I’m continuing to read and enjoy How Much is Enough? by Pamela Klainer. I keep being a bit put off by the occasional smug-seeming attitudes, such as when she talks about losing $400,000 on an investment, but not really having that loss impact her life other than in an emotional way. But, what she is talking about is hitting me at a deep level, and I’m getting a lot out of actually thinking through the questions she poses.
One of her main points is that despite peoples’ earnest denials, very often they really are motivated by the money.
Most successful people, even those who are highly sophisticated at investing money, still can’t talk about money’s powerful symbolic meaning.
[...]Many otherwise sophisticated and competent adults have a psychological framework around money that it comprised of a jumble of early and unexamined messages, metaphors, and partial meanings. To the extent that out early frameworks remain unspoken and unexplored, we remain ill-equipped to cope with the complex challenge that money always presents.
Later, when talking about the “money stages” we go through, she describes this money denial even more bluntly.
Denial can take other forms, like distancing from one’s ambitions. The young management team of a technology company headed toward an IPO called to see if I would work with them on leadership issues and business strategy. I asked them to tell me about their company. “The first thing we want you to know,” the CEO replied forcefully, “is that this isn’t about money. It’s about shaping the global technology story.”
“Hmm,” I responded skeptically. “I don’t think so. You’re driving a for-profit company toward an IPO, not building a network of soup kitchens. If you’re successful with your business goal and complete the IPO, you’re all going to make a lot of money. What makes that so hard to say?”
Ms. Klainer is attempting to help lead the reader from the three initial “money stages” of “denial”, “anxiety”, “exploration” to “integration”, where money becomes something we are skilled with, but no longer obsessed or driven by. I think it is a lofty and worthy goal, so I’ll keep reading and thinking about her points.
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