Getting To Know Real Wealth
Wealth | Economy | Money | Debt | Prosperity | Freedom | Choice - A Personal Journey
I’ve always hated talking about money, the economy and the politics around it. I would go out of my way to not know anything about it and I rarely looked at my personal finances.
When the lockdowns in 2020 happened, my neighbourhood was hit hard, like most other neighbourhoods. I don’t watch the news, so my world is definitely more informed by physical world around me. Personally, I still had my job and my apartment, so I was fine, but so many were not. I remember feeling afraid and panicked, even though ‘I was fine’. But the truth is, we are all connected, so of course I wasn’t fine… no one was.
I decided I was done letting my resistance and fears around money control relationship with wealth. So I dedicated the year 2020 to learning, with a focus on self-empowerment with finances and creating the vibration of wealth for me and my community.
Like any good spiritual hippie, I lit the appropriate coloured candles, burned some incense and created my list of intentions with, what would end up being an intense 13-month self-study with external help and guidance.
There were many points of liberation and learning, but there were far more fears, judgements, patterns from family, attachments to the poverty mind-set, and deep mistrust of money, wealth, economy and the systems of our world.
It’s that pain of disillusionment, where you enter a dark room and someone turns on a very bright light. It hurts your brain!
Debt & Prosperity
Happily, one of the first things that came my way was a book called the Fourth Turning. It starts with an explanation that, like everything else, the commodity we understand to be currency, has cycles and seasons – it rises and falls – like the rain, like forests, like the moon and really everything in our universe.
The goal of a healthy economy is not to force one superior thing to all nations of the world and to never change. A healthy economy is one that enables a fair exchange of goods and services in a way that celebrates opportunity, trade, overflow and joy.
To my hippie soul, this was early encouragement. Back then, I felt quite stupid around money as I knew I didn’t understand so much; but I did understand cycles and how to ride them.
I had never even considered that fiat currency (dollars, euros, yen) were commodities, like rice, gas or cotton. We collectively agree that our paper money holds a certain value. In the 1600s, when paper money started coming into fashion, they were actually ‘bills of credit’, verified and signed by a monarch or a large bank of the time. It was a great and innovative idea back then!
I explored themes around the American Dream through the 50s-70s in the US - single income households that slowly gave way to double income, along with a change in family values and dynamics.
It’s quite an intimate learning actually. You don’t think it is at first, but it turns out that our personal and collective values both inform and are informed by economic changes - they are interdependent.
Certainly, there is good and bad, blunders and brilliance, knowing that what works for some, did not work for others – and through all of it, I was guided to leave my judgements and blame aside. Because that often hinders true learning.
Then came the learning about debt - debt of people and their nations. This seemed scarier. It was 2020 after all, and in Canada where I live, a massive over-printing of currency had started and government assistance was flowing into the bank accounts of half the population.
This was in all ways opposite to how I lived. It was common for me to sacrifice eating out for a few months, if I wanted to travel abroad. Or make coffee at home for a a few months if I wanted to take take a course.
In a naïve way, I never understood why people go into debt for things that are beyond survival needs (medical situation, job loss etc).
I could also never pinpoint why I thought and felt this way, as it was very different from my family and all my peers.
Eventually got my answers – bit by bit.
I learned that you can actually use debt as a tool to help you build your wealth legacy and work your way into prosperity. I suppose this is what took place in those post-WW2 years. I vaguely recall a statistic that showed that for every $1 of debt, about $1.35 was generated in economic growth. Which is great and it explains the massive boom in the US in those years!
But we live in a universe where the only constant currency is change.
So, of course this lovely boom wouldn’t last eternally. Nor, should we have expected it to do so, but we did. Not only that, anyone who talked about the natural lull that comes after a boom, was often discredited.
It is as insane as ignoring dusk as a time of day, just because we were having a great time under the summer sun. We then, didn’t use the time to plan and store up what we needed to for the night. We also became terrified of the night, not understanding that it was just a different time and would have given way to the day once again.
Debt, as a tool to a nation’s or a person’s wealth, like anything else is great when it is used intentionally, mindfully and certainly not all the time. We have to know when to let things go - each and every one of us.
In very simplistic terms, perhaps this is what went wrong. We kept at it. Unwilling to personally or collectively engage in a little ‘let go and give a little’. We couldn’t enjoy the boom and then allow for the natural currency cycles to flow down and then up again. We didn’t have the emotional or social strength to surf the waves of these cycles, like one would going into a long cold Winter, knowing that warm Spring was coming soon.
The entities that control monetary and fiscal policy, the mints and governments at large have a massive role in this as well. Certainly, the politics of illusion were and continue to be at play, more than any of us like to think. However, my learning (and intention) was focused on my own self-empowerment. This doesn’t happen by placing blame elsewhere.
Ask yourself:
When your country, your family, or half your neighbourhood are in debt or amidst financial struggle, do you truthfully feel wealthy and abundant? Free? Sovereign? Even if you’re personally doing okay?
Have you looked at the current debt your nation is in today, and compared it to the economic growth you see around you? Does it feel like the outcomes of good and healthy decisions?
When someone tells you, inflation is here to stay, how much do you bury the helplessness, the denial or fear? How deep does that go?
When you heard about Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), are you certain that you align, or even know the current policies of your country’s Central Bank?
Economy, currency and money are not static, and by their nature, they require flow and exchange to generate value - that is their whole point. But we got stuck. We got tethered to one type of system, that may have served us well in the past, but does not any longer.
The world changed, and that required different people in different countries to ask questions that invoked a little discomfort, but were important truths, so that citizens could determine the path forward for their nations.
But this doesn’t align to political agendas.
As a result, most of the collective world is quite tethered to debt, so it’s hard for the systems of old who control our money to easily move over. And I don’t expect them to.
But, I can move over.
And, so can you.
The Wealthy Consumer Has Choice
The expectation that a giant system will change to me is folly. True change comes from each and every one of us - it’s grassroots. That’s where the human lives.
One of the things I love these days, that we didn’t have before, is the realized power of the consumer. And how that power is harnessed - in both virtual & physical worlds.
We often associate money to power; so then, your money, is also one (of many) expressions of power. As such, where and how you spend it, and how you receive it, tells you where the seat of your power truly is.
“We have power and choice” is not something I ever felt before. It’s a cute meme, but, it is also proudly true in many ways.
There is SO much that we can have choice in that we don’t even realize!
Here are a few things that happened in my neighbourhood during the lockdown years:
Since most people weren’t going to offices, lots of us hung out in parks and cafe patios and got to know each other.
Many people left their jobs and urban-life to live in farming communities.
Others left their jobs because they did not agree with policies and ending up pursing their dreams.
Food drop-off, language and skill-share; neighbourhood support of dog and child care took-off.
Lots of us choose to minimize Amazon purchases and went to our local stores
Farms outside the city expanded their produce delivery.
Little food producing gardens popped up everywhere.
There was a lot more eating at home, learning to cook, and simply making better food choices.
Almost every independent gym and yoga studio converted to online classes within the first month, so at home working out happened.
Tons of people choose to pool resources, move in with family and friends to provide and receive support.
Piles of donations for the un-homed population living in parks, especially as winter came in, including heat generation pods and outhouses.
Personally, I moved my accounts and investments out of the large Canadian bank system; changed credit card companies and how I banked.
Of course people still struggled, but mostly I saw how folks rose to connect and help in the ways they could.
Truly, one of the most beautiful things I learned about wealth through my learning journey was how wealthy many of us already are. Wealth isn’t just money, it is also access and ability, it is community and family-bringing-you-soup when you need it, it is opportunity and support, it is also shelter and energy sources and your own personal ability to rise again and again to meet challenges gracefully and creatively.
I’m not an economist. I don’t know all the names of schools of thought and theories. But I do know an end-cycle when I see one.
The time of prosperity through debt has gone. There may be a time for it again, but it isn’t now.
Now, prosperity comes from learning, synthesizing and choosing what is next for you and your family – understanding your values, you present and future needs, your risk level, your motivation and what opportunities float around that you haven’t yet recognized.
This requires tremendous strength to overcome our fears and the opinions of others, especially those who helped create this mess we currently find ourselves in.
It isn’t about being stubborn either, because loving choices often come from and free open heart, versus a fearful closed-up one.
My invitation to you is look at your relationship with money – look closely and deeply.
Change is here. You know it and I know it. We all feel it.
The solution will not be born in a boardroom somewhere.
It will be born in your heart and in your knowing, around your dinner table, and it will inspire you to dig deeper and find creative ways to stabilize yourself for the waves of change that are upon us.
Know that you are not alone, and help in many forms exists.
Note: If you are interested in more learning and resources that helped me, please comment and I will share them. These are a few videos I did on aspects of wealth as I was walking through them.
- On Asking the Right Questions (CBDCs)