There are plenty of ways to get lost, seduced, bought off, and dead-ended in a lifetime—some of them involve money. And there are also lots of ways to be inspired, connected, invigorated, and purposeful—some of these, too, involve money. Putting our hearts back into money, and money back into our hearts, is as life-affirming an investment as we can make.
There are no guarantees of riches from looking at your relationship with money. There's no certificate or diploma to hang on your wall after you have read "Emotional Currency" or attended an Emotional Currency Workshop. There’s nothing tangible to point to or touch that signifies the power of what you have experienced.
But you’ll be changed from understanding how you feel about money. Though subtle, looking at your inner money life creates slight shifts in awareness that then start to produce both profound and unpredictable changes in our lives.
We are all to varying degrees desensitized to money. How can it be otherwise when we live in a world where money is used cold-heartedly, unfairly, and often cruelly, and where human life is often valued by the accumulated wealth (or lack) it represents? In contrast, when we open our hearts to money, when we honor what is unseen yet deeply felt in relationship to money, our lives—including our money lives—change. Opening our hearts involves feeling the confusion of pain, pleasure, opportunity, tragedy, and power that money carries.
Money is at the intersection of our inner and outer lives, a place of much power. Our interactions with money can either amplify or deaden our sense of aliveness. Money exists in almost all human cultures, giving it a potency as one of the hallmarks in modern life of being human.