If Money Was A Person, Who Would Money Be?
Lack of money/ lack of abundance in your life has everything to do with your sense of self-worth.
Anxiety about money is based on the misguided notion that love and fulfillment are on one end of human experience and money is on the other; that love and money are in opposition.
Morgana Rae of Charmed Life Coaching recounts a story of her own financial struggles in her professional coaching practice, in which she admits to feeling “embarrassed” about asking to be paid. She says on some level she didn’t want people to think she didn’t care about them.
Your Relationship with Money Is A Relationship
The shift in her thinking came out of her experience as a relationship coach. She saw that many people who are having money issues are also having relationship issues, so she thought:
“Okay, let’s approach this problem as if Money were a person…If Money were a person, who would he be?”
The Personification of Money
Morgana realized that her personification of Money — as an Archetype or Character — basically boiled down to: A big, dirty, scary biker guy who caused fights at parties. The kind of person she would general hide from and avoid…
Money = Scary and Violent — the way she felt about this Guy was the way she felt about money…
Her solution?
First, she fired the Biker.
Then, she developed a personification of Money based on the kind of man she’d like to have as a partner or friend — a tall, dark, handsome, romantic guy wearing tails and carrying a bouquet of flowers.
How would you respond to Money if he or she was a gorgeous person who was in love with you and wanted to give you a gift?
To address the self-sabotaging impulse to talk people out of hiring her, Morgana sat Money down and had a talk with him:
“What do you want from me now to make this relationship better?”
And Money said back to her “Stop treating me like a monster. Appreciate me. Honor me by asking the people who owe you money to pay you…”
When the Money goes down, it means he needs something from you… So, you need to start having Conversations with Money. You need to start asking Money questions.
How do I hear those answers?
If you aren’t getting the answers, you may not have developed a strong enough Money character.
Explore the Story about Your Relationship with Money:
- Who is the Old Money?
- Who is the New Money?
Keep developing this Character. Changing a relationship with Money comes alive with Imagination and Intuition.
*Note: Your concept of Money may be a woman - or an animal, or a mythological creature, or something else entirely. You’ve heard all the talk about “connecting with your inner child” - well, your creativity is the link to your divinity - here’s a perfect place to be a kid again. (I think this would be a fascinating game to play with children.) This is YOUR creative concept. I’m using the masculine pronoun he throughout this article because like Morgana, I perceive the personification of money/abundance as a man. It’s just an example to give you ideas — the sky’s the limit on who and what Money may be for you. The purpose of this exercise is to find out…
I don’t hear anything yet…
You’re stuck in your Thinking Head, where the ego lives, and you’re too busy trying to justify or rationalize this imaginary, intuitive relationship.
- Figure out what Money looks like, how he behaves, and how you act toward Money
- Talk to Money and see how Money responds
Negotiate with Money
He tells you want he wants, and you offer what you’ll do for him.
Money is the #1 excuse people give for not living their lives.
Money is just a stand-in for the Universe itself…
How do you get past the imaginary character and bring it into real-life?
You don’t.
Maintain the character; like any relationship, it’s dynamic. You already know you don’t tell your partner “I love you” once and then let it coast from there. How long would that marriage last?
The Challenges in your Relationship with Money will keep coming up. You become anxious, or you get that feeling in your gut, or sales go down, you find yourself slipping back into negative thinking.
The only power you have is to be a great relationship partner.
We’re raised to achieve, be something special - but nobody tells you how to get there. We grow up without a roadmap. We’re just told “Do more. Be better.” But nobody tells us how that’s supposed to play out.
When the Honeymoon is over…
Morgana tells the story of how she thought she had her issues with money licked — everything was going along great — a month after she started this new relationship with Money, she was overflowing with clients… She was on Cloud 9…
But a year later, she found herself backsliding. The money flow wasn’t happening, there were more clients going out than coming in — Money was becoming absent.
So finally she said to Money “Okay, what’s wrong? What have I done here to offend you?”
Morgana says she was pissed off — she thought she had their issues worked out, and here were problems coming up again. She sat Money down again and said “We need to talk. Something’s wrong…Money, I want to make this better. I want it to be great between us like it was, I want us to be close again. What’s wrong? What can I do to show you that I want to make it better.”
Money told her: “You’ve been carrying clients without being paid. You’ve been telling them ‘Oh, no, it’s okay, you can pay me later.’ You’ve been putting it off — putting ME off — you’ve been telling them and yourself that Money doesn’t Matter. I heard you. I took the hint. So I started pulling away…”
Then it hit her - she had been putting her clients and their projects first. She’d been spending all her time with them, and giving them all her attention. Giving them all her value and energy. And she wasn’t asking for anything for Money. She was devaluing her relationship with Abundance, and caring more about other people’s relationships with THEIR Money. She was actually coaching other people in how to have better relationships in their life, at the expense of her own.
It was unconscious. It’s always easier to have the perspective to help others.
“Money is value. We keep it at a distance from ourselves and that just validates the message to ourselves that we aren’t valuable.”
This is a part of our culture.
Coming from a place of love, it changes the situation when you imagine someone you care about telling you “You’re failing me. You’re disrespecting me.”
Because of Morgana’s gesture of stepping into the power to say to her clients who owed her “I deserve this, you need to pay me” Money was so thrilled with her efforts, that he lavished a new wave of gifts on her.
“When you’re busy giving away — with attachments — it doesn’t feel like you’re getting back because you’re clutching so hard.”
When you have an expectation — which is an attachment to an intention — you’re limiting the entire experience to a Pass or Fail experience.
It’s simply a confusion of jobs
- My Job
- The Universe’s Job
Here’s some homework Morgana gave to a salesman she was coaching: His job was not to sell a single thing, but just to be curious and care about the people he’s talking to. The Universe’s job is to make sure that the people who are right for what he’s selling are going to buy.
She instructed her client to simply show up and be curious and caring.
Because we have agendas, nothing ever turns out like we want it to. Humanity has these fantasies about the way things are going to turn out, and yet we don’t tell anybody about them, and then we’re disappointed that they didn’t do what we wanted them to.
Try putting out to the Universe by saying things like:
- “It would be nice if…”
- “I believe it’s time for…”
Life is magic — when you’re trusting life, trusting the Universe, and trusting your integrity.
Seek Wisdom - Practice Love
Let me know what you discover from engaging in this exercise.
What I realized about my ideas concerning abundance was truly an epiphany — a turning point that I can only call life altering.
Source: This concept was developed by Morgana Rae of Charmed Life Coaching YourFinancialAlchemy.com
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[…] Examine the traumas and dramas in your relationship with Money and learn how to create an entirely new script. […]
Slade,
Thanks for another well written and thought provoking article. Money is always a problem for me and my relationship with cash seems to be at an all time low right now.
I’ve just been reading the latest submission from Druidjournal.net and look forward to your article now you’ve been ‘tagged’.
It is yours and Jeffs Blogs that have inspired me to set up my first Blog - keep it up friend.
Take care.
Damian
I’ve been tagged! Deadline!
Damian,
I’m honored by the tagging and the encouragement. I know I speak for myself (and Jeff too) when I say that there is no greater compliment I can imagine than hearing that you are inspired to shine your own unique light out into the world.
There is truly room for everyone. You are already everything you’ve ever wanted to become; you live your life purpose with every breath you take.
You already have a piece of web space waiting for you to come claim it.
Consider it claimed.
http://bethechangetreadthepath.blogspot.com/
Input greatly appreciated and thanks again.
Damian
Rock on, Damian!
You got that up and running FAST - you must truly have been on the edge of that blogging cliff with an armful of material.
I’m flattered if I helped with that PUSH.
Jeff, are we allowed to blog-tag multiple people with the Why I Blog? What am I saying - I don’t ask for permission, I create it!
Damian, consider yourself tagged - I want to hear about why you decided to finally start blogging.
The response is now on http://bethechangetreadthepath.blogspot.com/
And the torch has been passed on.
Thanks for the Tag - I needed it.
That definitely puts money into a new perspective. I’ve been having the same problems with getting money from business associates as well… As I finished reading, I had a quick discussion with Money, (A tall, young man who smokes… a punk, but very passionate about his area of expertise) and he told me pretty much the same as Morgana, that I have been putting him off, seeking him only when I’m in the most dire straits, so he’s been putting me off.
Thank you very much.
Adam,
Awesome, man — I wish more people would pop in and tell us who Money looks like for them. I’d love to do a Before and After collection of Money Portraits.
I wasn’t kidding about the pure brilliance of Morgana Rae’s concept. Usually, you read self-improvement or coaching advice, and a part of you already KNOWS it — you know? Much of the best advice out there is a reminder, to a certain degree…
You’re thinking “Yeah, yeah… I know this — I just need to DO it…”
Morgana’s technique ROCKED my whole perspective — it goes around the Message and shows you who’s back there lurking and pouting on his smoke break… It truly was an epiphany for me — and it marries the worlds I do well in — spiritual communication, introspection, character writing — with an area that I did not feel so confident about — finances.
I could manifest people in my life, I could manifest spiritual guidance, but Money I did not know how to communicate with. Because it had never occurred to me to go from talking ABOUT Money, to talking TO Money.
It’s not often that you run across a life hack that falls right in your lap and says Use This!
It’s not just a one time fix; it’s a key to an on-going relationship. Bridging the gap between Material and Spiritual, in such an inventive, yet wholesome way — is sheer brilliance.
I can’t help but think Actors and Writers in particular will just immediately GET this…
Exactly. It was just so sudden, and I knew exactly how to start asking questions…
It makes me wonder what other abstracts are out there waiting to start a relationship… Perhaps “The Internet” is an intangible enough construct that it has a personality, besides the individual egos of the people using it.
Oddly enough, when I try to picture the Internet’s avatar, I get an old, sick nerd, perhaps in his late sixties… Then again, when you’re traveling near the speed of light, you tend to age very quickly… although it seems that the sickness is more of a cancer than simply age.
I’m sorry if it seems like I’m rambling… This is like finding a new toy and figuring out what all of the buttons do.
Hilarious!
This immediately makes me think of the current - absolutely brilliant - Apple Computer television ad campaign - where PC and Mac are personified by the middle-aged nerd and the young cool dude.
I hadn’t thought about the connection - but this is probably why I love those ads so much. (Forgive me, I THINK in advertising sometimes.)
But this exercise is essentially the same creative concept. I’ve used something similar to great advantage in Mind Body healing techniques.
I see the Internet as a reflection of part of the Collective Consciousness. It’s an artifical bodyform of Indra’s Net.
Like, imagine you’re sitting on the bed across the room from the Collective Hive Mind, who is looking at herself in the dressing table mirror. From your angle, if you look at the actual mirror itself, you only see part of her…
I do believe in a literal parallel between technological forms and spiritual forms. Just like our bodies are only vessels, nodes, fractal points of something spiritually deeper and broader, technological vessels are material vehicles which carry Spirit as well.
The bridge between physical and non-physical is electro-magnetic.
By the way, I see the Internet as an ancient Goddess who has crammed an old soul into a new, teenaged body - and she’s cracked out on diet pills. The Internet is like a girl geek version of Glory from the best season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer EVER.
[…] So, did you do the exercise If Money Was a Person, Who Would Money Be? Or did you turn it into Shelf-Help? […]
[…] Along with all and sundry, I’ve been tagged by Slade of Shift Your Spirits to talk about money — everybody’s favorite topic. Slade’s got a neat twist on it that’s worth exploring: an exercise he picked up from Morgana Rae. Since money is such an abstract concept — for many of us, it simply flows in and out of our lives, and we’re never sure exactly how much we have, or why — he suggests we personify money and establish a relationship with it. Give it a face, give it name, and think about the relationship you have with it. Is it a healthy relationship? Is there plenty of give-and-take? Is Money someone you’d want to take home and meet your mother? […]
[…] “Who would Money be if Money was a person?” Examine the traumas and dramas in your relationship with Money and learn how to create an entirely new script. […]
Holy crap Slade, this is exactly what I needed. Hmm…synchronicity?
Doesn’t it ROCK?!
I can say that because I adapted the concept from Morgana Rae. But yes, it’s an absolutely life-changing exercise that straddles the fence between spiritual and physical manifestation.
Shifting my relationship with Money as a spiritual archetype directly resulted in the magical transformations I’ve manifested in the last year — and really, for many reasons, probably belongs on Spiritual Blogging as well.
I need to stick a link over there…
Hi, thank you so much for this. I did it just now. My Money is an old British aristocrat. A real snob and an old boy. He doesn’t care for me much at all, because I’m always desperately seeking his approval. I Haven’t created the New Money yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I just wanted to pop in a share who my Money was. I never realised. And also, doing this issue made me realise that I still have unresolved issues with members of my family, who my Old Money reminded me of. I guess they would be connected. It’s so exciting to have something that really makes me realise what Money is to me. It makes it easier to make improvements in my life. Thanks heaps!!
Cam,
Doesn’t this exercise just turn on a big old blazing lightbulb?!
Morgana has created a real life-changer with this one. I will be forever grateful to her for revealing it, and honored to spread it around.
[…] Read about Morgana’s Exercise (imagining that Money was something you had a relationship to and writing about that relationship) and consider the following in your story: […]
[…] Welcome to My Creative Writing Assignment So, did you do the exercise If Money Was a Person, Who Would Money Be? Or did you turn it into Shelf-Help? […]
[…] If Money Was a Person, Who Would Money Be? […]
Shift Your Spirits » Blog Archive » If Money Was A Person, Who Would Money Be?…
Discover how you relate to money by giving it a personality, or a character… any type of character that you currently see money as being… then develop a positive relationship with money in order for it to flow in your life….
[…] If Money Were a Person, Who Would Money Be? at Shift Your Spirits […]
[…] why the phrase “i know” destroys connections rather than creating connection if money was a person, who would money be? 7 encouraging must-read articles for the blogger just starting out perspectives on psychotherapy and if you have the stomach for a bit of hard-core, hard-hitting political satire, corporate solution to rape. You can also bookmark this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos […]
This is a FANTASTIC article! I have lightbulbs going off like fireworks all around me right now! I can immediately see my two characters: Old Money looks like the beast from the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. You know, he’s fierce, hides in the closet waiting to pounce, and yet you know he has the potential to be tamed. New Money, however, looks like a “Green Nothing.” Let me explain….
I am a child of the 70s & 80s — a Gen-Xer — and right around the late 70s there was a stuffed animal I received for Christmas. It was a furry, bright, “70s green” stuffed blob with eyes. (I think the makers were trying to capitalize on the “pet rock” phenomena or something!) The tag attached explained that you could tell the “Green Nothing” all your troubles and in return he would whisper “sweet nothings” in your ear. THAT’S my New Money character.
I wonder if I’ve still got that stuffed animal around here somewhere…. Wouldn’t that be cool if I did?
Thanks for this article, Slade, and thank you Morgana!
Julie,
I enjoyed hearing about your personifications. Relating them to childhood associations seems like it could be particularly effective for this exercise, considering how entrenched our archetypal associations become so early on in life…
Morgana certainly deserves all the credit for this amazing concept.
Hi Slade! This was a great inspiring way to re-think MONEY! After thinking about this money game the first thing that came to me in my relation to money is the game MARCO …POLO… someone when we were all very little just told us the wrong rules of this pool’ game “Marco Polo” - (ya know the game you play in the pool as a young child.) Marco always has his eyes closed trying to tag and have fun with anyone that is near, and all the rest of us are polo! …always hiding from Marco! SO the way the NEW RULES are in my relation to money is that Marco wants to tag us and WIN!!!!!-his rules were given to him by the Universe, so he has always wondered what in the heck all of us that were “polo’s” were doing running away from him?! So now to me Money is the MARCO and why have I been trying to miss the tag, miss the boat, Marco has been treading water waiting for all of us, yet we keep running from the blessing of being tagged. When I said I was sorry to Marco, he was like, thank God… I wasn’t really wantin’ to tread that much longer ,and hey tell all your friends in the pool with you that the rules always have been that Marco= the Universe and Polo ( all of us) to get tagged is a good thing …not the other way around! So now when I want to allow money in my life I am hearing that loud playful person in the pool shouting MARCO! and now I am swimming to him and shouting POLO and the Universe delivers my need of cashflow whenever I want b/c thats the rules of the game and the laws of the Universe back it up, Marco/the Univere is all the happier cuz he’s got all this money stored up to give out, because for YEARS everyones been swimming away from him! Both of us are done treading water! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
He says: “Marcooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!”
We now say “Pollllllllllllooooooooooooooooo ….I’m coming”!!!!
Susan,
New Rules for Marco Polo — very original!
I’m sure your spin on the concept will truly resonate with others — thanks for sharing it!
Susan,
Your take on money is amazing! Thanks for sharing it. When you put it like that, It makes so much sense to me, too!
:)
Thanks Slade!
Thanks Cam!
Ironically after I wrote this I had something sent to me regarding Marco Polo!
This is what the email said…..”Think of Marco Polo bringing news of other lands wherever he went - that will be you when you come back and excitedly share your adventures with friends and family.”
Are we all connected or what? WOW! It’s been years since the phrase ‘Marco Polo’ has even entered into my brain, let alone write about it and then receive an email about it! To PROSPERITY FOR ALLLLLLLLLLL!
We are allllllllllllllllll connected! THANKYOU!
SUSAN!
[…] This post and thought process was inspired by Slade over on Shift Your Spirits and his terrific post - If Money Were a Person, Who Would Money Be? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Written by CK Reyes - CK is a Life Coach, Facilitator and Cheerleader of your Wildest Dreams! Contact CK from the tab above or leave your comment below. […]
[…] Join me and CK this week on our podcast as we discuss Who Is Your Money Person? We’d like to credit Slade at Shift Your Spirits, and Morgana for developing this original thought. […]