I talk a lot about the process of changing financial class and it’s always so edgy for people.
There’s a clear reason that class change doesn’t happen more often. It’s not because it’s difficult. Making more money is actually easier than making less. Making more money is everyone’s birthright. There’s no limitation on this.
So why isn’t everyone doing it?
It speaks right to the heart of our sense of belonging.
When I was working in New York City schools, the explicit agenda we brought to the table was using education to empower these kids – to change class. The concept was that low income kids can have access to more, if only they have a great education. That was the philosophy.
It didn’t work.
Part of that is because I didn’t actually know how to change class then. So I wasn’t able to teach them that. But even if I had been able to – if my students had used their education to go further, farther, faster than anyone in their family had gone….
They would leave their family behind.
There is a kind of betrayal in that. Or at least, that’s what it feels like emotionally.
It’s what happened with my own parents. I was raised middle class. My parents are both very financially secure. They have prioritized financial security to a fault! And, they are both completely mystified by what I’m doing. It makes them uncomfortable, and it makes us feel separate. It’s tender and strange for all of us.
It’s dramatic to exit our family of origin, our community of origin; to break with the culture that formed us. Yet I feel that all of the promise, and all of the hope, and all of the potential of my ancestry is now mine to claim and make real.
I’m doing it in honor of them. I stand on their shoulders as I make money in new and big ways.
They put me in the position to be able to do this in the first place. I couldn’t do any of it without that support, that experience. And I am doing everything I can to carry our legacy forward. To fully realize the promise we share.
I’m curious…
- What does this process look like for you?
- Are you ready to change your class… and receive all that comes with it?
- What losses are you prepared to experience?
- Is it worth it for you, to allow the vision that’s flowing through you?
- Is it possible that this – the sense of emotional betrayal, of leaving your family and community behind – is the very thing holding you back from realizing your vision?
- Can you reframe your mindset to say… I’m doing this for us all?