Lesson number one: money is important.
Quite a cliche. but I was raised in a way to believe that money is not important. And I inherited this conviction somehow I can't blame anyone in particular, but somehow there it planted a conviction in my head that people with money are not nice people.
So when I had money, I would spend it as soon as I could, and then when I found my purpose working with students, I just didn't ask for it, I didn't care. I just wanted to change the world, which I had no impact on whatsoever with three years and 97 cents. And I also learned that money doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you more of who you are, so if you're a jerk with a lot of money, you're probably a jerk when you're broke as well. And if I would have more money I would simply give more, but if I have to worry about money every day, all day I can't even take care of myself and I have nothing to give.
Lesson number two: money equals time.
As soon as we start working, we start exchanging time for money, which is a problem because we can always make more money but we can never make more time, and I started to exchange my time for far too little money, I could barely survive, and at the
end of the month there was nothing ever left to invest in my future.
So I would have to spend all my time. to make just a little bit of money and I would probably have to do that for the rest of my life because there was nothing left, and for the rest of my life I would have given away the one thing that means the very most to me, which is time. Time with my loved ones and time for myself.
So I decided that it was time that I value my time, I would spend it more consciously, and when it comes to work, I would have to exchange it for more money, so I could spend less time working, and more time actually living.
Lesson number three: money equals value.
It took me two years to discover that the money project is not about money it's about value, and I've always seen myself as a confident person, but I didn't value myself, because the way you treat yourself is a reflection of the way you see yourself, and I've been treating myself like crap, which I found a terrible example to set for my daughter.
So changing my rates was not enough I had to change the way I see myself, I had to start seeing myself as a person of value, and that was not easily done, it's a process, and I'm still working on it so I still on a regular basis I still have to remind myself it's okay, you're worth every penny. And even now I find it hard to say this out loud I get a bit embarrassed so I'm still learning I have to keep practicing.