Summary
Joe and Brett continue their series on money, exploring why people believe money is bad or evil. Joe explains that this belief typically comes from feeling hurt by money — a parent who prioritized money over the child, or wealthy people who triggered feelings of inadequacy. Our emotional patterns from childhood get projected onto money because it’s omnipresent and determines so much of adult life, just as parents once did.
They discuss how money shows up in business: CEOs who feel bad asking for money, people who avoid marketing because sales feels “dirty,” and the difference between treating money as a game versus keeping it personal. Joe argues that the key isn’t depersonalizing money through a game mindset, but simply not taking it personally — not making it a reflection of who you are.
The conversation goes deeper into money as projection: when all projections are removed, money becomes something Joe “can’t name.” They discuss poverty mentality (not about financial poverty, but the false belief that we can’t get what we need), integrity as the guide for relationship with money, and how saying “it’s just business” is actually the most personal thing you can say.
Key Concepts
- Money is a projection of childhood emotional patterns
- Depersonalizing money creates financial freedom
- Saying “it’s just business” is deeply personal
- Poverty mentality is about love, not money
Key Quotes
“All that’s required is to not have the money be personal. You just have to see yourself as human beyond the money.”
“Money is a projection. What if that were true for a moment? What if it were true that the money in your life is a projection?”
“If you have to harden yourself in any way — if you have to become defensive, build a wall between you and other people — you are taking it personally.”
“When I take all the projections of money away, it becomes something I can’t name.”
“Poverty mentality doesn’t mean anything about money. The poverty was around love and attention.”
Transcript
foreign all that’s required is to not have the money be personal right so you don’t actually have to see it as a game you don’t actually have to see it as a means to an end all that’s really required is like oh the money isn’t personal you just have to see yourself as human beyond the money and then money as a way of flowing very differently in people’s lives welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson foreign welcome back everybody to our topic on money and now we’re going to get to the second half of this discussion on the belief that money is bad so Joe what makes it that people develop this belief that money is bad or evil yeah um what I typically notice is that money is bad comes because somebody felt that money hurt them right so maybe they had a parent who cared more about money than they it felt like the parent cared more about money than they did about time with the kid or that somebody with money did something bad or that somebody uh with wealth did something that made them feel less than also we there are certain people that have perspectives internal perspectives that when something makes them feel bad they attack right that’s the way their personality system works and so you know just being observing great wealth and the way that great wealth moves can make people feel like oh like if they have that moment of insecurity or that moment of like oh I’m not good enough then their natural response might be to attack the way that their personality works and so for I think all of those reasons people think that money is bad and I mean you can see it all over our society you want to like you’ll if you just start saying how people with a lot of money are bad you’ll start getting a following so it’s it’s a fascinating thing but it’s often not just even people with a lot of money it’s just money you know the system sucks the what an he drives a 120 000 car right it’s just like there’s this whole set of judgments that come along with money and I think they’re usually some reflection or some sort of projection of our own relationship with money and or ourselves or or like I said earlier with our parents or authority figures or something like that what you were saying there was like the 120 000 car like money can point at glaring inequalities in all the things that money can be a surrogate for like you might see somebody with a lot of money and they’re getting a lot of affection from people and a lot of attention because they have money and so then that makes you feel your lack of affection and attention and maybe in the opposite framing of what we were talking about in the first half instead of buying into it and being like you know what I need I need more money and then people will love me you instead just say well that I don’t want to play that game so then money becomes this like lava that you don’t want to touch yeah let’s take a look at like that the person and the let’s call it a 250 000 car there’s a person drive around in 250 000 car now some group of people are going to be like that guy is a just a good person cool like they’ve accomplished something I like that I like him or her and some people are going to be like what a douchebag you know like whatever a whole bunch of you know greedy selfish what happens to our whole system if we just see the person as a person they are neither good nor bad they are neither insecure more insecure less insecure than all the rest of us so they’re just a human being and a flawed like all of us and healthy like all of us and that we can’t even know do we know does the person in the car is that do they have that car because that’s what their job requires of them because they need to exude status are they doing it because they’re trying to get their mom’s love are they doing it because uh they just really love it’s just their passion is sports cars and or their passion is just really well made Machinery or or really complex Machinery like what we don’t even know we don’t even know what’s happening for that person and so it’s it takes the humanity whatever perspective you have around money that takes the humanity out of the person that’s a prejudice including that they’re good or that they’re happy and so I I think that’s like the really interesting way to look at your own views around money what are the daily judgments that you walk through the world with and how is it separating you from connection with yourself and other people yeah I’m curious about some of the things that that money stands in for that we can have issues with like Authority and with power how does that happen yeah I can’t say neurologically exactly how it happens um I can point to some of it but I can say you know how I’ve seen it work in me and so what I’ve noticed is that you get emotional patterns that happen right so what I mean by that is that when I had a green Mohawk as a teenager my parents worried 15 of the time and they worried over things like me my haircut if I was going to grow up right now my parents are are you know kids are fine everything like that and they still worry about 15 of the time but now it’s over like are they going to burn the chuck roast so we seem to get into these emotional patterns and as kids we get into very specific emotional patterns and we’re in Theta brain wave which is kind of like where you go in the subconscious it’s like how we program ourselves or unprogram ourselves often is most effective in Theta and so kids are mostly in Theta from zero to seven zero to eight years old and so they get into a certain kind of emotional patterns and then as they grow up they’re going to place those patterns on something and probably have something of equivalent importance in their life so when dad leaves or Mom leaves or they leave Mom and Dad then that pattern needs to hit something else and money is a great place for it to hit it’s a great place because it it can really you can project anything you want onto money you can think it’s like we were talking about it you can project it’s great you can project it’s bad you can project it’s neutral you can project and and there’s evidence to show all of it you can show how money created a society in which more people are able to thrive than any other Society and you can also look at how money creates all the disenfranchisement inside of our society so you can just project anything you want onto money and since it’s such an important part of our Lives it’s so much about determines so much for most people how they spend their time what they can do and what they can’t do in their mind that of course right so Mom and Dad used to be that Mom and Dad used to be the thing that said what I could and couldn’t do and now money is now money is the thing that says what I couldn’t couldn’t do and so it’s just natural for the emotional process to lay itself on top of money so that that emotional pattern could be about anything and like you were saying earlier it’s often about love um but you know in society and money is just something that is so present that it’s really easy for it to become about money yeah it’s it’s easy for it to come about money and it I mean it’s just like it’s easy for it to become about your boss like you see that all the time where people aren’t they think it’s their boss but it’s not they’re treating their boss like their dad or their mom or a teacher that had an impact on them right so how does this show up in business I I have sort of examples here in my life with like not asking for what I needed like not like feeling Shame about asking to be paid like more money for something and then finding myself in the position of not having my needs met enough to actually do great work or not having the needs of the project met enough for the project to work out really really well because I was afraid to ask for money and this has happened yeah you know over the course of my life in fractal ways and so what’s what’s some other way that you see this showing up commonly in in business when people have this kind of squirmish uh discomfort around money well I see it happen in business in many ways not even if they have squirmish discomfort uh you know I see people who think that money is the way you determine if you win or lose in business and to some degree that’s true right like if you don’t have enough Revenue you don’t stay in business so you lose if you if you think of it that way and but there’s some people think the most money wins right that that’s the currency for a good business is who made the most money rather than maybe who had the best impact or um who has the happiest employees and so you see people who create fights and lose profit because they care about you know how the deal came out in a way of winning and losing instead of in a way of winning and winning so you see that happen all the time you see people avoid marketing and sales whether they’re CEOs who are avoiding it or employees that are avoided because sales and marketing is dirty because you’re trying to convince somebody to do something for money right yeah and then you see other companies say marketing is just education we’re just telling people we have a product that we think is important and and we want to give them an opportunity to experience how important this product can be in their lives and then that’s a different way of looking at at it and some people get off on convincing people to do things that aren’t good for them and they feel powerful over it and some people just can’t do that with their lives you know it doesn’t feel good in their system or they realize that the short-term power is not worth the long-term disconnection with themselves so I think there’s all sorts of ways I see CEOs who feel bad for asking for money or they feel like they deserve money both of them are going to not get enough money probably for their own for the needs of the company or yeah so there’s all sorts of ways of looking at it seems like the people in the Venture Capital business who seem to do the best with money or comparatively are people who see it as a game as a means to an end or a game so a game meaning that it’s like oh it’s like I don’t take it personally and it means to an end meaning my vision is to you know plant 10 000 trees and I just the money’s the thing that I have to do to get there and I think both of those two things depersonalize the money and then people who have depersonalized the money are more successful with it typically there could also be a danger in that because depending on what the game is you know the game might just be a game to maximize money for a particular you know Milestone like let’s just bring a company public dump it on the public correct and then walk away with the bags and that could be a game that can have really negative consequences oh correct as is the other thing as is seeing the you know having the money just be a means to an end an end to what I think it all has like a particular danger and the good news is is that all that’s required is to not have the money be personal right so you don’t actually have to see it as a game you don’t actually have to see it as a means to an end all that’s really required is like oh the money isn’t personal it’s not a reflection of me it’s not a reflection of who I am it’s not a reflection of who other people are you just have to see yourself as human beyond the money and then money as a way of flowing very differently in people’s lives I mean there’s there’s a way that it that it can be helpful that it’s impersonal but also there’s a way that it always is personal and I think something that happens often is that people insist the impersonality of it and then separate themselves from the connection of the people that they’re working with yeah right so the classic like you know it’s just business that basically is what you’re saying right yeah it’s just business like kind of avoidant yeah that’s that’s totally personal that’s not taking it not personally that’s taking it incredibly personally at least in the semantics that I’m in my head so maybe I haven’t explained it right in fact I can be confident that I haven’t um so saying it’s just business means that you have taken it personally you’ve taken something personally you have some level of shame or something to that effect and you want to push that down you want to push that emotional experience down just think of it this way there’s you’re about to get fired and you have a choice and the person who is about to fire you can say it in many different ways one way they can say it is it’s just business all right we had to let you go it’s just business it’s nothing personal which is really personal because it’s like I I don’t trust you to be able to handle by telling you the real reason that I’m firing you correct that’s exciting yeah perfectly sad right so just feel how that would land and then you can have like I feel really sorry that we couldn’t do it you know we wanted to and we tried and we we weren’t able to keep you here there’s that way of getting fired right and then there’s the way of getting fired which is just like Okay so this was our expectation of what you were to do here we made that really clear to you and those expectations aren’t being met my experiences is that you’re either capable of doing that the stuff we’ve asked you to do in which case you’re you’re choosing not to do it which means you know on some level this isn’t the right job for you and you’re making sure that it doesn’t last in your world or secondly you’re not capable of doing it and therefore you must always be feeling like I’m not doing a good enough job which also isn’t a really great thing for your world so it’s it’s clearly not a match and like how do we move forward if this job is a match how do we help you how do we you know what what do you need so that you can get to where you want to go in your life next and how can we be of service in that that’s mutually beneficial that’s another way to fire somebody and to me that’s the least personal of those things right it’s like this is the situation that that we find ourselves in yeah it’s the taking it the least personally it’s the least caretaking least avoidant yeah the thing that we’re avoiding is that we actually feel bad for firing them so we Harden ourselves down and become to fire somebody which is is just a huge if you have to harden yourself in any way if you have to like become defensive build a wall between you and other people you are taking it personally that is a clear sign that you are taking in personally we somehow get in our head like if we take it personally we’re scared or we feel guilty or we’re sad but the the clear sign of taking something personally is that you have shut yourself off to your own emotional experience so bringing this back into the the money aspect the way that we show up in the world with one another with all of our Concepts and projections about money you know there’s many ways to take that personally and there’s many ways not to there’s there’s ways that we can be successful and then that will make other people feel their shame and there’s ways that we can be unsuccessful by money standards and people will still feel their shame somehow or something else so that’s right your relationship with shame is definitely gonna yeah exactly it’s like money is a projection money at some level money is a projection what if that were true for a moment what if it were true that the money in your life specifically to you the money in your life is a projection maybe it’s a projection of your value maybe it’s a projection of your lack of value maybe it’s a projection of your needs of your lack of Love of what if it it was only that at the beginning of the conversation I said I don’t really know what money is and I think the thing that I’m pointing to is when I take all the projections of money away it becomes something I can’t name hmm so when when I do that exercise there’s like okay letting letting go of money as a projection then there’s this thing that immediately comes in where it’s like like no it’s not just that there’s also environmental factors there’s you know the privilege that I was born or not born in there was the luck that I did or didn’t have in my you know in my career in my business or in or even just in my family relationship that patterned my relationship that’s underneath money and so my question is how do you how do you hold this sort of this like Cohen where money is entirely projection so that we can let that projection fall away and find out what’s underneath it and love ourselves more and also hold the truth that our entire relationship with money and our experience with money has also been influenced by external factors yeah I mean this is the question of life it’s like how do we recognize the unity that we are in the self-interest that moves every one of our actions it’s really the question you’re asking right if we even that is a projection meaning on some level if I really look at the essence of of what I am it’s also very empty very massive and very empty and at the same time who I am is the person who is driving a car and polluting the atmosphere and the person who I am is the person who is hurting somebody with the hamburger that I just bought so it’s like this unbelievable Cohen on one level this unbelievable Cohen of both like human side and this illusionary side coming together this material side of money in the illusionary side of money coming together and how do you handle it and the answer that I have found that creates the most freedom in me is is with Integrity you know and and when I say Integrity I mean when I listen to my deep truth when I am spending money or when I’m receiving money what does that require of me what do I have to do to feel most aligned around my behavior with money that’s the question that I ask and it doesn’t feel aligned to be to have no money and it doesn’t feel aligned to accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth and it doesn’t feel aligned to have me say like to try to use my money to save people just like it doesn’t feel aligned for me to use my money to earn my non-money my anything to try to save somebody but it feels really important for me to use my money to work with people for our mutual Freedom Our Mutual Saving so it’s this really interesting thing where it’s like this moment-to-moment learning for me around money where it’s how does it feel right now what does this transaction feel like how does having a transaction feel as compared to being in connection and letting the money sort itself this is the way that I think about how I want to live with money at this point yeah thanks a lot for that yeah I notice I’m nervous that um that people won’t get to it you know because there’s I realize as we’re talking about money there’s so many um really it’s like religion you know what I mean like there’s no conversation you can have about religion where you’re probably not going to offend somebody yeah I think it’s the same way around money I don’t think that there’s really a way for us to talk about the money where somebody isn’t going to feel like either we have poverty mentality or that we’re part of the oppressive class or you know like and I think this is why people don’t talk about money this is why we don’t talk about our credit card debt it’s why any conversation that’s happening in the world around money is like how to make it or what’s wrong with it there’s no conversation of like what is it there’s no conversation of what’s the relationship we want with it there’s a little bit of a conversation right now with like electronic currencies of like what are the rules to it but I mean this is the perfect example you know if you create a currency out there that has rules of money that don’t have shortage of Supply as a part of that rule nobody has faith in the currency so is it the money’s problem or is it what we put our faith into that is the problem humans naturally put their faith into things that have short supply that they can hold on to that have power immediate power that’s where humans naturally put their faith for a good reason you know like a spear is a good thing to put your faith in if you’re a hunter and it fulfills all those requirements and you’re hunting a you know limited supply of game exactly and there’s if you’re making your own Spears there’s somewhat of a limited you know it requires effort because there’s a limit of Supply there’s not just like Spears growing off trees yet there’s effort involved and this is what we put our faith in so if it’s not money and we put our faith in something else if it’s not the US dollar if it’s not the Euro and we put our faith in something else like Bitcoin the question is what are we putting our faith in and if we ask ourselves deeply like am I willing to put my faith in something that has abundance that isn’t Limited that anybody can have at all and that doesn’t have short-term power and I’m going to rest my entire family’s security on the faith in this thing like the way we do with money how does that feel money isn’t the issue at the core the core issue is that like if if every human being on the planet put their faith in something that was an utter abundance and there was like clear that oh we have enough for everybody and that I can give freely I can have faith in long-term investment like if we all had that like what would happen to the problems of our world and that’s a really difficult thing to ask and what would that be I have no idea I have no idea but it’s a difficult thing even to ask you and I in this moment and it sounds like one thing that could be is investing in relationships investing in trust which is what communities without money have right it’s what they do right I remember when I was young I was in my 20s I worked in the Hayes Valley projects and Head Start and I realized and then if I went from that into International stock Lending and I remember you saying like one has money one has community one relies on money for survival and one relies on community for survival one rely generally relies on money for happiness one generally relies on community for happiness which we’re more successful depends on how you measure success you know but what I noticed is what I noticed is the people with the community wanted the money and the people with the money didn’t always want the community sometimes the community was heavy for them right because whatever they were taught but both of them had poverty in in one way or another So speaking of poverty I’ve heard you say this a couple of times in some of the courses as well using the term poverty mentality and you were just saying earlier about like feeling a little bit of fear in your system about how you know this talking about money is like talking about religion and everybody’s gonna be offended about something I have a something about this word the poverty mentality that all right that offends you well it’s it’s not even so much that it offends me personally but I I think that it might offend a lot of people because it maybe associate like poverty mentality is a thing that keeps you from having money then poverty mentality is like this thing that’s holding you back and that’s associated with poverty which is something that people are born into um and don’t have a choice of starting there I’m curious if like if it’s poverty or if it’s like a scarcity mindset yeah yeah that’s a great question so for me poverty mentality doesn’t mean anything about money you know I was born with a poverty mentality but the poverty wasn’t around cash though there was some of that as well um there the poverty was around love and the poverty was around attention that there were I wasn’t going to get enough attention I wasn’t going to get enough love and so I grew into a life where I created a world where I didn’t get enough love and I didn’t get enough attention and it took a lot of work to switch that that autopilot off in my life and in my system so that’s what I’m speaking to about poverty mentality it’s the false belief that we can’t get what we need and what we want generally not specifically we’re not going to ever get everything we want but like that we can’t have our needs met but yeah just living living and recreating that in whatever way whether it’s about money or anything else correct that’s what I’m speaking to and I can see your point that like just the word poverty could trigger and it could speak to you know a class of people that didn’t have a choice or a group of people who didn’t have a choice around their financial situation but I I don’t like the the term that you used I don’t like using it for a different reason you know which is scarcity mindset because it it feels ungrounded it doesn’t feel like it’s as pertinent or real to me as the word poverty but I can see how that also is a is a bias yeah yeah well maybe we’ll find a better word someday yeah yeah I mean yeah there’s a flip side to every coin all right well thank you Joe this has been a really great episode and I think we could do a couple more on money related topics yeah but for now this is yeah this is great awesome thank you so much for your time thank you take care bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com