Here’s the real reason why you desire wealth.

We live in an age where people either want to get rich quick, or they have such a negative opinion about money that if they made too much of it they would consider themselves evil.

Some people won’t touch money because they assume it’s dirty, and others are so obsessed with chasing it that they have lost all sense of joy and satisfaction.

Yet, when we were all children, most of us ran around telling our parents that we were going to be rich. The reason why we told our parents this was because before anybody came in and told us anything about what the real world was, we knew that life was abundant.

We knew that we were supposed to experience joy; that we were supposed to be able to play all day, have fun, obtain those things we want, and do those things we love.

So we told our parents, “I’m going to be rich one day” but what we meant was, “I’m not going to be stressed out and worried all the time like you are. That’s not how life is supposed to be.”

We knew that we deserved the freedom to love and live the way we wanted to— without restriction, and we knew that all the stress so prevalent around us was not in alignment with our true nature.

And then we got older.

We let people convince us that it wasn’t realistic to desire freedom. That it wasn’t realistic to want to live a life of travel, fun, and overall abundance. We let people shrink our dreams, and we settled for a life of mediocrity.

When I first started my business years ago, I thought it was money that I was chasing, but it wasn’t until I realized that it wasn’t money but freedom I was chasing that I really started to create real momentum.

Now, as I stare out my apartment porch door on a Thursday afternoon while “working” with the freedom to structure my day as I choose, I know for sure that it was not money, I was chasing.

But the freedom I feel now.

Most people, when they say they want to be rich, before they lose all of their courage and faith in the possibilities, they don’t realize that its not actually money that they are wanting, but freedom.

So I wrote this article to remind you to never give up on your freedom. You may have to stop chasing money, fame, and attention, but never give up on the idea that freedom, the freedom of time, passion, and money, is your birthright.

Originally published at medium.com