Cold, Hard, Cash... Not!

While we jokingly call it “cold, hard cash,” there’s nothing cold about it.

It’s definitely an emotional substance, at least in terms of what it represents for most people. We’ve seen the television commercials showing Publisher’s Clearinghouse awarding million-dollar prizes to unsuspecting winners. They jump for joy. They smile from ear to ear.

While we jokingly call it “cold, hard cash,” there’s nothing cold about it.

Money is definitely an emotional substance, at least in terms of what it represents for most people. We’ve seen the television commercials showing Publisher’s Clearinghouse awarding million-dollar prizes to unsuspecting winners. They jump for joy. They smile from ear to ear.

In 2011, ABC aired a television series called Secret Millionaire, in which millionaires spent a week with those less fortunate and donated thousands of dollars from their own bank accounts to needy individuals and charities. The generous financial gifts were received with hugs, tears, and gratitude for the difference they would make in the lives they would touch.

We remember the joy we felt as children when the tooth fairy left a shiny coin under our pillow. As working adults, most of us have experienced the validation that goes along with getting a pay raise and a promotion. Millions of people play state lotteries, hoping to win big and be able to embark on their dream lives.

Make no mistake; money holds great power over us.

It’s power we’ve chosen to give to it, whether it’s been a conscious choice or a subconscious one.

While money can bring joy, it is also one of the most common causes of friction in relationships.

It’s responsible for divorces and stress. It can make us feel inferior to others with more. Money and material possessions are the key components in the comparison trap so many people fall into.

Our emotional attachment to money is real.

We believe that it's money that makes us happy. As a result we want it. In fact, we usually want more of it. So we spend the majority of our time working, striving, investing in ourselves and our businesses, all in an effort to make more money.

Sometimes we take great risks, as many people did by investing in the real estate market in the mid-2000's. We follow what we see other people doing, hoping to strike it rich so we can sail away into the sunset of financial freedom and live a blissful life. At least that's what we want to believe. And it's very often the picture that's been painted for us.

Money affects how we live our lives and treat others.

Money controls us through attitudes such as “it takes money to make money” and “the rich get richer.” We live by these beliefs and allow them to take away our power and put it squarely in the hands of money.

While it might only be paper and metal, it can be so much more in terms of the impact we allow it to have on our lives. But if we truly want to be happy, we need to realize it is just paper and metal. And while it can make life easier, it certainly can't make us happy, in and of itself.