Our society, though a capitalist society, does not teach us how to become capitalists. As most of you already know, unless you were born of aristocratic (or political) bloodlines in the United States, you were taught how to go out and get a good education in order to get a good JOB and earn money by working for someone else for the remainder of your life. We are born and raised in an environment that pre-programs us for failure. And, for some reason, which I have yet to explore further, when one of us tries to climb out of the muck and apply the success principles that this country was founded on, the rest of us grab him (or her) by the pants and attempt to drag him back into the rat race that we're so busy running we don't have time to notice that there may be a better way (Whew - didn't mean to run on). That has certainly been my experience.
Money, Love and Happiness
I remember being lavished with love when I was a child, and remember my Mother saying things that, when she became older, she absolutely wouldn't say. I suppose that when you are as young as she was (18), when she gave birth to me, you still have a lot of growing up to do. I didn't hear these things from just my mother though. I grew up in a setting where people simply had a "broke" mentality. The folks in my neighborhood and in my circle of acquaintances simply did not have a "money" mentality. It seemed that they knew that they "had no money" (nor happiness for that matter) and that was the class of society that they belonged to. Nothing would ever change that. I heard things like:
We can't afford it!
Do you think that I'm made of money?
You want horns but you're gonna die butt-headed.
Do you think that money grows on trees?
We don't have money because we have the wrong last name.
You weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
Money is the root of all evil.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Only ruthless crooks have money.
We don't have a pot to piss in.
We're poor but we're happy.
Wow, just writing about this helps me understand why I struggled so with money and finances after I got out on my own. I thought that I could obtain happiness through love and approached life that way. This is some pretty intense programming if you ask me. I can easily understand why I have spent most of my life never having enough money. I obviously convinced myself that that was the way it was. It seems to me, looking back over all of these statements, that one would be hard pressed to overcome the subliminal message imparted by the repetition of these words.
Fortunately for me, my Mother eventually came across a new way of thinking about money. She started to speak more positively and attempted, to the best of her ability, to refrain from making negative comments about money or wealth. In fact, the other day I was going through some boxes of old mementos and came across some notes that she wrote around 15 years ago. I am not sure if authors were quoted in a couple of these sayings when she wrote this down but they were not cited, so forgive any potential plagiarism as it is absolutely unintentional. I attempted to find as many as I could. I named this "From my Mothers Heart":
From my Mothers heart
(words of wisdom written down by my mom)
To dream anything that you want to dream: That is the beauty of the human mind to do anything that you want to do; that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself to test your limits, that is the courage to succeed. (1)
You begin to live when you begin to love; you begin to love when you begin to live for others.
Some see things as they are and ask why; others see things as they could be and ask why not? (2)
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become for it. (3)
The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible. (4)
Winners are those individuals who can see inside a man and behold the miracle God created.
To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another. (5)
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. (6)
Only as high as I can reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go. Only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be. (7)
The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is a brave heart. (8)
Much to my good fortune, I didn't suffer from a lack of love for there was plenty of talk regarding the abundance of love. And I also heard that money didn't buy happiness, so I never felt that I couldn't find happiness in life. In fact, I am very grateful that my life has been filled with love and happiness.
To all the young mothers and fathers out there, please keep this in mind when you converse about money, or even happiness or love, with others in the vicinity of your children. We do grow up believing what we hear and it's difficult to overcome the kind of negative programming that makes you think in limitations. Amidst all the possible threats to our happiness and safety, we certainly don't need to have to fight against a low self-esteem brought on by the belief that we can't be more, or that we can't succeed.
To all the children out there, you CAN, if you think you can!
Quote Credits:
1. Bernard Edmonds
2. George Bernard Shaw
3. John Ruskin
4. David Viscott
5. G. Wilhelm Leibniz
6. William Jennings Bryan
7. Karen Ravn
8. Nicholas Murray Butler
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