I’ve been listening to the book “You Are a Badass” by Jen Sincero on Audible. It’s basically a how to get out of your own damn way and embrace your badassery guide.
In the money section of the book, Sincero gets into why it’s really crucial to examine your thoughts and beliefs about money. She suggests that one of the ways you can do this is by writing a letter to money. So I did and I’m sharing it with you because I know I’m not the only one who has a messed up relationship with money.
My Open Letter to Money:
Dear Money,
I don’t even know where to start with you. Do I thank you? Do I apologize? Do I get you a new wallet to luxuriate in?
I think it’s best if I start with the reason that I am writing you and we’ll take it from there.
I’m writing to you because I want to have a better relationship with you and in order to do that I have to examine the relationship we’ve had thus far. Our relationship has not been good and for the most part I have blamed it on you, but I am finally ready to take responsibility–ALL of the responsibility–because only one of us is human here and that means only one of us is in control and that would be me.
My relationship with you has been based on some pretty effed up notions. Instead of seeing you as a tool to help me get what I want and to be of service to others the way I want, I turned you into things that really have nothing to do with you.
I grew up without an abundance of you and that shaped the way I relate to you. I came to the conclusion that you were for others and not me. I became proud of how much I could do and accomplish without you. Think of how much easier it would have been for me to get the education I got with you? Where would the pride in that be? Heaven forbid anything come easy to me, right? And how resourceful must I be to live in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the country, with so little of you at my disposal.
I act like having you would be a burden; whereas not having enough of you and somehow still surviving makes me some kind of better-than-anyone-with-money kind of person.
Oh, and the mixed signals I’ve sent you. My entire adult life I’ve been playing this “I want you, I don’t want you” game. So, you come and then you disappear. I can’t blame you, I don’t stay where I’m not wanted, respected and appreciated either.
The truth is that you have come through for me time and time again. When I have been down to my last dime and needed you so badly, but had no idea how to get you, you’ve shown up and saved me. Saved me from hunger, saved me from homelessness, saved me from crisis to crisis.
How many times do you have to come through for me before I finally see that you are for me as much as you are for anyone else?
Then there are the times I’ve had more of you than the bare minimum needed to survive and I find a way to get rid of you right quick because I’m so scared that I’m going to lose you that I might as well waste you. I know, it makes no sense. None whatsoever.
Perhaps the most awful thing I have done to you is not pay attention to you. I make you and spend you without really knowing how much of you is coming and how much of you is going. Why? Because it scares me to know. It scares me that I might actually be right about you not being for me and if I don’t account for you, then I won’t ever really know just how much or little of you I have. I also won’t have to face why I can’t have more of you or hold on to you.
This relationship has been exhausting to me. I can’t do it anymore. I’m tired of being broke. I’m tired of the stress, I’m tired of the lack, I’m tired of not having you.
From now on, you and I are in it to win it. I want you. I want an abundance of you. I want you flowing into my life like Niagara Falls on steroids during a flood. I no longer think you are anything but GREAT.
I am so excited about what we will accomplish together. I thank you for already existing. I thank you for finding your way to me. I thank you for every wonderful thing you have provided and will provide for me. And I especially thank you for all the extra guacamole you ‘bout to buy me for the rest of my life.
Let’s rock this relationship and make it rain,
Claudya Martinez
ALSO READ: Letter to an Absent Father
I hope my open letter to money, inspires you to write your own.
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