WEDNESDAY, 8 AUGUST 2018
How long was I programmed about money and making money, and about my role and place in the world before I said, “Hold on! What’s going on here?”
The answer: For a long time. At least 25 years, but the same operating procedure continued because I didn’t replace it with another way of thinking about things. Even when I went through a period of intense self-examination, during which I critically considered what I believed in and how I went about doing things, I never went far enough to truly reprogram myself.
I learned how other people made money and tried to take the same or similar actions. But it’s like teaching someone a few Russian phrases and then dropping him in the middle of Siberia expecting him to be an effective spy. He won’t fit in because he’s not from that environment. He wasn’t programmed into, and for, that society. He may succeed in producing sounds which other people will recognise and to which they’ll respond appropriately, but to really succeed in his mission he’d have to receive much more intensive training.
For two decades, I was taught to trust in “God” for guidance in my life. “God” would send my life in a particular direction. “God” knew where “He” needed me. “God” would take care of me; I just had to be patient. Then, one day, I realised that I no longer believed in “God”. Oops, now what? Two decades of programming that the world works in a certain way, that my place in the world is determined in a certain way, and suddenly – nothing. You’re on your own. Good luck.
I have done okay in almost three decades of adult life since that traumatic turn – not great, but there are definitely some positives in my good column. But I will find it difficult to argue with someone who’s of the opinion that I have just been slogging it out the last two and a half decades as well as I could.
Fact is, I can do better, but I would have to go deeper than before, especially with regard to my relationship with money, and how it affects my place and role in the world – or how I think about my role and place in society.
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