The more and more I read seriously about money, the more I come to accept that: the only thing that attracts money is VALUE created for others. People who create value for others receive money in return. Money is just a measure of value a person creates or has created.

What is valued does not often align with society’s ethical notions and notions of what is fair and reasonable. So, we have nurses who do valuable work for society but do not receive a multi-million dollar payout that a founder of an AI startup receives.

A person either consumes value and so pays money/energy or it produces value and so receives money/energy. As a result, to create value, a person must switch from a consumer mentality to a producer mentality. Consumption of value can help in production of value – for example, consuming information can help produce information. In this way, people can spend money but still make money. But, activities of consuming value created by other people do not inherently produce value/money/energy. So, the consumption mentality can be said to have a lower energy state than production mentality. In consumption, we are the product of circumstances created by others (low agentic activity/low aliveness) and in production, we create our circumstances (high agentic/high aliveness). Both are necessary and neither is inherently better than the other. A person needs to have both across a day to survive and live – hence the emphasis on rest and relaxation (consumption) that even Olympians place in their training. However, one is more responsible than the other in attracting money.

Not all production is equal in value. The result of the production, as opposed to the hard work done to create it, must be considered. The bigger the result (i.e. the more people it impacts), the greater the value that is created and so the greater the money it attracts. So, a person producing raincoats in the desert may make no money despite being in production mode because the business has not created value for other people. But a person creating a website for people to tour a desert may make money because it creates value for people.

One of the greatest ways to produce something is to do so through a sense of play. If you can find something that feels like play to you (i.e. problems you would pay to undertake because of how joyful it feels to solve them) and you are in producer mentality, then you will likely attract more money than if you produce something with the sole desperation to create money. Like all great things in life, money is attracted indirectly. It can sense the desperation (which arises from a sense of lack and scarcity) and it is turned off. By being in play, money comes naturally because you did not care for it (in a real way and not in a pretend way to be detached from money so you ultimately get money). The sense of play also helps detach the energy of money from its actual use. Many people are born and taught (explicitly or implicitly) that the energy of money is: the solution to all problems, the cause of all problems, something that is hard to get, something that you (the person) cannot get, something that can only be obtained by following a set of rules or a path etc. When you produce value through play, money appears. But it does not matter as much now as your emotional needs are being fulfilled by the sense of play that previously were purported to only be filled with money.