My thoughts on “flaunting privilege”
A few people have been annoyed at Jordan and me for “flaunting our privilege” lately.
Here is the thing.
Privilege exists, of course.
And if you are someone who complains about privilege and criticizes other people for it and expects them to do things differently….
You will stay right where you are.
Are you going to whine about the game, or are you going to play the game?
Let me talk to my fellow privileged people for a moment:
When I first started my business I was basically frozen and couldn’t ask for money because I felt so bad about my privilege.
I felt like I didn’t deserve to earn anything because I already had grown up with more than most people.
We all have money stuff. And mine was that I was always given it, never told how it worked, never learned to work for anything, and felt guilty about it.
I had to unwind a fucking lot about this in order to make what I am making now.
When I was a little I gave a girl in my neighborhood a hair wrap.
I had practiced this skill and I charged her $20 for it. It felt like a fair price because we paid more than that for hair wraps on vacation.
She was happy to pay for it and I was very proud of myself.
When I got home I told my mom and she was horrified I had charged that much, told me I took advantage of her, called her mom and apologized, and made me return the money.
I remember feeling very confused about this.
When I started my business I was embarrassed I even had money stuff because I had grown up with money.
Why was it so hard for me to make any money when I had so much privilege, I asked myself. I didn’t have that much money, it was running out.
I spent so much time feeling guilty about this.
Thinking that I deserved to just survive because others were barely surviving.
Who was I, to think that I could thrive?
Your relationship with money is energetic.
So if you spend all your time feeling guilty about what you have
Or hating people who have more than you
Or critiquing people for not talking about it properly according to you
You will stay stuck right where you are.
And all you will see in the world around you is proof that you can’t have it.
Instead of seeing proof that you can have it too.
And I’ll just say, most business “success stories” that I read came from people who had started off broke or who had been completely broke.
People who taught about how they had been poor and broke and had nothing.
Rags to riches.
And I was like well what about me. I don’t relate to this.
In retrospect, this is probably because most people who have money don’t want to talk about it because they don’t want to be criticized for it.
So anyway, just want to say here that whether you had or have money or not, you can still make money.
A lot of money.
And I lived for a really long time in fear that I couldn’t have my life be this good.
And I am not doing that anymore.
And you know what?
The more I open and let it in and celebrate it, the more that comes.
And I know that anyone complaining about privilege and blaming things on it is stuck in the same place I was years ago.
Not willing to take responsibility for their patterns and their energy
The truth is you can have it.
But can you feel how absolutely terrified you actually are of having it?
Privilege is real, and it matters to acknowledge it and understand how it impacts our life experiences.
But it doesn’t need to predict how your life will go.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– Here are some things you might not like about me
– I can just let this in, everything I’ve ever wanted
– Taking responsibility for your desire
– Why I can’t tell you what I do