Gold Will Pass Through Your Hands, But Gold Will Have No Dominion Over You

The title of this post is a paraphrase of something Galadriel tells Glimli, son of Gloin, before he and his companions leave Lothlorien.

If you are completely in the dark about what I just wrote you should go get a complete copy of The Lord of the Rings and read it, by JR Tolkien and read it. It is a great novel for just entertainment, but, as is the case with so much fiction, there are wonderful gems of wisdom to draw out as well.

Anyway, when I heard this (I have read the books, but I am now listening to the audio book version while I am in my car) a light went on in my head.

In years gone by I hung around with several gamblers, and they had a saying about money, "It's only paper, I'll just go get some more." It made it seem that money meant very little to them. I found that too be true only if they had a lot of money based on some entrepreneurial venture.

And there's the key. See entrepreneurs view money differently. They don't see money, necessarily, as something you trade time for. That's not to say they don't work, just that they look for leverage. Employees for example. You pay someone 15 dollars an hour who makes 30 dollars an hour for you each hour they work. Now you still have to work managing them, and ideally you have several employees who you manage, all making you money each day they work.

Entrepreneurs also know they can send another piece of mail, place another ad, etc. etc and they can create more money for themselves.

In short, money is something that flows (cash flow) and it doesn't control the entrepreneur. It is an element in the decision making process, but general not the controlling factor.

In short, money (gold) passes through our hands but has no dominion over us.

Of course to the outside observer that is 100% wrong. You'll hear people say things like "All he [she] talks about is money," or "all that matters to him [her] is money."

That is, of course, not true. We are just willing to accept money as part of life. Conversation about it isn't meant to be shunned anymore than conversation about an interesting show you saw last night should be shunned. Conversation about how to make more money or how to increase your wealth are no more taboo to us than conversations about how to deal with martial problems or conversations about how to deal with a problems with your children.

All of these are part of life, some topics very important parts of life. Money is just one of those parts.

So here's the questions, who does money hold greater sway over, the person who views it as taboo, who won't talk about it, who expends mental and emotional energy fretting about whether it should be discussed or not, or the person who just views money as one of many areas of life, not to be ignored or concerned about any more or less than any number of other areas.

Interestingly enough, the more natural someone is with money, the more they tend of have/control. So in short, I would suggest that the average entrepreneur, when compaered with the average non-entrepreneur, has more money flowing through his/her hands and money has far less a hold over him/her.

But then, do they have more money because it doesn't have ahold, or does it not have ahold because they have more money?

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