Money does not Change Life, Professionalism Does

A great majority of persons all over the globe are seeking happiness through having more and more money. Indeed, they are changing their lifestyles, not their respective states of mind. They are failing in differentiating between lifestyle and state of mind. Happiness is a subject matter of state of mind, and not of lifestyle.

For a happy state of mind, money is required just for satisfying instinctive needs like survival, procreation, curiosity, etc. but the money provides for only misplaced intuitive needs of lifestyle. Lifestyle is a superfluous cover for the state of mind, not influencing it in any way. Meaning to life is provided through the state of mind, but not through the lifestyle.

Firstly, we need to understand what is meant by economy. Economy is being free from financial worries, just absence of a negative state of mind - financial worry. A natural lifestyle means doing what our instincts call us to do, and these are limited to survival, procreation and satisfying curiosity.

Survival encompasses food, clothing and shelter at minimum levels, procreation needs finding a soul-mate and providing care to growing-up children. Instinct of curiosity demands from us that we have some free time from our respective families for knowing, thinking over and trying to improve upon our social and natural environments.

Nature intends survival of life through generations after generations, for this survival and procreation were naturally desired and designed. We humans gave humane touches to these instincts to improve upon conditions of survival and procreation. The additional requirements include -

1. a disease-free body,
2. institution of marriage,
3. caring for children until they are on their feet to survive further in humane ways, and
4. a social discipline of not harming others and the environment.

So, our natural requirements of money are for satisfying these instinctive needs only. This is what I call as 'economy of instinctive life' or just 'instinctive economy'. This economy is, of course, essential to life and underlines importance of money in life. Need of this much money in life has been flared up by our flaring intuitions with roots in our failure of keeping intuitions separate from instincts.

Intuitions work through sub-conscious mind of the person giving him/her a feeling of getting to a decision all of a sudden from his.her inner-self. Indeed, such decisions are imposed on the subconscious mind by the person's long-term conscious beliefs penetrating to subconscious level. Inner urges of a person for needs more than the instinctive ones discussed above, force him/her to look for resources to satisfy these needs, thus, the person is caught in a vicious cycle of needs and search for more resources, having no end. In this process, the person forgets what his/her original objective of life was and he/she just gets crazy for more and more money.

Once in the cycle of money earning and spending, desires of the person keep on flaring up and taking him/her beyond needs of his/her intuitions. A stage comes when the person forgets even about satisfying his/her desires in the process of earning more and more money. Only money and nothing else becomes aim of his/her life. Since, he/she loses sight of his/her aim, the money he/she earns leads him/her to nowhere.

Earning more money is not bad in itself, provided it makes life of the person more comfortable and fulfilling to his/her humane aim which is contentment - an inner feeling of getting satisfied. Contentment comes through an achievement at the end of a performance. Therefore, a performance, its end point and the result thereof are three pre-requisites of contentment.

The contentment not only comes at a pause of performances after achieving a desired result, but this also induces a pause in performances to relax and enjoy the achievement. It is a moment of celebrating the achievement and an end is a must. The contentment is never achieved through keeping money in focus through actions, as nobody can reach a destination without knowing it and aiming it.

The right way for achieving the aim of life - contentment, is reaching the achievement level of a performance for which the person's focus on performance and the achievement are essential. This is where professionalism comes in. Professionalism is keeping focus on work and let the result arrive as a natural outcome of the performance. This is akin to focus on means rather than on ends. It is opposed to the idea of 'all is well that ends well', but says, 'let means be right for right ends'.

A performance naturally remains the best when the performer keeps it in focus instead of anything else like the result or money therefrom. With focus on performance, the result and money commensurate to performance naturally comes in, provided the performance is not misdirected with respect to prevailing circumstances.

Every result is subject to efforts and circumstances, therefore, efforts are needed with reference to taking due care and consideration of circumstances. This is where management comes in to play its role, making professionalism as its indispensable part and parcel.

The life is achieving what you begin with. For a change in life, you need to change your thinking and performing pattern. If you begin with just thinking of money, you will get it but not anything else. For achieving the essence of life - contentment, you need to begin with thinking of contentment and that comes from success in performance, and that comes in focus on performance. Thus, life is a matter of performances, achievements and the contentment therefrom. It is never achievable through focus on money and getting it. Money is essential component of life but just for meeting instinctive needs of it as discussed above.