Insights gained from this easy and fun read.
Ken Honda is a personal development guru. He is known as the Zen Millionaire for his ideas of making peace with money and giving thanks to it when it enters or leaves his hands. He believes that having this appreciation for money is key to a life of abundance.
Mr. Honda defines Happy Money as money circulated with love, care, and friendship.
There are two things that he urges one to do first.
First, he asks that you identify how you feel about money. Do you have a negative or positive relationship with it? What does money mean to you? The way that you feel about money is due to how you were raised. We tend to adopt the feelings and behaviors about money that we witnessed by our caregivers.
We control how we feel about money. Do we feel so negatively toward it that we repel it? Yes, you can unconsciously be repelling money because of poor experiences that you have had with it as a child or as an adult. If we want to achieve financial freedom, we must have the courage to face our past and deal with issues that have influenced our negative relationship with money. Only then can you develop a healthier relationship with money. This brings me to the second starting point.
Mr. Honda asks that you face your past money traumas to be able to move forward and be happy with money. If we do nothing about our past, we will do nothing in the present or future to increase our wealth and happiness. Your feelings about money and not how much you make, determine your wealth.
Money has three functions. To exchange, save and grow.
Exchange: We use money in exchange for something. When we don’t have money to exchange for goods we panic and get desperate. Don’t make financial decisions out of desperation or fear. The outcome will not be good.
Saving: Seeing money in the bank gives our life purpose. We feel like our hard work is valuable. The money we save is to keep us safe in times of hardship. This money will keep us from making desperate decisions.
Grow: People who have more money get more money. The wealthy get wealthier. We need to have money to invest monthly so that we can generate wealth. Repeatable and slow income is how most fortunes are made.
To have a happy money life you need to have both a Healthy Money IQ and Health Money EQ.
Money Intelligence is focused on financial intelligence. You obtain Intelligence IQ by learning about investing, general money knowledge, and tax law.
Emotional IQ is required to deal with your reactions toward money. Money brings up a lot of emotions in us, but we need to be careful with not letting them make us do things we will regret. For example, pulling out our investments during a market crisis, going shopping because we felt sad, hopeless, and numb because we got turned down for a job we really wanted. When it comes to money we need to keep our emotions in check so that we stay focused on our financial goals.
How much do you need to be happy? How many assets and how much income will make you happy. How did you come to this determination? What will having these assets and income make you feel? Create a plan to get there. Don’t just write down goals. For each goal, create specific action steps with timelines.
What most people want is to be happy and to feel free. They don’t understand that it is attainable because of all the emotional blockages and lack of money Intelligence they have before them. If you focus on earning enough and saving enough, you will be financially free in 3-7 years.
To reach financial freedom, we need to free ourselves from fear-based and negative thought cycles. We need to be present and do more of what makes us feel happy. We know what we must do. We need the courage to do it.
You are the only one that can choose your future with money. Start with saying thank you when money comes in and thank you when money goes out.
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