It's Not About the Money

Brent Kessel

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780061734632
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

What do the latest financial thinking and ancient spiritual teachings reveal to us about financial freedom? Top financial advisor Brent Kessel insists financial success and security is "not about the money." Rather, it's about what's inside us—first understanding your emotional relationship to money, and only then taking action. It's Not About the Money expertly and compassionately guides you along the path to financial security and true peace of mind.

Kessel, founder of two top wealth-management firms, has the inside scoop on the higher wisdom of personal finances, and he wants to share it with you. Through extensive experience as a financial advisor and spiritual seeker, Kessel has discovered that people need to understand their core financial story in order to make meaningful changes. Some of us are savers or caretakers, says Kessel, while others are pleasure seekers and spend like Hollywood stars; some people are idealists who place greater value on creativity or compassion than on financial security; some of us innocently believe our finances will work out without effort; and others obsess about building empires with lasting value. It's Not About the Money will help you identify your money type, providing information and resources as well as exercises and meditations to inspire a fresh approach to your relationship with money that will change your life.

PART 1

The Nature of Mind

CHAPTER ONE

YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH

“Just a little bit more.”

—JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER,
WHEN ASKED HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH

A friend of mine recently handed a homeless person on the street a dollar. The man looked at the money in his hand, looked up into my friend’s eyes, and then quite matter-of-factly stated, “It’s not enough.” Though that dollar was probably not enough to meet the needs of this unfortunate person, even those with abundant financial means tend to approach money from this same “not enough” perspective. Why is it that so many of us feel such a deep sense of scarcity when it comes to money?

Compared not only to a person who relies on handouts for income but to a nineteenth-century monarch, you’re probably relatively wealthy. You probably have a warm home and your clothes are comfortable. You can travel most anywhere you want at fifty times the speed of the monarch’s fastest team of horses, and you can visit a modern health care facility for treatment if you become ill, a place where no one will try to bleed you or apply leeches as a cure.

Of course, some of you may answer that the reason you feel you don’t have enough is that you simply don’t. Indeed, you may be struggling. You might not be able to be admitted to that modern hospital due to a lack of insurance coverage or financial resources. You may have to choose between paying your heating bill or your car insurance or hesitate about investing in real estate for fear of not being able to pay the property taxes. If you face this kind of dilemma, I acknowledge that you are in a very difficult position, one that my own experience with finances makes it difficult for me to fathom.

But no matter what our circumstances, our minds tend to promise us, falsely, that happiness is tied to getting more of what we want—better food, housing, transportation, recreation, health, and travel, to name just a few possibilities. If that were really true, though, wouldn’t we all be happy beyond belief by now?

Over the last several decades, economic growth in almost all developed societies has been accompanied by a very modest rise in subjective well-being. In the United States between World War II and 1995, the increase in income has been dramatic and the amount of work time required to buy most goods has fallen substantially. Yet according to almost all of the scientific evidence, there has been little or no change in how happy Americans say they feel. And this is true the world over. In 1958, Japan had an average per capita income of about $3,000, an amount well below the present poverty level in the United States. By the end of the twentieth century, Japan was one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but still there was little discernible change in subjective well-being (a mere 3 percent increase over forty years). And in a survey of members of the Forbes 400 “richest” list, the world’s wealthiest individuals rated their life satisfaction exactly the same as did the Inuit people of northern Greenland and the Masai of Kenya, who have no electricity or running water. Obviously, we’re not that much happier despite our collective material progress. Why is that?

THE WANTING MIND

Most of us would not consider ourselves greedy. Yes, we might want a bigger house in a better neighborhood, but we want it for our expanding family. Yes, we want a nicer, newer car, but it’s because of its safety features or fuel efficiency, or because the reality is that our position in our company depends in part on how others perceive us. We may not want a specific material item, but instead want a better salary or a higher quality of life, the ability to take more vacations and enjoy time with our spouse or friends. But even when we crave something intangible like security or time off, there’s no denying that most of us spend a lot of time just wanting. What’s more, we often act on these desires in ways that leave us less than free financially. It’s as if there’s a force outside of us compelling us to squander our capital, be it financial or spiritual. This force is known in several Buddhist traditions as the Wanting Mind.

The Wanting Mind is always craving an experience different from the one it currently has. Whether we want money, love, that great new sweater, a 20 percent investment return, or a more equitable world, the Wanting Mind insists that things need to change in order for us to be happy, and money is one of its favorite objects to focus on. The Wanting Mind’s whole reason for existence is to strategize and fight for a different future. It exists on the premise that what we have right here, right now, can’t possibly be enough. The Wanting Mind continually takes us out of the present moment in its attempts to make us happy in some better tomorrow. And unless we inquire into the subtle and often hidden workings of the Wanting Mind, including whether its promises of happiness are actually true, we remain its slave and will likely spend a lifetime chasing its images of freedom.

The broader evidence shows how pervasive the Wanting Mind really is. In The Overspent American, Juliet Schor writes that between 1975 and 1991, the number of people who said that a vacation home was a key component of the good life increased 84 percent. During the period from 1987 to 1994, the income people said they needed to “fulfill all [their] dreams” increased from $50,000 to $102,000, much more than the rate of inflation. According to another psychological study, the majority of those people in industrial nations want more than they possess: 61 percent of those surveyed said they always had something in mind that they were looking forward to buying.

We all like to point fingers at the overspenders and insatiable materialists as the culprits, the real money addicts. However, in my experience, the Wanting Mind plagues everyone, from people on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to the most aware spiritual teachers and the wealthiest members of society.

WIRED TO WANT

All beings in nature have a biological imperative to survive. Without this imperative, they die. A tree grows toward whatever available sunlight is piercing through the forest canopy. Whales migrate thousands of miles to birth their calves in the warm Sea of Cortez. A human baby screams with hunger until she is fed. Without this inherent drive for survival, living organisms would die and evolution would cease altogether.

This drive is the very core of our wanting. Our physiology is wired to constantly deliver messages about what threatens us and what will make us more likely to survive, more secure. We naturally want to eat until we are no longer hungry, and usually a fair way beyond that. Our skin senses a drop in temperature, and we want to be warmer. Pain and suffering, or even mild discomfort, are taken as warning signs that our very survival may be threatened.

Nothing in modern society is as closely tied to our survival as money. Is it any surprise that when we find ourselves wanting to buy a new pair of jeans, a portable DVD player, or a vacation we’ve been longing for, we exclaim, “I’ve just got to have it!” as though our very survival depended on that one purchase? Even though our rational minds know it isn’t the case, the Wanting Mind attaches a certain life-or-death urgency to objects we crave. In fact, we often can’t get something we want out of our minds until we’ve bought it. This is the same kind of focus and intention that was biologically programmed into us over millions of years. But today, this physiological, reflexive response is carried over into all but the most mundane purchases we make.

“When you begin to really understand how wired you are to want pleasure and to want to avoid pain, that sort of basic instinctual wiring—when you start to see through that clearly, you begin to take it less personally.”

—WES NISKER, MEDITATION TEACHER

Wanting more is a universal phenomenon. If you pay attention, you’ll find that there isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop this desire—you just go on and on wanting material things or better emotional states, wishing the people around you were different or that the weather were a bit better, or wishing you were less stressed out, more generous, or kinder. There is no way out when we are seduced by our mind’s endless chatter for more, better, bigger, faster.

I recall a retired dentist who sat at our conference room table at Abacus. Sporting a polo shirt and khaki pants, he looked down through gold-rimmed reading glasses at his portfolio report. It clearly showed that his original $4 million net worth had grown to almost $8 million in just under five years. He looked up at me and said matter-of-factly, “I know that I’ll feel truly financially independent when I have $15 million. That’s my number.”

To those who have less money than this dentist, his statement probably seems absurd. “I wouldn’t be saying that if I had eight million!” you might retort. It is quite easy for us to peg others as having extreme desires. But in labeling others, we may miss the ways in which our own interactions with money are almost always motivated by a desire to move beyond our innate sense of scarcity and insecurity.

The numbers really don’t matter. The truth is that we all have the experience of “not enough” thousands of times every day. In fact, many of the thoughts that arise in your mind have a component of “not enough,” and each of these thoughts wants you to do something, to change your experience in some way. Our thoughts are constantly telling us, “This moment, just as it is, is not enough, and so I want__________.” Underscoring every thought is an outcome that the mind believes will make us happier or more secure.

“There is never enough in the world to satisfy the dissatisfied heart.”

—CHRISTINA FELDMAN, MEDITATION TEACHER

IF ONLY

Almost everyone I’ve ever met, whether rich or poor, has at one time in their life had an experience of not having enough money. For some people, the most horrific experience of their life involved the family running out of money just before the rent was due and going through the trauma of being evicted. For others, there were feelings of social inferiority in school in the face of kids who could afford better clothes, vacations, or cars. Because these experiences are so painful, many people compensate by making sure they will always have more than enough money in their lives. Even people who seem to have enough money find their inner thoughts focused on their finances, on how things could be even better. Just like all our thoughts, those that concern money are almost always targeted at rejecting our present experience. Do any of the following examples sound familiar?

• If I inherited or won $________, I’d be able to quit my miserable job and do what I want.
• If my raise had just been a little bit higher, we’d have been able to afford________________.
• If I could get my spouse to stop spending all our money on_____, we wouldn’t have so much pressure each month to pay our bills.
• If I could sell my company for $_________, I’d be set.
• If only I had not gained weight, I wouldn’t have to be out buying new clothes and I could put that money toward_____.
• If the credit-card companies didn’t charge such high interest rates, I would be out of debt by now.
• If only the stock market would go back up to its high of________, I could stop worrying.
• Once I have $____________ in assets, I will relax and enjoy life.

If yours isn’t in the above list, fill in your “if only” statement below:

• If only__________, then_______.

I am not saying that it is wrong to have these desires. But can you see how each of these thoughts, with its underlying foundation in “not enough,” actually undermines our life right now, just as it is? Every single one of these thoughts presumes that we’d be happier or more secure if something were to change. And there would be no problem with this strategy…if we actually ended up happier after fulfilling our wants. But we don’t. We usually just end up wanting more.

When most people turn off the TV, lie down in bed, or try meditation for the first time, they are aghast at how many thoughts are running through their heads, how random they are and how distracting. If you remain silent and pay attention, you will find this theme of “not enough” in so many of your thoughts.

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DETACH

Right now, without putting down your book, prepare to stop reading for a minute. Try not to get distracted by anything in the outside world. If it’s comfortable, close your eyes for one to three minutes. Just pay attention to what thoughts arise, without trying to control those thoughts. Ready? Go.

Now reflect a little. What were your thoughts? Did you wonder what time it was or what you were going to have for lunch? Did you wish you could get to the end of the chapter without doing the exercise, so that you could learn how to solve the financial problem that prompted you to buy this book? In what ways were the thoughts you had, whatever they were, about problems to be solved? Were you fully accepting your experience, just as it is? In other words, did you simply think, “I am sitting here with my eyes closed and I feel happy and peaceful”? Or, more likely, were your thoughts focused on something that needed to change for you to be better off?

Whenever you can in the coming days, take a look at your thoughts through this lens: Is this thought happy with my life, right now, just as it is? If not, what is it trying to get me (or others) to do in order to feel a sense of “enough”?

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IN THE FLOW

Most of us have been fortunate enough to experience moments of incredible connectedness, be they with a lover, in nature, in solitude, or through great art and music. Athletes sometimes achieve states of complete surrender, when mental effort has subsided and their physical exertion seems to be fueled by an outside force. Artists, poets, and entrepreneurs experience similar moments of creative “flow,” when ideas seem to come from nowhere and surprise them. There is a quality of timelessness, even a sense of elation during these periods. The mind’s incessant struggle with life and its desire for something better has subsided, and they feel at peace.

Regardless of what we call it or how we get there, we all know such states, in which we feel a ...