Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm strolling back home along a footpath that runs beside a wildflower meadow and you can really see the change in the season now.
Lots of the flowers have turned to seed heads,
The grass is long,
Dry,
Brittle and brown and it really feels as though the season is a changing.
And today my reflection actually is about money and I'd love to get your reflections on money when you comment on this recording.
And it came about because I've been reflecting on my relationship with money and have been very curious over the last few weeks to learn how other people connect with money,
Reflect on money,
How other people,
What kind of relationships other people have with money.
And I had a conversation with a friend today who seems to be very successful in their business and he charges high prices,
Works with corporations but seems to be really comfortable around money.
And I had a conversation with him and was really surprised when I discovered that this man who seemed to be so easeful around money actually had a lot of thinking about money.
He was being really open and honest but he just expressed that yes I have a lot of thinking about money.
It's fine because I'm earning a lot of money and I'm earning enough money but I wouldn't want to be put to the test.
I wouldn't want to be in a position where money didn't come to me this easily.
And that just struck me because I thought well he just seems so comfortable around money.
I didn't realize that money had an emotional attachment to him.
And I had another friend,
She's a coach,
And she's finding it hard with clients at the moment and she was just making the comment that she's really looking around trying to find clients.
And the difference in the way she spoke about money was that it seemed to be in real short supply and she needed to be doing lots of things to try and get money.
And I just thought wow that's another sort of emotionally charged experience around this whole thing of money.
And I've been reflecting on it myself because I have been going through a transition in my personal life,
My spiritual life,
Over the last two years.
And one of the things that seems to be shifting is my relationship around money.
I feel more easeful around money.
My identity doesn't seem to be so caught up in how much money I earn.
I don't seem to be earning any more or any less money but I don't seem to have that emotional edge with my relationship with money.
And I'm enjoying the feeling.
I've no idea how long it will last but I'm enjoying it whilst it lasts.
And one of the things I've noticed as I've spoken to people who are involved,
Either they've got lots of money or they haven't got a lot of money,
Is that there is this intense amount of focus and energy that seems to go on the game of money,
Generating money,
Keeping money,
Holding on to money,
Expressing your worth through money.
And it just struck me,
The question arose like what if we had the same compulsion and energy and attention that went on creating,
I don't know,
World peace or ensuring everybody was fed in the world or that we had a sustainable environment that we all lived in,
All animals and plants had a place in the diversity of the environment we lived in.
What if we had the same and put the energy into that,
Into the game of something else other than money.
Because in one sense money is really just a convenient way of exchanging goods and services.
It's an exchange of energy as it were.
It's much easier for me to go down to the shop and buy a basket load of bread and groceries and fruit and veg by exchanging some money rather than going to all the different places that supply these things and bartering.
So it has this sort of sense of being easeful to use money and yet somehow there's something about money that seems to have a negative edge,
It seems to have an addictive edge and an edge that has hypnotised all of us into kind of thinking it's more than it is.
A lot of people spend a lot of attention thinking about money regardless of whether they've got money or not and that was a surprise to me is that even people that appear to have money spend a lot of time thinking about money.
I am in this research phase at the minute,
I just want to learn what people feel about money,
What relationship do you have with money in your life.
So do let me know,
I'd be ever so curious to hear your thoughts and maybe as I research more and learn more from other people I'll let you know what I'm learning about money.
