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One of the biggest (if not THE biggest) reasons people feel stunted from following their dream is money. The question that comes up, often before one even knows what they are passionate about is “How am I going to make money with this?”
The thing you have to understand is that as soon as this thought takes over your mind and heart, you’ve robbed yourself of making your dream come true, or of even finding out what your dream is for that matter. Instead of opening yourself to possibility, you have closed yourself in with fear and anxiety. Rather than focusing on what you want, you are choosing to focus on what you don’t or can’t have if you go down the path of pursuing your passion. This “lack” mindset continues to create physical evidence in your life that you will fail and wind up starving on the street if you follow your heart.
Now, I know very well that if I tell you to stop worrying about the money, even if you understand that notion intellectually, everything else in your being will fight against me. I know this because there is nothing more powerful than arriving at this truth on your own. Believe me when I say it took A LOT of work to shift my personal perspective on the topic of money.
I grew up in a household where money was always worried about and that worry didn’t stop when I was out of the house and responsible for my own income. Even when I actually made enough money to not live month-to-month, I still worried about money. Even when I had saved enough money to potentially quit my side job that I wasn’t passionate about, I still worried that it wasn’t going to be enough. So I held onto the security of steady income, which meant I also held onto the fear.
Fast forward several years. I am now living my passion one hundred percent. I have no steady side gig, no fixed income, and no idea where the money will come from, but I’ve never been more certain that it will show up exactly when I need it. How is it that I can be so certain about that?
To put it simply, I’ve had a little heart-to-heart conversation with my beliefs about money and this, my friend, is what I want to share with you. If you are sick of your mundane life and serious about following your passion or true calling, drop all the hustling you think you need to be doing to get there, and start changing your views on money. Until you do this, no number in your bank account will ever look like enough to sustain you if things don’t go as you had hoped.
The first belief that you need to throw out the window is that money can only come from your job. Naturally, this belief discourages many people from following their passion, especially if their passion is something that is statistically not a very well-paying profession, or within which there are few examples of job positions.
The question I want you to ask yourself is what would you be doing with your life if money wasn’t an issue? If someone were to tell you they’d be depositing a huge sum of money into your bank account every month and you could do whatever you wanted, would you still care to make money off of your passion?
When you stop directly associating money with what you do, you give yourself the freedom to explore your passion. Take a break from figuring out the money bit and focus on what brings you joy and excitement instead. Stop wasting your energy on figuring out the possible ways in which you can get paid or which of your skills can be monetized. The reason you’re not arriving at a solution that feels right is because you’re too many steps ahead of yourself. Or else you’re following something that is closely related to what you want because it feels safer, but unfortunately still leaves you feeling dissatisfied and therefore will never bring you the level of success you dream of.
The only thing you should be focusing on at this stage is following your next highest excitement. It’s the only thing that matters. The only thing that will lead you in the right direction.
If this means that for the time being you need to keep your sidegig to earn a living, then don’t go quitting just yet. Let yourself relax into the thought that you are currently supported and have the freedom to search for your true calling. If you can wake up an hour earlier every day to dedicate the first part of your morning towards what truly excites you, your current unbearable job will become a lot more bearable. If you leave the stuff that excites you, for after you’ve slaved away at a job you hate, you know how it goes...you end up preferring to veg out with Netflix to unwind from all the accumulated tension and no progress is made on pursuing your dream.
In the meantime, as you continue to keep your passion and your finances separate, keep your eyes peeled for all the ways in which you are provided for which are not coming from your job or from a direct financial transaction. For example, let’s say you have a desire to build a shed in your backyard. Your friend offers to help you build it, saving you thousands of dollars on hiring someone. You didn’t have to hustle to be provided for in this situation. Opportunities like this are happening around us all the time, but often we write them off because “they are not reliable.” Or we don’t want to accept our friend’s help without paying them. In other words we don’t allow ourselves to be supported in any other way than through the steady paycheck we earn from our job.
Once you stop seeing money as numbers, and instead see it as support that comes in numerous forms to allow you to fulfill your purpose, you will inevitably acquire all of the evidence you need to feel more comfortable with not knowing where the money will come from right now.
With less fear of winding up on the street, you will begin to connect more with what truly excites you. You will start to see your passion as something that is revealed to you little by little, rather than something you need to find, figure out or plan ahead. Instead of feeling anxious about not having the whole picture clear, and therefore not taking any action at all, you will feel confident that your next excitement is effortlessly lighting that path for you. On top of that you will realize that your next excitement can never be wrong. Afterall, we are talking about passion...what is passion if not something that excites you? All of these little steps of excitement are just building blocks towards the big picture, and in time that big picture will come together as a culmination of these smaller parts.
Unfortunately, there are two forms of resistance that many people have towards viewing money and passion this way. The first is not feeling excited about anything and therefore not knowing where to even begin. To this I will say if there is nothing that excites you, start with what feels lightest or where you have the least resistance. If you are overworked and stressed out and the lightest thing at this very moment is to take a nap, don’t underestimate the importance of that nap. This is your body telling you it can’t send you any inspiration until you rest. On the other hand, if you are going to feel guilty for taking that nap, then that’s not the path of least resistance. The correct choice is the option that feels lightest in any given moment.
The second form of resistance I actually already mentioned before but will elaborate on now, is not wanting to accept support unless you establish some form of direct transaction. You help me build my shed and I will return the favor or pay you for it. The thing is that giving and receiving do not always have to be so linear. A very clear example of this is anyone who has ever monetized a youtube channel. Money doesn’t come directly from the viewer. In fact the viewer gets to experience tons of free content from you, and yet you never ask them for a single cent. Yes, you might ask them to support you by subscribing to your channel, but you earn the money through advertising. You are financially supported by something unrelated to the specific transaction.
Let’s take this concept one step further, so that you can release some of the guilt around being “indebted” to your friends or family who offer their help. I’m going to invite you to widen your perspective and think of this circular giving and receiving relationship as one transaction between you and the whole planet. You give something today to someone. That person gives something to someone else. That person then gives something to someone else. It doesn’t really matter who is on the giving and receiving end. We are all part of the same quantum field, the same source of energy. You feed that source, and that source feeds you in whichever way it wants to.
Once you enter into this more universal relationship with giving and receiving, you’ve tapped into every single possible channel through which you can be provided for that you can’t even fathom right now. There is an order to life that is much bigger than you are and if you step into its current rather than trying to control or limit it by saying how the money should come to you, you will always be supported.
If the money is not coming to you it’s because you’re saying it has to come through the one channel you’ve decided it should use. Let go of the notion that you are in charge of the how. What you are in charge of is following your excitement. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Your excitement contains everything you need to know about your special gift or purpose here on earth. However, don’t assume that what you are excited about right now has to lead to a specific outcome. Sometimes your excitement leads you to a particular experience which is exactly what you need to go through in order to be led towards something else that provides another clue. The journey is always moving in the direction of your true calling. The more closely aligned you are with your calling, the more chance you have in creating that direct channel between your passion and your income. Opportunities to monetize your passion will come to you rather than you having to find them.
These opportunities will come to you in one of two ways. The first is that it will be impossible for others not to notice the passion literally oozing out of you. You will get invitations or people wanting to pay you for doing what you do simply because they find so much value in it. Passion, afterall, is a hot commodity that everyone wants a slice of. The second is that you will get inspiration for generating income from your passion in ways that feel right instead of contrived. Perhaps this is going to be in the form of a job title that already exists, and perhaps it will be through innovation, with no existing formula to follow. Either way, you won’t even question jumping into action because the inspiration feels so damn good.
On top of this, when you feel solid about your true purpose, few obstacles will be able to tear you down. If you are rejected in some way you will not see it as rejection. You will see it as redirection. Heck, you might even thank that rejection for steering you towards something exceedingly better than what you could have imagined and making things even more clear.
This sort of responsiveness to what shows up in your life, along with trusting your excitement to reveal your next step, and not needing to have the whole picture clear is the key to accessing certainty and security before you have the physical evidence of money in your wallet. Needing certainty and security are the only reasons you cling to the fear of where the money will come from. And as I mentioned before, even if you save up enough money to live off of for years, your mind will still tell you it’s not enough because it’s not “reliable” or “steady.”
It’s funny that in order to create this secure connection between your passion and your finances you need to literally take money out of the equation. Focus only on what you feel called to do regardless of whether you will ever earn a cent from it. In other words, remain passionate and simultaneously, detached from the outcome. With that level of internal security your physical reality will have to reflect back to you experiences that match, and that means money showing up when you need it.
Now I know that money is not the only fear or reason why people don’t follow their dreams, but if it is one of yours then we cannot even begin addressing all the other fears until you start chipping away at this one. Fear of failing, of making the wrong choice, of wasting your time, of disappointing people, or of discovering that there is nothing you feel passionate about, are all fears that are rooted in this same need for certainty and security. Once you become untethered from knowing how it's all going to turn out, you will also see how it’s impossible to fail, how no choice can ever be the wrong choice, how nothing was a waste of your time, how other people’s disappointment is none of your business, and most importantly that it is impossible not to find your passion.
So my friend, although there is a whole lot more I can say about changing your views on money, if there is one piece of advice that I could give you that I feel absolutely positive will mobilize you in your soul search, that one thing that’s going to make the biggest difference, it’s to stop trying to figure out the money, and start following your excitement.