Did you know, in real life, most people would believe the Good Samaritan in the Bible was EVIL? When I work with people, their beliefs about money end up stopping their progress MORE than the strategies they are using.
What beliefs are stopping YOU from making more money, and enjoying more time with your loved ones, or feeling free? Host and Cash Flow Expert, Chris Miles, shares 5 common, subtle beliefs about money that keep people trapped day in and day out. Tune in now!
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Chris Miles Bio
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, and Entrepreneur on Fire, and has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Lies We Believe About Money
I love that you’re here with us and am excited to be able to share one more great negative stuff, which has multiple aspects to it. I’m excited to share some principles with you that will be essential for your success, both in business, money and everywhere in between. A reminder, if you’ve got questions or great ideas for questions that we could address on this show, please let me know.
Send me an email to Chris@MoneyRipples.com. If you are saying, “I would love to know how I can better fix my situation. I’m working hard but it feels like I’m not getting anywhere. I feel like I’m working and making more money but it’s not coming home.” If that’s the case, let me know. If you ever feel like you want to get your money to work for you because you work for your money, reach out to me. Let’s chat.
The Widow And The Good Samaritan
Let’s talk about the lies around money. I shared a quote on Facebook that was from Margaret Thatcher and I love her. She’s got some great stuff and is a powerful woman in Britain. She came later in life. She got rid of excuses about age, gender and everything else. She was a powerful one that could stand toe to toe with any male member of parliament in the UK. I also love that she teaches a lot of great economic principles too.
One of which she said and this is a little tidbit of a quote for her, “No one would remember the good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.” If you remember in the Bible the good Samaritan, there is a man that was on the way in between cities. He got beat up, robbed, everything else and left for dead. A few people of his belief or even of his nationality pass him by.
As they passed by, they made excuses why they couldn’t help him. When someone who is considered almost a second-class citizen to him, someone who would be considered almost like an enemy and who had been hated by him came along and decided to take him in. Not only did he take him and help bind up his wounds but he took them and even paid for him to stay at an end to recover.
In a sense, you could say someone who had been discriminated against and hated decided to turn that around and show love for someone who could be considered his enemy. Not only did save his life but also took care of them and had money. Margaret Thatcher’s point was, “The good Samaritan, no matter what intentions they had, still had money to help this guy out.” It was interesting because one of my friends said and I don’t know if I agree with this, “The widow had only a single mite so he brought the widow’s mite,” which is where Jesus used an example where the widow paid her one mite. That was greater than the rich man who had paid several. I said, “That’s a great point but there are different lessons here.”
Money is not everything, but having more money is not a bad thing either. Click To TweetFor the widow, it was about what it did and what the power did for her. It was about what she was able to give her commitment to God. It was a greater gift than someone who had extra land around that gave it. It was a greater growth for her when that came to be. However, for the good Samaritan, it was a very different thing because this is the guy that should not have helped someone who is considered his enemy, someone who looked down upon him but he’s still out of love and was able to help. He had money so he was able to help more. There were different lessons there.
It’s about loving your enemies but it’s also about even the fact that there is power and money. I want to clarify that because there are a few lies that are here and a lot of lies that keep coming up. Especially if you’re dealing in business, trying to create more money, be of more value and prosper, you cannot prosper very well if you keep buying into lies that people teach about money. There are a lot of lies. Some are subtle. Some are not so subtle but I want to talk about five lies in particular that I thought would be great to share.
Loving Money Is Evil
Number one, “Loving money is evil.” Especially those that referenced the Bible, they’ll say, “We get it. It’s been said enough times that money is not the root of all evil. It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil.” Even the love of money in a certain context where that’s evil is not true either. It depends on what kind of love you showing for it. I believe the context in the Bible where it says, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” is that when money becomes your God. When money is something that is all your aim and your life becomes about, then that’s the root of all evil.
There are a lot of people that say, “I get it. The love of money is the root of all evil,” but they’d be going this either/or mentality. In scarcity, you tend to look at things as either/or. “Either it’s this or this. It’s not both or in between.” When we get into that place, we start to say, “It’s a love of money that is the root of all evil. Therefore, that’s why I don’t have much of it. I don’t want to love it too much.” Here’s the thing. How do you know you love money too much? It is when you can’t stop thinking about it.
Do you realize it’s not just rich people that love money? There are a lot of rich people that don’t love money. There are a lot of poor people that love money, even more than rich people. What do you obsess your mind over? What are you constantly thinking about? If you’re always thinking about money, how to make more of it or the bondage that you’re in because you don’t have enough, you love money from the context we’re talking about here.
There is a way to love money in a good way where it doesn’t become your God, where you realize that that money is the root of all that’s good. I love the speech that’s given in the book Atlas Shrugged. I’m not a huge fan of everything taught in that book. I believe there’s some of the agenda that Ayn Rand teaches but there’s a good speech in there by the character Francisco d’Anconia where he talks about what is that love of money. He’s a rich guy. Even rich people are saying, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
They’re trying to discredit the purpose of money and almost in a way to make themselves feel better about themselves for having lots of it. They try to almost go overboard. I’ve seen wealthy people do this when they try to say, “I don’t love money. Let me give it to here or there everywhere.” Rich people say they should give more of their money. A lot of rich people are giving tons of their money away and still never going to be enough. They could give away it all and still think they’re able because they still make more money. They’re going to hate it. The critics out there, the people that do not understand money and believe that it’s a very evil or good world when it comes to money, those that have it are evil and those that don’t aren’t will never be happy.
Stop trying to impress those people for one. A loved one, the speech, when he starts to address that, he says, “If the love of money is the root of all evil, then what’s the root of money?” He starts to talk about what’s the root of money. If you’ve read any of these episodes, a lot of what I’ve talked about is that the root of money is value. Money is just an exchange of value. What kind of value do you offer that people would be willing to exchange money with you for that value?
That’s why I always say, “Go and create more value. How can you add more value to people’s lives? How can you become valuable to others? What can you do for them so that they will want to give you money in exchange to have it because they’d rather have whatever it is you offer than have these pieces of paper or coins in their pocket?” That’s why people exchange money. They want money to be used for something that betters our lives. What do you do? What can you offer that will better people’s lives? That is the root of money.
When you look at that, the root of money is service, value, solving problems for people and giving them things that they want or need. What you’ll find out is that the root of money is all that’s good. When they say, “The root of money is good,” that means good as evil. Therefore there is no such thing. If that’s evil, then what’s good? If doing, serving and creating value for people is evil, then what is it? You can argue all you want that some rich people are mean and evil but it’s not the case.
Money can be used as good. Loving money can be good because that means you love the value you provide for other people and the service that you render for other people. Money is just the receipt of that service. The money is the piece of paper that comes in exchange to say, “Thank you.” If you looked at money as being a thank you, instead of something as being bad, you would say, “I want as many thanks as possible and have evidence that I am serving people as much as possible.”
Granted, not all service gets paid for in your life. Most of the services that I do, I don’t get paid for. That’s okay. I don’t get paid for my kids in money, dollars and cents but I get paid in so many other ways that enrich my life. To have money is not bad. Money is not everything and we know that. Having more money is not a bad thing either. “Loving money is evil.” I don’t believe that’s true. I believe that loving money is good in the right context if you realize that it’s loving service and loving solving problems for people. If you only love money and your whole aim is for money to use people to get more money, that is the wrong way to go. That is evil.
Working smart doesn't necessarily mean that people value it. If it doesn’t help anybody, then it doesn't matter. Click To TweetMoney Is Hard To Understand And It’s Hard To Get
Number two, “Money is hard to understand and hard to get.” This has been taught by many people and it is mostly by the people that are giving you the education that wants you to believe it’s hard to understand and hard to get. For example, as a financial advisor, our whole thing was to tell people, “You’re just not good with money. Turn over to us. We’ll handle it for you. We’ll make sure that you have money somewhere down the road.” It won’t be enough but you’ll have something.
Money is not hard to understand, get or attain. To attain more, it’s simply how you would go about adding more service, value and solving problems. If you focus more on becoming useful rather than just trying to get a paycheck, you’ll find out that money is not hard to get. I remember that turnaround for me when all of a sudden, I realized that this was the true source of money. That’s how money is created and earned. All of a sudden, it was easy to attain it. The money came in much more easily than when I was trying to work so hard to get it.
I used to think that you had to work so hard and for many hours. If he didn’t have enough money, you would work more hours. Working hard doesn’t do it. Even if you just try to work smart, working smart doesn’t necessarily mean that people value it. If you say, “I have this thing. I even found this new system or a new way of making money.” “Does it help anybody?” “No.” It doesn’t matter. It’s useless.
In 2015, I spent a lot of time trying to work very smartly. I ended up working hard and smart. I was doing a lot where I spoke 184 times if you include about 50 shows I did here on this show. There are about another 130 times or so that I was speaking live. I was on other people’s interviews, teaching other people’s events or my events, you name it. I was out speaking. For 184 times, I was presenting something.
What’s amazing to me is that I did that stuff. That’s working smarter. I was getting PR, publicity and everything else and having other people promote me especially but that didn’t necessarily mean that for the effort, I was making more money. I still made money doing it. That’s even despite a life transition and everything else. It was a pretty tough year for me from a personal level. Even doing all of that didn’t necessarily equate to a lot more money. I’m making more money working less because it’s about working smarter. It’s not about working hard.
I went back to the basic principles of, “How do I add value to the right people? Whom am I serving? How am I best serving them? How can I keep serving them?” What’s amazing is I’ve spoken less. I’ve turned down speaking engagements. I’m trying to keep up on this show. I keep having good ideas for the show. Let me sit down and save that for you for another time. I’ll dwell on it. With this topic here, I wanted to think about it for a while before I teach and give it to you. I’ve been working way fewer hours and making more money with overall profit in my business in working less.
The key is that it’s not about working harder. Not even just about working smarter but it’s about working right. If you understand the right principles, the strategies are important but they’re not everything. This is why I’m teaching the principles because I could teach you all the strategies in the world. You’ll botch it up by doing the wrong things. How do we get you to do the right principles? Understand the right principles going back to that and then the right strategies can easily follow when you have an understanding.
Not just a knowledge of the principles but a real understanding where it becomes a part of you, then it becomes so much easier. You attract so much more in your life when you do that. Money is not hard to understand and get. You can go toe-to-toe with any financial advisor by bringing out a few principles that will dumbfound the best financial advisors. I’ve done it.
I remember going toe-to-toe with one of the top financial advisors for dentists. I’ve worked with a lot of chiropractors and dentists, as well as some other entrepreneurs but especially in those two fields. I remember going toe-to-toe with him and his legal counsel with that company because my client said, “I’ve put hundreds of thousands of these guys. I want to know if they’re doing the right thing.” They kept trying to come to me like, “Why don’t you teach them to invest?”
I said, “I’m teaching them principles first and foremost. I want them investing in their businesses because we’ll make more money there than they will in your crappy funds.” They’re like, “What about other things?” I’m like, “If they’re going to be in anything, they probably wouldn’t want to be anything more than bond funds.” What’s funny is one of the guys said, “I’m in a bunch of bond funds myself but I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.”
I pointed that out to the dentist afterward. I said, “You realize this guy who is supposed to be advising you said he doesn’t recommend people going bonds but that’s what he’s investing in. He’s not even being true and congruent to himself. He’s living in fear. Do you want somebody who is living in fear to give you advice? Do you want someone who does even do what they talk about doing, giving you advice like that?” That’s crazy. We bring up certain principles.
I’m like, “Does high risk create high returns?” No, that doesn’t make sense at all. What’s the real return? How’s that going to help them become free? It won’t. Why not put their money in other better places? It doesn’t always have to be in their business either or mutual funds. There are other options. The power is that when you understand principles, you can go toe-to-toe with anybody. That’s what’s amazing. Money is not hard to understand or get.
Money is a magnifier of the soul. It makes you more of who you already are. If somebody is already evil, money makes it worse. Click To TweetSpending Money Is Bad
Number three, “Spending money is bad, especially it comes to debt.” It’s amazing when people say that spending money is a horrible thing. They feel bad about spending money. Whether we’re spenders or savers, we’ve all been taught that to be a saver is the wise thing to do. What’s interesting is that people will say, “I don’t want to spend money.” How has money supposed to bless lives if you don’t spend it? Some people say, “I’ll give it away.” Giving away doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing any good. You can give away to certain charities but they don’t know how to manage their money. You’re just throwing money away. You might as well spend it somewhere else with corporations who will go and employ more people.
That’s where people say, “Corporations are evil. Shame on Walmart.” “Walmart raises their wages.” “Still shame on Walmart.” I love seeing those signs out there because Walmart is creating more jobs. They’re hiring people that I’ve seen. I’m like, “Those people probably wouldn’t get hired at a lot of places but they work there, have a huge smile on their face and create good value.” Walmart’s not always known for having great customer service anymore like they used to but they’ve helped and blessed a lot of lives. They’ve saved and made people lots of money that’s been able to work there even if it’s been on a certain wage. They still are able to do it.
They spend and reinvest. The richest people get this. They know how to reinvest their money to grow and expand their stewardship. When they do that, everybody has more money but most people will say, “Hoard your money. Keep it.” It’s like The Great Depression, “Don’t spend any money,” then nobody makes any money. Everybody goes broke. Everybody becomes impoverished when you go into that scarcity of hoarding money and thinking that spending is evil. Spending money is good if you do it wisely. It’s okay to sit on that money. That’s going to be another episode I’m going to talk about later. Spending money is bad, especially debt but not necessarily. We’ve already had other episodes on debt. I’m not going to go into that.
Money Is Power
Number four, “Money is power.” Can money influence? Yes, but it’s not the money. Money is a magnifier of the soul. It only makes you more of who you already are. If somebody is evil already, money makes it worse. If somebody is good, it allows them to express it better. It allows you to express more of who you already are. Money doesn’t make you a better leader. It doesn’t make people follow you. Leadership, the ability to influence, loyalty and things like that make people want to follow you. Money doesn’t do that.
You can try to buy people but eventually, this means that somebody who has bigger purse strings will buy them out. You don’t buy anything. It’s all counterfeit. It’s not real. To say, “Money is power,” is not true but can money create an amplification? Yes, it can amplify your results and allow you to do better good like what Margaret Thatcher said about the good Samaritan. He still had money. It was able to be used in a good way. The more prosperous you are, the freer you become, the more time freedom you have and the more ability you have to serve in a much more powerful way.
Don’t use this as an excuse because other people will say, “I don’t have money so I can’t do any good in the world.” That’s false. I’ve been flat-broken $1 million in debt and still spend a lot of time serving people because I knew somehow I would reciprocate and come back around to where I dug myself out of that hole. Service is at the heart of prosperity.
You need to focus still on doing that regardless so that when you do get more money, it amplifies that because if you’re making excuses when you don’t have money, you will make excuses when you do have money. I’ve seen people do it over and over. They get more money and it makes them more scared. All the scarcity you feel, the fears that you feel with more money you just have more of it.
It doesn’t solve crap for you other than it allows you to do more of who you already are or what you’ve already done. Money is not power but it can be influential and amplification. It does not by real power. Power is what you can do in blessing people’s lives and how you can get other people to rally around you to support you in that cause. That influence is true power.
Money Is Obtained Through Greed, Deceit And Thievery
Number five, “Money is obtained through greed, deceit and thievery.” There are people out there who are deceitful, greedy and steal but that does not mean that that’s the way to true wealth. If you want more money, you need to be focused on how you can go and serve people, create value, add value and be useful. Many people will think, “They were greedy.” There are greedy people with a lot of money. There’s no doubt. Money magnifies who you already are.
If you were greedy before, you’ll be more greedy with more money. That doesn’t do much good. You can’t believe in self-interest, not just selfishness, where if you understand that through people, helping people, serving people and adding value to their lives, you do that when you become more valuable to people. That’s in your self-interest to have more money. If you’re a greedy person, you would still do well to understand that you need to help others get what they want so you can get more of that, which feeds the greed. Some of the most humble and giving people I’ve met have been very wealthy people. You would never guess that there are some of the nicest people.
You start meeting wealthy people, not all but some are greedy, liars and do steal in some way, shape or form. When you see a free society and people that are taught good morals, you’ll find that there are a lot of great people to have a lot of money, have amazing hearts and feel like they can’t even give enough sometimes. There are amazing examples of people that are good and you want those good people to have money. I’m teaching you this because I want you to also be good. I want you to be the kind of person with more money who becomes a huge blessing to other people, not someone who’s going to take lie, cheat or steal.
There are those people out there. We don’t want that. We want people with good people with money. I want you to understand these true principles. Stop believing the lie that money corrupts people because that’s not true. Money doesn’t corrupt anybody. It makes you more of who you already are. Become the kind of person that’s good with money and that won’t just give it away and throw it away but says, “How can I use this money in a way that will help others? How can I use my talents and gifts in a much bigger way with more money? How can I express it more? How can I share more of what I have and what I have offered with the world?”
That is how you end up making a positive impact on the world. Stop believing these lies. Stop using that as an excuse to not have more money subconsciously. Not just know it but understand it to your soul that money is good when it’s in the right hands. You can be that kind of person to be a good steward of that money to bless lives and help other people. Everybody, make a great and prosperous week. We’ll talk to you later.
Important Links
- Chris@MoneyRipples.com
- Facebook – Chris Miles
- Atlas Shrugged