As someone who grew up in poverty and where scarcity was at every corner of life, I learned early on that money, including all the things it can buy for us, isn’t everything.

The point of this idea, “money is not everything”, doesn’t mean we don’t need money for our needs and the lifestyle we want. It is simply a statement to remind us that there are more important things in life than success, power, and possessions. I know it is easier said than lived because in reality, all of us need money, but I believe that a huge part of our blocked spirituality was rooted in attachment to materialism.

You might be wondering why I am writing about money, and what it has to do with healing or nurturing the soul. But I remember when I was a little girl, our family lived in a flood-prone area where our house, including almost all of our belongings, was regularly devoured by storm floods at least four times a year. Seeing our things ruined by water over and over taught me not to get too attached to them, so I wouldn’t have a hard time letting go and moving forward. It also taught me that when everything that seems important vanishes, what’s left is the quality of our mind, heart, and spirit.

If you find yourself being carried away by the influences of money and material things, there is a lot of wisdom that you can always tap into to help redirect your mind, heart, and spirit to what truly matters. Here are 10 reflections to inspire you that money is not everything. 

1. Money cannot buy true love, inner peace, and joy

The things that make us truly happy and fulfilled aren’t those that money can buy, but the invisible things that bring love, inner peace, and joy in our hearts. If wounds or traumas from the past still haunt us, living in a mansion can feel empty and dark. Our inner life speaks louder than our possessions, especially when hope is elusive and life gets heavier than we can bear.

Sometimes, we are too busy ticking what’s on our bucket list and don’t have time to listen to our soul’s needs. To help you reconnect with your soul, here are a few things you can yourself for reflection:

  • How is your relationship with others? How are you setting boundaries with them?
  • What do you see when you stand in front of a mirror? Is it the face of gratitude, despite not having all the things you wanted? Or a person who rants a lot?
  • Are you doing something to heal from a dark or painful past?

There is nothing wrong with desiring things or with working hard to grow your money as long as your inner life isn’t left behind. True success means to live in balance between outer and inner life.

2. Being contented is more powerful than being rich

Contentment is the state of being at peace and grateful for your current state, regardless of possessing less or more than what you wished for. When you are content, it is easy to be positive and mentally strong, and to feel secure despite not having the ideal life you imagined for yourself.

You don’t have to wait to have plenty of money to be in control. True power is about being able to think clearly and to be deeply rooted, no matter what life throws at us. It only takes a sincere appreciation and contentment in life. As what Gary Zukav, author of The Seat Of The Soul, wrote:

“Authentic power is a power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth.”

3. Your worth does not depend on the amount of money you have

Have you seen newborn babies who came into the world without anything, and yet looked so precious? You were once a newborn baby, too: full of value and made of purity even without a single penny on hand. But years after going through worldly conditioning and judgment from the people around us, it is not easy to believe it, much less to remember our true nature. When our worth was stolen, our initial tendency is to reclaim it by pursuing money, power, or fame to mask our brokenness, just as we’ve seen from others.

Our true worth resides inside us, and everything outside of it loses its value over time. Depending our worth on what matters to the eyes of the world can never give us a solid rock foundation once challenges get in the way. The only way to reclaim the worth we once had when we were born is to change our perspective about money and success, look inward, and deal with the matters of the heart for inner healing and rediscovering our authentic self.

4. You will be remembered best by how you treat others, not by the things you give

People will remember you most by how you treated them, and not for the things or money you give them. For example, imagine these two scenarios:

(1) You work in sales and you reached your month’s sales quota, and your boss rewarded you with a big cash incentive.

(2) The following month, you went through rough times in your personal life, and it affected your performance at work. It caused issues for the company, and you failed to hit the target sales. You were down, scared, and wanted to quit, but then your boss went to your desk to check in with you and compassionately listened instead of highlighting your mistakes.

Which of the two scenarios will you remember your boss for? Isn’t it how he treated you when you were weak and messy? Money doesn’t always touch lives as deeply as the relationship created through respect and genuine care. Love always imprints unforgettable memories in the heart.

5. Being grateful is what makes you truly abundant

When was the last time you said thank you to God or the Universe because you’ve been given another day to wake up? Have you ever said ‘thank you’ to your problems because they make you stronger and prepare you for what’s coming ahead?

Gratitude is the key to a happy and fulfilled life. When you are grateful for small and big things, you will never feel inadequate or that something is missing in your life. You become appreciative of the little things that you used to take for granted, and everything becomes big, abundant, and beautiful in your eyes.

Be grateful for the people and things in your life, instead of comparing your life with others who possess more than what you do. Money is not everything, and a million in the bank can never satisfy an ungrateful heart.

money is not everything quote

6. Love is the purpose of your life

Life is nothing without love. We are here on earth to learn how to love ourselves and others, and nurture the passions given to us. Have you wondered why we love the feeling of loving others (through giving, serving, etc.) and being loved in return? It is because we resonate with the energy of love, for we are made of love. Love is our purpose and true nature.

However, this is not how the world wired us up. It made us believe that the ultimate goal in life is to have a decent job that can provide our wants and needs, build a house, drive our dream car, and secure the future, thinking that it would spare us from challenges and sufferings. I’m not saying that these things are wrong pursuits, but the more important question is: ‘In between the long hours of creating your dream life, have you loved enough?’

Because the truth is, it is impossible to experience meaning and joy if our inspiration for what we do isn’t love.

7. You don’t need a lot of money to make your loved ones happy

We tend to exaggerate in making our loved ones happy and forget that it doesn’t always have to be the big things. While money is a great tool to make others happy, the amount we spend isn’t as important as the sincerity of the heart as we give.

When we were newlyweds, my husband liked gifting me things that he wanted for me every time we celebrated special occasions. I did appreciate the gifts for sure, but being the simple girl that I was, everything was ordinary for me, no matter how expensive they were. He noticed that my reaction was always plain and not proportional to the gift’s market price. 😂 So I told him that a $15~$20 book of my favorite genres was enough to make me so happy (and he knew that) than a $1000 worth jewelry set. (He wasn’t very happy about it at first. 😂) I also told him that I’d appreciate it more if he would give me things “I wanted” rather than what he wanted for me.

Try to be creative in making the people important to you happy. Maybe it’s spending quality time with them or giving emotional support when they’re going through a hard time. It is so true that money cannot buy soul-deep happiness. It is love and selflessness that make a lasting impact in every human heart.

8. Money comes and goes, but your life purpose is eternal

We were taught that money is everything and that our decisions should always be practical, even if it means not embracing our true calling. Life choices based on something temporary like money, make our innerself vulnerable to the simplest problem and can destroy us in a snap.

Money comes and goes, but our purpose lives eternally in our souls. Pursuing our life purpose may not promise material stability, but it steadies our spirits and gives a long-lasting sense of peace and completion. Do not be afraid to choose this one thing you want to do and be once you figure it out. Not everyone is going to discover it in this lifetime, but if you do, take the chance and surrender to the magic of choosing your passion over what you’ve been told you should do.

9. Forgiveness is the best gift you can give to yourself

Gifts are not limited to bags, shoes, gadgets, or any matter that satisfies our physical senses. For sure, they can make you happy for a while, but once the excitement is gone, inner struggles that have been troubling you may resurface until you deal with them.

For a long time, I struggled with extreme shame and self-hate because of having been constantly told that I wasn’t beautiful and no man would love me because of that. I grew up hating myself, believing I didn’t deserve to be happy and experience good things in life.

I started to shift, however, when I learned that everything those people had told me was a projection of their unforgiven selves. As the cliché goes, “hurt people hurt people”, and once I learned this, I knew I needed to forgive myself so I could start healing.

Forgiveness is a wonderful gift for yourself and others. By forgiving ourselves and those who have hurt us, we can experience healing, growth, and transformation that our soul craves for a long time.

10. Faith takes away our fears, not money

Isn’t it ironic that we work hard for money to ‘secure’ our lives, but it is also through it that we get to worry and feel insecure?

Money or securing the future is not the answer to everything. Life is never smooth and straight, and the solution to our problems isn’t always money. When we are shaken, the best thing we can do is to believe that ‘everything happens for a reason’ even if we don’t see it yet.

Faith is trusting that all things work together for good, even if it doesn’t seem to be working that way. To be faithful means to respond to a situation the best way you know, without trying to take full control of what is ahead. It is being able to live in the present, one day at a time, because you know that magic happens when we are aligned with what’s real at the moment.

No amount of money can spare us from the battle that is happening in our heads. It is by trust and surrender that we can let go of things and make space for what is really meant to be.

Being attached to money can restrict our access to more eternal things like values, relationships, self-worth, and spirituality. And the tricky thing about it is that you don’t even have to be too greedy before it controls you. Even the slightest desire or sense of ownership can lose our grounding and balance.

Dependence on money is something we can never break off from our lives. But as long as our footing stands on a more solid rock than any material thing, we can never really fall apart.

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