Is making money selfish?

According to Steve Pavlina, in his blog post entitled How Selfish Are You? – yes and no.

He defines two concepts:

STO – Service to Others
STS – Service to Self

Says Pavlina:

STS and STO must remain in balance. It isn’t a matter of choosing one path over the other. You need both.

….For example, suppose you’re in a situation where your job is almost entirely STS. You do it for the money or for other perks or for a feeling of security, but your work doesn’t serve the greater good in any meaningful way. Suppose your company manufactures junk food, the kinds of products that are only going to harm people’s health in the long run. But your company (and you) get paid to do it.

Then in your off time, you do volunteer work, spend lots of time with your family, and so on. In your personal life you try to be a lot more STO.

STS and STO are in conflict. They’re not in balance.

How does one find balance?

Pavlina suggests:

Instead of having [STO and STS] work against each other, set them both after the same goal. Allow your greed to fuel your service and your service to fuel your greed. Accept and integrate both the selfish and the selfless parts of you. Learn to use both the dark and the light sides of your nature.

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Is Wall Street still a man’s territory?

According to Cari Lynn, journalist and author of Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventure Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys’ Club of Commodities Trading, it is.

Lynn spent a year on the “floor,” learning the ropes, and researching her book. She was interviewed by Stocks & Commodities Magazine for their May 2006 issue.

She says:

“It takes a special kind of woman to survive in the pits. There is a whole spectrum of women on the trading floor. It is certainly no secret that there are many women who are there because there are a lot of men and a lot of money. Then on the opposite end of that spectrum are the women who really lost all femininity. Unfortunately, both these types were often held in low esteem by the male traders. So somewhere in the delicate middle are the really successful women traders. It takes a lot of savvy for a woman to find success on the floor. You have to know yourself, and go in there with a good head on your shoulders and a strong sense of self to make it. Just knowing how to trade isn’t enough.”

Does she plan to continue trading?

No, she has other plans:

“Trading really sucks a lot out of you. I learned that my mind doesn’t work that way. I can’t tolerate that kind of risk.”

Does this mean women should avoid being traders?

Not according to Gail Osten, in her 2004 article in Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine: “What Can Male Traders Learn from Successful Women… and Vice Versa.”

She believes that perhaps it’s easier for women to enter the field now that more trading is done virtually. According to Osten, women tend to benefit from right-brained visual thinking, curiosity and a lack of fear about asking questions.

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At cgjungpage.org, Jan Bauer, a Montreal Jungian analyst, speaks about “The Mysteries of Money.” In Part 2 of the audio, she observes that if someone is strong in relationships, they tend to be weak in money, and if they are strong in money, they tend to be weak in relationships.

To be balanced, according to Bauer, one must integrate the "other side."  To integrate the “other,” there must always be a fall into the shadow. For the relationship-oriented coming to terms with money (warrior archetype maybe?), she will, at first, feel like a “selfish bitch.” For the financially oriented coming to terms with relationship, he will, at first, feel “spineless and weak.” I speak of stereotypical genders here, but the genders could be switched. This is very scary to do, from either side. Seeking wholeness, one must go into that “bad” space, that bad image of oneself, before one can integrate the “other side.”

No wonder change is so difficult.

Listen to full lecture here.

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