Money, Emotions, and Success
Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business, recent syndicated column was on the connection between emotions and money.
Recently I interviewed Robert Kiyosaki, author of the biggest selling financial book of all time, Rich Dad Poor Dad on my radio show. Kiyosaki has been on my show many times and I admire how he “gets” the idea of earning money. One of the things I always feel is how he is so naturally inclined to pursue success, when it comes to his emotions, when it comes to making money.
The way we feel about money is extremely important to our financial success. It goes back to the words of Solomon, “as a man thinks…” If I thought I was poor (as I often did in my life), I lived an impoverished life. If I thought money was hard to obtain, invariably that proved to be correct. If I felt I “never had enough”, sure enough, I came up short on many months. Our feelings about money are profound.
For those in money related 12 Step programs, finances are a very “big thing”. I have friends who have received robust recovery around drugs, food and other challenging obsessions and compulsions, but money recovery is the “Holy Grail”. For them, it is not just a means of paying their bills, but for many, it has supernatural power and is even an obsession.
Virtually everyone develops their emotions (or attitudes) about money in their family of origin. But there are other incidents or events that can heavily affect one’s view of money:
- The loss of a job that creates a series of events, to losing one’s home and other important possessions.
- An injury or illness that undermines one’s ability to make money.
- Living in a community that was heavily dependent on a particular industry and to have the companies in that industry shut down.
In this same space, there is the issue of “emotional intelligence”. There are many definitions for this, but they all come back to a similar idea. Emotional intelligence is where one is able to identify and manage his or her own emotions and appropriately deal with the emotions of others. It is also said to deal with three areas: being emotionally aware, which means you can recognize your own emotions and those of others; the ability to leverage emotions to solving problems and resolving issues; and the ability to control and manage emotions. Emotional intelligence is very important in becoming successful in business and life.
The following are some of the hallmarks of the emotionally intelligent…. read more.
