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Is making money in conflict with your sense of spirituality?

Written by: Jane Francis

Article Overview: As a child, were you reminded of the war years or the starving children in India? Did anyone ever make it clear to you how feeling guilty or “being greedy” can relieve the pain of the war years, or fix the problem for the starving, ten thousand miles away?

Is making money in conflict with your sense of spirituality?

It’s kind of a spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. —Albert Camus

As a child, were you reminded of the war years or the starving children in India? Did anyone ever make it clear to you how feeling guilty or “being greedy” can relieve the pain of the war years, or fix the problem for the starving, ten thousand miles away?

Was “greedy” ever defined?

Do you have any other feelings that undermine you? What about fear? Not the white-knuckled sort, but the type that makes you anxious and uneasy in case you might succeed? The truth is that we really can be afraid of success, and we can see it played out sometimes in sports, when a golfer has a two-inch putt to win the match, and unbelievably, he misses it; sports journalists call them chokers.

An extremely talented graphic designer told me she was scared to mail out a promotional brochure. Though this is something she does for clients every day, she felt she couldn’t do it for her own business, because she would never be able to produce it to the standard she would like. In other words because she feared she might not do it perfectly, she wouldn’t take the risk of doing it at all.

Perhaps, like the graphic designer, you have a self-defeating fear that you might become visible. By trying to keep yourself under the radar so people don’t notice you, you take it a step further by not giving others the chance to reject you. There’s no need to; you’ve already done that yourself.

Here are some scary things that might happen when you set out to charge what you are worth:

* You might draw attention to yourself. If you’ve ever been bullied or abused, you might fear this will make you a target again.

* You might get called greedy.

* You might start to earn enough so you can quit struggling. But then what would you do and who would you be?

* You might get back your power—but there’s the worry. Perhaps you can’t be trusted with it; it might corrupt you; you may use it to do harm.

* You might make people jealous of you. Your success could ostracize your family and friends; they might think you’ve become a different person.

* You might have the chance to live your dreams—but are you ready for that? Dreams are rarely the same in reality. Maybe you’d prefer to live your life wanting, because then at least you keep your dreams.

* You might change. You’ll become a tyrant, someone not to be trusted, someone you don’t recognize.

To succeed, you need to believe it's okay for you to make money and you need to know you can trust yourself to be happy with the outcome.

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