What I learned recently is that, in order to succeed, I needed to totally change the way I relate to money as an artist.

I bought into the “poor artist” concept, where money is tainted and to accumulate money and wealth is to become tainted yourself. Poor artists indulging this paradigm judge people who are wealthy harshly — as being morally corrupt, greedy, egoistic, self-indulgent ass-holes. Many of them are, it’s true, but not all of them. There are also poor people with those traits.

Psychologically, we would “tell ourselves” we want success, but at the same time, would always sabotage our chances of success if deep down, we thought it would corrupt us, or automatically lead us down a perilous moral path.

I came upon this idea a while back when I realized, I looked down on wealthy people. I have since reframed things. There is nothing wrong with accumulating green survival tickets, especially if having these would enhance my art (as time would no longer be divided between art and finding a means to pay the bills).

I don’t think I had a devils chance of succeeding when I harbored virtuous (untainted) prejudice. It’s like I had to give myself permission to succeed. And I did. To prove it, I can believe the following statements:

There is nothing wrong with having wealth. As one of the wealthy, I will have the means to address wrongs. Time will open up because the tasks I was not good at and so did myself because I didn’t have the means–like accounting and taxes–would be delegated to those with expertise in those areas.

Then, I could better focus on things that I love and are important to me. It is thus, I give myself permission to not only succeed, but to lavishly exceed all expectations.