What is the role of money in your life?

This is a guest post by Shell Tain, PCC, CPCC of Sensible Coaching, from the crunch to the ka-ching!

Money’s Real Role

• What does money do for us?
• What do we expect of it?
• What is money’s real role in our lives?

These questions frequently resound in my practice. We expect a lot out of our money. We believe it will keep us safe, and that it will make us feel worthwhile. We expect that it will support us. But I wonder if that is really what money is all about? Remember, we humans make up most of our beliefs.

Does money really keep us safe? I think safety has more to do with our own resilience and fortitude than does money. Money can help, it can make the process easier, but does it really keep us safe in the crunch times? When the waters from Katrina let loose, money isn’t what saved people. Quick thinking saved people. Money helped after the fact. If you had money you stayed in a motel instead of the Astrodome.

Does money truly make us feel worthwhile? It would seem not, because the place where you think you will have enough money just keeps moving farther and farther away. We seek to have money make us feel worthy and deserving, and somehow we never amass enough money to have that happen. Yet, most of us do feel worthwhile. Those feelings come from our feelings of self worth, from our values and our actions. They don’t come from our money.

Does money actually provide support? We expect money to have a positive or negative voice, but its voice is actually quite neutral. What money does extremely well is to tell us, without judgment, just how we are doing. Once you get that idea, it’s the good news. Money doesn’t have an opinion. Money doesn’t think a bankruptcy is bad, or winning the lottery is good. Money isn’t really the cause of any of that, and it doesn’t care. It’s just what we use instead of the barter system.

You are going to be in a relationship with money for the rest of your life. Most people will come and go, but money will be there in some manner forever. So how do you want to be in your relationship with this neutral, non-judgmental reporting agent? Afraid of it? Angry with it? Avoiding it? Or maybe you could just use it to see what it has to tell you, without all that emotion clouding its mission.