Supercoach - Michael Neill [63]
Now, one of the first questions I ask my own clients is: “How many days forward could you go without earning any money before you would be out on the street?” The answer is generally measured in months or years, not days. (Actually, the most common answer is: “I would never be out on the street, because my family/friends/ community would make sure I always had a place to stay until I got back on my feet.”)
One client who had been arguing for his “need” for money sheepishly admitted that he could go ten years without working before running out of money. Based on this, we created an experiment. For the next three years, he would proceed in business from the assumption that he didn’t need the money. All of his choices over that time period were to be made based on inspiration and true heartfelt desire. In other words, he was going to begin to do what he wanted to do, not what he thought he “should” do or “needed” to do. (We figured that would still give him seven years to go back to doing things out of desperation before he ran out of money!)
Although he struggled with it for several months, before the first year was out he had made more than ten times as much money as he had the year before and was doing work that he really loved and wanted to do.
So how is it that by letting go of neediness he was able to create so much more wealth in his life? And more important, why would someone who clearly didn’t need the money continue to act for all the world as if he did?
Let’s take a look at each of these questions in turn.
1. Why Do You Make More Money
When You Stop Needing It?
As we’ve already discussed, there are essentially three motivations for anything and everything we do: desperation, rationalization, and inspiration. In linguistic terms, these usually are expressed in terms of:
• “I’m doing it because I have to.” (desperation)
• “I’m doing it because I should.” (rationalization)
• “I’m doing it because I want to.” (inspiration)
When you act out of a sense of desperation (that is, neediness), you have to settle for whatever is on offer. There’s generally a sense of urgency that shifts the balance in any negotiation in the other person’s favor. What’s more, you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin that you put your worst foot forward, trying too hard to please or shifting to the other side and putting on a front of anger or bravado to cover up your fear.
However, when you act as though you don’t need the money (because almost invariably, no matter what your fear has been telling you, you don’t), you move forward with a sense of ease and well-being. It’s easy to stick to your bottom line because you always have an alternative—getting on with your wonderful life and offering your creativity and skills at difference making and value creation to any of the hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of people who would benefit from them.
You enter negotiations without fear, because whether or not you reach agreement, you know at an absolutely fundamental level that your well-being is not dependent on making a deal. And when you’re okay with the other person saying “no,” you can ask for anything you want.
2. “If I Don’t Need the Money,
Why Do I Feel So Needy?”
When it comes to money, nearly all of us have learned to protect and motivate ourselves by creating feelings of worry, fear, and even desperation. “If I can just stay scared enough,” this internal logic tells us, “I’ll be safe and I’ll keep moving forward.” The problem with this point of view is that fear is one of the least effective states to move forward in—it impairs your reasoning, limits your vision, destroys your health, and gives off a horrible stench that puts people off doing business with you: the sickly smell of desperation.
(Think about it for a moment—who would you rather have working with you on a project? Someone who’s inspired to make things happen or someone