The Emotional Currency of Money

Money is a weird thing. It can be the source of great pleasure, but it just as readily brings about great angst and fear. Tomorrow night we are joined by psychotherapist and author Kate Levinson, who will read from and discuss her recently published book Emotional Currency: A Woman's Guide to Building a Healthy Relationship with Money, published by Celestial Arts.

Before beginning to explore the psychological and emotional roots of her relationship with money, Levinson always assumed that her discomfort with money was caused by "the amount I had and how I mismanaged it, never glimpsing that most of my money dilemmas had to do with my feelings and what it meant to me....Though financial advisers suggest that we just be rational in our dealings with money, this is rarely possible for most of us, as we attach a complex set of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings to money." These emotions affect every aspect of our lives, whether we have lots of money or not nearly enough.

Emotional Currency, according to Levinson, is "a guide to exploring your personal experiences of having, not having, making, not making, spending, saving, giving, investing, inheriting, and losing money....It will teach you how to integrate your feelings into money matters." The book includes dozens of real-life stories, as well as questions and exercises to help the reader explore the emotional and psychological aspects of  money and to provide strategies for working through confusion or struggles.

Interestingly, Levin's husband, Steve Costa, owns Point Reyes Books -- a profession I can easily confirm for you does not typically lead to great wealth. In fact, the author says it's a good thing she made her discoveries about the emotional component of money before he decided to buy the bookstore: "Without having done some of my inner money work, I would certainly have said, 'We can't! We don't have the money.' And our lives would have been poorer. Instead, our world has been immeasurably expanded and enriched, but of even more value to me has been the deepening of our partnership."

Levinson holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology and is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She is a member of the teaching and supervising faculty at The Psychotherapy Institute, and has also taught and supervised students at J.F.K. University’s Graduate School of Clinical Psychology. She specializes in helping individuals and couples deal with money from a psychological perspective.

Please join us Thursday, July 27th, at 7pm for what is sure to be an eye-opening discussion. I am eager to learn from the author's insights. Here is a link to an article about the book to whet your appetite.

Women and Happiness

Do you know what makes you happy? Let's see....I'm happy when I feel the sun on my face, especially after many cloudy/rainy days in a row. When I get to about page ten of a new book and realize I've got a delicious winner on my hands. When I'm laughing with a friend or friends and enjoying time together. When I wake up at night and feel my partner snuggled up close to me. When I have a happy purring kitty in my lap or by my side. When I see the waves rolling on shore at the Oregon Coast and smell the wonderful ocean air. When I successfully hook someone up with "the perfect book." So, if I know what makes me happy, why aren't I happy all the time?

In her latest book, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, Ariel Gore conducts an exploration into the history, science, and experience of women's happiness. As part of that study, she kept a journal in which she recorded the happiest moments of each day, and she asked other women to do the same.

She was prompted to embark on this study in part becaused she noticed a growing disconnect between the things she imagined would make her happy and the things that actually did. She also began to notice that the vast majority of people conducting happiness studies were men.

"We are told what will make us happy, as if we were all the same woman, as if we all share a single heart, as if we can't all be right when we realize our disparate desires."

She found that a lot of women are resistant to focusing on their own happiness. "As women, we have been taught that thinking of ourselves is intrinsically selfish." But as the women kept their journals, they found that focusing on their own happiness and recording moments of joy can be very powerful. Just paying attention to happiness every day can increase it.

And just what is "happiness," anyway? According to Ariel, happiness isn't the same as pleasure, or the fake cheerfulness of Madison Avenue; it's more complex than that. The opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or depression, it's anxiety. A big part of happiness is about the ability to rejoice in the midst of suffering

Did you know that the ancient Greeks attributed happiness to being favored by the gods? "Their fatalism is captured in our language: the English words for happiness, happenstance, haphazard, and hapless all derive from the same root -- the Old Norse happ, meaning 'luck' or 'chance.'" I had no idea!

Come learn more about women and the psychology of happiness when Ariel Gore reads from her new book tonight at Broadway Books at 7 pm. The event is free, and you just might find yourself happier when you leave -- especially if you leave with a great new book or two!