Ep 404 – The Money Myth: What Money Reveals That Strategy Can’t Fix
This episode is powered by The Ascension Archetype Quiz.
If you are a 6- or 7-figure CEO who secretly feels like a stranger inside your own business, lean in. I get it. You did what you were supposed to do. You built the business. You hit the number. You stabilized the cash flow. And instead of relief, you feel more pressure, more responsibility, and a quiet sense that something still isn’t quite right. You thought more money would mean more ease, but what you are feeling now is anything but. If you believed more money would finally make you feel settled, safe, or at peace and it didn’t, this episode will confirm why that feeling is a big fat money myth.
We’re naming what happens when money removes the urgency of survival and exposes what strategy was never meant to fix. We’re finally giving voice to the experience of having everything look right on the outside while inside you never fully exhale or feel at home in the life you built. And if looking into your money mirror is revealing a disconnect between your leadership identity and your ability to feel safe in your own body, get ready to get extremely honest about what your next level reveals and demands.
Here’s the truth: money was never designed to fix you. It was designed to magnify what already exists. It changes your environment, but it does not automatically change your identity, your sense of safety, or your internal agreements about worth, control, and responsibility. When those agreements haven’t evolved, money becomes a mirror, not a solution.
You’ll walk with clarity, language, and relief. You’ll finally understand why success didn’t feel settling, why pressure didn’t dissolve when stability arrived, and why strategy stopped working as the answer. This episode gives you a new way to relate to money, not as a measure of success, but as information about what your leadership is being invited to integrate next.
Grab your Move to Millions Podcast Notebook, a pen and your favorite beverage and listen in to discover:
✔ How to understand why money amplifies internal patterns instead of resolving them
✔ How to stop trying to strategy your way out of an identity conversation
✔ How to recognize internal homelessness without making it mean something is wrong
✔And so much more
This episode is a call to Legacy-Led CEOs who are brave enough to admit that more money didn’t bring the joy or relief they were promised. It’s for leaders who have outgrown the belief that gratitude should silence discomfort and who are ready to have an honest conversation about what success actually exposes once you reach higher income levels.
This is your invitation to stop judging yourself for how success feels and start understanding what it’s revealing. To pause the constant fixing, optimizing, and self-correcting long enough to hear what your internal world has been trying to tell you since the money arrived.
- “Money was never the reward. It has always been the magnifier.”
- “There is no socially acceptable language for saying I’ve succeeded and don’t feel at home inside of it.”
- “Money does not negotiate with identity. It simply reveals it.”
- “You were taught how to pursue success, but never how to live inside of it.”
- “Internal homelessness isn’t dissatisfaction. It’s unintegrated success.”
- What did I expect money to fix that it never actually could?
- Where do I still not feel settled inside the life I’ve built?
- How do I relate to safety, rest, and worth when urgency is removed?
- What patterns does money seem to magnify for me instead of soothing?
- How might my leadership need to evolve now that survival is no longer driving me?
- Take the Move to Millions Ascension Archetype Quiz
- Join the Waitlist for Sanctuary
- Apply for a Soul + Strategy Conversation
- Move to Millions: The Proven Framework To Become a Million Dollar CEO With Grace & Ease Instead of Hustle & Grind by Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon – Get Your Copy
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Season 7 Ep 404
Darnyelle: [00:00:00] If you are realizing that more money didn't actually bring you the joy and relief that you expected it would. I want you to come in closer. I want you to lean in because this episode is for you. This is the Move to Millions podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Darnyelle. If this happens to be your very first time here, welcome.
I already know that it will not be your last. I am on a mission to transform the soul and strategy of entrepreneurs and business owners just like you, so that you can make. Move, leave and net millions and do so with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind. My bestselling book is a great place to start.
In addition to this powerful podcast, if you want to acclimate yourself to the work that I am called to do, we've got a link for you to get access to Move to Millions: The Proven Framework to Become A Seven Figure CEO, right in the show notes. Now all season long, we are having a different conversation.
Now [00:01:00] this is a conversation that you likely won't hear anywhere else. This season is all about what happens when success is no longer the problem. Yep. You heard me correctly. This season we are getting to the heart of the matter about what's really keeping you from crossing over seven figures, and I promise you it is not what you think.
And in this market, I know you probably feel like getting to seven figures is harder than ever, but I've got something for you. In this episode, we're getting into a little something I like to call internal homelessness. This is about when you build a powerful life, but still feel like you are a visitor in the home that you've built inside of it.
Now, there's a promise that most of us absorbed without ever consciously agreeing to it. The promise says something like, if you make more money, things will finally feel settled. If you reach a certain level, the pressure will begin to dissipate. If you [00:02:00] hit that number, you'll finally feel secure, grounded, and complete.
And because the promise is so rarely spoken about out loud. It's almost never questioned, but here's what I need you to understand. Money does not do what we told it that we wanted to do, not because money is bad, not because wealth is wrong, but because money was never designed to fix. What it exposes and for high level leaders, that exposure can be very, very deer in the headlights, startling.
I know it was for me, I said, for years I wanna make lots of money. And when I actually did, I still wasn't ready for it. Now this is one of the hardest conversations that successful people ever have to have because the moment that you fix your lips to say, money doesn't solve this, it. Doesn't just sound like you're being ungrateful.
It sounds like you are suddenly disloyal to the life that you have been praying for. It sounds like you're questioning your own [00:03:00] success. I mean, seriously, it sounds like you are admitting something that you are not supposed to ever admit and say out loud. So what happens instead of saying it out loud and getting it off our chest?
Leaders keep it inside. They keep it to themselves. They tell themselves that they should feel differently, and they remind themselves of how far they've actually come. They compare their current discomfort to earlier struggle and decide that they have no right to put it out there. Now, on the outside, they'll keep functioning.
They'll keep leading and achieving, but on the inside. Something really important stays unresolved because the problem was never the money, just like it was never the strategy. It's that there is no socially acceptable language for saying I've succeeded and I don't feel at home inside of my success. So what do we do?
We stay silent. Not because we're [00:04:00] ungrateful, but because the culture that we are in only celebrates arrival, not adjustment. And that silence is not a character flaw. It becomes the cost of living inside of a promise that was never designed to be questioned. Hmm. This episode is gonna be so good. Now, the fact of the matter is this, we were taught how to pursue success, but we were never taught how to live inside of it.
And so as a result, we don't know what to do when we get there. Now according to finding summarized in the World happiness report, increases in income do absolutely improve life satisfaction, but only up to a point. Listen, you cannot money yourself out of some of the struggles and strife that you experience in your life. It's just not gonna happen. So once you get beyond that threshold, the emotional return actually begins to flatten, which means something really important. Money can [00:05:00] absolutely improve circumstances, and yes, it can absolutely reduce.
Certain stressors, it will create options for you. It will give you access and it might even give you a level of freedom. But let me tell you what money doesn't do. Money does not resolve identity. It does not create internal safety, and it absolutely does not calm A nervous system that never learned how to feel safe having more money.
That's not philosophy. That's not even data. That is science. That is the plain hard, honest truth. And what we have to understand is that this explains something that many leaders feel, but don't quite know how to articulate now, why success didn't bring the relief that they expected, why the pressure didn't disappear when the number actually was reached, and why the tension didn't dissolve when stability arrived.
The reason because money changed the environment around them. But it does not automatically change the internal agreements [00:06:00] that you have made about who you would have to be in order to survive having access to the money. Mm. Go ahead and wiggle your shoulders a little bit 'cause I know this is gonna get tight, tense and take a deep breath.
And if you need to always breathe, I always like to just move my head back and forth and roll my shoulders. Breathing in deeply and releasing slowly. This is where the misunderstanding actually happens. Most people think that money is the reward, but the fact of the matter is that money has never been a reward, but it has always been a magnifier.
It magnifies who you already are. I always say how you see money is about how you see yourself. Money doesn't ask you who you want to be. It actually reveals who you have been. It reveals how you are already relating to pressure and what you already believe about safety, about worth, about control, and about responsibility, which means money is not fixing your internal patterns.
[00:07:00] It is merely highlighting them, maybe not loudly or dramatically, but absolutely steadily and relentlessly, and it's doing so without judgment. Now, one of the things that I've been really focusing on since we started our SANCTUARY program is breaking this down in a way that makes it really resonant for you, because this is where it really clicks for a lot of the leaders that we work with.
Well, now what I'm talking about here is not dissatisfaction. It's not that you want more, it's. Definitely not that you're ungrateful. It's something that I didn't have language for for a very long time. It's what I now call internal homelessness. And if you felt it, you'll know exactly what I mean as I describe it to you.
It's when your life works, the business works, the money is money-ing it's coming in. The ends are meeting. People respect you. You have authority and influence, and at the same [00:08:00] time. You don't quite land. You're in the house, but you're not home. Remember that Luther Vandross song and what's wild is how often this shows up in the way that we relate to money, because money starts to feel like that thing that it's supposed to fix.
A feeling you tell yourself, listen, once I hit this number, I'll finally exhale. Or when things are just a little bit more stable, I'll finally feel safe. Or if I can just get ahead enough, then I'll be able to relax. Listen, I've said all of these things, and I've coached lots of people who said all of these things too.
But here's the part that no one really talks about. When the money arrives and that feeling still doesn't go away, it can be really confusing and it will have you start to think that there is something wrong with you. That this was supposed to be the part where you actually felt better, like you felt worthy, you felt deserving, you felt like you had finally [00:09:00] arrived, and the truth is.
Nothing is wrong with you. Money just can't improve what you thought. It could improve. Yeah. It can improve your circumstances. Yeah, it can create options. Yeah, it can remove pressure, but it absolutely cannot make you feel at home inside of yourself. So when that internal sense of home isn't there, money quietly becomes something we try to use to anchor ourselves.
Not in a greedy way, but in a human way. We're looking for relief. We're looking for grounding. We're looking for safety, and that is what I mean by internal homelessness. You've built something meaningful, but you haven't yet felt settled inside of it. Have you felt this?
If you felt this, tag me in a story telling me that you feel me. Listen, I wanna know I'm not alone. This can be why money doesn't feel neutral at higher levels. It's not just a resource anymore. At that point, it literally becomes a mirror. Here's what I mean. At [00:10:00] higher levels, money removes urgency around survival decisions.
So you don't have to take what you can get. You could leave it, right? And that's when you notice how uncomfortable it is to choose slowly to wait to trust yourself. Now, money didn't make that hard for you. It actually just exposed the pattern. Another place that this shows up is in rest. When money finally gives you the option to slow down, you realize how difficult it is to actually rest.
Your body stays on high alert. Your mind stays busy. Now, money didn't fail you. It just revealed how unsafe stillness feels for you. Another place is in celebration when a win happens and there's nothing pressing behind it. You will notice how quickly your mind jumps to the next thing. Now, money didn't take away your joy.
It revealed how unfamiliar it feels to stay in the moment, to anchor that into [00:11:00] your body, into your cellular memory, so that you start to build a new safety around the fact that you deserve and you are worthy of having that kind of money. Now. Yes, it is absolutely true. Money will remove certain constraints.
When those constraints are removed, what's underneath will absolutely become visible. Now, . If you learned safety through control, money will reveal where you need to manage. If you learned worth through performance, money will reveal how hard it is for you to rest.
If you learned belonging through usefulness, the money will reveal how uncomfortable it feels to simply be present and embody. This is why strategy eventually stops working as the answer, because strategy can absolutely optimize systems, but strategy alone is not enough. Money does not negotiate with [00:12:00] identity. It simply reveals it. This is the moment when money stops being a goal and it starts becoming a mirror. At this stage, money doesn't respond to effort the way it used to.
It begins to respond to safety, to identity, to what your system can actually hold. That's why this is not about strategy and that's why we are not talking about strategy all season long strategy can absolutely optimize what's already integrated, but it cannot stabilize what you have not yet put into place.
This is why some leaders feel more anxious as they reach higher levels of success, not because something is wrong, but because their internal agreements that they've made earlier in their life are now colliding with an expanded reality. I have seen this happen so many [00:13:00] times. In addition to the times I have experienced it myself, right now, I'm thinking about a client who had been working towards a very specific goal for quite a few years.
You probably are working toward that same goal yourself, seven figures, right? In her mind, that number represented calm. She used to say, once I hit it, everything will finally settle. Then she crossed seven figures. Her revenue increased massively. Her cash flow stabilized.
She had cash reserves that gave her access to it for more than nine months. The business was stronger than it had ever been before, but instead of feeling relief, her body still tightened. She told me that she felt more pressure not less. That she felt more responsibility, more obligations, more fear of making the wrong decisions.
She was so much more aware of how much there was to lose. Now that she had more, she kept saying, I don't understand. . This was supposed to be the part where I get to relax. At first, she assumed it was a strategy [00:14:00] problem. So what did she do? She went back to the plan. She reworked her projections, added more structure, tried to optimize her way into peace.
But what finally shifted everything was the realization that nothing was actually wrong with the business. Money had not failed her nor had strategy. What had surfaced was an identity tension that she'd never had to face before the money removed. The urgency of survival. And what came up instead was the question, who am I now that I don't have to push as hard as I used to?
That was the moment she realized the work wasn't about doing more. It was about learning how to feel safe, holding what she already had and what was going to come in. Again, I tell you, I see this happen time and time again. The client I was just referring to took our ascension archetype quiz when we announced it out into the [00:15:00] world and we learned that she was a producer.
No surprise to me as I was building this, she was one of the clients I absolutely had in mind. And here's the thing I need you to understand. Money exposes different things depending on how you are wired. That's why you need to take the Ascension Archetype quiz. I promise you, getting to seven figures in a way that honors you is far too important to wing it.
You need to understand how you're wired and how you move, and how you need to continue moving in order to achieve the milestone without burning out before you cash out. So go and take the quiz. It'll literally take you three minutes and you'll learn your archetype. And that is just the beginning of the powerful work and the tool that I've designed to equip you to make the move to millions.
Now, once you take the quiz, you'll learn that you are either a Performer. A Producer, a Path Maker, a Powerhouse, or a Prophet. And I'm gonna tell you, I can't wait to hear what you are. Once you've taken it, do [00:16:00] yourself a favor. Do me a favor, tag me in a story letting me know so I can celebrate with you. I promise you things are gonna start to change.
Now for my Performers, money increases visibility, and with visibility comes judgment, protection, and expectation. So typically, instead of relaxing, you refine yourself even more. Not because you're insecure, but because being seen now feels consequential money reveals how much safety you tie to approval.
For my Producers, money increases scale and scale increases responsibility. So what do you do? You hold on tighter, you manage more. You carry the load longer than you absolutely should, not because you don't trust others, but because of money exposed. Just how deeply you associate safety with being in control.
For my Pathmakers, money will accelerate your vision. It makes possibility real, but it also widens the gap between where you are right now and what [00:17:00] you see coming into your life and or business. So you feel stretched, unsettled, and suspended in mid air, not because you're ungrateful or that you don't understand, but because money revealed how much you live ahead of yourself.
For my Powerhouses, money is actually going to increase consequence for you. For every decision that you have in your life and in your business, it has a weight, so you stay braced up, you stay tense, you stay commanding. You stay alert, not because you crave dominance and being in control, but because money revealed how responsible you feel for holding everything together and for my Prophets.
Money amplifies your truth. It removes distractions and what you see actually becomes harder for you to ignore. So you feel overwhelmed by the clarity that is showing up for you, not because you're fragile, but. [00:18:00] Because money has revealed just how sensitive your system is to operating inside of integrity.
When I tell you you need to take the quiz, you need to take the quiz, okay? If this feels uncomfortably precise, stick with me all season long. When I talk to you, when I teach you, when I highlight what I highlight, I'm going to tell you based on your archetype. Here's the biggest thing that leaders miss.
Money does not create problems. It reveals unresolved relationships that you have with safety. With worthiness, with power, with rest, with self-trust, and with strategy, listen, strategy cannot fix a relationship. It can only manage a round one. That's why so many leaders feel stalled after they've experienced a massive amount of success.
Now, they're not blocked. They're being asked to relate to those things differently, and if you don't [00:19:00] recognize the need to show up differently. You'll be the hamster on the wheel, consistently repeating the pattern. This is exactly why understanding your Ascension Archetype matters because without the language, you will internalize what is actually structural.
You'll think things like, why can't I just enjoy this? Or Why am I still tense or tight? Why do my shoulders hurt all the time? Why doesn't this feel the way that I thought it would? Right? When you understand your wiring, the shame begins to dissolve and you begin to realize that you are not failing at being successful.
You're being invited to grow in a different way. This is just one of the many gifts and benefits that the Ascension Archetype quiz gives you. It's gonna give you language, context, and relief, and it only takes three minutes. And it's often the first step towards revealing and [00:20:00] relating to money as a mirror instead of as a measure.
Everything can change when you recognize the significance of this. Now, money does not fix what strategy can't reach. It's only a revealer. It's gonna amplify, and what it reveals is not a problem to be solved, but a relationship to tend to. In our next episode, we're gonna talk about the unspoken pressure of always having to have it together because performance is often the last place that leaders feel safe.
Letting go now until we meet in the next episode. Take the quiz. Learn about your archetype. Just so that you can have a firm understanding of who you are, how you are wired, how you relate to money, to success, to leadership, to scaling, and absolutely how you sabotage your level of success. Once you take the quiz, you'll be invited [00:21:00] to go deeper and when you go deeper, I have two options for you.
Option one is to get a private podcast that I created for every archetype. Specifically sharing how you sabotage based on the seven pillars in the move to millions method. So those pillars again, are strategy optimization, sales infrastructure, solidification systems, and operational efficiencies, support team alignment.
Success mindset, soul leadership, and self-care. I literally break down for each of the archetypes where you are sabotaging in every way across those seven pillars. 'cause here's what I need you to understand. You need to know and understand not just the pillars and the move to millions method and the role that they play in your ability to get to seven figures, but you need to understand where you are currently sabotaging so that you can start shifting instead.
A difference maker. It's the reason why we've been successful in helping 85 entrepreneurs and business [00:22:00] owners just like you experience their first or next seven figures. Since 2021, listen, no one else is turning out these kind of numbers. It's because of our methodology. You're listening to the show. I want you to get the book.
I want you to take the quiz. I want you to go deeper with that private podcast. And once you've listened to the private podcast, you might wanna go even deeper. So we created the Divine Design Report. There is a detailed. 37 page blueprint of everything you need to know about you as a Performer or a Producer, or a Pathmaker, or a Powerhouse or a Prophet.
Literally no detail is left out. It's designed to help you to really come into a knowledge and understanding of who you are wired to be, so that when we get an opportunity to deepen our connection and work together, when you come to work with me inside of one of our programs. I can relate to who you are and what your archetype is, and [00:23:00] I can assist you in building out what you need to go to the next level based on how you're divinely wired.
Listen, I have literally, if you know the expression, I put my foot in the ascension archetypes quiz. I put my foot in it because it's so important and it's the backdrop of our program Sanctuary. I literally leverage the power of the archetypes to help. Those students who come and work with us in Sanctuary finally feel safe inside of their success because there is going to come a point if it hasn't for you already, I promise it will happen, where success will no longer be the problem, and even though you're successful, you still don't feel safe.
I don't want that for you. I want you to actually know that you are worthy and deserving of feeling safe. With your wealth, with yourself, with God, with leadership, absolutely with money, you deserve it. God designed you that way, and I want you to get everything that [00:24:00] He has for you in this life. I cannot wait for our next episode.
I'll see you over there. Take care.
