I’ve always kinda liked Dr Phil.  Maybe it’s that he’s feisty?  Anyway, one of my favorite ‘Dr-Phil-isms’ is “If you marry for money, you will earn every penny.”  I think the money knot around that is worth exploring.

The biggest problem about marrying for money, or doing anything just for the money, is that money is never the actual issue.  It’s bass-ackwards.  Money is reflective of other things. Money is just a symbol for all the things we want that we think will make us happy.

If we make or “earn” our money doing something we love, we are honoring who we are.  In that case, we are living based on the core stuff that is truly important to us.  When we do anything  “‘just for the money” we are falling into the “Money In the First Position” Money Trap.  That’s the one where we make the choice solely for and about money.  Frankly, doing almost anything just for money isn’t worth it, is it?

Okay, I hear you thinking: “But what if I need money to pay the rent and feed my kids, and do a yucky job to get that?”  In that case you are doing the work you hate to make the money to support the kids you love.  That’s not the same as doing something just for money.  Would you actually keep that job if you didn’t have the kids and the rent to worry about?

The reason that doing something just for money rings so hollow is that it’s not really about money.  Again the bass-ackwards thing.  (Okay, I enjoy using that word)  It’s about the life you imagine you will have once you have money.  And there is the fallacy.

Remember that thing about money being reflective?  If you are just about having money, you are waiting to be in your life until you have the money.  What’s the money supposed to give you?  Happiness, safety, peace?  Maybe even love or fame?

None of those things start after you have money.

Money can reflect those things, but it never creates them in a satisfying way.  There’s another rub.  We don’t actually want just the money, we want the money to make us happy.  Ah, not money’s job.  Money’s job is to show us where we are putting our energy and efforts, to show us what we are choosing.

So are you choosing to spend your efforts and energy in making money, and hoping that it will make you feel good about yourself and life in general?  Or are you choosing to live every day using your energy and efforts to enhance and reinforce what you really care about, and allowing the money to reflect that?

So I think what Dr Phil really means is that it will be brutal and hard to marry for money, because you won’t be honoring who you are, you’ll only be chasing money, and that is bass-ackwards!

Ka-ching

Shell