Question

Respond to the primary arguments of Lynne Twist's book "The Soul of Money." In particular identify the "Three Toxic Myths" she describes. PIck one of the myths and explain your response to her claim. Do you agree? Disagree? in Either case, explain why.

Answer 1

Summary of the book "The Soul of money"

Chapter 1 – Money and Me, Money and Us
The book opens with how many people separate their soulful life that centers around their values to their financial life that revolves around money. The behavior of the people in each world is different: the soulful life is usually full of following the things that really matter, being fair to others, working for a cause and so on, while the financial life is full of greediness, petty behavior and yearning for material things that provide temporary pleasure but takes you away from actual happiness in life.

Chapter 2 – Into India: Heart of Hunger, Soul of Money
This chapter describes how money alone does not guarantee a fulfilling life. So why do people directly associate money with fulfillment? The real truth is that there is a disconnect between the having money and having lot of money. This gap creates for the people who feel left out when they don't have enough money – or enough of any material good – and also from the sense of “selling out.”

Chapter 3 – Scarcity: The Great Lie
Most people have an innate sense that there is simply not enough: this makes people strive for more than they require and they miss out on simple things in life.

The myth of scarcity breaks down into three parts.

1) The idea that there simply isn’t enough is a myth

2) The idea that more the better causes us to grab the bigger piece of pie, even to the exclusion of others.

3) The concept that this is just the way things are gives us a very weak excuse to act greedy.

Chapter 4 – Sufficiency: The Surprising Truth
The book basically tries to distinguish between the idea of “enough” and the idea of “abundance.” Most people strive for abundance, but the truth is that abundance itself creates an overflow of things and create a greed in oneself.

A much better target is “having enough;”. This will help you find the things that make you fulfilled and then use the overflow part to make the world a better place.

Chapter 5 – Money Is Like Water
This chapter quite interesting. it focuses on how people (myself included) keep track of their net worth and strive to increase it. This creates a state where you become self reliant and achieve financial independence. Here author is of the view that growth in the networth should be used for more constructive purpose. It should be used for the values that matter the most rather than spending on things that will after sometime be of no use.

Chapter 6 – What You Appreciate Appreciates
Just like an investment made appreciates over time , similar is with the case of 'value', it appreciates over time in relation to the amount of attention you pay to it. Thus, Think twice before you spend your time focusing on in a given week. These are the things in your life that will help you to grow. Keep a log, of the time that you spend focused on various areas of your life: your career, your family, your interests, and so on.

Chapter 7 – Collaboration Creates Prosperity
The main thesis of this chapter revolves around the general idea of working together and sharing skills. The best gift we can usually give to anyone is sharing our skills and resources and our time but not our money,

Chapter 8 – Change the Dream
The “dream” referred to here is the social dream, what change can you bring about. Instead of taking the excess in your life and spending it on a $100,000 on a car, why not apply that money towards creating that social change or invest in some startup that is working towards solving problems and making life easier..

Chapter 9 – Taking a Stand
This chapter helps one to understand the importance of believing in oneself and focusing on providing value rather than just money as the latter is the byproduct of what follows. This requires commitment, being different from the herd, challenging conventional principles and chasing your dreams by breaking the flow.

Chapter 10 – The Power of Conversation
The power of conversation is a way of carrying forward a dream is and really understanding it. In an interesting way, the way internet has really connected the world where in like minded people can share their knowledge, converse and indulge in productive framework that can bring in a change.

Chapter 11 – Creating a Legacy of Enough

This chapter focuses on committing yourself to a greater cause and setting yourself as an example for your kids and neighbors rather than just battling for more money and more material stuff than you need. Committing yourself to a cause that can affect the lives of countless people and authentically bring about change.

Chapter 12 – The Turning Tide
The final chapter of this book merely sums up the parts and gives a general idea that once you figure out what is enough for you, you can take the abundance and then you can really work to change the other aspects of life. It mainly focuses on finding the balance between the emotional and the financial aspects of life.

The three toxic myths are

The first myth is “there is not enough.”
The second myth is “more is better.”
The third toxic myth is “that’s just the way that it is and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

This one is, I think, is the worst myth of all because it holds the whole of your mindset in place. It restricts the power of brain from thinking, imagining things. Restricting the power of brain makes us think that we can’t do anything about it, so we don’t try. It makes people lethargic. They just follow the system, which at times is cumbersome due to its policies. This stops innovation. It’s the source of institutionalized racism and poverty.

So, these 3 toxic myths demeans human life. It exhaust the purpose of humanity. More of anything and everything, makes us feel that we’re not enough, this doesn’t gives us the sense of wholeness and has us think that that’s the way life is. No wonder why people are driven by money and not emotionally in today's world.