Can you write an essay about “the soul of money” four to five pages
assignment Specifics: Read the book and prepare an essay that critiques and reflects on the relationship of money to business, society, and the accounting profession. Relate your experiences and your reflections to The Soul of Money. Your essay should be four to five pages in length, with 1.5 spacing, 12-point font, one-inch margins, and professionally written and formatted.
“Money is like an iron ring we put through our noses. It is now leading us around
wherever it wants. We just forgot that we are the ones who designed it.” – Mark
Kinney
Lynne shows us that we each have something that lives inside of us. It’s
an, “intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances.”
Lynne writes: When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really
need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you
have. When you make a difference with what you have it expands.
Just like water, money is a carrier for both positive and negative things. If
we allow it to flow, it can help to create life. It can help to grow and improve
the world around us. But if we hoard it, or act to stop up it’s natural flow, we
open ourselves up to toxicity.
https://www.bookey.app/book/the-soul-of-money
“Money is a product of human civilization that has been with us for
thousands of years. Not only does money still play an important role in
economic activities, it also constitutes a pivotal element in countless
aspects of our lives. Money is no longer just a tool for the exchange of
materials and services; it is a force that everyone needs to confront.”
We live in a World defined by money to a large extent. Many people
consider money as an important factor when making decisions and as an
important yardstick to measure one’s success. They allow money to take
control over their lives even if that means to deviate from their principles
and original intentions. Why is it so? Lynne Twist believes that all this
stems from a sense of scarcity rooted deep in everyone’s mind.
If we observe carefully, we find out almost everyone is haunted by their
thoughts concerning scarcity every day: “I haven’t slept enough”, “I don’t
have enough time”, “I’m not slim enough”, “I don’t have enough money to
spend”, and so on. The endless feeling of scarcity persistently influences
the way we think, act, and live. Whether rich or poor, powerful or weak, no
one seems to be able to free themselves from this mental dilemma.
Although money itself is neither good nor bad––it is just a tool for trading––
people’s sense of scarcity has distorted the nature of money and generated
the wrong understanding of their relationship with it. Lynne summarized this
misconception into three “toxic myths”.
—-No matter how far or how fast we go, no matter how many people we
surpass, the sense of scarcity will always make us feel that what we earned
is not enough. The pursuit of “more” has gradually become an addiction
which consumes our energy and leaves us no time to slow down and
reflect on ourselves. We stop working on our self-worth, and start ignoring
our inner integrity. The “more is better” myth has also caused violence, war,
corruption, and environmental damage all around the World. People do all
these things just to satisfy their desire for more land, more market shares,
more property, more power, and more money.
——The third toxic myth is called “that’s just the way it is”. Resigning
ourselves and succumbing to the concept of scarcity, we take for granted
that the world itself is unfair and only the strongest can survive. It is natural
for the rich to hold great power, while the poor can all but accept the reality.
The systems of many countries are established in a way that benefits a few
wealthy people, ignoring completely the negative impact this has on public
health, education, and safety. Towards such unfairness, most of us feel
either desperate and helpless, or cynical, without thinking that actions can
instead be taken to change all this.
“marry the money and love will come later.”
Being successful means making a lot of money. This kind of information
gives people the illusion that whoever makes huge profits from
overexploiting resources becomes more successful than any teacher, civil
servants or those who earn relatively low salaries.
There are many pieces of “wise advice” in our life that could determine our
attitude towards money and lifestyle. Some people believe that financial
success is the foundation of happiness, so they spend their whole lives
chasing after money, but forget to ask themselves what they truly love;
some people know that their job has no future, but worry about being
unemployed, so they settle with the status quo; some are afraid that their
insistence on financial independence will damage their intimate
relationships, so they let their significant other control all their financial
decisions. It’s the “wise advice” about money like these that restricts our
lives.
How to correctly interpret our relationship with money? | Chapter 3
If we, as mentioned, let the sense of scarcity fill our hearts and let money
control our lives, then our happiness and inner integrity will be severely
damaged, and the World will be full of evil and darkness. In Lynne Twist’s
view, although the resources on Earth are limited, they are sufficient to
meet or even exceed the needs of everybody. If we can shift our mentality
from “you or me” to “you and me”, the World will be full of love and
cooperation, and all of us will have enough food, water, land, housing and
other basic resources. To enter a World that belongs to “you and me”, we
need to correctly interpret our relationship with money and have positive
interaction with it. First of all, we need to realize that money is the carrier of
energy and will. On the basis of her profound experience in charity work,
Lynne believes that money is a channel through which our desires are
reflected, and this has nothing to do with the amount of money involved.
How to reshape our relationship with money to change our life and
even the entire society? | Chapter 4
As human beings, everyone wants to love and be loved, and everyone wants to make a
difference in life. However, the toxic money culture has blocked our path to selfrealization and discovery of who we really are. It has eroded the values hidden deep
inside our hearts without us noticing. So, how can we return to a more valuable way of
life? How to make the World develop on a more sustainable track? There are a few
suggestions in the book, and we will talk about three main points here.
According to Lynne, our words and conversations can create the background of our
lives. If our conversations focus on negative content such as fear, anger, jealousy, and
competition, then we will live in a depressing world filled with a sense of scarcity. On the
contrary, if our conversation is full of gratitude, love, trust and respect, then we will have
the confidence and hope to live our lives with a mindset built on sufficiency. We have
already covered this topic in the bookey of Metaphors We Live By. No matter what
situations we encounter in life, we must consciously fill our speech with a sense of
sufficiency. This way, we can start seeing things becoming different.
In 1987, the U.S. stock market plummeted. Many people, including Lynne and her
husband, lost large sums of money in a single day, and their hearts were filled with fear
and anxiety. She and her husband followed the developments of the stock market crash
day by day on the TV. Suddenly, they realized something was missing. They turned
from the TV and started to discuss the impact the crisis had on their families. The
conversation made them realize that although the stock market crisis has caused
financial losses, they still had a happy family, the love between them was not changed,
and their children kept being healthy and lovely. The two felt grateful about the
sufficiency and happiness in their family.
In Part One, we learned that the reason why money controls our lives
and makes the World full of competition and evil is the sense of
scarcity inside all of us which often generates deep fears in our hearts.
Because of this, people think resources are limited and try to own as
many of them as possible. This mindset has pushed us to make many
life choices that are against our own values and the common good,
and our own lives are limited because of it. Part Two tells us that we
need to reinterpret our relationship with money. On the one hand,
money is the carrier of our desires and a being with its own soul. It is
the manifestation of our own tendencies, whether noble or evil. On the
other hand, the potential of the existing resources far exceeds our
imagination. As long as we make good use of our inner potential, pay
attention to and harness the existing resources, and learn to
cooperate with others on an equal footing, we can create values
beyond our imagination. In Part Three, we learned that we must use
words to create a living environment that is sufficient for ourselves and
others. On top of this, we need to pay attention to the flow of money
and let it carry the energy of our soul. Whether it is business
operations or personal consumption, we must take on our
responsibility towards the Earth and society. Money is a double-edged
sword. It can fill the World with pettiness and evil, but can also heal
our souls and nourish all mankind. We are the ones that get to decide
which direction money will take us. When dealing with money, it is
extremely important to make a choice––whether to stay obsessed
about it or open our eyes to a bigger world.