There is another version of this famous quotation "money is the root of all evil" that has been around since about 1000 A.D. It's rather different to the original New Testament quotation. The original version could be considered to be a success quote. The new version of the quotation can block your success.

There is just one small change in more recent version of the original success quote, but that small change is of tremendous significance! Removing the world love reflects a whole set of cultural conditioning that so many people fall victim to on their journey to success. In fact this conditioning is so pervasive you probably have it too.

You may have been bought up with the belief that money is bad, rich people are bad, making money is bad, being poor is good, noble, worthy… Your parents or someone else significant in your life may have passed similar beliefs on to you directly, through their attitudes to people and events or in some other way. Or you may have acquired these beliefs at school, from your friends or from your culture.

However it happened, if you belief that money or making money is bad, you will struggle to be successful with money!

The key to success - it's not money that's the problem

Stop and think about it for a moment. How can money be "the root of all evil"? Money in itself is passive, it is the system by which we exchange value - you exchange the value of your labour and expertise for money and then you exchange the money you earn for things that you value - food, clothes, a house and so on.

The key to success is to realise that it is your attitude to money and the way that you acquire and use money that is the problem. The original New Testament success quote says it so much more eloquently: "The love of money is the root of all evil".

The desires that we all feel towards money and making money can be bad for us and our society. Greed, acquisitiveness, miserliness, status consciousness… Money can cause humans to do a lot of bad things.

Believing that money is the root of all evil is one way to protect yourself from falling victim to these emotions. However as you've seen it can have some rather serious side-effects. Such a belief can cause you to reject money and regard people who make a lot of money as somehow morally inferior. And such beliefs will limit your ability to make money.

Success quote: give your attitude to money a health check

You should consider the original purpose of money - as a token to exchange in return for value. Money made by giving fair value in terms of goods or service is a fair exchange that is recognised by the whole of society.

Many people who make a lot of money - and you should aim to be one of these people - employ a large proportion of their money to benefit other people. There is a long tradition of philanthropy, such famous self made billionaires as Andrew Carnegie and more recently Bill Gates have donated a lot of their income to help other people.

If you find that you are limited in your ability to make money by negative beliefs about money, you should reflect on the success quote "the love of money is the root of all evil" and make sure that your attitude to money is one that is aligned with the positive good that money can achieve in this world. Once you have the correct attitude and you truly believe in it, negative beliefs about money will disappear like ghosts in the sunlight!