What the Fear of Looking Money-Grubbing Tells You — A Mismatch of Meaning

Introduction: The Awkwardness of Naming a Price

In the scene of conveying a price, you hesitate for an instant. Saying the figure, how the other will regard you crosses your mind. There is, in broaching the talk of money itself, a certain awkwardness.

I don’t want to be thought grasping about money. Many carry this feeling. And they try to process it as their own immaturity — a professional should ask for payment with confidence; failing to is indulgence.

Plenty of people are looking for the mindset to invoice with confidence. What this article examines is the premise beneath it: what this feeling of I don’t want to be thought so actually detects — its reading.

Let me give the conclusion first. In most cases it is not guilt over money. It is the honest reaction of the senses to a mismatch of meaning.

Reproaching Myself Did Not Erase It

Let me speak of myself. I loved music. I was absorbed to the point of madness. But when it came to using that music to earn money, a strange resistance welled up without fail.

It was not that earning was frightening. Nor did I dislike money. And yet, the moment it came to offering my own music as a product, somewhere in my heart called wait. An unease like a small bone stuck in the throat, not quite putting itself into words.

How did I process this then? By reproaching myself. This is merely me sulking, being naive. A professional, I told myself, says no likes or dislikes, delivers what is asked, and receives payment.

But however much I scolded — you are merely immature — the unease did not vanish. This is the key point. If it were truly mere indulgence, then resolving myself, or gaining experience, should thin it. But it did not thin. However many years passed, the same small bone stuck in the same place.

A feeling that does not vanish however much self-explanation you pile on is a sign that the self-explanation is wrong.

People can handle a feeling correctly named. Know this is fatigue and you can rest; know this is anger and you can face the cause. But a feeling given a wrong name stays suspended, never vanishing. An alarm that will not stop is not proof the alarm is broken but proof the name is wrong.

The Resistance Was Not on the Axis of the Payment’s Size

There was a moment when that unease showed its outline most sharply. It was when I was involved in a competition to provide a song for an idol group.

To be adopted, I had to bring the song toward the direction demanded — the mood this agency wanted, the brightness that suited this group. Technically, it was not impossible. But the moment I set to that work, the clearest voice of refusal I had ever felt rose: I do not want to write this song, neither for the company nor for the idol.

At first I was bewildered by this voice. It is work, so writing for the other is natural. But sensing it well, it was plainly something other than dissatisfaction with the payment.

Suppose the payment were piled several times higher — would that refusal vanish? Honestly, it should not. If anything, if in exchange for a high payment I were asked to surrender my judgment more deeply, the refusal might rather strengthen. Conversely, even for the slightest payment, if I could make what I truly wanted to make by my own standard, that voice would not have risen.

That is, the variable the senses were reacting to was never on the axis of the size of the payment. It swayed on an entirely different axis — whether the authority to judge value is mine or outside.

The True Nature Was a “Mismatch of Meaning”

What was happening here must be named precisely. This was a mismatch of meaning. Work meaningful to me and the conditions that work must satisfy to convert into money were fundamentally at odds. That gap, the senses keenly caught.

In the world, this kind of discomfort around money is called, in one lump, guilt. But this lumped naming makes the situation invisible.

The word guilt carries the moral implication I am doing something bad. The instant you apply that name, the problem becomes a story of the heart that feels bad, and the prescription automatically turns toward letting go of that sense of sin.

But if the true nature is a mismatch of meaning, the story changes entirely. It is not a problem of morals but a structural problem — my standard of value and the structure of payment do not mesh. If so, what to do is not to let go of the sense of sin but to question anew that failure to mesh.

Here appears how naming binds the prescription. Name the feeling guilt and the exit becomes letting go. Name the same feeling mismatch of meaning and the exit becomes changing the structure. The same single feeling is carried in wholly different directions by the name applied.

And if the name is wrong, proceeding in that direction naturally does not reach the exit. Many people hit a wall with the let go of guilt prescription because the naming at the starting point is already off.

Read “I Don’t Want to Be Thought So” in Two

This distinction can be opened into a form anyone can use.

When you hesitate to price what you made, read it as guilt over receiving money and the prescription becomes give yourself permission to receive.

But if the true hesitation is the feeling if I take this on under these conditions, I will no longer be able to make what I think good, that is not guilt. It is a mismatch of meaning that arose between value and conditions. In that case, what is needed is not permission to yourself but a review of how you take it on and your relationship with the other.

Even if they look like the same hesitation, if the true nature differs, the direction to head is the exact reverse. Precisely for that, you must not err in the first naming.

The question to check is this. Is this awkwardness directed at naming the figure itself? Or at what you will surrender by taking it on under these conditions?

If the former, it may be a hesitation about receiving. If the latter, the senses are pointing at structure.

▸ This structure of the authority to price itself is treated in why you cannot set your own salary.

Conclusion: Before Erasing, Read

The feeling I don’t want to be thought money-grubbing was not an immaturity to overcome. In most cases it is a proper reaction to your value being priced somewhere out of your own hands.

Processing it by reproaching yourself had a troublesome side effect. By shaming the self who feels unease, you become unable to calmly hear out what that feeling is trying to convey. Shame clouds the eye of observation. For a long time, I could see my own senses only as a defect to fix, never as a signal to read.

So the first thing to do is decided. Not to erase but to read.

What is this feeling detecting? Is the sense of choosing for yourself being taken? Are what you feel to be of value and the conditions required to earn payment at odds?

An unnameable feeling only torments us. But a nameable feeling becomes a point on the map. And recompose the place the map points to, and that feeling ends its role and goes quiet. The whole picture of this reinterpretation is gathered in the true nature of the guilt around earning.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press