Creative development coach Lorraine Blackley explores the nature of money and recommends ways to increase money flow in your life by understanding what money is.

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Having worked in the creative sector supporting artists, musicians and all variety of creative and enterprising individuals to develop sustainability and livelihood doing what they love, I notice there is a resoundingly central issue that crops up.  Money and the relationship one has to it.  This article explores the nature of money and how to increase money flow in your life by understanding what money is.

The Nature of Money

Money is a form of exchange, a currency.  It is energy.  Energy being defined as, what it takes to get the job done.

Commonly understood forms of energy are fuel, electricity, nuclear power, rivers and thermal activity.  Less commonly considered forms of energy, freely available to us all, are:  time, creativity, health, inspiration, enthusiasm, ideas, generosity, love and sunshine.  These are all energies and/or currencies.  Other forms of currency are green dollars, social good and carbon credits.  Even our thoughts have energy, do we think we can or do we think we can’t.

The nature of energy is that it can do what it does when it is allowed to flow.  An electric light shines when the switch is turned on.  For a car engine to run a continual flow of fuel is required.  Plants grow when the sun shines.  Listening to someone share their ideas, will spark ideas in you.  We do more when we feel the love of others around us.  We do more when we are healthy.  More happens when a group or a collective is enthusiastic and inspired.  All forms of currency become more when they flow.  This is the nature of energy.

Money is actually a neutral form of exchange along with all the other forms of currency mentioned above.  And yet in our society there are all sorts of responses to money.  “Money is the root of all evil”, “Easy come easy go”, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “He’s a money magnet” and “Money doesn’t buy you happiness”.  Money has also become this all important thing.  We are conditioned into being afraid of what will happen if we don’t have it.

It is us who put all the associations onto it.  Money is possibly the single one thing in our western society that has the greatest amount of emotionality loaded onto it.  It is said that it is either sex or money that brings most marriages to an end.   How has money become this all important emotionally loaded phenomena?

Beliefs and Conditioning

It is our beliefs and conditioning about money that determines the emotional relationship we have to it. 

It also these same beliefs and conditioning that determines how much flow occurs around money in our lives.  Let’s look at how our beliefs and conditioning come into being and how that affects our money flow.

We form our fundamental beliefs about life from the experience we have as young children.  For example if you grew up in a family where there was not enough money and your parents were always worrying about it.  You would form the belief that money was scarce.  The unspoken conditioning in this instance is that you have to worry if you haven’t got any.

On top of that there is all the wonderful societal conditioning that comes through our education, the media and everyone and everything we come into contact with.  A general theme that runs through the conditioning in our western culture is, “those that have money fare well in life and those that haven’t don’t”. 

I am speaking very generally and acknowledge that although there are common themes we all share, beliefs and conditioning will show up in personal and varied ways with each individual.

The point about beliefs and conditioning is that 95 per cent of them are operating below the surface of your conscious awareness.  That is according to Bruce Lipton in his book, “The Biology of Belief”.  This means it is the 95 per cent beyond your conscious awareness that is running the money show in your life. 

Four steps you can take to get more money flow in your life

1. Get aware of the beliefs and conditioning that are creating your money reality.  Bring some of the 95 per cent into your conscious awareness. Doing the exercises found in this section can assist you with this. 

The first exercise takes you through some questions that, by answering, will bring some of the conditioning and beliefs that you hold around money into your awareness.  Becoming more aware of how you really are in relation to money is all that is required.  Awareness without even a demand to change will be transformative in itself. 

The second exercise asks you to notice your daily and weekly spending at a micro level.  Doing the exercise will have you switch on and notice what is really happening with your money.  It is amazing what sorts of things go on when we are not paying attention.  When you begin to notice what is really going on you can make choices to support what you really want.  You can take responsibility rather than letting what you don’t prefer (ie money problems) to keep happening.   

2. Create Flow.  This can seem challenging when you have absolutely no money.  There is nothing to flow.  I know that place.  Now the beautiful thing about this predicament is that to flow any form of energy or currency in your life will add to the flow of all the other forms. 

So start flowing what you can.  For example: Plant a garden.  Give all your old clothes to the city mission.  Look for some way to help a neighbour or friend.  Put $5 in a random letter box.  Make a sale offer on your products or services for the rest of the month.  Tell people what you are doing and where you want to go with it.  Start a savings account and begin putting all your loose change into it.  Whenever I increase my health and fitness, whenever I get more inspired and motivated – my business starts to flow without any direct input on a business level.  The only way to prove there is a connection and that this approach works is to create a whole lot more flow in many areas of your life and see what happens to your enterprise projects.

3. Develop your relationship with money.  Managing money is a left brain activity which can be challenging for right brain creative’s.  This does not mean you can’t do it. 

You forge new neural pathways in the brain by doing the activity that at first is hard.  As the neural pathways develop the task gets easier.  There is a bridge of nerve fibres that connect the left and right hemisphere of the brain called the corpus callosum.  The more you move from right brain (creative) activity to left brain (logical) activity the stronger the bridge becomes.  The stronger the bridge, the easier it is to switch from one side of the brain to the other.  There is nothing more empowering than mastering a skill area that is challenging at first.

Most creative’s are called to self manage their careers even if being employed by others is part of the mix.  Mastering fundamental money management skills is a lot easier than the continual tension caused by not mastering money management basics for the 40 or 50 years of your working life.

4. Increase your income streams.  What works well in the creative sector is to get a number of income streams going.  No one stream might sustain you but collectively they will. 

For example you might have a few private guitar students, as well as a small teaching role at the music polytech.   These two streams might be supplemented by loading some sound tracks you have composed into an internet sound library for global sales.  On top of these income streams you might manage to pick up a job to compose the sound track for a film or advertisement from time to time. Altogether they sustain you. 

* * * The Next Step * * *

You are ultimately responsible for creating flow in your life, albeit money flow or any other form of energy flow.  No one else will do it for you.  Start with exploring the relationship you have to money by doing the exercises, reading the material and following the links in this section.  Then get into some basic money management tools which you can find on www.sorted.co.nz.

If it is hard or if it brings up unpleasant feelings, simply allow these to be and keep going.  You are simply moving beyond the restraints of your conditioning into a place of greater command.