Money... How Much is Enough?
How much is enough?
This is a question that I have puzzled over for decades.
Whether we realize it or not, we all have a number—an unknowable amount of money—embedded in our subconscious that, when someone hits or exceeds that invisible threshold, we secretly think, “that’s quite enough.” And, whether we acknowledge it or not, we judge people based on that hidden standard.
Now, we could take a journey into the subconscious and explore the depths of our motivations and reasons for setting this seemingly arbitrary limit in our minds, but that’s not really important. What’s more important is to acknowledge that enough is actually NOT enough.
The “just enough and no more” mentality is rooted in scarcity. Scarcity will always leave us “needing” (actually wanting) more. Scarcity is the enemy of abundance.
Scarcity is all about you; Abundance is all about us.
Even the word plenty just means I have enough for me, with maybe a little extra buffer. That’s as much as most people hope for in life. Having abundance, on the other hand, means there’s more than enough to go around. That ability to share is the foundation of our relationships.
Every relationship starts with a gift, and relationships are what make life worth living.
It all starts and ends with our relationships. Our life begins with a relationship, nurtures through relationships and ends surrounded by our loved ones. But our relationship choices along the way can make or break our ability to experience abundance in this life.
Our relationship with money often flows in patterns and follows our relationships with people.
We emulate the people in our life who have taught and mentored us in money matters—for better or for worse—and our money does the same. And if we really want to experience true abundance, it may become necessary to break away from those relationships that are keeping us stuck in a life of scarcity.
Scarcity can serve us to some extent. It helps us survive during times of crisis. It can also be a powerful motivator. But if we don’t move beyond scarcity, into abundance, then when we do start to accumulate money, scarcity becomes the gateway to greed. And greed is the #1 relationship killer.
Why do you think so many wealthy people have difficulty maintaining relationships?
We often get this impression of wealthy people as greedy. Indeed, many who decide to pursue wealth often adopt a never-enough approach to life. That’s just the flip-side of the just-enough mindset. It’s still the idea that there’s not enough to go around, so I need to get as much as I can in order to live the life I want—everyone else be damned.
Greed can take many forms, but it is always born of scarcity and fear. Counter to the mantra that seemed to be prevalent in the 1980’s, greed is never good. Greed is ultimately a destructive force, and must be countered either through self-regulation or, as a last resort, through government regulation.
Now, I fully acknowledge that not all wealthy people are greedy. In fact, I think we would all be surprised at how many people are “secretly” wealthy, meaning they don’t flaunt their wealth, and they are generous givers. Those are people who have successfully transitioned into an abundance mindset.
An abundance mindset is the antidote to greed, and really the only way to effectively fight it.
If we can all agree that there is more than enough to go around, and ample ways to responsibly extract and distribute it, then we need not fight over what we don’t have. Abundance is for sharing. Living a life of abundance is choosing a life of unbound generosity.
So much of our lives today are dictated by proprietary secrets. This is the opposite of generosity, but something we’ve just come to expect in the business world. Intellectual property and patent rights have been capitalized and weaponized by corporate interests. These are scarcity tactics.
Now, don’t get me wrong, scarcity can be very real. When you don’t have enough money in your bank account to cover both your car payment and your electric bill, for example, you have to make some very difficult decisions, based on some pretty crappy choices.
Where the problems start is when that scarcity experience creeps into our mindset. We start to believe that there just really isn’t enough to go around, and so we have to take as much as we can “while the gettin’s good.” That creates an environment ripe for exploitation. Businesses can leverage that mindset to control people. (The job market is a good example of that.)
When our scarcity mindset dictates how we do business, the shareholders become the gatekeepers of wealth and wellbeing in society. When profit is king, the good of all is outweighed by the good of the few.
Profit-driven corporations begin to operate like machines. And eventually, like in the Matrix movies from the early 2000’s, the machine becomes the master, and we become slaves to the very system we engineered.
That is the eventuality we face today in much of the world, as this greed-based brand of capitalism abounds. But capitalism didn’t start out that way, and doesn’t have to continue that way. I would argue that it is not money or capitalism, but greed that sucks the happiness out of our society because it prioritizes profits over people.
By choosing to live a life of TRUE abundance and sharing that experience and knowledge with others, we can truly live a happy and fulfilled life, while counteracting the effects of greed and scarcity in our society.
It’s not too late. And it starts with a simple choice.
