The 5 “Whys” of Money
Have you ever wondered why we're always chasing after more and more money? Society certainly tells us that's what we should be doing, but I want us to deep dive into the psychology behind why we want more money.
We all have a degree of freedom, but we don't have 100% of it. As long as you don't have Financial Independence, somebody else is still going to dictate partially how you spend your time, where you go to eat out, in what city you live, where do you vacation, and for how long you vacation. Money dictates a lot of the available time that you have to dedicate to the things that you value and therefore the short-term decisions and the long-term decisions of life are in most cases dictated by the amount of money that is available to you and how you deal with your own money. In fact, some studies even go as far as showing that 80% of Americans list money as being one of the major concern concerns in their lives, one of the major stressors. That includes people who are making six figures.
Let’s do a simple exercise which will help you identify your own “why” behind wanting more money. Not why Society wants you to think that you want more money, no, we're after your true reason and the way it works is by utilizing the 5-Why method . I also made a full video about it if you prefer to watch it instead of reading it.
Step 1: Take 3 slow deep breaths. Feel your shoulders relaxing and even dropping a little.
Step 2: Try to clear your mind and forget about your friends, forget about your family, forget about your job, forget about the expectations that your parents have of you, forget about the expectations that your job or your boss has of you and let's try to tap more into your own values.
Step 3: Give yourself a simple prompt such as: Why do I want more money?
The goal is to give it a simple and direct answer. The first thing that comes to your mind. Don’t overthink this, because we are trying to connect with your gut feeling and intuition.
Step 4: Now that you have your first “why” answer, we want to inspect that answer by asking “why” once again. For example: if you answered: I want more money to buy more things, then here you would follow the same train of thought by asking: why do I want more things?
Once again, allow your intuition and gut feeling to take over and provide you with a simple and direct answer.
Step 5: At this point, you have completed the first two levels of the “5-Why” exercise. The goal is for you to repeat step 4, four more times to help you reach the core of why you want more money in your life.
For example. When I did this exercise many years ago, this is what came up for me. I asked myself: why do you want more money? and I said well because I want to have a lot of money. And why do I want a lot of money? Because I want to own my time. And why do I want to own my time? Because I want to dedicate my time to the activities that I care about. And why do I want to dedicate my time to the activities that I care about? Because if I dedicate my time to those things that I find valuable, then I'm going to feel fulfilled. And why do I want to feel fulfilled (fifth layer)? Because that is in my opinion the reason why we're here on Earth. We have been given a talent and we're here to do the activities that are going to bring us fulfillment while we utilize that talent. The key thing here is that your way of fulfillment is going to be completely different from mine.
It is perfectly normal to go through these prompts multiple times to get more clarity. The idea is to define why you are chasing more money and only you know the answer to that. I can guarantee you that if you connect with your own values then the answer is not going to be based on an external life, it's not going to be based on your external possessions.
So much of personal finance has to do with the emotions we face as individuals, the way we were raised, how much our parents shaped our experience of life with their presence or absence, our own fears, insecurities and limiting believes. Many of these emotions come together and play a crucial role in our relationship with money. However, if you can clarify why you want more money in your life and you allow yourself to connect with your core values, then you can start creating new believes, overcoming fears, and living a rich life in alignment.