Ken Honda: The Japanese Art of Being a Zen Millionaire | Afford Anything Podcast (Audio-Only)

[Music] you can afford anything but not everything every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else and that doesn't just apply to your

money it applies to your time focus energy attention it applies to anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource and so the questions become twofold number one what matters most to

you and number two how do you line up your daily decisions accordingly how do you spend in a way that reflects your best self answering these two questions is a lifetime practice and that is what

this podcast is here to explore my name is paulo pan I'm the host of the afford anything podcast and today Japan's best-selling Zen millionaire joins us to talk about the Japanese art

of making peace with your money Ken Honda has sold more than seven million books in Japan about the intersection

between wealth and happiness he retired at the age of 29 and then spent the rest of his life writing books since 2001 his books have sold more than seven million

copies and many people in Japan refer to him as the Marie Kondo of finances in our upcoming interview we talked about how to treat money as a guest how to let

it flow into your life with gratitude and respect and how to let it go without resentment we talked about how to improve not only your money IQ but also your money EQ the emotional intelligence

around money and we talked about the four principles of money EQ we discuss five negative emotions that keep people stuck in the myth of scarcity and we

talk overall about how to be more Zen with your money so here he is Ken Honda one of Japan's leading experts in the

field of money and happiness hi Ken hello thank you for inviting me thanks for coming on the show let's talk about your philosophy of money you write

quite a bit about how to be a Zen millionaire mm-hmm let's start with what you need to unlearn before you can go into what's good let's start about unlearning the bad you talk about some

damaging childhood scripts that people learn tell us about that so most of us have that relationship with money because we either feel

frustrated or we worry about money it's because we had some experiences from our childhood that we're told by our parents that money is bad or you cannot spend

all the money you have we have to start saving mostly we're talking about negative stuff so we have to unlearn about a negative teaching from our

parents and start teaching us about a good side of money because money can buy you things that you love and money can give you flight tickets to wherever you

want to go money can buy material things money can relieve a lot of stress in life so you have to learn that money can

be a good tool and otherwise you feel stuck in the limitation of money what are some of those negative scripts that we need to unlearn and how do we recognize them within ourselves when

they're not necessarily conscious thoughts for example we have this notion belief that money can hurt people well

money can be bad but when you think of it it's nothing to do with money people hurt other people but we feel hurt by not having enough money about the

experiences that parents didn't give us money to learn piano and it'll send off

to summer camps and all the experiences teach us that money can be harmful so unless you heal the un's

money ins you cannot really think money can free you so there is this love and hate relationship with money as much as we want money but if we have

money it could be dangerous because people could be jealous and we lose it all and just we regret that we have the money or that could be you're hurting

some people so if you just let go and heal the money pain and all the negative belief about money and just start gaining all the positive belief about

money that money can make you happy and then that way you you have more freedom in life hmm if someone recognizes that they hold some of these

damaging scripts scripts like money is evil or I'm a waste of money or it's a shame we have to think about money so much those damaging scripts that many

people have internalized how do you unlearn that I ask my students to imagine what happened in your childhood

for example I wanted to go to Australia for homestay to study English at the time my father had money but he was depressed so if he didn't want to spend

money and my mother was so reluctant to bring bring up the issue to my father so without asking I gave up my idea of going to Australia for study for

homestay so I imagine that seeing at the kitchen that I wanted to bring up about my homestay but I give up

you know I forgave my cowardness for not bringing it up and I forgive my father for being so depressed and I forgave my

mother who didn't want to stir up emotions in my father so he could be violent so he/she didn't want to evoke

her husband so I get a slap later you know in that scene everybody suffers and everybody did what he or she could so if

you understand that although you feel the pain you're understand as an adult that it's nobody's fault there's just pain about money and once I

understand need them forgiving love for each one of them and then come back to my present

now I didn't have a chance opportunity to go to Australia but I now feel love for my parents and for myself too and it didn't really matter if I went to

Australia or not now you know I speak enough English so I'm happy so that way you know you heal your money wound in general if you could do that it's great

if you can't forgive who's involved it takes time but that's a least you can try hmm so you would recommend thinking back to specific instances in a person's life

uh-huh and then finding peace with that specific instance right you know I could do so many other things but you could get so emotional when you remember what

happened to you but you know everybody suffers from what happened and then everybody did his or her best your

parents didn't didn't want to say they couldn't afford to send you to expensive school if they had them got more money they they would have said yes but they

couldn't so just imagine the pain that they had to go through because they didn't have money we understand that now as an adult so all of us had to go

through this scarcity mindset and also all of us had to suffer about money but that's not our fault that's how like when and that's how life goes so if you

could accept that as it is you feel lighter about what's going on - in your book you talk about the five negative emotions that block abundance five

negative emotions that keep people stuck in scarcity and you discuss anxiety fear doubt guilt and self neglect can we walk through each one of those and apply

those to how they impact a relationship with money yeah so financial anxiety is the one that you feel pretty much every day when you feel like you or not be

able to pay the bills that's a bad feeling it's like you crunch in your stomach so if you feel that you cannot spend your money freely

and you feel like your life is very strict it and and unless you just face the pain you cannot live freely that's

probably a good number one feeling among all the money blocks and so how do you move past that how do you overcome that

anxiety so it's just not about the money it's just about the future we are afraid that something bad is gonna happen that we lose a job or we cannot make both

ends meet so we feel like we have no money we're like ah we have money problem that's what we afraid but when you think about life in a bigger picture

we are afraid of that thing would happen the worst comes to worse we'll be in a situation with no money it's not gonna kill us so the money worries will kill

us so if you feel like money in the bank is a security you have to know it's not it's more of a people is more security

if we want have the insurance if you have no money you could probably have somebody that you can count on your friends or your family members can help

if you are willing to ask for help but if the worst thing happens you could potentially ask for help and if you feel like somebody is gonna help you you can

relax more but if you feel like nobody is gonna help you you'll be in a ditch that's about feeling so you have to cut the association between money and

security otherwise you know you've been feeling this anxiety forever hmm so the fear of not having enough money in the future could be recast or reframed as

the fear of being alone or the fear that other people won't come through for you if you need them right yeah your survival mechanism the switch is turned

on so you feel like fight-or-flight and then you were in a survival mode but think about it nobody's gonna die if they have no money it's the fear that

kills them and I met hundreds of people thousands of people who were once in a situation with no money but it survived because somebody helped them so if you

are afraid of money I think you should have many friends at least you know if you have ten friends to let you stay for free for a week you can just hold for a

while so if you just start counting how many friends you you have to let you stay more than a week and if you count more than 50 friends you can last for a

year mmm right yes that's that's an exercise that you recommend in your book mentally think through all right if worse came to worse if I lost my home make a list of people who like me enough

that they would let me stay at their place for one week yes and if you've got ten people then that means that you've got 10 weeks of time to figure something out even if you lose your home right so

you know what I'm saying is now just having many friends it's just having a different mentality about money you know no money doesn't mean that you should

die you know but we're so scared of the future with no money but you shouldn't be scared alright so we've talked about financial anxiety and and I think we've

also talked about financial fear as well so let's move to the third negative emotion which is financial doubts right

we doubt that for example some people are fanatic about banks like what if banks don't give you money back so they stuck their money and under the mattress

you know that's extreme but if you have financial doubts about yourself the company you're working for or if you afraid worried if your clients will stay

or not you know there are so many financial doubts about what's possible so if you think that US government will go bankrupt and you have no money to

spend you know you may you feel like you have to have gold or something you know if you have one doubt financial doubt that brings another dow and another dog and you be paranoia about the whole

thing so have to clear about this issue - and how do you overcome that worry that doubt that paranoia about institutions failing

or investments failing or about you yourself failing so once again if you can place security in other people even if the worst comes to worst

there is no banking system or you know financial crisis there will be people people need food people need something

so we're going to create a new system so as long as people live people there there will be some kind of economy so if

you have skills to help other people you can survive and that's how we have survived over the you know centuries or

well as a human being so when you take a look at the worst case scenario and then still you feel like you can survive you

feel more relaxed about money and unlife - so worries and anxiety will keep more worries and anxiety so you have to shift

your mind to something else I recommend gratitude will be a great substitute let's talk more about gratitude in a moment but first let's go through your list of five major negative

emotions that keep people in a scarcity mindset so the other two are guilt and South neglect let's talk about guilt

first sure your guilt is a funny feeling when you have guilt you cannot enjoy money and when you have guilt you feel

like you cannot relax about making decisions you feel guilty about giving money you feel guilty about making money

and wealthy people have guilt when they're inherit money from their parents and grandparents so if you have guilt about around money even though little

money you receive if you feel guilt you feel like taking away from some other people you cannot enjoy money so you have to let go of your guilt too

and how do you let go of guilt you know there are so many ways but you have to get out of this trance of scarcity if you feel like when you have money you're

stealing from other people it's not what's happening money flows through people if you have money that's not you

stole from some of the people the money is flowing among people so it's not taking away from other people the money

flows from somebody to you and then you pass on to the money so it's not a zero-sum society that if you have any other people will lose it it's just how

we're living in the circulation of money and once you know the big picture and once you know that there are people with money without money and you realize

what's going on in life when you look at money in a different way you have less guilt but guilt is difficult creating

most out of all the feeling because it's not something that you can let go in two seconds if you've had it all your life and then the guilt is a feeling to

protect yourself from getting attacked but you know like if you have money you might be afraid that some people feel jealous but if we have guilt you feel

like somehow guilt will protect you which doesn't but you know you have to take a look at guilt and from many different ways otherwise you'll be stuck

in guilt forever and it's such an easy feeling to get addicted to that's an interesting observation that you might feel guilt will protect you meaning as

long as I feel guilty that I'm not a bad person yes exactly so you know you have to face the feeling and then go deeper otherwise

you cannot really heal this feeling of guilt let's talk about self neglect self neglect is something that you don't pay

yourself first and you are in sacrifice for example if you do what you don't like for a job you're in a self-neglect situation so

unless you make yourself happy you're neglecting yourself but it's so easy to fall into this state of sacrifice and self neglect because once again it's

sort of related with guilt - I'm working so hard for the people your family that's why I am a good person but self

neglect is bad feeling that kills you and relieves you of all the fun experiences in life so when you have self neglect you have to really take a

look at the issue so money it brings out all these negative emotions it's nothing to do with money but because of money these feelings will just come to surface

so I suggest you take a look at these feelings and then start healing otherwise you make it Manny's fault and

you still risk restricted because you think the money does that for you but money doesn't it's just your feelings you have around money that restrict your

life when it comes to self neglect how do you know the difference or maintain the balance between on one end of the

extreme completely neglecting yourself but on the other end of the extreme over indulging or going too deep into the treat yourself mentality that's a

beautiful question I've been thinking about this a lot and what I think now is this if you follow your heart and do what you love that is the best service

for other people too because if you're in sacrifice or of some sort you let other people win but you lose but if you

do what you love that's always weighing for you and Link for other people because you're in a state of being able to help you and being able to help other

people if you do what you love so that is the perfect balance what if you're not sure what you love or what if you're not sure what you want I'm sure there are some people who are listening to

this episode who thing I don't know what my passion is yes yes I've written probably about 10 books on this how to discover your gifts and how

to find it I think the most important thing in life is to find what to love and find what excites you the most otherwise you know we're are not living

our life truly the reason why I wrote my book is to let people know that there is your life to be lived all of us most of

us are restricted with money and since we worry about money we don't start what we love in this life we feel like we

have to pay the bills so we cannot make a living if we do what we love so even

before we find what we love we try to be blind to what we want to do so we

suppress our love and passion in everyday life so that way we don't have to worry about something else but that's a bad idea because that way we lose a

passion - so you've described the importance of discovering your passion and how passion can get muted over time

when we let the responsibilities of daily life stifle those passions how do if those passions have been stifled for long enough and we've lost touch with what they are how do we go through the

process of figuring that out how do we discover that purpose or that meaning once money is not the primary concern there are at least a hundred ways to

discover what you want or what you love in your life for example when it took up your life take a look at your life and the time you spend most or the money you

spend most that's what you love for example I used to love reading books I used to go attend a lecture or seminar

and there it became a career you know focus on what you spend your time on most if you love drinking wine if you

spend most of your time cooking your passion could be near what you spend your time and money most so look to the things that you do when you're escaping the responsibilities of

life as a clue to what you might want to do more of yes and there must be something that your friends were would be surprised about how you spend your

money and time like your friends might say wow you spent all the money on vacation overseas so like international travel is your passion thank you your friends might say while

you spend all your money on the food or wine or cooking or AMA therapy I don't believe it you know so when your friends are surprised at you that's your passion

is usually look to the ways in which you're weird yes yes yes because for you it's so natural for me reading a few

books a day was a normal thing but for my friends like they don't read a book a year but they're super surprised like you're reading a book a day you know

like for me I love books I love learning so I ended up writing books and I ended up teaching so if you love something and

you don't probably know because it's so natural for you in your book you discuss the difference between money IQ and

money EQ can you describe that yes you know I met all the wealthy people and regular people and I realized that

people who made a lot of money of high IQs but among those who made all the money but there are people who are not

so happy so I realized that there are the smartest people in the world but they make terrible emotional mistakes and then I realized you need some

emotional intelligence as well to be happy and wealthy at the same time that's when I became aware of the existence of money a lot of people are

talking about money IQ you know it's about investing stocks real estate all that so there are many books on that so I don't talk about it today but money IQ

is more important than money IQ because if you don't know about your emotions you make all the bad decisions to feeling all the emotions that you're not

aware of so there are four principles of mining EQ one is to receive well you know we're so good at giving people but

we're so bad at receiving right yeah that's the self neglect again yes when we receive money well that's a good start but we're so bad at receiving and that's

in general so that's a key number one and let's pause here and let's talk more about that before we move on to the other three components EQ when you say

receiving are you referring to receiving gifts from others are you referring to charging your clients or your customers at a rate that reflects the effort that you've put into your work like what what

do you mean when you say receiving money Oh actually everything you know we receive the informal money financial

reward or receive in the form of compliments we are bad at receiving you know in general so when people

appreciate and try to pay you more we say no no no no it's my job you know or like if you want to raise our fee but we have a hard time doing that because we

are bad at receiving so receiving well means receiving all worth so if you feel like you're in sacrifice and then you're

frustrated with your salary now it's the time to go up to the next level to risk we say well it's not like charging people more it's receiving it's not

you're asking it's they're asking for you to receive so the happy situation is instead of saying well I have to charge you more

you have your client say can I pay you more so that's that's receiving well how do you get to that point how do you get to the point where a lot of people who are listening to this are entrepreneurs

or they have a side hustle and they have the experience where if they go to their clients and say I'm raising my rates people will push back

how do you charge what you're worth without encountering resistance all the resistance is within you what's interesting is like if you're a coach

and if you charge $50 an hour and if you say suddenly charging hundred dollars an hour all the old clients will be upset

but if a new client comes in and said I like you I like your session how much are you charging you say are 100 and they'll say okay great so you know it's

all about the resistance is in your psyche not your clients so if you feel like you are willing to take the risk

and then then go to the next level and then you say I'm willing to accept clients who are willing to give me $100

per session so it's not charging more it's receiving well and the writers are the same way if you write a book and then they have to be open to receive you

know if your books sell 10,000 copies you get certain amount and if you your book sell a hundred thousand copies you receive ten times it's not like how you

sell it's how willing are you to receive so to do that you have to be more open to abundance which is a scary thing to do that's why I teach

emotional e.q and there are so many ways

emotional e.q and there are so many ways and practices that you can do but the easiest one that doesn't cost you anything is gratitude if you are open to

gratitude and if you thank people more you were open to abundance for example practicality if you say thank you to a clients more or if you show your

attitude of appreciation to your clients or potential clients more clients will come and more money they're going to offer you so it's interesting you know

how appreciation and money are connected so if you appreciate your clients more in a few months you get more referrals and more clients offering more money or just

bring gifts to you so try that all right so of the four principles of developing a strong money EQ one of them is to be good at receiving and that's what we've

just talked about what's the second one second one is to appreciate appreciate money a lot of us cannot appreciate

money because we feel guilty or you feel like if you enjoy money and suddenly we feel like I will become a bad person but

when you appreciate money that means wow I love this money I love what I can do with this money what you appreciate appreciates clients are the same thing

if you appreciate their business they want to place you if there are some potential clients among their friends they'll refer to you so if you

appreciate money subconsciously you attract more because what you appreciate is something that makes you feel good and a lot of other people around you

want to give you more for example in the United States I was at that supermarket and I got a $2 coupon and I simply smile

and enjoy the $2 coupon and said wow thank you so much I got a coupon you know because we don't have the system in Japan like I was just generally very

happy and I just say it out loud I thank you so much I got a $2 coupon and so the person right next to me just get the coupon for me because you know I see

probably wanted to see me with more smile Wow I got another coupon so the second person I mean the other coupon so if you show appreciation and gratitude you know

a lot of people want to see your smiling face some of the people who are listening to this podcast they work in a

job that isn't in business or entrepreneurship here they work in a job in which they're not dealing with money as part of their their day-to-day job

responsibilities they manage their own money but they do that quietly at home on their laptop you're moving money between accounts and moving money from a

checking account into a retirement account for example so in those instances when you're not interacting with others in a way that is money

related how do you outwardly express appreciation and gratitude and apply this principle in your own life yeah so

when you see the numbers coming in you appreciate your money and also you appreciate the fact that somebody gave you money it could be your clients it

could be your spouses it could be your parents it could be your bosses you know in the company but they could have so many other options your clients could go to somebody else

your company could hire somebody else to but they chose you to keep the money there are so many reasons that you can appreciate the money coming in and then

you feel like wow thank you you know I really appreciate that somebody came me this money so I can pay all the bills and I can just pay all the

fun thing that I enjoy and also when they take a look at the bills you are getting something with the money either goods or services for example if you buy

something and then you got a piece of furniture or clothes or food in exchange for money and and you when they take a look at the credit card bills like you

say thank you for the food thank you for the clothes thank you for the furniture thank you for the books and if it's electricity bill thank you so I can just

enjoy light in the night time the heating and the shower and for the water so there are many reasons to appreciate

when you pay the bills so I recommend people say thank you thank you thank you while you write checks for the bills so that way your mind shifts so so

differently writing checks for bills could be a lot of fun so writing checks and paying the bills then turns into a gratitude practice yeah because your

money is giving some and or paying some other people's bills too so that money it will turning into happy

money and how does that have an effect on the rest of your life I mean I understand how that would have positive psychological effect on you yourself

internally but how would that then extend out to attracting more money into your life or bringing more money as your life that ties in to principle number

three that is trust how does that appreciation and gratitude flow into trust so trust this is the hardest one out of

all the EQ that I teach because we have a hard time trusting anything in the world right now because the world is changing so fast and there are so many

violence that we see on TV and we have a hard time trusting our life and our future but when you think about worrying about money we are worrying about our

future there is the two different futures good future but future we are forced to believe that the future is bad but you

know if you can take a look at all the static statistics in the world we have less crimes and we have less violent death and we we have no more world wars

and even though the environment is being messed up there are so many other things that our situation is better as a whole

so if you can trust our life will get better we feel more relaxed about everything but since we are worried that something is bad is gonna happen we feel

so tight about money which feels so tight about everything so that's why we cannot take a risk but when you take a look at life in a different way I've

done some research and then I found out that 99% of the people say that the worst thing turn out to be the best

thing after five years like losing a job losing a spouse losing your health that turned out to be something better to appreciate about so if you to

think of the experiences that you couldn't make it to some college you were forced to do something that later on became the best thing that happened

to your life so if you have that experiences in the past and then look at life in a different perspective your life may turn out to be something

different than what you think it should be but you can find happiness in there too so once you start thinking I will

just enjoy the ride no matter where life takes you you know you can enjoy every moment of it and then you might be in a

situation with no money one time but that doesn't kill you and that is a time that your learned to be supported by

your friends and family and strangers so there are many lessons to be learned in hardships too so either about times good times

you if you know that you can enjoy both you can be looking forward to your future and the reason why I have no worries and anxiety and fear about my

future is that if I have some bad experiences I can get to write a book on that and then my friends will help me I have to give my friends some

opportunities to help me because I have I need no help at the moment so when you think of life that way you know you're more excited about more events than

staying worried about what bad thing can happen in the future it's an interesting observation that the more that you trust in the future and the more optimistic you are about the future the more able

you are to take risks as well mhm yes because life is a series of many events now I've interviewed people in their 80s and 90s and there's nobody who's

experienced only positive things in their life like losing the loved ones or just you say I love you to somebody but he or she doesn't love you back you know

that happens and then you know you want to do something but you returned so life events are made of all the

disappointments and glories and triumphs and a lot of other things so if you

decide to enjoy both sides of life you have nothing to fear because everything's about experiences and I got

to stay with old people nursing home and they said the fun memories is all the bad experiences like how they took a big

risk and TAFE failed miserably that they lost everything you know those are the fun memories like not necessarily or the success were good memories because it's

kind of boring why did those hardships turned into fond memories because I think it's more exciting you know the heroes in a nursing home were those who

had lots of setbacks and and failures imagine there are two guys in the nursing home one has no failures no

setbacks good life you know good kids good children he's boring but look at the other one who's done so many bad things and who just failed so many

things and who stories is more fun to listen to you know we love stories of setbacks because that somehow excites

you you know that's so like a secret life if you have more setbacks in life you have more thing to enjoy later on so take a risk is what I recommend to young

people right and certainly the disparity between when you are at rock-bottom and when things are going better makes you appreciate the better times more yes and

you know how good the world is you can appreciate your friends and family members more if you're at the bottom because people are more kind and gentle

and when you're doing great you don't notice those things so let's talk about principle number four for developing a

strong money EQ that is to share share what you're have so if you share your money you don't have to be super wealthy even a dollar with ten dollars

you feel the joy of giving and there's a psychological study done that the giver feels more joy than the receiver so I

recommend you start giving a dollar two dollars and even if it's a if you have no money you can give somebody a smile or kind words so those are the things

that I recommend if you share what you know if you share what you have if you share energy friendship gratitude that

grows and definitely that gives you happiness hmm how do you find the balance between sharing in a way that is

healthy versus sharing in a way that's in which you're neglecting yourself you're over giving it to the point where you're neglecting yourself yeah for

example if you just give the money you need to pay the rent or mortgage that's overdoing it but if you can share what

you have and then it doesn't hurt you I think it's a great balance so you don't have to do too much just start something

law you know a dollar or two or even even ten cents and the number doesn't really matter it's just a feeling so if

you feel joy that's great if you feel in a little bit of sacrifice that's not good so just do as much as you feel like doing it that gives you joy one of the

concepts that you talk about in your book is the notion of having enough that feeling when you look at your money and say you know what I have enough

everything from this point forward I can give away how do you know when you have enough how do you get to that feeling you know I interviewed a lot of

millionaires and surprising finding was that they don't feel like they're wealthy enough so one millionaire come that he said he is not wealthy enough

because he doesn't have a private jet and the other one who has a private jet complained his private jet is not big enough so there's no limit to how much

you have and then you satisfied with what you have so they give situation if you feel happy and content with what you have and you

can have more but the feeling of you have more than enough gives you joy and happiness so anybody can do that as long

as you have a house and a roof over your head you can say I have more than enough but if you just start complaining about money and if you feel frustrated with

money no matter how much you make or have you cannot be content so the key is to be content with what you have it almost seems like a paradox if you are

content with what you have then you open yourself up to having more but if you feel as though you don't have enough then you set yourself up in such a way that you might not ever have enough nurse

thank you Ken for sharing these ideas about how to be then with money and how to have happy money are there any final takeaways that you would like to leave

this audience with yes it's a teaching that I got from my mentor why he Takeda he says thank your money I did hurt all

your money when it comes in and thank you money when he goes out just do that it doesn't cost anything when you receive money next time thank the money

and then when you spend your money next time thank the money that way you start this happy money flow and once you find

yourself in the happy money flow that appreciates so just have fun with that and I've taught these principles to hundreds of thousands of people and I'm

hearing incredible results so I'll have fun with this practice and it's gonna take you to the next level of abundance and then without knowing you realize

that you forget to worry about money have fun well thank you Ken where can people find you if they'd like to know more about you you can find me

at Ken Honda calm my books will be probably out there in Amazon and all the bookstores and if you are interested in

doing money retreat online you can find all the information on my website thank

you ken for joining us on this episode what are some of the key takeaways that we got from this conversation here are five number one neither blame nor praise

money money is not the source of either harm or help people are ken makes the point that money doesn't hurt people people hurt people

and likewise money doesn't help others people help others and if you're struggling money isn't going to help you you are going to help yourself

and money might be a tool through which you do that but ultimately let's not forget the human behind the story we have this notion belief that money can hurt people

well money can be bad but when you think of it it's nothing to do with money people hurt other people and so this takeaway is that money is neither the

hero nor the villain of the story often when we talk about money we forget or we can forget that we're actually talking about people and so that's key takeaway

number one key takeaway number two if you're feeling anxious about money write down a list of people who would be there for you if you needed them because

ultimately your social network is your security the worst comes to worse we'll be in a situation with no money it's not gonna kill us so the money worries will

kill us so if you feel like money in the bank is at security you have to know it's not it's more of a people is more

our security one recommendation from Ken's book that I really enjoyed was that he described the exercise of writing out a list of people whose couch you could sleep on

if worse came to worse if you lost your home and you just needed a couch to crash on for a week who do you know who you could ask if you could just sleep in

their living room for a week not forever just for a week if you've got ten people in your life who are like that you've got ten weeks to figure something out so this hit me hard actually when he made that recommendation because I

started thinking about it I was like going through the very pragmatic I was like well okay I'm still gonna need a car to be able to get to their home and I'm still going to need some money to buy groceries cuz I don't think that

they like me that much and I guess I'll need gas to put inside the car and some insurance for that car I mean I was literally going through all of that in my head the conclusion that I came to I

was like man as long as I in a worst-case scenario if I were to lose everything if I were to be reduced down to only a car some gas and some

groceries man I mean look around the the FI community the financial independence community there are a bunch of people within this community who'd be like yeah

you can take my couch for a week in fact Ken Honda himself would probably let me crash on his couch for a week actually which leads me to another story so as Ken and I were chatting off-camera

behind the scenes I mentioned to him that I'm gonna be going to Japan in September for my September sabbatical he didn't invite me to stay on his couch but he did say that's awesome

let me know I'll take you out like we'll hang out around Tokyo we'll go to dinner I'll introduce you to my family Wow sweet now I've got a friend in Tokyo and

it came from this conversation and it came from being open to having friends so the key takeaway here is that in times of trouble and in times of joy

don't look to your money look to other people so that's key takeaway number two key takeaway number three worries lead

to more worries and anxiety leads to further anxiety gratitude however is the antidote worries and entirety will keep

more worries and anxiety so you have to shift your mind to something else I recommend gratitude will be a great substitute I recommend a daily gratitude

practice whether that's writing in your journal or adding a gratitude element to prayer or meditation in some way

speaking gratitude out loud or writing gratitude down on paper is a powerful practice and it's free so that's key

takeaway number three emphasize gratitude key takeaway number four when you think about the type of work that you want to do or the contribution that you want to make to society trying to be

too strategic or too analytical can backfire if you ensure field because it makes sense on paper but your heart's not actually in it then you end up sacrificing yourself and ultimately you

end up contributing less you may think that you're helping others but you're actually setting up a win-lose a situation by contrast if you do what you

love and you do it in a way in which you're making a positive contribution to society then you're setting up a win-win situation if you follow your heart and

do what you love that is the best service for other people too because if you're in sacrifice or of some sort you

let other people win but you lose but if you do what you love that's always win for you and lean for other people because you're in a state of being able

to help you and being able to help other people if you do what you love this is an interesting framework because I never thought of do what you love in the

context of creating a win-win but it makes sense because anything else even if the work is good for the world if it's not good for you then it's a win-lose situation and

win-lose situations are unsustainable so finding that intersection of what you love what's good for society and if needed what people will pay you for

finding that intersection is a win win just because you can do something that your epithet towards doesn't mean that you should so

that's key takeaway number four and key takeaway number five turn paying bills into a joyous practice also when you

take a look at the bills you are getting something with the money either goods or services for example if you buy something and then you got a piece of

furniture or clothes or food in exchange for money and and when you take a look at the credit card bills like you say thank you for the food thank you for the

clothes thank you for the furniture thank you for the books and if it's electricity bill thank you so I can just enjoy light in the night

time the heating and the shower and for the water so there are many reasons to appreciate when you pay the bills so I

recommend people say thank you thank you thank you while you write checks for the bills so that way your mind shifts so so

differently writing checks for bills could be a lot of fun this is a radical shift in thinking to turn bill paying

into a joyous practice to turn bill paying into an act of gratitude wow I love that idea and so let's make that

the fifth and final takeaway from this interview thank you so much for tuning in my name is Paula pent this is the afford anything podcast if you enjoyed today's episode please share it with a

friend or family member that's the single most important thing that you can do to help spread the message of happy money to spread the message of improving your relationship with money and

expressing gratitude for all of the ways that we have abundance in our lives so please share this with a friend or a family member and make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app

you're using to listen to this podcast coming up on next week's episode we will be answering questions from you the community but at the end of the episode

I have a very special interview with Jay money he was my co-host on this show for the first 26 episodes

and he is coming back to celebrate next episode is episode 199 which means we're

on the verge of 200 episodes and so to end the 100th and to lead us into the

celebration of episode 200 j-money is going to make a special cameo on next week's episode so make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast

so that you won't miss that special cameo by j-money next week thanks again for tuning in my name is Paulo pant this is the afford anything podcast I'll

catch you next week [Music]