The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
I really can't add much to this except that I recommend the book.
Cheers
Jeanne
In the 1970s, when Lynne Twist’s children were young, her husband was a well-paid executive and her family was living the high life. They had a nice house stocked with art and a wine cellar, expensive clothes, a sports car, a nanny, and exotic vacations. Nevertheless, Twist was struck by the contrast between the wealth of her social circle and the poverty of so many others.
Her cosy life broke open after attending some talks by human potential leader Werner Erhard, who had set a 20-year goal for ending world hunger. Twist and her husband decided to re-orient their lives toward causes they believed in, and joined the work of the Hunger Project (established in 1977). Later she became involved in other initiatives such as rainforest protection, indigenous rights, and women’s leadership.
Over four decades, Twist trained over 20,000 fundraisers in 47 countries and raised over $150 million, mostly from individuals. Her work has traversed the Sahel desert in Senegal, villages and slums in India, the Rift valley in Ethiopia, Mayan villages in Guatemala, and the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, as well as affluent countries such Sweden, France, Japan, Canada, the UK, and the US. Along the way she met the likes of Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, and scientist and futurist Buckminster Fuller became a mentor.
This breadth of experience brought Twist a unique perspective on how people see money around the world. Her chief insight in The Soul of Money is that money isn’t inherently bad or good, but that used wisely it has the power to transform both us and the world.
Money’s hold
Twist lived for a time with the Achuar people, who for thousands of years have lived a rich life in the rainforest with no need for actual money.
It was only when one of them stayed with her in America that she could see, through his eyes, how much of a money culture we live in. We incessantly worry about not having enough money, we define our value as people according to how much we have, we compete with each other for it, and we are addicted to consumption. Money controls us, rather than us controlling it.
It thus affects our relationships, drives wars, and leads to environmental destruction. Twist’s meeting with Mother Teresa shocked her, because she was told that part of her life’s work should be to sympathise with the wealthy, many of whom suffer isolation, mistrust, damaged relationships, and ‘hardening of the heart’.
The myth of scarcity
The root of our problem with money, Twist suggests, is a fallacious mindset of scarcity, the belief that everything is in limited supply – not just money, but material goods, time, rest, exercise, power, and love. This mindset afflicts both rich and poor, and leads to competition, mistrust, exploitation, envy, and a host of other symptoms, including the idea that ceaseless acquisition is the best way to live.
The tragedy of such thinking is that we can never step off the treadmill to appreciate what we have, and we come to value ourselves and others based on external factors rather than inner qualities. Yet Twist asserts that scarcity is a myth, a product of culture. She writes:
‘Scarcity is a lie. Independent of any actual amount of resources, it is an unexamined and false system of assumptions, opinions, and beliefs from which we view the world as a place where we are in constant danger of having our needs unmet.’
Twist’s Hunger Project has been criticised for focusing on education and mindset above actually giving out food. However, she never says that physical aid is unnecessary, only that we should try to understand the non-physical roots of poverty, a large component of which is the accepted belief in scarcity.
The truth of sufficiency
Twist moves on to the ‘surprising truth’ of sufficiency. It is rarely the actual amount of what you have, but how you use it and appreciate it that makes the difference in your prosperity. She contrasts tribes who live in abundance from their natural environment with senior women managers whom she met working at Microsoft Corporation, who despite being millionaires had a sense of constant lack in relation to time for their families.
Whereas the mindset of scarcity drives competition, the mindset of sufficiency fosters collaboration, in which everyone’s unique ability to contribute is recognised and valued, and where the outcome is win–win.
Twist mentions the success of the Hunger Project in Bangladesh to demonstrate this power of collaboration. A series of workshops helped to steer many people from feeling hopeless to instead formulating a new vision of self-sufficient communities. This vision resulted in building of roads, farms, and fisheries, reduced crime by up to 70% in some areas, and in many areas doubled incomes.
Money’s flow
Twist views money as a resource that flows like water, circulating around the world and leaving diverse consequences in its wake. Our task is to be conscious of this flow, both in our earning and spending choices. She counsels against accumulating money to too great an extent, as it becomes like a stagnant pool of water. It can no longer flow to good and useful purposes. We are naturally afraid to do this, but she gives the example of Mother Teresa, who reportedly never kept cash reserves, instead trusting that money would always come when needed, which it did.
In this context, fundraising is not simply about coaxing people to donate money, perhaps even against their will, but rather about helping them to ‘engage in their greatness’ through the effective flow of their money. Twist once returned a check for $50,000 that she received from a corporation because she perceived it to be ‘guilt money’, designed to take attention away from the company’s moral failings.
Real awareness of money’s flow rules out blithely handing over money or food to people. At a practical level, this can actually worsen their long-term prospects by making them dependent on such ‘aid’. The better way is to help them raise themselves to a level of self-sufficiency through a partnership based on mutual respect.
Final comments
Having spent decades travelling the world and seeing the best and the worst of money’s power, Twist remains optimistic. Her book reinforces the distinction between wealth and money on one hand, and prosperity on the other. Whereas a hungry pursuit of the first can cause terrible damage to our souls, a focus on the second –which involves an appreciation that there is enough for everyone – can enrich us spiritually and emotionally.
There are now quite a few books on the meaning of money in our lives, but what sets The Soul of Money apart is Twist’s experience of the extremes of wealth and poverty. With many personal stories and a compassionate voice, the book does not claim to be a scholarly work on the role of money. Some may find it too mystical, yet it is an engrossing read that will have you thinking more deeply about your unconscious attitudes, and how you can use money as a healing rather than a destructive power
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Twist was born in 1945.
Apart from her role with the New York-based Hunger Project (which has Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and Queen Noor of Jordan on its board), she has also been a vice chair of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance to empower indigenous people to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and president of the Turning Tide Coalition.
Her Soul of Money Institute was established in 2003, and runs workshops and seminars. Twist is also a contributor to the book The Soul of Business. She is married with three adult children and lives in San Francisco.
