The Vibrations of Money, Wealth, and Success

I was listening to my favorite marketing podcast recently, and the young man being interviewed was talking about money and how we respond to it on an emotional level, along with how our attitudes toward it help or hurt our desire to be successful, provide for our family, and climb the proverbial ladder.

During the interview, this young man said the following: “Money does not come from effort.”

I enjoyed the conversation overall, but I disagree with this statement. I think it's false and even a little offensive.

In this article:

• Our Mixed Feelings About Money
• Believing in Abundance
• The Value of Work
• What Do You Really Believe About Money?
• Money as Energy
• Shifting Your Financial Energy
• Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

 

 

Our Mixed Feelings About Money

We have a complicated, love-hate relationship with money, don't we? I believe many of us are our own worst enemies when it comes to the “head game” around success, money, and wealth.

Money has energetic frequencies. If you’re willing to let this conversation get pretty honest, maybe a little bit raw, let’s talk about what your own personal energetics are around this subject.

If you were raised Christian, you might have been taught Biblical sayings such as love of money is the root of all evil or it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. If you then saw your parents spend many hours, almost every day, trying to get more money, the whole situation was probably pretty confusing.

The Christian religion I was raised in has given rise to far more than its fair share of millionaires and educated, successful, even wealthy people. Both of my parents and most of my 7 siblings have advanced degrees, and it’s no secret that the #1 reason people obtain post-graduate degrees is to increase earning power; all of my siblings are very successful financially.

The contradictions aren't limited to religious folks; most people, regardless of background, make frequent negative statements about the pursuit of money and people who have lots of it—all while spending most of their waking hours doing everything they can to make more of it themselves.

So it seems worthwhile to explore the "vibration" of money—because, like everything else, money is simply energy (or vibration). The best energies are ones that flow without resistance. The energetic space you hold for thinking about, talking about, and pursuing money should ideally, then, be a flow state.

Believing in Abundance

Consider this outlook:

There is plenty of money.
It is abundant.
There is enough for everyone.
It flows like a river.
It’s easy to earn.
It’s easy to spend.
It’s easy to give and share.
It’s easy to invest well.

Read those words over and over again, and notice how you feel when you do.

Did any part cause your mind to trip? Did you feel any resistance?

What did it feel like -- Shame? Anger? Self-pity?

Where in your body did you feel resistance to the idea that money is free-flowing and abundant?

I hope you’ll spend a minute thinking about any part of that statement that you found yourself pushing against, instead of flowing with. Because all of those things are true. Money is a manmade concept. Human beings create the physical tender itself.

As you know, most “money” is flowing via digital transfer these days anyway. The value of Bitcoin went from $327 in November 2015 to $19,650 two years later, then back down to $3,183 today. Cybercurrencies are literally creating money. It's nothing more or less than energy, and if this is true, then it’s worth exploring what your own energy blockages may be.

The Value of Work

When the speaker on that podcast said, “Money does not come from effort,” I think he meant to challenge our parents’ and grandparents’ advice: “If you want to succeed, work hard.”

However, of all the twisty and conflicted beliefs we may have around money, I think that message is one we should keep.

Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the Colossus—all the great feats of humankind have involved massive effort. Sometimes unthinkable, thousands-of-hours, if-they’d-known-how-much-work-it-was-I-wonder-if-they-would-they-have-done-it work. Hardcore labor.

I think the young speaker dismissing the idea that money and success flow from hard work may have had a valid point underneath his words. There's such a thing as working smarter, not harder. If you're a business owner, you must learn to delegate, leverage systems, and get the most from your team in order to not kill yourself in building a business.

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water! I’ve never achieved anything without a massive amount of work. I love the idea that work creates wealth. We’ve all seen that in action.

I also think that working hard for something that matters creates quality, principled humans. Are we really able to value the things we achieve if we don't work hard to achieve them? That's exactly what I've done every time I’ve “birthed a baby,” whether it was a new book, a new business, or a new product line.

What Do You Really Believe About Money?

Have you ever felt critical towards or said harsh words about someone who achieved great financial success? Perhaps you went to high school with them or were at the same financial status once, and now they’ve outpaced you.

Have you noticed that you don't go after big financial or professional goals because you fear your family and friends will criticize you or see you differently if you out-earn them?

Are you known to say self-sabotaging things about material success? Examples include statements like, “Money doesn’t buy happiness anyway,” or, “I didn’t really want to succeed at X anyway because it would be too stressful.”

Do you really believe that a rich man can’t get into heaven?

Do you believe that the wealthy are innately more sinful, or less good and kind, than others?

Whatever your feelings about money may be, they can be changed to flow with more peace and abundance. All it requires is a little intention and practice.

Money as Energy

When I was 24, I set some ambitious financial goals for myself and planned to achieve them by the time I was 42. When I finally got there (at 48 instead of 42 -- just a little behind schedule!), I understood that the idea of “financial freedom” I originally set out to achieve is elusive, if not entirely a myth.

Most people who achieve 7-figure net worth will tell you that in the acquisition of their wealth, they’ve become acutely aware of how quickly it can disappear. This can lead to the sense that the original goal, “financial freedom,” or “financial stability,” may be impossible.

The more they work and acquire, and the older they get, the more they become aware of thousands of years of human history where the rich became poor, assets crumble overnight, and entire national economies fluctuate--even created or destroyed in just days or months. (We all watched the stock market tumble in 2007.)

Many of the most wealthy among us report having more anxiety around money when they’re worth $5 million than they did when they were young and working near the poverty line.

This may be due to becoming clear about how illusory and transitory money is.

If wealth is just digital transmission of energies, and it’s just a concept that we’ve all agreed to, why do we use it as a barometer around which we feel pride, shame, fear, guilt, and almost endless anxiety?

If money is in constant flow, and if we can either be in or out of that flowing river depending on the energies we choose, aren’t we all better off choosing to be more abundant?

Now that I’ve gotten entirely philosophical about the green stuff, you may be thinking, “No, Robyn. Money isn't energy. Money is a cold, hard fact of life that I need in order to have food and a place to live.”

Fair enough. But there are billions of dollars, mostly in the form of little digital data bits flowing across wires buried in the ground, that we can create more of. There is no actual scarcity.

Plenty of people work very hard, harder than wealthy people do, and never earn any significant amount of money. Many people expend a tremendous amount of effort on a variety of things, while avoiding putting their labor into activities that will actually lead to material success due to their fear or aversion around money.

So, because there’s more to becoming wealthy, or financially successful, than what your parents may have told you (“Work hard!”), we must examine another aspect of whether you could be more successful than you are.

Shifting Your Financial Energy

You can absolutely have more money and wealth than you have now.

Because money is energy, and because spending it creates lots of ripples and flow in the larger energetic system known as “the economy,” you can create money and wealth, without taking it from someone else who needs it!

The idea that “effort does not create wealth” is disrespectful to over 90% of the human beings on the Earth for whom physical labor pays for their food and shelter and their children’s needs. We have most of what is available to us due to someone’s physical effort, so I don’t think it serves to devalue that.

But in addition to acknowledging the value of effort, shifting your energies and thought patterns towards money has the power to completely change your financial status when added to hard work and being a “finisher” of your projects. What if you challenged these commonly-held beliefs:

• that money is something to fear
• that entrepreneurs and people who work more than 40 hours a week are “workaholics” and therefore pathological and need to change
• that you aren’t capable of obtaining enough money
• that people who obtain money and spend it easily are somehow bad or obsessive or misguided
• that you shouldn’t bother to try to earn more money because you’ll just lose it somehow
• that if you become financially successful, your friends and family will turn on you
• that because money can’t buy happiness, then staying where you are is actually better
• that only shallow people care about money
• that because people who are “satisfied” with their financial state are the happiest, you should decide to be satisfied with your financial struggle rather than pursue success

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

I hope you'll try a little experiment: when you have a negative thought about money (whether the thought is judgmental, jealous, or fearful, consciously replace it with a positive statement.

When you see someone who's obviously had financial success and think to yourself, "I bet that guy has stepped on a lot of people to get where he is," make an internal shift to something like this: "I'm learning to get in the stream of flowing money and to both give and receive it willingly."

Instead of settling for, "That car she’s driving is fancy, but I don’t need a flashy car to feel good about myself," tell yourself, "I view others with money positively because I want those positives to flow into my life as well."

Change, "He’s got a really nice house, but I wouldn’t want a mortgage payment that big," to, "I don't need to make a judgment about expensive things or the people who own them, because it doesn't serve me."

Go from, "I'm sure I'll lose this business/house/car eventually," to, "My energies around money help more of it flow to me and the people and causes I care about."

If you find yourself saying, "Money can’t buy happiness," replace that thought with, "I want more wealth, and I'm not afraid to say it."

Stop judging those who work hard as somehow broken or inferior and start seeing money as the ability to use your time the way you want to.

The words, thoughts, and emotions we have about success, money, and wealth directly affect whether we are in the stream of wealth and abundance or straining to get a drop from a turned-off faucet that drips now and then. Money flows to those who work, who do so diligently, who finish their projects rather than just dream about them, and who put their time and effort into “highest and best” uses.

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