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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 2 years ago
Over 20 years ago, I was walking down Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York, when the title of a new book popped into my head – How to Make One Hell of a Profit and Still Get to Heaven.
That title resonated with me because I had consistently seen so many individuals struggle with money as a result of their unresolved moral, psychological and spiritual or religious issues around money.
Some of those idealisms were based on the idea that “money is the root of all evil” or that “it is more blessed to give than receive” or similar types of thinking injected from outer authorities. As a result, whenever these individuals ended up with money, they tended to get rid of it by rescuing others or consumerism.
So, I wrote the book to try to dissolve that concern and go some way towards addressing and integrating spirituality and financial materiality.
I now want to touch on some of the points I raised in the book in this blog.
( NOTE: If you’d love to access the book you can either do so on the Demartini Website or on Amazon)
Click below for the video of this article. ↓
The compatibility of spirituality and finance
The term “spirituality” has different meanings to different individuals.
It has been considered by some individuals as being in an inspired, centered, poised, present, purposeful and grateful state.
Ultimately, mastery of financial materiality and spirituality are inseparable. They are the same state. As one ancient philosopher stated: Spirit without matter is expressionless, and matter without spirit is motionless.
Spirituality is an expression of what inspires you as an individual according to your highest values.
The reason why you’re inspired while taking actions that help you fulfill your highest values is because where and when you take these actions you are most inspired to do so with the fairest exchange and you’re most likely to be balanced, objective and reasonable. As a result, that’s when you are likely to end up with the most sustainable fair exchange with others.
The moment you have fair exchange, there’s no limit on how many other individuals you can serve. Therefore, there’s also no limit on the money you can generate in your life.
If you get creative and care about humanity, and serve more people, you have the opportunity to receive more money from delivering inspiring services to others in life.
The Mindset of Financial Abundance
Some individuals have the mindset that is receptive to having financial abundance in their life.
Each of us can be integrated into one whole being or fragmented into many becoming personas. These fractured personas arise when we are polarized with imbalanced perceptions and driven from our more primitive subcortical region of our brain. And then we have our one, true authentic integrated being which is when we’re balanced in our perceptions and operating from our higher more advanced prefrontal cortex.
I’m sure you can recall moments when you’ve EXAGGERATED yourself, where you’ve inflated and puffed yourself up with pride and self-righteousness. When you do, you tend to project your values onto other individuals as you expect them to live in your values.
Think of a relationship where you used the words: you ‘should’, ‘ought to’, ‘supposed to’, ‘got to’, ‘have to’, ‘must’, or ‘need’ to. This imperative language indicates that you likely projected your values and expectations onto other individuals and expected them to live according to what you expect.
Here’s why.
When you resent an individual, and you put them down and see them beneath you, you tend to exaggerate yourself. That wakes up your narcissistic side where you believe you’re more important than the person you’re talking to.
As such, you’ll tend to get a little arrogant and talk down to them.
You’re also likely unconsciously think that they deserve to give up what they want for what you want. You may even try to get something for nothing, get others to sacrifice for you, and want them to live in your values.
If you act that way with customers, you’re unlikely to make vast income; if you do it to employees, they’re unlikely to want to work for you. As a result, you may need to pay more and more for them to put up with that type of behavior.
This is not sustainable. Eventually, pride comes before a fall, and nature will, at some point, humble you and bring you back down into more of an equitable position.
If you MINIMIZE and deflate yourself, have low self-esteem, an inferiority complex or minimization of self, you’ll tend to go in the other direction where you put others on pedestals, and think you need to sacrifice yourself for them.
I’m sure you can recall a situation when you looked up to or idolized someone and didn’t want to lose them. As such, you probably minimized yourself and ended up sacrificing and giving up what was important to you so you could be with them. This tendency to give something for nothing is a type of altruism.
I’ve said for years that:
- Altruism is a compensation for self-minimizing shame and guilt of the past and a hidden agenda of the future (where you’re hoping for some sort of a social welfare or reward).
- Narcissism is a compensation for a self-aggrandizing pride and self-righteousness of the past, and again, a hidden agenda for the future (which ends up being philanthropy and giving back).
In other words, when you puff yourself up, you tend to look down on people, become more narcissistic and think people owe you.
When you minimize yourself, you tend to look up to people, become more altruistic and think you owe something to them.
However, the moment you’re authentic and no longer exaggerate or minimize yourself to others but instead see yourself as equal to them, you are more likely to create a sustainable fair exchange.
The second you have equanimity within yourself and equity between yourself and others, you will tend to care about what they value as much as you care about what you value. In doing so, you are likely to make sure that you care enough to communicate what you have as an offering - a product, service or idea - in terms of their highest values.
The result is that they are then more likely to buy what you’re selling, which, in turn, will often result in your reaping the financial rewards and making more money.
The cliché that it’s more blessed to give than to receive
The reason why altruistic individuals feel ‘good’ about giving is that when they are giving, they feel less guilt and shame than when they are taking.
On the other hand, when someone is narcissistic, they tend to feel ‘good’ when individuals give to them because they perceive that they deserve it.
So there are two polarities - the self-righteous and self-wrongeous, the build and destroy, the inflated and deflated self - that create a non-sustainable, and unfair exchange. Both these polarized personas are signs and symptoms of living in your ungoverned mind, what some psychologists refer to as systems 1 fast thinking, or being governed by your more primitive, subcortical regions of your brain. And that’s not living with equanimity. That’s not equity. That’s not authenticity. Authenticity, equanimity all emerge when you’re operating from your self-governed executive center otherwise known as systems 2 slow thinking. This is the byproduct of living in fair exchange.
Maintaining fair exchange with others is the key that opens the doorway to sustainable transactions. If you feel short-changed in a business relationship, you tend not to want to do business with them.
If you perceive that you gave more than you expected, you might also not want to do business with them in future.
However, when you have a fair exchange, you are both likely to do business again and again, which makes it sustainable.
It is wise to do something that fulfills your and their individual’s values when it comes to business
In my travels to teach in various countries worldwide, I often ask people to raise their hand if they’ve ever used Microsoft Windows? Every hand in every country I’ve been in goes up because people have had an experience with Microsoft Windows in most countries.
I’m certain that’s one of the key reasons Bill Gates is a billionaire because he created a product that served large numbers of people.
If you go out of your way to do something that serves vast numbers of people, you get extensive opportunities to receive economic rewards.
Economics is essentially a measurement of fair exchange.
The way I look at it, it’s basically a measurement of whether you are doing something meaningful and that fairly serves the collective population’s values.
The value of values in sustainable fair exchange
- The more you live by your highest values, the more authentic you are, and the more likely you will have a sustainable fair exchange.
- The more you live by lower priorities, the more likely you are to end up skewing your perceptions and undermining your fair exchange in the process.
If you have not yet determined your highest values, I would love you to work through my website’s free Demartini Value Determination Process. I am certain it will help you identify your unique set of highest values in your life so you can live by priority and fill your life with what you would love to do and what helps you earn a handsome income in the process.
The value of paying yourself first
I meet thousands of people who live their lives waiting to see if there’s extra money at the end of the month before they choose to save and invest it. And I learned over my lifetime that this is not a wise course of action.
There’s something called entropy in life. Entropy is the tendency to go from order to disorder, and your financial situation follows that law.
- Disorder takes over if you don’t bring order to your finances. As a result, you’re likely to have unexpected bills show up that erode the possibility of saving.
- If you don’t invest money and make it passively work for you, you’re likely to be in a position where you have to actively work throughout your life to make ends meet.
That’s why I love that old saying that says the wealthy always pay themselves first. You’ll keep having more unexpected bills if you pay yourself last and get further behind.
If you pay yourself first, you’ll end up having order instead of disorder taking over.
The same principle applies in terms of time management. If you don’t fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, it fills up with low priority distractions that don’t.
If you don’t put your money into something that goes up in value, it will automatically be attracting situations that make it go down in value.
That’s why people who devalue themselves typically buy things that go down in value, and people who value themselves, usually buy things that go up in value.
If you don’t know what an asset, liability or depreciation is, it’s worth knowing about.
In essence, every time you take money and put it into something that goes up in value, it begins to work for you, and you become its master.
Every time you buy something that goes down in value, you essentially become its slave.
Many individuals who are not engaged, inspired and fulfilled in what they’re doing in their life tend to activate the amygdala portion of their brain, their subcortical regions of their brain or as we’ve said earlier, their system 1 fast thinking areas of their brain.
The amygdala drives them to seek immediate gratification instead of long-term vision, which results in their buying other individual’s overpriced brands to make them feel temporarily ‘better’. They will often pay using a credit card, which separates pain from pleasure – they get the pleasure that comes from immediate gratification and the pain 30 days later when they need to pay the installment.
Banks love to separate that pleasure and pain. The more you separate pleasure and pain, the more addicted you become to getting the momentary pleasure, and the more frustrated you become by the pain 30 days later.
The wise individual doesn’t go and look for immediate gratification. Instead, they build a brand around their own life by serving people.
When they do, people tend to want to buy their brand, which results in their ability to put their hard-earned money into an asset that grows up in value.
In other words, if you buy stock and help companies go and reach more people with more services, capital gains, and dividends, you are likely to have a passive growth of income that rewards you.
But if you keep buying things like cars, shoes, household goods, and clothes, they immediately go down in value unless they are essential and help you grow your business.
You are a slave to money if you buy things that go down in value. You’re a master of money if you purchase something that goes up in value.
Before spending money, it is wise to ask yourself: Is this a priority? Is this important? Is this the thing that’s going to get me ahead? Or is this going to keep me entrapped?
You may be surprised. Most items you buy are likely to be immediate gratifying depreciable that go down in value. As such, you may end up spending half of your life paying off debt.
You don’t have to live that way - it’s a choice.
The wise thing to do is take a portion of whatever you earn and put it into something that goes up in value. And when you manage money wisely, you receive more money to manage.
I’m a firm believer that you deserve to be able to do what you love every day.
Suppose you’re not prioritizing your day, doing what’s most important, learning how to delegate, giving job opportunities to other people, and receiving extra money for taking the risk and rewards. In that case, you’re passing up a gold mine.
There’s an abundance of wealth out there. Take the time to master your life, master your decisions and priorities, and give yourself permission to go out and participate in fair exchange service.
In Conclusion
- Millions of people worldwide dream of building wealth, and having an extraordinary and fortunate life. However, many fear that they can only do so at the expense of others, or they feel inwardly guilty about acquiring it, and their elusive conflict blocks or dissipates their potential fortunes.
- Some people have an internal struggle between their desires to give and receive, and these individuals also hold themselves back from breaking through to new levels of financial freedom.
- There’s no reason why you can’t build a financial fortune in your life and have inspiration in your life at the same time. Spirit and matter are in fact inseparable.
- You deserve to be living abundantly with a prosperous consciousness while serving vast numbers of people. If you get up in the morning and say, “I’d love to make a difference in the world and serve vast numbers of people.” You’ll see something astounding start to happen in your life.
- I believe that the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. If you ask: “How do I get handsomely and beautifully paid to do what I love while being of service to people around the world?” The doors of opportunity will open, I’ve taken thousands of people through this process during my two-day self-mastery seminar titled: The Breakthrough Experience. If you’d love to learn how then join me at this 2-day seminar by clicking HERE to find out the details of the next session in your time zone.
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