Pod Insights The Quote of the Day Show | Daily Motivational Talks Dan Millman: "Money is Just Energy." About this episode Dan Millman https://peacefulwarrior.com shares a powerful lesson on money, spirituality, and the cultural programming that's quietly keeping you broke. In this candid talk, the Peaceful Warrior author reveals how every movie you grew up watching taught you to romanticize struggle, the moment outside his house that rexposed his own poverty consciousness, and the simple reframe that turned around a $15,000 debt. This episode will challenge you to look at what you really believe about money — before you try to make more of it.
Source: The Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Everyday Enlightenment https://www.nightingale.com/products/the-peaceful-warriors-guide-to-everyday-enlightenment
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 We have strong beliefs about money and until we deal with those beliefs, it doesn't do any good to give tips for making more money or stabilizing your life. Because a part of you may not want to have much money. Many of us are like Joe Louis, the boxer who once said, "I don't really like money, but it calms my nerves."
0:32 Speaker 01 Welcome back to the Quote of the Day Show. I am your host, Sean Croxton of SeanCroxton.com. We've got Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, on the show today. I read that book a couple of months ago. It's really good. If you get a chance to read it, you definitely should, or at least add it to your wish list. Today's QOD is this: Money is just energy. You've probably heard me talk about this before. Like, we've got a lot of emotions and meanings and beliefs attached to money. Most of them, we didn't sign up for. They were just installed in our subconscious minds before we were old enough to realize what was going on. So here's the truth that most finance gurus don't talk about.
1:15 Speaker 01 Like, we don't have a lack of money information problem. Like, we have all kinds of money books. We've got money podcasts. We've got money Instagrams, TikToks. We've got money YouTube channels. Like, what we really have is a money mindset problem. Over the next couple of years, you're gonna see something happen in the money space. You're gonna see a shift, right, in the conversation. You're gonna see a lot less information on tactics and strategy. You can get that from ChatGPT and Claude, right? You're gonna see more information about what drives our money behaviors. The stuff I was doing six, seven years ago is starting to become more mainstream.
1:55 Speaker 01 And the point is that it doesn't matter how much you know about budgeting, or saving, or investing. If you have negative beliefs about money, about people who have money, about the idea of you having more money, about what people are gonna think about you when you have more money, that information, the know-how, is useless. You're not gonna apply it long-term. Your subconscious mind will not let you, and you are going to sabotage yourself. Because you're just living in a conflict, right? And so if you believe rich people are greedy, if you believe we should eat the rich, if if somewhere underneath it all, you think money is dirty, that it's suspect,
2:39 Speaker 01 that somehow it's not for people like you, your subconscious mind is going to keep you broke. That's its way of protecting you. Because if you actually became rich, what would people say about you? Will they call you greedy? Will they perceive your wealth as dirty or exploitative? Like, we have to answer those questions. So today, while you're while you're listening, I encourage you to get curious about what you actually think and feel about money, what you actually believe about people who have money, what you absorb from your your parents, your culture, your church, your friends, your teachers. Because that's the work that we all have to do before we apply what we learn
3:23 Speaker 01 about budgeting and saving and investing. If you don't do the mind work, everything else is useless. It's temporary. You're never going to follow through long term. Dan Millman is coming up.
3:36 Speaker 00 Most of us do have money issues. In fact, let's let's go through a brief assessment about our attitudes and issues toward money. Does money frequently monopolize your attention?
3:51 Speaker 00 How much time and energy do you spend struggling to balance income and expenditures?
3:58 Speaker 00 How do you feel about wealthy people, the rich?
4:03 Speaker 00 How do you feel about poor people?
4:07 Speaker 00 Do you believe that wealthy people are somehow less spiritual or poor people more so?
4:15 Speaker 00 How do you feel about wealthy spiritual teachers?
4:21 Speaker 00 How much money would you like to earn each year?
4:26 Speaker 00 Why not more?
4:30 Speaker 00 Does money seem very hard to come by or burn a hole in your pocket?
4:36 Speaker 00 Or do you feel guilty about having a lot of money when other people don't?
4:42 Speaker 00 Are you in debt?
4:47 Speaker 00 If you are, is it due to insufficient income or overspending?
4:55 Speaker 00 Are the best things in life free?
4:59 Speaker 00 Again, these questions don't have instant answers, but they're questions to consider as we move into this area of managing your money. So let me define what I mean by managing your money. Simply put, it involves achieving stability and sufficiency.
5:17 Speaker 00 Okay, not getting rich, not being poor, but sufficiency and stability. Why do we want to achieve sufficiency and stability? Because it frees our attention, so much of our attention. If you think about the percentage of the day, paying for lunch, going to the bank because you need some more money, wondering how you're going to afford the dental bill or the car repair. Money surprises, expense comes in, what am I going to do about this? Money issues at business, at work, trying to get more of it, spend less of it, spend more of it. Should you go on vacation? How much should you spend? A great deal of our lives and energies revolve around money.
5:57 Speaker 00 Those of us who have an abundance of energy or of money, often we have some subtle guilt about it.
6:06 Speaker 00 What about that idea of the rich? The rich, you know, it's okay to tax the rich more, they take more, they have more. But it turns out, those we call the robber barons of old were neither robbers nor barons. They made their money by providing a valuable service, by inventing or creating something, by providing jobs and industries.
6:32 Speaker 00 Now, if I said to you, would you like a little more money? You'd probably say, sure, I have nothing against that. Great, I could use a little more money. There are things I could do with it.
6:42 Speaker 00 But when you really contemplate attitudes, again, we're going back into that subconscious area.
6:49 Speaker 00 Money versus spirituality. I noticed there was, might have been a response in you when I mentioned, "What do you, how do you feel about wealthy spiritual teachers? Does that negate their value? Does that make them hypocrites? We have strong beliefs about money and until we deal with those beliefs, it doesn't do any good to give tips for making more money or stabilizing your life. Because a part of you may not want to have much money. Many of us are like Joe Louis, the boxer, who once said, "I don't really like money, but it calms my nerves."
7:27 Speaker 00 When you picture a spiritual person, a classic spiritual person, do you picture a sannyasin from India, a renunciate? A monk, a nun, a priest? People who've renounced worldly possessions for the things of spirit? We have a tremendous dichotomy in our minds about money and spirituality. I'm not the only one to say this, but I like to say it clear, so it really strikes home. We've been programmed, all of us, in growing up. Now, by definition, when you've been programmed, you don't know you've been programmed. If you know you've been programmed, you're no longer programmed. But look at the films, popular films. They're meant for mass audiences. They're not aimed at a wealthy elite, they're aimed at mass audiences.
8:11 Speaker 00 So they deify the salt of the earth. People who are struggling, poor, but spiritual and good. How about a movie we've probably, most of us have seen? It's a Wonderful Life. Many people around Christmas see that. Do you remember the evil, unethical, greedy Mr. Potter, who owned half the town and wanted to own all of it? All the banks? The rich guy, the bad rich guy? Then we have George Bailey and his family. They're poor, but they're happy and spiritual. How about Christmas Carol? We have Scrooge on the one hand, and we have the Cratchits. They're happy and spiritual and loving, but poor. The Karate Kid, more popular recent movie.
8:54 Speaker 00 He lived with his mother across the tracks, a single mother, they were struggling. Then with these rich brats with their fancy red motorcycles and cars, do you remember that? No wonder we grow up with some mixed feelings. The things of the world, the flesh, and then the spirit. It's about integrating those two.
9:16 Speaker 00 Let me tell you the story of my life. And I had serious money issues. And I didn't even know it. About sixteen years ago, maybe fifteen years ago. I was walking out of my house and I noticed across the street some very wealthy young teenage girls, maybe they were nineteen, eighteen or nineteen, getting into a Mercedes sports car. It's about a seventy thousand dollar car. And I looked at them for a minute, just kind of stared at them, you know, and then I turned around. There was like a dark cloud that passed over me, kind of a negative feeling. And if I could have given words to that feeling, it would have been something like, "Look at those little rich girls."
9:57 Speaker 00 I might have just kind of felt that way and then turned away and until new impressions entered my psyche. But in a moment of self-reflection, it was like a slap that hit me. I went, "Wait a minute, what did I just feel about them? I don't know them. They might be wonderful young ladies." My daughters were growing toward teenagehood. They dress well, just because they appeared to have a lot of money. I felt negatively about them. And I went, "Whoa. If that's how I feel about money, I'm sure not going to attract much of it." And as a matter of fact, during this period of time, I was mastering my poverty consciousness phase of life. At that time, I was working two jobs, getting up at four in the morning to do overload typing in a local law firm. I let myself in.
10:42 Speaker 00 And then I went to a real estate office from eight o'clock until five, doing word processing. This was after I'd written Way of the Peaceful Warrior. It went out of print for a time. That's another story. It was after I'd been a professor at Oberlin College, a college professor. This phase, I was just broke. We were fifteen thousand dollars in debt, which was a lot of money for us. I had no way of seeing my way, how are we gonna ever get out of debt? And we didn't live high off the hog either. Money was scarce, I was struggling. And that was a turning point. When I saw my attitudes toward money, I was really unsympathetic toward the stuff. That was a turning point. I began, literally, and a few other things happened during that period. I stepped forward, started teaching seminars, sharing what I had to share.
11:27 Speaker 00 I remember the first time I came back from a seminar and I had a handful of cash. And I said to Joy, "Close your eyes." And she opened her eyes. I threw the money in the air and let it shower down around her. Now, again, if you feel like, "Oh, that's kind of ostentatious." You know, is that love of money? Then look at that in yourself. Attitudes toward money, it's just stuff. Green stuff, trade. Somebody once said, "We should go back to barter." I said, "Yeah, we could all be bartering, but didn't we start with that?" And then somebody wanted to barter a chicken for some pottery. And they said, "Well, what's worth what?" And they developed money to find a sense of value. And it was an easier way to barter. Point is, money is just energy. Just energy. It makes you more of who you already are.
12:12 Speaker 00 That's what more energy does. If you're loving, it'll make you more loving. If you're greedy, it'll tend to make you more greedy. It makes you more of who you already are. Anybody who listens to this tape program and has a lot of money and feels guilty about it, if money is just energy, would you wake up in the morning and say, "Oh, I feel so guilty. I have more energy than my neighbor." I don't think so. Money doesn't care who has it, it's just stuff. But by using your talents and your creativity and your labors to provide a service for other people, you end up producing more income for yourself. And if there's abundance there, you can share it with other people, whatever you choose to do with it.
12:56 Speaker 01 That was Dan Millman. His website is peacefulwarrior.com. You can check out today's entire talk on an audio program you'll find at nightingaleconet.com. And it also may be on audible.com. It is called "The Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Everyday Enlightenment." All right, my friend, start thinking about how you think and feel about money. It's a really big deal. You cannot skip this step because, again, everything else is useless if you We don't. Carolyn Maces on the show tomorrow. See you then. Peace.
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