How to Do What You Love and Make Money

Meaningful work and financial abundance are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they can and should go hand in hand to enhance your life and your creativity

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Do you think that you can’t do what you love and make great money doing it? 

Somehow in our culture we have made having a robust income and doing fulfilling work mutually exclusive — especially for professionals in the business of helping others. But what if you don’t have to give up income to do what you love?

What if loving what you do can actually increase your financial flows?

One of the biggest things that affects our financial flows is how we see the world. Our perspective and our points of view shape reality around us in dynamic and fascinating ways. When we begin to unpack the judgments that we carry about how life is, how money is, and what is valuable to us and the world, we can have the freedom to choose a perspective that actually works for us and creates something different.

Imagine you are wearing glasses that are tinted green. Everything you see will have a green hue.  Now, replace them with red glasses and everything looks red. If you didn’t know you had the glasses on, you would just assume that everything is, in fact, red. You wouldn’t know that there was a different perspective out there that might create more in your life. This is how so many of us are walking around — wearing colored glasses that we don’t even know we are wearing!

When you realize that you are functioning from a point of view that you didn’t even know was limiting you, you can change how you combine your business life with your financial life. 

Here are 3 common myths about the mix of meaningful work and money:

Myth #1: The desire for money makes you greedy

If you have the point of view that money equals greed, then you will likely not allow yourself to have or desire money because if the desire for money is bad, then you are bad… and nobody wants to be bad!  

The judgment that money is bad underlies so many things in our world that we don’t even realize. Start by looking at where this viewpoint might be running your life, unbeknownst to you. Do you ever judge wealthy people? Were you ever told as a child you should just be grateful for what you have? Do you (or did your family) have the point of view that when you don’t have money you are virtuous? 

There are so many different expressions of this widespread judgment about money. If you have them running in your life in some way, whether you know it or not, you will stop yourself from having work in the world that brings you wealth.

Myth #2: If you make good money helping others, you are taking advantage of them

So often we have the perspective that people that ‘need’ help are victims of their circumstances, not empowered people who can choose something different in their lives. This is a very common point of view that actually ends up disempowering people in ways many of us don’t realize. 

If somebody has been put in a position in life by external forces whereby they now need a charitable handout to change it, then they have to wait for the world to get them out of their circumstances. From that perspective, we don’t see people as the primary agents of change in their own lives.

When you see the people that you are helping as empowered individuals equals to you, they can actually rise up and change their lives in unimaginable ways.

Most people don’t value things that don’t cost very much. It’s just part of our human psyche. For instance, do you take better care of your car than you do of your bicycle? Probably so! That’s probably because the car costs way more money.  

When you charge a fee for your services, that creates a sense of value for you and others. As a result, the people you work with may very well get more out of working with you. Stretching to pay for something can create a sense of value in somebody’s life — and the change people choose from doing that can often be so much bigger than something they spend a small sum of money on.

Check it out in your own life or business and see if it’s true.

Myth #3: You have to work harder to make more money

This is one of the greatest limitations we use to make our lives so much more difficult than it needs to be! What if it’s just not true? What if you changed your point of view to believe that you could make more money by enjoying your work more while valuing yourself more? 

Money follows joy.

It does not have to be directly related to the hours you work or the intensity with which you work. If you have the perspective that more money requires more work, then you will max out on the amount of money that you can make when you max out on the number of hours you have to work. And if you are in the business of helping others, then you will max out on how much you can help people. For most people in helping professions, that just doesn’t work!

When you start to look from a different point of view, you realize that money is available in so many different places.

This change opens you up to the possibilities of more and different revenue streams coming into your life from everywhere. The way that you ‘find’ those revenue streams is by living your life and enjoying it! It might sound crazy, but it also sounds a lot more fulfilling than putting your nose to the grindstone for the rest of your life. 

Start to notice where meaningful work and money are at odds in your life. Where you have judged money as bad or wrong. Once you realize that those judgments are running the show, you can choose a different perspective. Suddenly you will have fresh new choices every day that can create far greater joy in your work, and wealth in your life.

It can’t hurt to try on a different perspective and see how it goes. Test the theory.

Spend a day, a week, a month doing a lot more of what you enjoy — whatever that may be — and see what shows up in every area of your life. The worst thing that could happen is you enjoy your life more for a bit. Not a bad risk!

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