Why I Put ‘Money’ last In “Spirit, Mind, Body, And Money”
note: This is just scratching the surface on the impact your spirit, mind, and body have on your money. If I’m being honest, I’m still flushing out my ideas and working on being able to communicate my thoughts and while I know perfect is the enemy of great, this subject is so important I want to make sure I communicate it properly.
Not long ago I started using the phrase “connecting spirit, mind, body, and money” and sharing its importance in the pursuit of your authentic life. When crafting the phrase I was intentional with my word selection and the order I placed them in–it’s by design that “money” is the final area to be connected.
Money finds itself in last place because of the four areas of our life to connect, it is the least important. And, when you find alignment of spirit, mind, and body, money tends to fall into place.
Now, I didn’t say it’s not important. But as we seek to find and live our authentic life, connecting with our spirit, being in control of our mindset, and taking care of and listening to our body are more important than money–and they directly impact our relationship with it.
Many of our money issues are self-inflicted and are a result of searching for our identity and acceptance from others. A disconnect between our spirit, mind, and body leads us to seek validation from others and throughout our lives we’ve observed material possessions and social status as the metrics our peers judge us by, which leads us down a path of accumulating material possessions, feeling like we will never have enough, and thirsting for attention.
As we continue down this dead end path, we develop and reinforce unhealthy money habits like overspending, undersaving, lack of insurances and protections for our loved ones, and worst of all, a scarcity mindset.
When our focus becomes seeking the approval of others, our money never finds alignment with our values and it most likely our spirit, mind, and body are misaligned as well. It’s no surprise we become unhappy, stressed, and fall into the rat race just to get by. All of the money in the world won’t fulfill or make us happy when we don’t have an alignment of our spirit, mind, and body.
If you’re honest with yourself, you already know this, but living it is not as easy as it sounds. After all, there are a lot of unhappy rich people in the world, which highlights that money without alignment of spirit, mind, and body doesn’t bring fulfillment and happiness to you.
However, we see a lot of happy, content, and fulfilled people despite not having the net worth or income of the unhappy rich.
This is because the alignment of spirit, mind, and body are necessary to experience happiness, contentment, and fulfillment. It is hard to experience these feelings when you don’t know who you are and don’t have confidence in that version of your Self. But, when you have that alignment and know who YOU are, you no longer seek the approval of others, or you at least value it less. You find your happiness internally and from those you love and care about. With your happiness and validation coming internally you no longer spend money on frivolous possessions to create an image for people to judge and hopefully like. You shift your spending and relationship with money toward the things and people that align with your values and the authentic life you have discovered–a much healthier relationship with money.
If you find you’re unhappy, unfulfilled, and stressing over money, take some time to focus on working on YOU–work to connect and align your spirit, mind, and body. You’re probably more worried about addressing the money stresses but those will not disappear without the alignment of the other areas of your life. Once you’ve done that, working on the money part of the equation will become easier–it won’t magically fix itself, but the work to be done will become easier and you’ll see money start to align with your spirit, mind, and body.
Then, you are on your way to living your authentic life.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
