Everything isn’t about money–even when it is.

I want to start this piece by acknowledging that I have my own story about money, a story that I am unwinding and rewriting every day. So when you read this piece, don’t for one second think you’re hearing from someone who has arrived, someone who has figured it out, or someone who is in denial about money.

Instead, I invite you to read this as if it were written by someone else–someone who is figuring it out for herself. Because if you do, you and I will be the same. You will understand the spirit behind this work, the tension inherent to this work, and the hope, desire, and motivation for this work.

I am not an expert. I am just a normal person trying to find a potentially better way.

Everywhere I look these days, people are talking about creating generational wealth. And as a Black woman, the first-born daughter of a post office worker and a hairstylist, the first to graduate college, and the first to get a post-secondary degree (from an Ivy League school, no less), I get it.

We are the first generation that finally has the access, resources, and freedom to do what’s eluded our parents and grandparents: build wealth.

And thanks to the internet and integration, we’ve seen up-close the leg up that wealth provides. We’ve seen how people with money get to be different.

People with parents who passed down wealth get to go to college without the burden of student loans.

People with parents who passed down wealth don’t have to take and keep soul-sucking jobs to pay bills. They get to pursue their passions, change their minds, try something and fail without losing it all because they have the safety net of savings to fall back on. They get to inherit the house on the lake and the boat they can vacation on–a quiet place to rest and relax without incurring one more expense. They don’t have to hold on too tightly to everything they have because they know there’s more.

To be surrounded by this energy, in which everyone subscribes to and lives like this is the ultimate advantage. Because in this space, you get familiar with risk and as a result, access next-level opportunities.

So when I say I get it – I get it.

But as I think about what I want to pass on to my children, the legacy and leg up I want to leave them, I’m not sure I want to center it around money.

Hear me out.

I want my kids to have what money provides, but if I spend all of my energy, all of my life trying to make money, I am teaching them to make money, not how to live.

I don’t want my children’s lives to be dependent on how much money they do or do not make. Instead, I want to teach them that living like they have all of the money in the world is how they get more money.

Basically, I think we have it backwards.

It’s not the money that gives us those things mentioned earlier. It’s the freedom, space, and absence of stress that unbinds our head, heart, and hands so we can live and create freely.

That is what generates wealth–absolute wealth.

In order to create wealth, we have to live like we are already rich.

You see, I think we’ve limited wealth to money, when absolute wealth is about so. much. more. Absolute wealth is about unlimited resources: unlimited time, energy, space, solutions, health, and creativity.

Money isn’t a resource. It’s a tool that can be used at the direction of our resources.

If you had all of the time in the world, what would you do?

If you had all of the energy in the world, what would you do?

If you had all of the space, solutions, creativity, health…what would you do today?

How would you spend your time? How would you be with yourself? With your children? Your partner? Your friends? If you had an unlimited supply of everything…

I know what I’d do…

I’d call my friends and spend more quality time with them.

I’d waterski and jump the lake.

I’d take the trip and stroll slowly by meeting people, petting animals, trying new foods, exploring.

I’d create something and share it, not for likes, but because it was fun, freeing, and empowering to create, and because I am proud of it.

I’d play more and spend time with people who enjoy playing too. I’d invite people to play with me.

I’d move my body for fun, trying new things, contorting my body into new shapes.

I’d get lost within myself. I’d get lost in the world.

I’d live.

And in doing that…playing, moving, creating, laughing, being…I’d create and attract more money.

In short, money isn’t the end. Living is.

That’s the legacy I want to leave my children.

Living life is the legacy.

Do I get this right all of the time? Hell, no.

Do I freak out when my bank account gets lower than feels safe? Hell, yes.

But in those moments, I have a choice:

• I can chase the money, or

• I can live and attract the money

Let’s be clear.

Both require work.

Attracting money isn’t woo-woo, money cometh. Hardly. It takes emotional fortitude to be still when every muscle in your body wants to fight and claw for the security and safety you think money offers.

It takes courage to look at your bank account and not hustle to create from a place of panic but to slow down instead. To choose to take a walk, sit by the lake, and steady the mind so you can create in flow.

It takes sheer fucking will not to chase the golden egg or beat yourself up for choosing this unfamiliar path instead of the known one, for believing things could be different, that you could be different. That you are right to want, receive, and have more without the hustle.

To hold fast to belief when you don’t see the money and recognize that it is just the shedding, the unwinding, the unlearning, the demolition before the building.

To remind yourself that you can’t build something new and amazing without clearing the land first.

You can’t reap the harvest without breaking the soil, removing the rocks, tilling the land, planting, watering, and nurturing the seed first.

Some of us want a bountiful harvest of a life, ripe with fruits and experiences the likes of which we’ve never seen but know deep in our being exists.

But we are scared of doing the work.

We are scared of clearing the land, removing the rocks, and speaking what we want.

Come on.

Look out over this land of a life. What do you see? What do you feel?

Yes.

That.

It can be.

It can be.

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes, and feel it.

Believe it.

Don’t look at all of the work. Look at it as play. As creation.

Okay, yeah. It’s work, but my God, the vision.

A vast life. An abundant, joy-filled, playful, creative, expansive life.

See it done.

See it bountiful. See it.

See your grandchildren running around in it. Laughing.

Under the shade tree you saw and planted.

Hear it.

Cross your legs, sip some wine or sweet tea, and delight in the sounds of freedom.

That is your legacy–freedom.

Untethered.

Not tied to money.

Not because of money.

But because you decided to live…and the money just came with it.