampus has put together all of your early memories about money, the stories, the emotions and the places and times in such a way that your view of money has been cemented relatively early on and then modified by major and minor events since then. And that's why people have such a hard time shifting their mindset around money is because their, their nine year old is running their money problems, their money issues, their nine year old learned that money is hard to come by, that you don't talk about money in public. [10:21.8]
Like when I grew up, my parents didn't talk about money and I saw my mom balancing the checkbook and I learned money is somebody else's. It's not. It doesn't belong to me and we don't have enough money for that. My mom would say sometimes because yeah, kids ask for all kinds of stuff and sometimes there wasn't money for that and so I started piecing together these little bits of…okay, well we don't talk about money and stocks and investments. Other people take care of it and it belongs to other people. There's not enough for what I want and Oh, by the way, I have an artistic skill and artists are poor and I'm going to be a starving artist because somehow that idea was baked into people's jokings about it and I pieced all these together in a way that made me believe that money was something that
1. You always had to work hard for, and
2. That it was scarce, hard to come by,and
3. That it belonged to other people and that I shouldn't be having lots of it.
4. That it was harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And so there was some spiritual component and the love of money was the root of all evil. [11:26.7]
And I'd learned all this stuff and I had all of this emotional control stuff around money. And guess what? It controlled my life. If you think that, Oh, the love of money is the root of all evil and that controls you and it makes you operate around money a certain way, then you still love money. You're just loving it from the negative side. You're still being controlled by money and it's still going to be just as hard to get into the kingdom of heaven. That's my hunch. But you're still loving it, but it's in the anti-love, hatred. The hatred of money it’s also going to bring evil. You have to see it for what it is in neutrality and use it wisely, which is why the parable of the talents that we talked about is so powerful because he's saying, “Look, figure out how to work your money so that you can double it or more.” And if you can then you'll start getting more even, even the stuff that were from the other people that don't know how to do it, that don't know how to operate around money—Simple, simple teaching. [12:18.0]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in your life, whether that's from addiction or depression and anxiety, or just anything that's making you feel flat-out stuck, but you have no clue how to shake it and just want help doing it, head on over to LiberateAMan.com and book a call, where we can look at your unique situation and give you the roadmap you've been missing.
So that song, ‘She works hard for her money’—Boom. That's one statement. Two — You better treat her right.
Working hard for money, this concept is everywhere. Well, you just got to work hard and eventually it'll pay off. You got to work hard and eventually it'll pay off and tell. I started looking into what is the reason that people pay money? Do they pay you money because you work hard? Sometimes that does happen it’s legitimately true. Sometimes you like to see them working hard and so you want to fund that because you think hard work is a virtue. [13:24.1]
But what's happened is people haven't figured out how to make money in an easier way and haven't figured out how to multiply their money like in the parable of the talents and so over and over again they've developed this concept around hard work and it's become a virtue to work hard so people start to feel bad if they're not working hard for money. And you'll see entrepreneurs who start to make money then start to sabotage their success and start to do other things and feel bad about it because money is supposed to come through hard work. And if I'm only working X number of hours instead of an eight hour workday with an employer, then suddenly there's something wrong here and maybe I love money too much and I'm too rich and I need to scale back and whatnot.
Despite all the good you could do with more money. I mean, think about it. What if all the money the drug dealers were getting is money that you are getting instead because people wanted to pay you more than pay them? What if you could create a solution in the world that so radically altered people's life and their ability to find joy that they didn't want drugs anymore and they would rather just give all their drug money to you? Wouldn't that be a positive influence on society? That'd be amazing. And what could you do with that money? Obviously you would live fine, but what else could you do?What other humanitarian projects could you run? What other government programs could you sponsor or not sponsor? What politicians could you help get into, into place because you believe in them and they're great and they just don't have the funds to give to campaign against some of the big hitters. [14:46.3]
What, what could you do with money? And it all boils down to this notion of working. I mean smarter, not harder except that hard work has become a virtue and I want you to look at this clearly. Hard work is just hard work. Why do people pay money? Think about it. Parents, they pay money to their kids. They want to give them an allowance. Some parents want to give kids an allowance just because they want the kid to learn how to work with money. So this is not chore oriented. They're like, you're going to get this much a month and I want you to operate it under this way so that you start to learn how to manage and budget with your money.
Some parents give their kids money that are based on chores because they want the kids to learn the value of working for their money and that they're not just going to get handed out. Some parents give kids money as a gift. No hard work is needed, they just use birthdays and Christmas and whatnot as an excuse to give money. Some people give homeless people money. They'll walk by them on the street, feel compassion and just hand the homeless person money. The person literally did nothing. Buddhists wander around with their begging bowls, asking for offerings and people just give it to them. [15:53.2]
Especially in India, the tradition is there that like, they understand that a spiritual person, a person on the spiritual path is a benefit to all of society. And historically about a third of the entire population of India used to be on the spiritual path.And it was just understood in that culture that we support them because what they're doing is valuable to all of society. And so they, they're not working for it, they're just holding their bowl out and whatever they get, they get and that's it. And they're not earning them money. So we have homeless people receiving money. How many people are giving money to fundraisers and you know….Cancer research and whatever else? They're not funding hard work, they're giving the money because they believe in a certain cause. And time and again, as I looked at this, I realized that the only reason that people pay money is because they want to…and that's it. And everybody has different criteria for why they want to. But you and I both, we give money for all kinds of different reasons. [16:52.1]
I backed a Kickstarter project called “The Chosen”, which is this re-examination of what it might look like to be one of the people living as a disciple of Jesus Christ and what…what would that be like to live next to somebody or live around somebody who is doing that kind of thing?
We give money because we want to. And the hard work thing, if you just work hard, you know people will pay you and you, you gotta go work hard though because that's why your boss pays you. No your boss pays you to solve problems. The better you solve the problems, the better he'll pay you. The smarter and less effort he has, you have to put in, in order to solve those problems, the more your time is worth and so on and so forth. [17:31.2]
It's not about working hard at all and in fact, if you look at work, what is it that makes work hard? If you enjoy the work, is it hard? No, in fact, for many people it's play. In fact, what makes it hard work is you are looking at it going…Oh, I don't want to do this anymore than I have to and this is tough and if it's hard work, then that means it's worth more and so now I'm, I'm asking, I'm getting paid more because I'm doing hard work. And Oh, I didn't succeed at something, but he really worked hard, man, he really worked hard at that, and… and didn't succeed. And so now it's a virtue, as long as I work hard than whether I fail or succeed, at least I get something out of it, satisfaction out of it. [18:15.7]
The reality is, does work exist? Work is actually a measurement of an exchange of energy. That's all it is. It itself is not something you can't go buy work from the store. It doesn't exist. I've never seen my father go to work a day in his life and a day in my life. I've never seen him work. What I've seen him do is drive to an office building where I've seen him land a jet fighter plane or I've seen him do those things and landing a jet fighter plane. Was that work? No, he loved it. It was total play for him…Total awesome. Was it hard? No, he had trained himself to where it was like really fairly simple. He simply had to pay attention, he couldn't do it drunk. But was it hard, difficult? No, it just required a certain level of skill. So he wasn't doing hard work, but he was being paid well for it and he was going to work every day. “Work”…. No, he was just driving to another place and doing some activities and because people value those activities, they wanted to give him money for it. [19:12.6]
Why do we want more teachers in the classroom? Well, we want smaller classroom sizes, so we want more teachers. So I want to give somebody money to be a teacher. All the way down the line, the only reason people pay money is because they want to and it has nothing to do with you experiencing what your activity is as hard or as work. So instead of sitting here valuing hard work and sticking with things that are hard, how about you value the skill set of making things easier for yourself of turning what used to, of not making things into hard things. Of simply being able to go to an activity and more and more efficiently handle it and do it in a way that's playful and awesome that brings you joy and happiness and that isn't hard and it gets easier and easier. [19:58.3]
What if that were the virtue that you really cultivated and what if that were what you taught your children? So that instead of raising a generation of people who are simply while you're supposed to just put your nose to the grindstone and do it. What if they grew up really seeing the correlation between people pay money because they want to? and my only job is to help them want to pay me money and that means I've got to produce something that they want to pay money for or I've got to create a cause that they want to pay money for, or I've got to work on their emotions in a way like homeless people, you know that they want to pay money for it because they're paying for the experience of helping out a homeless person. That's why they're giving them money. They feel good doing that. If you didn't feel good helping a homeless person, “Oh, that guy's probably going to buy,buy booze out of it.” You don't give them money. But if you really believe that and you find value in it, then you will give them money because you're giving yourself an experience. That's why people pay money. [20:53.1]
So the whole idea that you have to work hard for your money and that's why people should treat you right, because you’re working hard. That idea can go away, when you start to understand that the real reason that money fluctuates and moves around is because people want to. They want experiences, they want products, they want things, they want to feel certain stuff. I mean people go to the movies for crying out loud, they pay 10 bucks to sit down for two hours and have some lights on a screen…that's it! I mean they want to…that's it! Nothing else was happening. And then if you also understand that work, “What you do for a living”, doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be experienced as work. Then you can start to divorce yourself from this idea, this tyranny, that money is going to control you, that it's your God and the only way to get it, to serve this God is to work hard. And you can start to see that it's not your God that is really much more fluid and that the way to get more of it in your life is to get it, help people want to give it to you….And that's it, the only way to get more of money in your life is for people to want to give it to and for them to give it to you….That's it! [22:00.8]
I mean, unless you work at the mint, which you know, I don't. So it's got to come from other people and that's an important thing. It's an important thing to understand and to recognize that there are millions of ways to do that so that you never have to sit there and have an opportunity staring you in the face. One that you believe is an answer to prayer and look at your checkbook and your money, your pocketbook or your or your bank account and have that determine whether or not you can do something that you feel like is an inspired move in your life.
To recognize that there is money everywhere right now and it's flowing all the time and all you have to do is create something that people want to direct it in your direction. And suddenly what you want becomes a reality. And that may mean asking for help. It may mean creating and doing something for people. It may mean an extra job. It may mean just doing your dump differently. It may be just simply asking for a raise. It may be family and friends coming back you, it may be creating a cause, it may be any number of things, but you don't have to work hard for it. You will. Some of it takes time and effort. We're not talking about that, but you don't have to experience it as hard and you don't have to sit there and believe that money is hard to come by. It's everywhere …in everybody's wallet. And if you're listening to a podcast on a smartphone or on a phone or on a computer, that means you have enough money to pay for internet and to pay for a home and to pay an electricity bill. [23:25.0]
And that's a lot of money coming into your life. And some of it you could probably redirect in a bunch of other ways. But if you are privileged enough to live in a society and in a place where you can listen to a podcast like this, that means there are more ways for you to have money come into your life than you can possibly imagine right now. And all you have to do is open your mind to it and recognize, You know what?... People pay money because they want to. What is it that people want? What is it they want to pay money for? And how can I create something that will allow that to happen? And that's it. So hopefully this has helped you as you start to examine what money is and to extricate yourself from having it run your life so that you can consciously control your life and really experience being alive and free even from money stuff. [24:11.4]
And that's it for today's “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
