Great for Book Clubs – Lost and Found

Let’s face it, there’s no stronger power in this world than the one that results when women collaborate. Yet so many of us end up trying to change our relationship with money on our own. It would easier and effective if we could share our thoughts, fears and lessons with our favorite people.

If you are looking for a place to start, consider getting some friends together for a book club and you can read Geneen Roth’s Lost and Found.

Geneen Roth was at the top of the New York Times bestseller list as the author of Women, Food and God. Roth believes many of us have a similar relationship to food as we do to our spirituality. Her insight into her own experience and her application to other women was extremely insightful. After Roth collected over $1 million in royalties, she recognized a deep-seated fear that it wasn’t enough. And while she was wondering how to make more, she found out her money was gone. All of it.

To be fair, this is NOT something that happens very often; most of us invest our money and get to watch it grow over time. Unless, of course, the guy you hired to manage your investments has the first name Bernie and the last name Madoff.

Roth had nothing left. At least that is how she felt. But over time she applied the same process of self-discovery that had previously earned her a spot on the best-seller list.

Below is a sampling of Roth’s conclusions as she realized a crucial point; by having nothing, she found a real life. Take a look and consider getting a group of your friends together to have a conversation about your money and your beliefs:

• Our approach to money – “(Money) is not the problem – it’s only the middleman. It is the vehicle, the means, the transport for the internal sense of self – of value and worth, or deficiency and scarcity – to express itself.”
• Our attitudes – “When you look at the world through the lens of not having enough, all you see is lack, hunger, emptiness…”
• Our past hurts– “As soon as I realize that “Wow, I’m an adult. I need to think about this need to take some responsibility here…”, I realize that taking care of my financial situation means I have to stop living in the fantasy that I’ll get everything I never got as a kid.
• Our “fight or flight” response – “We need to update our wiring, since the chances of being eaten by a dinosaur are slim. Hoarding our resources has now become maladaptive, not only because it causes us to live in a constant state of tension… but also because it promotes greed and dishonesty.”
• Our fears – “Many smart, powerful women become spineless and clueless when faced with making financial decisions. The only way to remedy this situation is to face it directly and to realize that we are running from monsters that don’t exist.”
• On changing our relationship with money – “Without deeply understanding the roots of our discomfort … we will revert to the same behaviors over and over again… “
• On having enough – “Enough cannot be in something we can touch or buy or have (i.e. money or a thin body or UGG boots.) Enough isn’t an amount; it’s a relationship to what you already have. But each of us has to find this out for ourselves.”

It took me several years of looking at Lost and Found on my bookshelf before I was able to get past the first chapter.  There was just too much truth inside it that I was not able to handle at the time. But Roth’s discoveries have been instrumental in my own journey to financial wellness, read about it here.

How about you? Do any of these ideas spur you to delve more into your attitudes about money? Go ahead. Start talking about it (see below to join our discussion). Invest some time in your relationship with money. No risk is required, but the returns could be huge.

Click here to learn more about our online discussion group on Lost and Found.