How You Can Achieve Financial Freedom: Engaging All Three Dimensions of Wealth
Are you really after financial freedom? Or are you after a self-actualized life where you are free from the stress of your money? What if financial freedom is not only about early retirement, but rather about living a life in full alignment with your values and your money? They say money doesn't buy happiness, so what does? A lot of us focus our time and energy on outer wealth: material acquisition, creating a plan to earn more money, to save more money, to get higher returns on our investments. I believe that achieving financial freedom is an experience deeper than what material wealth provides. It requires addressing not only your outer wealth plans, but also your concepts of inner wealth and higher wealth.
In this article, I'd like to teach you about the three dimensions of wealth, and how considering all three perspectives will allow you to create a wealth plan that serves your highest interest. Each dimension is incredibly important in our individual money journeys, and I hope you step away from this article with practical tools to start building a more holistic, peaceful money experience for yourself. I believe that when you not only address your outer wealth, but also engage your inner and higher wealth, you begin to find true peace, and true financial freedom.
The first dimension is outer wealth. This includes all the practical and tactical manifestations of your money: your net worth, your budget, your bank accounts, your spending and savings numbers. Considering your outer wealth alone when building your money map will leave you with a one dimensional wealth plan. When you build a one dimensional wealth plan, it is much more difficult to sustain in the long-run. It encourages you to keep your life and your money in separate parts of the brain, and the moment you’re confronted with a tough financial decision that may not be in alignment with your inner and higher wealth plan, you will not have the tools or resources to realign. Most financial planners only focus on your outer wealth, however, inner wealth and higher wealth are the second and third dimensions to achieving your goals and living a powerful relationship with money.
Your inner wealth refers to the way you think and feel about money. Do you believe money is evil? Does how much money you have determine how valuable you are as a person? Are poor people bad and rich people good? Often, money beliefs stem from our family’s relationship with money when we were kids, and can be incredibly problematic. If you find yourself spending too much money or afraid to spend money at all, it’s time to examine these deep money beliefs.
One of my favorite exercises in my planning practice is working through a “belief blueprint,” where I ask my clients to really articulate what they believe to be true about money. Once we start digging into these beliefs, we can start to understand how they affect our actions. I suggest you become curious about all of your financial decisions. Ask yourself, why is this purchase meaningful to me and my life? What is the actual return on this purchase? (Remember, there are several different types of return, not just financial return. Learn more about how to adopt an investor mindset when it comes to purchases here.)
Inner wealth also contributes to your level of comfort in communicating with others about money, whether it’s with your partner, your boss, your potential customer or your children. If you’re uncomfortable communicating with others about money, you are giving up your financial power. You may find yourself missing out on a well-deserved raise, undercharging for your services, ignoring financial problems with your partner, or teaching bad financial behaviors to your kids. Addressing your inner wealth is perhaps the most important component of financial success, and should not be overlooked when building a wealth plan.
One insidious money belief that plagues all of us is that our personal value in the world is determined by our income or net worth. This is one of the most dangerous, debilitating beliefs we hold, and one that is constantly reinforced by a consumerist, material society. At some point in our lives, each of us starts from ground zero in order to build towards a goal. If our inner compass aligns our value with our net worth, we won’t make it very far. It’s incredibly important to confront this belief if you are taking a risk on yourself or your business. If you believe your value reflects your outer wealth, you’re going to give up, succumbing to your self-defeating thoughts: I’m not good, I’m not valuable, my business isn’t growing fast enough, this was a bad idea.
Our society constantly reinforces the idea that outer wealth reflects ultimate success, and we have to do a lot of brain rewiring to believe that our worth isn’t tied to our money. Again, we can’t ignore outer wealth. But to break out of paralyzing monetary stress and find financial freedom, we need all three dimensions to work together.
Which brings me to our third dimension: higher wealth. This dimension is your money purpose, the way you express your perspectives, your values, and your beliefs with the money you spend. We advocate with every dollar we have, and we choose where we want to spend our money. We have power with our purchases. Every time we spend, we’re supporting a future—a future for a business, a future for the world we live in—and this is where our purpose in the world manifests itself in a material way. When we spend mindlessly, we’re giving our power away.
I believe money is an energetic flow. It’s a reflection of how much value we put into the world and how much value the world gives us back. It’s an exchange for the contributions we make to the world, and the more passionate we are, the more purposeful and intentional our work is, the easier it will be to show up earnestly and communicate our values.
Once you align your money with your purpose, outer wealth becomes much easier. People feel that you care. People understand your passion, and you get to do what you love. Aligning with your higher wealth and your values really allows you to support the world you want to live in, and it allows you to make more intentional choices with your money and the future you want for yourself.
There’s a lot of rewiring we have to do and a lot of trust we need to build to make room for this new mindset. And of course, everyone has a different starting point. Often due to either family wealth or systemic disadvantages, which make financial stability much harder for many different groups in the United States, the path to financial freedom will vary widely from person to person. We will all have different hurdles to overcome along the way, and I won’t deny that it’ll be harder for some than others. But the important thing to remember is that financial freedom isn’t just about securing funds and planning an early retirement. It’s about building a healthy relationship with your money, which can be achieved no matter your income level.
Financial freedom is for all of us, and we can all get there step by step. As you continue your journey, I’m here to support you while you lean in and start the big work of addressing your beliefs, understanding your purpose, and building that outer wealth towards self-actualization and financial freedom.