The moocher mindset

Opting into mooch mode means you’re extracting more social value than you’re contributing. Your focus is on getting as opposed to giving, so you take more out of the system than you give back. The moocher mindset suggests you can always rely on others to pick up your slack. It’s the mindset of unearned entitlement. Since you still need to extract value such as food, clothing, and shelter — value which others must provide for you – you live at the expense of others. Your burden may be shouldered by an individual such as a parent, or it may be shared by society at large, but either way you survive by suckling the social teat.
Sometimes mooching becomes so habitual it’s easy to overlook. Many people who seemingly have contribution-based careers harbor an underlying moocher mindset. They aim to extract as much social value as possible while contributing as little as possible. They work to make money to the degree it’s necessary, while mooching as much as they can get away with. Such people don’t have inspired careers because work is only seen as a means to an end, not an outlet for genuine contribution. Take a look around and see if you can identify the moochers in your life. Who is there to get rather than to give?
Another name for the moocher mindset is the scarcity mindset. Since you aren’t creating value of your own, the money you extract must come from someone else. It’s a zero-sum game. Whatever you gain, someone else must lose.
The moocher mindset makes the attainment of financial abundance very difficult because in order to succeed financially with this mindset, you must embrace certain values that most people would consider negative. Your gain is someone else’s loss, so getting rich requires taking advantage of more people. In order to gain by mooching, someone else must cover your extraction with real value. So the more wealth you accumulate, the more you steal from others.
Most people can’t handle the thought of becoming wealthy at the expense of others, so usually the moocher mindset gives rise to self-sabotage instead. If you fall into this pattern, you’ll experience a love/hate relationship with money. On the one hand, you may want more money, but on the other hand, you may feel disinclined to make too much, since you know that the more money you get, the more someone else has to pay for it. For example, if you make a living as a professional poker player, then you know that the more you earn, the more money others have to lose… not the best motivation for a highly conscious person to achieve financial abundance.
Some people are able to bypass this problem of financial self-sabotage by lowering their consciousness. They learn to make money without rationally considering the consequences of how they’re earning it. They invent justifications to explain their actions while keeping their awareness from getting in the way. Ultimately this is the mindset of criminals.
The more you align yourself with the moocher mindset, the more difficult it will be for you to experience financial abundance and remain conscious. Ultimately you have to choose one or the other: be conscious or be wealthy. You can’t have both if you subscribe to the moocher mindset. If you find yourself stuck at a certain level of income and unable to go any higher, an underlying moocher mindset is probably the culprit. This is the mindset that leads you to ask, “How can I get more money?” instead of, “How can I contribute more value?” It’s also the mindset that says it’s a bad idea to earn more money, since your gain is someone else’s pain.
The contributor mindset
Now let’s consider the contributor mindset. This mindset recognizes that the best way to make money is to provide fair value in exchange. Create genuine social value, and receive payment commensurate with that value. Due to market inefficiencies, sometimes you’ll be underpaid, and sometimes you’ll be overpaid, but the basic idea is that you earn money by contributing.
If you want to earn income as a contributor, you must contribute social value, not personal value. Many would-be contributors get stuck on this concept. Personal value is whatever you say it is — you’re free to decide what has value to you personally, and it doesn’t matter if no one agrees with you. Social value, however, is assigned by social consensus. If you believe your work has tremendous value, but virtually no one else does, then your work has high personal value but little or no social value. Here’s the key point: your income depends on the social value of your work, not the personal value.
If you want to generate income from creative work, then your work must have social value. There’s no getting around that. No social value, no income. If your skills and hard work are not in alignment with the creation of social value, then you will not be able to generate income as a contributor.
This isn’t an unfair system — it’s just how the monetary system works. Since money is a social resource backed by social value, it makes sense that you won’t get paid much for providing something of little or no social value. The saying “Find a need and fill it” certainly rings true, assuming we’re referring to a social need or desire.
This web site, for example, has a fair degree of social value. Whether you or I value it as individuals is financially irrelevant. It successfully generates income because the overall social consensus is that this site has a certain level of value. And that social value makes it possible for the site to generate income. If there was no social value to this site, there would be no income potential.
Another name for the contributor mindset is the abundance mindset. This mindset says that wealth can be created from ideas and action. Your gain is a reflection of the social gain you’ve contributed. If you want to earn a high income, you must contribute a lot of social value. The more social value you create, the more money you can earn. This is a win-win mindset because you’re putting value into the system for the benefit of others.
Under the contributor mindset, you receive money as payment for your social service. The money you earn is society’s way of saying, “In exchange for your valued contribution, you are hereby granted the right to extract $X of value from society at a time of your choosing.” This is a beautiful thing!
The only real limit on your income is how much social value you can create. If you want to earn more money, then develop your skills and talents to facilitate the creation of lots of social value. The best way to increase your income is to figure out how to deliver more social value. Focus on giving, and the getting will largely take care of itself. The systems to reward social service are already in place, so all you need to do is plug your service into the existing marketplace.
Generating income from social contribution is a very positive experience. Consequently, it won’t lower your consciousness like the moocher mindset. With the contributor mindset, wealth and consciousness are not in conflict. In fact, they synergize extremely well, especially if you reinvest some of your income into expanding your contribution.
If you adopt the contributor mindset, just be aware that members of the moocher mindset will sometimes mistakenly count you among them. As you work to increase your social contribution and thereby earn a higher income, moochers will project their values onto you, concluding you’ve become greedy and must be taking advantage of others for personal gain. Don’t let moochers dissuade you from your path though. Let your inspiration come from the desire to provide even more social value. It would be less honorable to withhold your value just because others misinterpret your motives.