Earned or Inherited: What Your Relationship with Money Reveals

“Life isn’t a game. Life is communication. Learn the language, or stay lost in translation.” — TAGA INC.

Most of us navigate the financial system without a clear map because the guidance we need is rarely given. I’m sharing what I’ve learned from my own missteps, and I’m confident you’ll find insights here that can shift how you relate to money.

Please be advised:
Knowledge is only useful when applied.

To the average spender, money is never neutral. It not only carries memory, history, and weight but it is also the ledger of unmet desires, unspoken fears, and unclaimed power.

Money, like anything we have relation with, is a language. As a social creature, you either learn the dialect of these systems, or stay forever mistranslated.

Take success. It is rarely labor alone.
It demands the sacrifice of the identity that clings to comfort, mediocrity, and the familiar lie of limitation—demanding a war on your own inertia.

We believe value lives in accumulation.
False.
Value lives in removing excess.
You do not need more noise.

You need meaning.

Give a poor man $1. $100. $1,000. $1M.
Does it change him?

Now let’s reflect:

You’ve earned tens, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions over the course of your life, and just as easily spent as much without anything to show for it. This mirrors the experience of the 70% of lottery winners who go broke or file for bankruptcy within a short span.

Why? Because their identity remains that of the receiver, never the source. Money flows in through external channels, and those same channels take it away.

The limiting belief is that money belongs elsewhere, anywhere but under your command. This thought is ingrained in the vast majority of people, turning what could be abundance into burden — the very opposite of what most long to experience.

Hard work doesn't guarantee financial wisdom.

Earning money alone does not make you the source.

If your self-concept is rooted in lack, you will inevitably sabotage it. What matters is who you are when it rests in your hands.

People do not merely desire money; they seek experiences that either transform or deeply affirm who they are. Yet affirmation without conviction is a prison disguised as liberation.

What we truly seek is the trust to wield wealth and the courage to bear the responsibility it demands.

So what actually builds that kind of trust and endurance? How do you have a relationship with value that's not rooted in performance, validation, or lack?

Here’s where the real work begins:

1. Emotional Literacy: Understand the feelings driving your financial behavior

• Track your spending—not just of purchases, but of the emotions before and after each financial decision.

  Why? Because emotional conviction is what impresses the subconscious and sustains identity. According to the Hermetic principle of Cause and Effect, every outer action is the effect of an inner state. If you ever feel uncertain about your state, look at your results and, more importantly, your attitude toward them. Your emotions reveal the state you are operating from. By tracking them, you begin to see the direct link between identity (cause) and material results (effect).

2. Financial Identity: Clarity is a new kind of status

• What is your desired relationship like with money? How do you define currency? Spend time actually discovering who you are in relation to these experiences. That alone, will enlighten you more than any course.

• Define values around money that prioritize flow (or freedom) over possession.

• Hold yourself accountable to your standards.

  If most of the people you surround yourself with carry negative money beliefs or operate below the level you aspire to, it’s time to reflect: Where are you now versus where could you be if you took full accountability for your situation? What does it look like? What does it feel like? Great. Now impress it. Seek it within you. It’ll have no choice but to materialize.

4. Cultural Detox: Unplug from hyper-consumerism

• Unsubscribe. Mute. Unfollow. Recalibrate.

• Replace scrolling with value creation, learning, rest.

• If you want to be exceptional, you must accept being the exception.
  Following the crowd only guarantees you their results. There’s a reason it’s called the top 1%—few are willing to stand apart long enough to claim it. Will you?

Note: The brain will always justify any emotional indulgence you feed it. Consume with intelligence.

Final Thought

True wealth isn’t what you can buy. It’s what you can walk away from without losing yourself.

Here are a few actionable tools that sustain this way of thinking:

1. Build Self-Control
   Delay gratification and develop mental discipline.

2. Shifting Identity Toward Intention
   Your identity is about vision, not performance.

3. Creating Boundaries
   Get clear on what you allow and what you don’t. Then be it, non-negotiably.

4. Foster Real Wealth
   Develop habits that lead to true freedom: value creation, flowing, investing, planning.

5. Restore Sovereignty
   Become sovereign. Avoid being ruled by endless wants, hopes, and wishes. Learn to sit in discomfort, and relaxing your nervous system without outsourcing relief.

It’s not about how much you can have, but how deeply you can choose.

TAGA INC.
Luxury is Sovereignty. Imagination is Wealth.