Stop asking money to make you feel safe (it can't).

The safer you feel, the more money you make. This is not backwards.

The first date you keep having with money

Imagine on that first date, you went up to your date and said,

That's what we're doing with money.

We walk up to our bank accounts the same way: I need you to make me feel safe.

The date's response is the same way money responds to us when we're looking to it for our sense of safety.

It wants none of it.

Money is a mirror

Money is like a mirror. It doesn't create feelings. It reflects the ones you brought to it.

Nobody tells you that if you're terrified of losing money, you'll find ways to lose it.

If you believe money is scarce, you'll make it scarce.

Your behaviors follow your beliefs.

So, if money reflects what we carry inside, wouldn't it be worthwhile to explore those attachments?

A good place to start is to ask yourself, "How do I make more money?"

Start by asking, "What am I asking money to do for me that it cannot do?"

The people who make money with the least friction are not the ones who need it most.

They're the ones who stopped demanding money to give them something it can't.

They're the ones who stopped asking for money to be something it isn't.

The client who couldn't focus

I once had a client say,

He was trying to build a business but was working on 5 projects at once, making little progress on each one of them (and no money).

His inability to focus came from fearing what would happen if he couldn't get his business off the ground, and that fear brought him closer to the very outcome he dreaded.

In our coaching session, we discovered this big insight that stopped him cold:

Here's what this means: "in the future" is a thought.

That's all it is.

In our direct experience, it is always Now.

His mind kept taking him to a catastrophic "future" (that doesn't exist) that was dysregulating his nervous system.

And causing him to work on a bunch of projects at the same time.

Which led him to try to make money quickly, in order to feel safe "in the future."

But his state of consciousness, in the present, was a lack of safety which was being projected onto "the future."

After this big insight during our coaching conversation, he felt safe enough to slow down and focus on writing his book.

Creativity requires a sense of safety to do.

And paradoxically, it's both what he loves to do and a high-leverage activity.

The Hammer Exercise

The hammer exercise is a way to check whether what you're reacting to is true or a shadow on the caves wall.

Finish this sentence:

• When I have enough money then I'll finally feel . . .
• Then replace the word money for the word "hammer".

Next, say to yourself some version of:

• If I just had enough [money], then I'll be safe!
• ithout [money] I won't be safe!
  ​
• need more [money] to feel safe!
  ​

Again, replace the word money for the word "hammers".

If this exercise sounds ridiculous, that's the point.

Of course, a hammer cannot pay a landlord. Money is a tool for transactional tasks the way a hammer is a tool for physical tasks: both get a specific job done.

But the point is not what the tool does, it is the emotional weight you pile on top of it.

If you can replace 'money' with 'hammer' and the emotional charge vanishes, you're not reacting to money. You're reacting to a shadow on the wall.

A carpenter who clings to his hammer out of terror that he will never drive another nail will swing it badly.

The fear, not the tool, wrecks the job.

Everything else is a projection of what we're thinking and believing it to be.

After you've discovered your definitions of money, decide if you want to keep them.

If they actually serve you, or if they get in the way of your relationship with money.

The cave you didn't know you were in

What happened to my client is not unique to just him. It's a very common experience. And the best illustration of it is Plato's Cave

In the allegory of the cave, prisoners are chained inside a cave, facing a blank wall. The prisoners see only the shadows cast on the wall.

Having known nothing else their entire lives, they mistake the shadows for reality itself (being outside the cave).

Plato's Cave is a metaphor for our minds.

My client's cave was the thought: "I won't be safe in the future."

That thought cast shadows:

• the five scattered projects
• His chronically dysregulated nervous system
• The inability to focus and decide on a clear path forward

He was reacting to shadows on a wall, not to reality.

He was inside a cave he didn't know he was in.

You have a version of this. The thought might be different, but the cave is the same.

Take a common money belief: "Rich people are greedy."

If you secretly believe that, you will unconsciously sabotage your own earnings to avoid becoming the thing you judge.

That belief is a cave.

You are likely inside a mental cave right now, watching shadows on the wall, convinced that what you see is the whole picture.

Our thoughts and what we are believing become caves, trapping us in a specific way of thinking that then appears to be so true that we mistakenly take it for the truth itself.

Ask yourself: what is the one thought about money I keep mistaking for a physical threat?

That thought is your cave. The anxiety you feel is its shadow.

The only way out is to notice you're in one.

What's on the other side

I went on a work trip to San Diego the other day, and I saw a homeless man sitting so peacefully in the center of a busy sidewalk that I began to feel more relaxed simply being near him.

I had a hotel room and a wallet full of credit cards, yet I felt less secure than he looked. His ease convicted me.

I even offered to buy him food, which he graciously declined.

So, if he can feel safe without the accumulation of the supposed objects that give us safety, safety must then come from within.

Paradoxically, I have discovered in my own life that the safer I feel, the more money comes into my life. Not the other way around.

Seeking money to find safety "in the future" is like a panhandler begging for spare change while sitting on a treasure chest.

We're all the panhandler to the degree to which we expect money to fulfill us, to give us safety, and so on.

The treasure chest is the Now.

It's accessible to all of us right now.

Stop begging for spare change, the treasure chest is already underneath you. You've just forgotten how to open it.

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Peace,

Alex

P.S. If you are tired of chasing a feeling that money can never deliver, the way out is not more hustle. It is clarity. The kind that shows up when someone outside your own head asks the right questions. If you are ready to stop running the same mental loops, sign up for a 20-minute Clarity Call: https://calendly.com/alexpadron1082/claritycall​

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