Do You Feel Guilty About Having More Money Than Others? Part 2

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This is Part 2 of a series on the Economic “crisis”. In Part 1, I explained that if you’re currently stressed about money, you’re probably one of 4 kinds of people.

1. You’re basically a homeless person. With an iPad (read Part 1 if you don’t get this.)
2. You’re basically ok, but living in fear of losing what you have (Part 1 dealt with this fear).
3. You’re basically ok, but you feel guilty for having more than others do (today’s post is the post for you.)
4. You’re basically ok, but afraid AND guilty (you’re screwed. Unless you read both Parts 1 & 2.)

Aren’t we supposed to feel at least a little bit guilty?

Let’s face it. There are people out there who have less than you do. A LOT less. There are people who are struggling just to feed their families, who don’t have a proper place to live. Heck, if you expand your search globally, you can find millions of people who are worse off than you. And if you live in America, you can raise that number to billions. Wouldn’t you be a cold hearted bastard if you didn’t feel at least a little bit guilty? Aren’t we supposed to feel bad for those who are less fortunate? Isn’t NOT feeling bad the same as abandoning them? No. No. And No. Here’s why:

Your guilt does nothing to help anyone. Seriously, how is your feeling horrible going to help others feed their families? How are your pity and empathy going to raise Africans out of poverty, provide proper shelter to children living in Shantytowns, or give the homeless guy a place to plug in his iPad? The truth is, you can’t feel badly enough to make them feel better, and you can’t get poor enough to make them richer. This societal expectation that the proper response to what we perceive as suffering is more suffering, is…wait for it… bullshit. At some point, we’ve decided that a great way to measure the quality of one’s life experience is the quantity of stuff one has amassed, but that it’s also somehow inappropriate for one person to have more “stuff” than someone else, because obviously there’s only so much stuff to go around; so if one person has more than another, they should feel bad. They shouldn’t stop striving for more stuff, mind you, because obviously we all love the idea of having more crap, but when you do amass vast closets and rooms full of material wealth, you should have the decency to feel like an asshole.

Say what? Essentially, we’ve set up a system where if you win, you lose. And if you lose, you lose. There’s no possible scenario in which you get to feel good. Sure, you can take a vow of poverty, become a tree hugger and feel righteous, but if you don’t really WANT to be super poor, you’ll be a very angry, righteous tree hugger, who will then probably end up on TV and make all tree huggers look bad. Do we really want to continue to give credence to a system that will not allow us to be happy, no matter what? A system that essentially declares happiness to be inappropriate? Well, I don’t. I want to feel good, I want to help others and I want a Jacuzzi. I want to have my cake and eat it, too (possibly in the Jacuzzi.) And you should, too (but, um, not necessarily in my Jacuzzi. Get your own).

Guilt about money pushes the money away

Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that your guilt does nothing to help others. But it also does nothing to help you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When you feel guilty about having money, it can push away the money, creating a never ending financial struggle in your reality. You may have more than others, but you don’t have nearly as much as you want.

Guilt is a two part belief – one part unworthiness (you’re not as good as others and therefore don’t deserve to have what you do), and one part thinking that there is a limited amount of resources and whenever you gain something, it means someone else had to lose.

This kind of belief can be formed in an infinite number of ways. Perhaps your mother used to take the “small” pork chop at the dinner table so someone else could have the “big” one, or made other similar gestures. What was probably a gesture of love would’ve almost certainly evoked guilt from you. You knew intrinsically that this kind of sacrifice wasn’t necessary. It just felt off. But you could’ve misinterpreted this “off” feeling to mean that she shouldn’t have had to make this sacrifice, because you were not worthy of it. When really, it felt off because there’s no actual scarcity and no one has to do without so that someone else can have what they want and need. This is a false belief – one that creates the scarcity!

Not convinced? Let me give you a few examples of how there’s always enough:

• Every year, there is more money circulating through the computer systems around the world. If there was a finite amount, the amount of money would’ve stayed constant, adjusted for inflation, of course. The amount of value in the world would’ve been limited to natural resources. And yes, we keep mining and pumping out more, but not nearly enough to account for this huge influx of cash. Money simply represents value, and the value in the world has been increased by ideas, concepts, inventions, new services, etc.
• Today, being a billionaire isn’t all that big a deal. We have tons of them. They’re a dime a dozen, really. A few years ago, that was inconceivable.
• When we run out of one resource (like oil, or coal) we come up with a different way to produce the same result – often a better way. Solar panels provide power to millions of European homes (I’m sure the US will catch up). Electric cars no longer suck (check out the Tesla. Awesome), and the technology is no longer being squashed. They are actually becoming viable. There’s a power plant being planned in Scandinavia which uses sea water and osmosis to generate power (to be sold by IKEA, I presume).
• Our global standard of living is the highest it’s ever been in the history of man (and certainly woman!)
• Be honest: When you do a spring cleaning or when you move house, don’t you wonder where the hell you got so much crap? Crap that you don’t even really need? We all have way more stuff than we can even handle. How can you look at your overflowing closets and still believe in scarcity?

You don’t have to take from their pot to fill yours

When you get a raise, it isn’t because they gave someone else in your company a pay cut. When you buy an apple at the supermarket, this does not mean that a teacher will now go hungry. When you buy a house, you don’t make someone else homeless. As the demand increases, so does the supply. Of everything. We are constantly finding new ways to produce more. Whatever the public wants, the public can have. Whatever we can conceive of, dream up and imagine, there is someone out there who will find a way to actually bring it into existence. There is no scarcity. There is no limit. There’s an endless supply of Universal energy and it can be molded into whatever you want it to be. Your job is to allow that energy into your life and enjoy the hell out of it. And when you feel guilty about what you already have, you are not doing that. In fact, you’re doing the opposite.

When you feel guilty about your possessions, you are telling the Universe “I don’t like what I have. I would like to have less, please. What I have makes me feel bad.” Unless you’re a total Law of Attraction newbie, you’ll know that the Universe has no choice but to bring you more experiences that feel that exact same way. Not only will you never manifest anything that you truly want (because that would match the vibration of joy, and you’re not a match to that, you guilty bastard), but you’ll also meet up with lots and lots of sob stories that will keep you feeling as guilty as possible. People will come out of the woodwork to tell you about their hardships, how they don’t have enough money for food, clothing, health insurance. You will meet up with the worst of the worst, the most unfortunate of the most unfortunate. It’s like the Universe is saying “You think you feel guilty now? Wait until you see this! And this! And this!”

You can’t control the financial situation of other people (in fact, the poorer you are, the less opportunity you have to help them), but you can control how you feel. That’s it. That’s the only thing you can ever control. So stop feeling personally responsible for all the evil in the world, and start fixing your own vibration.

Stay out of the shit pit

You can’t possibly know why that family down the street is having the experience that they are. You can’t judge how it feels for them (only how you would feel in their place), or what their vibration is. And you can’t help them if you have nothing to give (again, your guilt doesn’t put food on their table, either.) Why worry about the fates of others? Why feel badly for them, or pity them (which is arrogant, when you really think about it). If you truly feel called to help others, you first have to get to a place where that’s actually possible.

Let’s say you see someone stuck in a pit of sewage. What do you think will be more helpful?

1. You jump in with them, and commiserate with them about how much this sucks?
2. You stay where you are, outside the pit, and throw them a rope so you can pull them out?

When you pity someone or feel badly for them, you are essentially jumping into that pit with them. If you truly want to help someone, make sure you get out of your own pit first. Only then can you really lend a hand.

• What if you made enough money so that every time you saw someone in need, you could help them – not because of your guilt, but just because it felt good to do so?
• What if every time you saw someone poorer than you, you held a vision of them, successful and prosperous and happy and therefore amplified that vibration of them so that when they’re ready to hear it, it would be easier for them to find?
• What if instead of feeling badly for people who have less than you, you brightened their day with a smile and a joke? What if you treated them as equals, rather than people who need to be pitied and are somehow failing?
• What if you stopped judging people by how much money or stuff they have and just connected with who they really are?
• What if you became the one person in their lives who actually saw them that way, saw their potential, believed in them and let them know it? How do you think that would feel to them?
• What if you started doing the same thing for yourself? What if you just started focusing on your happiness, on finding it and then sharing with others?
• What if you finally gave yourself permission to feel good?

Now it’s your turn: is there someone in your life that you’ve been feeling badly about? Is there someone who’s been “making” you feel guilty? What’s one thing you can do to change your reaction to them? How can you change the way you look at them and interact with them? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: http://animalswithcasts.com/