Review
Everyone will get value out of Lynne’s message. — Rachel Naomi Remen, author of Kitchen Table WisdomEveryone will get value out of Lynne’s message. — Rachel Naomi Remens, author of Kitchen Table WisdomLynne’s wisdom is the precise healing message about money needed in this time. — Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life
A wise and inspiring exploration of the connection between money and leading a fulfilling life. This compelling and fundamen…
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Most of us think that we understand the facts of money: money is good, lack of money is bad; having more money is better than having less money; competition and scarcity are normal because it’s a jungle out there; the way to cure economic depression and hunger is to throw more money at the problem; and so on. But these aren’t “facts” in the sense of objective realities; rather, they stem from attitudes towards money that are so ingrained in our culture that they rarely intrude into our consciousness.
This book is an eye-opener: as a highly successful fund-raiser and representative for the Hunger Project, Lynne Twist has worked with everyone from Amazon tribal members to CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations. Her sensitivity and willingness to listen have given her insight into the real-life consequences of our attitudes towards money (and resources in general). The money consciousness that she propounds in this book is transformative, but it’s based on a breadth of experience that makes her conclusions convincing — for instance, she’s worked in real jungles, and the “law of the jungle” is NOT the way they actually operate!
Despite the many well-chosen anecdotes, this book deals primarily in generalizations. But that’s appropriate: the author’s purpose is to make us aware of our attitudes towards money, and suggest how changing these attitudes can transform the way we go about solving some of the world’s most vexing problems. This book deserves not only to be read, but taken to heart.
Wow! This is like no book about money that I have ever read, and I’ve certainly read my share. From her vast experiences travelling around the world, from the ghettos of Calcutta and Mother Teresa to high-level fundraising with CEO’s and “movers & shakers” in the West, Ms. Twist looks deeply into the human needs that are associated with money. Not just the needs of human beings in what she calls “resource poor” (developing) countries, but the needs of people like me who have resources, abundant resources, but who still struggle with our relationship with money and its meaning in our lives.
What I think impressed me most was that this book was fun to read, as well as informative and (dare I say) profoundly philosophical. Unlike many of the other books I’ve read about money, this one was much more experiential. Others take on the philosophy of money, while Twist seems to be sharing her experiences, truly remarkable experiences, with people all over the world, and then boiling them down to the lessons that she has learned in the decades of work that she’s done working to end world hunger, empower women, save the rainforest, etc.
This book is truly an amazing adventure because of the scope of her life’s work. I think there’s a depth because her message is authentically based on her experiences, not just of her ideas or thinking about the subject. As a result, I think that this book hits home. It speaks to us where we live, in terms of our relationship with money and the difference we can make. If you are interested in (as the sub-title says) “transforming your relationship with money and life,” then this book is an opportunity not to be missed. I’m sure that I’m going to want to re-read it. Very highly recommended.
Rusty Schweikart was the first man to walk in space. He had been tightly scheduled with activities each moment he was floating outside the command module in the late 60’s. But at one point his camera jammed, and he was able to experience just being in space and circling the earth. Many of you may have seen the video he made from this remarkable experience called “No Frames No Boundaries.”
It took Rusty many years to digest and integrate this planetary experience and to realize the responsibilities he felt to mankind for the privilege he had been given. He came to call himself “a sensing element for mankind” (to know more about Rusty, his life and work http://www.well.com/~rs/ ).
When I read “The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship to Money and Life,” I found that Lynne herself is also such a sensing element for mankind.
She worked for several decades as the chief fundraiser (she’s raised $150 million from individuals) for the Hunger Project, which has been a revolutionary effort far beyond what some of us may remember it for in its beginnings. In that role her travels have taken her all over the world–from Bangladesh to Ethiopia, from the Women’s Conference in Bejing (where she reports some of the most poignant and heartbreaking stories you’ll ever read) to South Africa and the installation of Nelson Mandela, although that story is not included.
Lynne has been with the rich and famous. One of her great stories is her returning a $50,000 check from a corporate CEO because she realized it was guilt money. Read the book to find out what happened next! And, of course, she has been with the poor and apparently downtrodden. They have been her great teachers and inspiration for this book. They taught her how money can be blessed, how when it comes from love, appreciation, and intention–from the soul–it has power, it flows and it can transform lives.
Where she has been on this planet, what she has seen, and how she has thought about it and integrated it into the soul of her being is the gift she gives back to us, her readers. Very few of us have had the opportunity to go where she has gone, to meet whom she has met, and to have contributed as much as she and her colleagues have to helping to end hunger and poverty on our fragile, blue orb, as Rusty first saw it.
Lynne offers great guidance about how we can each be and be better philanthropists (the amount doesn’t matter, but the intention and commitment surely do). But the core of the book (which many of us may already know) is a transformation from a “you or me” world to a “you and me.” one. Buckminster Fuller first articulated that as the necessary condition we are challenged to make on spaceship Earth (also his articulation). He was someone who profoundly influenced Lynne.
She leads us through the belief systems around scarcity (fear of not enough, push to always get more, resignation that it’s just the way it is) to belief systems around sufficiency (there is always enough; turn our attention and appreciation to what we already have). Sufficiency becomes a more useful word than abundance. Creating a world of sufficiency (includes sustainability) is where we are headed together.
The most compelling parts of the book are the stories she tells from around the planet about actually ending hunger and poverty. She shows that this change of belief systems (we actually do have enough most of the time; we can focus on and appreciate what we already have to get to where we want to go) along with love, understanding, and effective facilitation can get the job done. “The Soul of Money” adds the interior dimensions as a vital and necessary component to solutions to hunger and poverty.
Lynne is herself a gifted and expert facilitator, and at the personal level the stories she shares of people who pull themselves out of poverty and lack are equally riveting. She concludes with a remarkable narrative about the last months of life of her mother, her first role model as a fundraiser and philanthropist. How Lynne assists her mother to fully complete her life is a wonderful offering to all of us with aging parents.
“The Soul of Money” is about far more than just the soul of money. Lynne reveals her own soul, the souls of the rich and the poor, and the collective soul of which we all partake that holds the promise of a sufficient, just, and more peaceful planet. Just as Rusty Scheweikart took us around the whole earth from the outside, Lynne, gives us many inside views of the beauty and commonality which we share. She provides an outstanding, authentic, and worthy ride!
–John Steiner