 money is such an important thing for those of us who live in society that I think it's really important for each of us to get clearer about how to think about money. And so in this video I offer you some some ways of thinking about money. One of the most common ways that you may have heard is that money is energy, right? Money is just energy, right? It's the energy we give and receive from other people. When we buy something, we give energy to somebody else and they give us energy in the form of their product or their service. And I think that's a pretty good metaphor because we realize that we're not really trading paper or metal but we're trading our time and our energy that we spent earning those that money in the first place and somebody is giving us energy in the form of their work, hard work in creating that product service. So it's a pretty good metaphor but I don't love that metaphor in that when it comes to money as energy we usually assume that therefore more money means more energy. And that's not necessarily true because if anybody who has made a lot of money can tell you and in my, I've been in business now for eight years and in the first couple years I made a lot of money and I could tell you that I didn't necessarily feel like I had more energy in my life. I actually felt, I felt more burdened because once I made more money I felt like I had to keep the money, protect the money, fear, I feared losing the money and and also it took me more energy to try to make the same amount of money. This is kind of this this pressure, right? So money is energy I don't think is the most helpful metaphor and I'll suggest a couple other ones and you can let me know what you think of this. Money is like fire. Money is like fire. Just like fire is helpful for creating useful things in society. So does money. Money helps to create useful things in society, right? But fire can get out of control. We just had a terrible forest fires here in California. So when fire gets out of control it destroys a lot of the earth. And so what about money? When money gets out of control, when people's love of money gets out of control, as we know it has destroyed a lot of the earth. Greed has. So just like fire, money or the love of money needs to be contained very carefully so that it just cooks your food, right? It brings you what you need but not but being careful how your love of your money, your love of money can get out of control and burn your life down as well. Another interesting metaphor I heard was that money is like manure, right? Money is like manure in that when it's all piled in one place it stinks but when it's spread around it makes things grow and that's kind of a funny and interesting metaphor in that when you try to hoard money, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate you become what's called filthy rich. Isn't that interesting? Filthy rich in that you start to equate your self-worth with the money you've accumulated and so you're fearful of losing that money and you keep it and you become it's easier to become miserly and stingy rather than generous and letting it flow and letting it spread around to let other things grow, right? And there's one more metaphor that I thought was interesting which is money is like red blood cells. Now I heard of this from John Mackey the founder of Whole Foods. He set that in some talk of his. Money is like red blood cells, right? We as human beings need red blood cells to survive without red blood cells we would die and similarly living in society we need money in order to survive but here's the thing just like as a human being I have red blood cells but I don't live for my red blood cells. That's not the purpose of my life is to have more red blood cells, right? Just similarly in society we need money in order to survive but we don't live for money and that's where it gets dangerous. The people who start living for money, oh I want more money, it's like the person who says oh I'm living for my red blood cells. I want more red blood cells. No you just need enough red blood cells to keep you going just like you need enough money to keep you going but then when you start to live for the money when you start seeing yourself think about money all the time it's like a human being thinking about red blood cells all the time so are you thinking of money all the time, right? And actually this is a great metaphor to keep going on because if you need red blood cells you don't think oh I need more red blood. No you think okay I need to go get some food, I need to go get some exercise, I need to go get get some rest or whatever. You need to do the things that bring you the money rather than thinking about red blood cells, right? So instead of thinking about the money think about the things you need to do to get the money so you need to go and serve other people in meaningful ways that they would say yes that's worth paying for, okay? That is much more useful to think about and think about I need money I want money I think that can be kind of an unhealthy thing, an unhealthy love of money. So I hope this is helpful you can comment below and let me know which metaphor makes the most sense for you or if you have another metaphor that that helps you to stay healthy with your thoughts about money.