Your Money AND Your Life:New Book Brings Money Issues Out of the Vault

Everyone has money issues—but few of us want to admit it. In a culture where therapy and discussion groups have become the norm to deal with a variety of problems, we’re surprisingly quiet when it comes to our secret financial fears. Sure, we might complain about the state of our bank accounts, but how often do we really discuss the complex feelings we have about money?

Joan Sotkin, author of the new book Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money, addresses the root causes of money troubles without beating around the bush. “The fact is that most people are uncomfortable with money, no matter how poor or wealthy,” she says. “Financial advisers address the external components of achieving wealth, but actually the most important factor is an individual’s internal relationship with money.” This relationship, according to Sotkin, is an extension of people’s relationships with themselves and others, originally formed in childhood.

Build Your Money Muscles facilitates exploration of an individual’s relationship with money through a series of exercises designed to uncover the causes of money problems and shift the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that often unconsciously drive financial behaviors. And the basis for having a good relationship with your checkbook is developing a loving relationship with yourself. “Most people look in the mirror and say, ‘Ick,’ which is not a great way to treat yourself,” Sotkin states. “What if you could look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow, you’re terrific’—and mean it? It may sound strange to say that what you tell yourself when you look in the mirror affects your finances, but it does. Most people never feel like they’re attractive enough or good enough, and these feelings extend to their interactions with money.”

Having a good relationship with money, then, starts with getting comfortable with yourself and loving yourself more. Surprisingly, Sotkin says, once people develop a better relationship with themselves, they realize they don’t need a lot of money to achieve financial comfort. Lasting prosperity comes from an inner sense of having more than enough of what you need to support you in life—including plenty of money.

Sotkin, who learned money lessons the hard way, through chronic debt and bankruptcy, created her successful Web site ProsperityPlace.com at age sixty. She now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she counsels privately in addition to leading workshops, seminars, and a prosperity group.

Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money by Joan Sotkin (Prosperity Place, 2006). Includes 15 charts, 8 b&w illustrations. $24.95. ISBN 0-0-9711719-8-0. Available at bookstores everywhere and from www.ProsperityPlace.com.