A Fresh Look at Money

As a possibility, what if money really just meant numbers on a screen, like points in a game? - A short game that ends very soon and by the end of which you will not be left any richer or poorer than you were before you began.

And depending on the money you have, you can do different things in the game, and because it is play, it is fun.

But for most of us, money means way more than just points in a game – it means security, stability, comfort, power, freedom and even self-esteem.

We find these emotions in earning a certain amount, in building a nest egg of a certain amount, in reaching a financial goal of a particular number.

What this really means is that we have innocently outsourced our emotions to money. And if I have enough money, I can manipulate how you feel by offering you money or by taking it away from you.

This is how most of us live – and how is it a problem? Because then you don’t feel good when you don’t earn what you imagine to be enough, or what others around you are earning, and you don’t feel good when you lose money.

Cherry on top: You don’t feel as good as you thought you would even after reaching that financial goal that you set for yourself.

Moreover, you will keep running after it imagining it would give you a feeling not recognizing that a piece of paper or a number on a screen does not have that power of creating feelings - only conscious beings like you do.

You will get stressed out about money. You will make life decisions based on getting more of it, even if it won’t add a difference to your actual quality of life. You will justify your decisions by convincing yourself that it is worth it, or by inventing new desires that you can fulfil with this extra money.

This is the condition that most of us live in.

As a possibility, what if money is just numbers on a screen with an imaginary value that we all agree upon? How wise would it be to stress out about it, or to make life decisions based on it?