Marinate Yourself in the Things That Money Can't Buy
Running your own business is a powerful personal growth exercise.
The moment you realise you can create more money for yourself through your actions is transformational.
And the moment you realise that the stories you have about money affect the success of your business, everything changes.
But no matter what your stories, how skilfully you deal with them and how hard you work, every business goes through cycles and part of one of those cycles is to be low on money.
If you’re sensible, then you save in advance of that date.
But in the end, all of us - whether we have a business or not - will likely have times when money is short.
And there’s a problem with that: in scarcity and under stress, we make worse decisions. There’s research that seems to show this really clearly.
But more than that, when responsibility is high and money is low, it’s horrible to be low on money.
The pressure is enormous. The sense of failure damning.
There are many pieces of work I’ve done over the years to try and help with this.
In the most recent one, earlier this year, as my business significantly slowed compared to last year, while family situations ramped up the pressure, I took this question to Robert Holden.
Here’s what he said: marinate in the things that money can’t buy.
Bathe in them.
And so that’s what I tried to do.
I let myself be marinated - through attention and action - in the things that are priceless, that money can’t buy.
The crisp wind in my face.
The rustle of leaves in the breeze.
The feeling of the heart beating after a run or workout.
The laughter of a three-year-old.
The big eyed curiosity of a one-year-old.
Being held by the woman I love.
Pure, priceless love.
Pure, priceless aliveness.
It doesn’t change the bank balance.
But it does change life.
It makes the stresses and strains somehow more manageable.
The reminder of the truth we all know, somewhere: money isn’t everything.
In fact, it isn’t most things.
One of my clients, recently, told me about how Ramit Sethi and his question, ‘What is YOUR rich life?’ really changed things for her.
The author and entpreneur Derek Sivers says that many people miss the point about him when they know that he built his business from nothing, sold it for £22m and gave basically all the money away to a charity. The point is he knows how to be rich and to be happy, and it doesn’t take much money at all. He learned that when he was a professional musician: that was his dream and he made peace from the start that it almost certainly wouldn’t make him rich. But it was worth it anyway.
This isn’t to say that having more money doesn’t make things easier. It does. It makes so many things easier. The years when I have had the absolute privilege of not thinking about it feel so much more amazing when I’m reminded life hasn’t been like that for almost all of my life.
But money isn’t everything.
No one has it always.
And the thing that really matter - well, mostly money can’t buy them.
Those of us who grew up with not very much money but were surrounded by love know that.
Just like those of us who grew up with lots of money but not enough love know that.
I count myself incredibly fortunate to be part of the first group. And I would swap no amount of wealth as a child for the privilege of growing up marinating in love and curiosity and nature and the things that money can’t buy.
It’s hard to remember, sometimes.
When it is, maybe it’s time to marinate in the things that money can’t buy.
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PS You might be interested in my latest long-read article. It’s about Mohamed Al-Fayed, Enron and Omar Little from The Wire. It’s called A Man Got to Have a Code: https://www.robbieswale.com/writing/2024/10/11/a-man-got-to-have-a-code-leading-with-honour-iii
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.