Doug Lynam spent 20 years as a Benedictine monk before becoming a financial advisor, and that unusual path gave him a front-row seat to something most financial professionals miss entirely.
In this episode, Doug explains how your Enneagram personality type shapes the way you earn, save, invest, and give, and introduces his concept of the “sacred wound”, the emotional pattern from your past that’s been running your money decisions ever since.
This isn’t about budgets or discipline. It’s about understanding why you do what you do, so you can finally start doing something different.
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The Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast’s mission is to empower women to approach money confidently, reframe their financial habits, and build a future where their money is a tool for opportunity and security.
Through Dr. Sev Talks Money YouTube channel and Podcast, I provide actionable advice and inspiration to help you achieve financial freedom. Join me for one-on-one coaching, group sessions, workshops, or speaking engagements as we journey to financial empowerment together. It’s never too late to begin again—let’s make it happen!
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Doug’s information:
Book Doug as a coach or keynote speaker, purchase his books, or hire him as an investment advisor. His goal is to help you master your money so you can live a life that makes your soul sing.
Website: https://www.douglynam.com/
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Amazon Link to Taming Your Money Monster: Nine Paths To Money Mastery With The Enneagram: https://bit.ly/4pvyLvQ
Amazon Link to From Monk To Money Manager: A Former Monk’s Financial Guide To Becoming A Little Bit Wealthy – And Why That’s Okay: https://bit.ly/45zwNDC
IEQ9 Enneagram Test: https://www.integrative9.com/DougLynam/enneagram/test/individual/
Transcript
Hey, hey, hey, Savvy Squad Welcome to Dr. Sev Talks Money. I am your host, Dr. Sev, personal finance educator and coach who rebuilt my credit from the five hundreds to eight 50 and paid off $39,000 in debt after a late life divorce.
Today’s guest has one of the most unconventional journeys you’ll ever hear going from marine training to spending 20 years as a Benedictine monk, and now serving as a financial advisor and coach at Innovative Advisory Group.
But what makes this conversation powerful isn’t just a story. It’s what he’s uncovered about why so many of us struggle with money even when we know what to do. My guest is Doug Lynam. He blends psychology, spirituality, and financial strategy to help people understand not just what to do with money, but why they struggle to do it.
Doug’s full bio will be in the show notes and YouTube video description. Doug, welcome to the show. Thanks, Dr. Sev. Great to be here. Alright, great to have you. I love to do icebreakers and I have to start here because your story is a lot in the best way.
Uhhuh, you’ve been a marine, a monk, and now a money manager. What’s one moment from that journey that still makes you laugh or just shake your head and say, how did I even get here? Yeah. Well, it was probably when I was in the monastery because I, there was a time when I, I, you know, I. Joined the monastery to get away from the world of money and materialism.
And I thought this was gonna be a way to escape the rat trap in a really powerful way. But then the irony is I found myself living in a community where everyone hated dealing with money as much as I did, and then our community, of course, went bankrupt. So I found myself having then to dig our community out of that mess and really learn how to master the world of finance.
In order to rescue our community. And that was just a head shaker, like, how did I get here? This was the one place I didn’t wanna be. And that’s where I found myself. So that was probably the most powerful moment. Yeah. ’cause money touches everything. Yeah. It’s. No matter what, anything you can think of, money touches it.
So even if we want to hide from it and it’s there, it’s there anywhere. You can’t, can’t even run away to a monastery to get away from money. Yeah. There’s nowhere the money doesn’t touch you. That was, that was a big insight for me. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk about what people think they’re saying. Well, money problem is because I don’t have enough, but if money problems aren’t really about money, what could be driving our financial behaviors? Well, trauma for one thing. Mm-hmm. It’s our, it’s the trauma we have around money and around our past that creates, you know, an unhealthy relationship to money. Where, you know, when, when roughly one in four Americans have PTSD symptoms from financial trauma and among millennials, that number goes up to one in three.
And that’s according to a report in Forbes Magazine. And so what, a lot of us have other kind, you know, we might have actual PTSD symptoms. I, say, I, I have payment, traumatic stress disorder. That’s my PTSD. But you know, when we, when we experience stress and trauma, there’s really four things we can do.
We can fight. We can fawn, we can flee or freeze. And if we are in the fight or fawn mode, we, we can get hyper anxious around money and maybe obsess about it too much in unhealthy ways. But when we’re really struggling financially tend, we tend to be more that’s called what I call the money anxious type.
But more common, what I see is what I call money avoidance. And that’s when we’re stuck in a flee or freeze response. Where we don’t wanna look at it. We don’t wanna do the budgeting, we don’t wanna pay the bills. You know, we’re not willing to have the hard conversations that need to be had in order to shift our situation.
Or take the appropriate actions that we know we should do but don’t do our financial life kind of is like the treadmill in the corner we know we should use, but never kind of get around to doing it. Yeah, so I think it’s really when we, when you understand these emotional response patterns we have, then you can find a better way through it and how to calm your nervous system so that you can and know what your particular trauma pattern is.
And that’s kind of really what I go deep into my book, uh, Taming Your Money Monster. It’s really understanding what, how your ego pattern is structured, and then how this money anxiety or money avoidance might manifest according to, according to your very unique personality type that the Enneagram can help you pinpoint.
Yeah. And that leads me to my next question, which is gonna be twofold, but I’ll ask them one by one. Um, uh, we hear people talk about, um, personality types and you, you just, um, referred to that a while ago. Uh, whether that’s the Enneagram, Myers Brigg, or some other type, but we’re naturally wired in some way to fit one of these types or some combination of these types.
How do those personality tendencies show up in things like money avoidance, procrastination, or even over controlling our finances like I do? Mm-hmm. Well, it depends on your personality structure. So, um, you know, it depends on your ego type. So each one of them. So any, any, any, the word Enneagram, it’s a big, fancy word.
Ennea in Greek means nine and gram, gram means drawn. So the word Enneagram is just these nine archetypes of personality. Kinda draw ’em in a circle. Think like a color wheel. Maybe you just slice it. If you had a, a, a rainbow color wheel and you were to slice it into nine pi pi, even pi wedges, your personality lands somewhere on a spectrum inside one of those quadrants.
What’s helpful about each of those quadrants where your, where your personality lies, it tells you a lot of things. And the system is, you know, has a lot of depth and a, a lot of complexity to it. Um, it’s really grounded in, you know, modern psychology. It’s an old ancient system, but we’ve now managed to, managed to root it in modern neurobiology and childhood developmental psychology.
But the, the key takeaway is that each of the personality patterns has a deep unconscious fear that they’re trying to assuage some way, and that kind of shapes and tense the lens through which we view all of reality. And then when we layer on top of that, either money anxiety or money avoidance, you get the money monsters, you get two money monsters for each of these nine types.
And maybe I can give you an example or we, you know, I don’t think we have time to go through all of them, but, um, that’s, that’s kind of the, the rough framework. Um, uh, one, one, I’ll give you one example. I’ll, I just poke at myself ’cause it’s, it’s, it’s the easiest. Um, and when you find your Enneagram type, it’s a bit like sitting on a cactus.
It’s really uncomfortable because it shows you the patterns that you’re repeating over and over again unconsciously. Oh, yes. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s a, it can be, it can be quite awkward. But the way to think about the Enneagram, these nine types, there’s three quadrants or three, um, call ’em the triads. But if you were to break those, put three types in each triad.
Um, what it comes down to is there’s basically three core negative emotions that we all feel, and this is true in all mammals. So in the limbic system of our brains, there’s just these three. All our other, all our negative emotions are kind of running off of these really basic primal circuits, and they are anger, grief, and fear.
So anger, grief, and fear. So your type falls into one of those three triads. What it says about you is you, in your childhood, you basically got exposed to one of those negative emotions more often than the others, whether it’s through nature or nurture. I’m, I’m more in the nurture camp on this one. Um, but basically kind of from your childhood holding environment for whatever reason, you got hit with a little more anger, a little more grief, or a little more fear.
So I’m in the grief triad, and then in each triad you get this one negative emotion. That you’d wrestle with more than the others. Uh, and then there’s three ways you can process that emotion. You can internalize it, kinda like giving yourself an emotional wedgie. You can externalize it, which is a bit like having a food fight with the world.
Or you can have both. So I’m my, I’m a call what’s called a type three and often called, we’ve given nicknames. They’re called the achiever or the, the performer. I call us the, I call ’em the race car because we’re always racing towards the finish line, but we tend to leave our authentic selves in the dust.
We’re kind expert match changers. We kind of are always looking for approval from the world around us or trying to achieve things to. Assuage what really is a deep seated insecurity for the type three we have, uh, this grief, which we internalize and externalize. So we’re caught in the kind of caught in the middle.
And what that means is, uh, the type three, the internal grief is sort of like grief about how you perceive yourself, which is kind of another word for shame. So it’s shame is often used as another. Way of looking at it. But then we also have this externalized grief, which is sort of shame or grief about how you think people perceive you.
And what that creates is the greatest fear for a type three, which is that we’re fundamentally worthless, that we don’t have any value in the world. Mm-hmm. So we’re always running around trying to achieve things to prove that we’re not worthless. And each type has a different core fear. They’re running around trying to protect themselves from, and no type is better or worse than the other.
Um, but then when you layer on this attachment of money, whether you’re anxious or avoidant, if you’re avoidant, then the money monster is, I call it the barrier, meaning looking at our finances, threes tend to equate their net worth with their self worth. So when your net worth is low, when you’re, it’s like a real blow to your ego.
It floods you with grief and shame. So then your trauma response is to stick your head in the sand, is that that flee or, um, freeze. You just seize up and can’t seem to get moving and, and take the action you need to take to really change your situation. And then on the flip side, there’s the anxious type where they may be too obsessed about money.
I call it the binger. So the barrier and the binger. And the binger for the three, we can, we can have both money monsters depending on the, uh, context or what part of your financial life we’re, we’re referring to. ’cause in finance, there’s what I call the four pillars of finance, and the four pillars are gonna be earning, saving.
Investing, and giving. So earning, saving, investing, giving. You might be an anxious earner, but an avoid, an avoidant saver, right? You might be an anxious saver, but an avoid or an investing, or you might invest really well, but you might avoid giving. So, you know, and these can, we can flip back and forth depending on the stressors we’re under, but that’s some context.
And then the anxious type, what happens is the, I call them the binger because they tend to want a lot of money, but then they, they tend to. Throw it at bling at, uh, status symbols. Mm-hmm. So, because threes are so image conscious, we, we have a tendency to, uh, overspend on things that make us look and feel important in the world.
Like we want the nice clothes, the fancy car, the nice house, you know, the gold watch, whatever it is, whatever it is that is gonna make you, um, feel. You are valuable, like in the world. And so it’s a cheap, but, well, it’s an expensive way and, but also a cheap way, if you will. Mm-hmm. Trying to, trying to gain sta status.
Symbols are a expensive way to gain status essentially. Yeah. And that’s, that’s one thing that threes are, are prone to if they’re not careful with their money. So that gives you that, that was a deep dive. And maybe I’ll pause there and we can go deeper from there. Yeah, I, it sounds like we really need to get your book because mm-hmm.
Um, this is very intriguing and there’s so many nuances to this. Uh, so I, for anybody listening, um, just know that you, there are degrees to wherever you fall. Yes. So, you know, for, like, for me, I know that I, I am a big saver. I just save the save, save, save. Um, I’m a big giver also. Um, but at the same time, when it comes to earning, I needed to do more work when I was in the corporate world Yeah.
To see my value so I could go get more money because the more I had, the more I was able to give and to save. Yeah. Um, so they’re always nuances and, and Doug said. Depending on where you are in your life, in, in your financial life, one will lead more than the other. So, you know, don’t get too hung up on, oh my gosh, I’m this and I’m bad.
No, no, no, no. Right. Amen to that. Yeah. And, and it, the nice thing about the Enneagram is it has a growth model built into it. So there’s, there’s sort of unhealthy ver versions of your typo. There’s very healthy versions of your typo, and we’re trying to get you to a healthy relationship to money across all four areas of earning, saving, investing, and giving.
So it might be one area that you’re struggling with, but maybe not all of them. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s just normal and, and my second question that I said, I had two questions around that. Right. Um, for, you mentioned some of it already, but for someone listening who might recognize themselves, themselves in some of the things you mentioned, how do they start working with their tendencies?
Instead of feeling stuck by them. Yeah. Well, it depends on your type. So each type has a specific practices for their type, and those are all laid out in the book. So you kind of need to figure out what your type is first. Mm-hmm. Know what your, kind of, your worst vices are, or your, your most negative tendencies tend to be those negative patterns that you repeat over and over again.
And then your, your sort of, your virtues of the things you need to practice are gonna be just the exact opposite. So whatever that worst vice is for you. Then the practice is gonna be, there’s, there’s many, there’s a couple steps to it, but they’re, they’re all, they’re all laid out in the book. And, uh, but for example, so for type three, you know, our worst vice, the thing that we struggle with.
Um, is deceit it, meaning we’re always trying to put on an image of success. It doesn’t mean we’re lying or intentionally. Mm-hmm. You know, not telling the truth. It means we’re always putting our best foot forward, but we we’re always kind of wearing a mask. We’re not always letting people see our, the messy stuff going on inside.
That’s a kind of deceit. It’s like, um, I want you to see the polished image. I don’t want you to see the, the messy stuff going on behind the scenes. And so their practice is really kind of a modesty, a really, really honest assessment of who they are. And then they need to practice a certain kind of faith to take not a theological faith, but a faith to take the masks off, to trust the universe that they can take those masks off.
And let their authentic selves come out. So for a three there were practice is gonna be, the highest practice for a three would be authenticity. Um, and maybe we can talk about your type if you feel like, you feel like that’s something you wanna jump into. Yeah. I, I don’t know what my type is, but I know that I am an INFJ on, on um, Myers Briggs.
Okay. So I don’t remember if I’ve ever, I think I did my Enneagram years ago, but I don’t remember what it’s Oh, okay. Yeah. But I do know that I tend to. Really, really save, really, really give Uhhuh sometimes to my detriment. Mm-hmm. Um, but uh, when it comes to earning, I don’t position myself. I haven’t positioned myself and I still am struggling with that position myself to, I know what my value is, but I don’t position myself well.
Right. To, to get that value. Yeah. So that’s, that’s one of my struggles. I know. I see. Well, I, I try to type you over a zoom over a podcast in public, but, um, uh, yeah, maybe that’s a d that’s a different conversation. We could try to figure that out. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s fine. I mean, I’m, I think I’m confident enough in myself that whatever it is, where, because I know some of my tendencies, I tend also to overanalyze and decision making.
I tend to, um, I want to do the spreadsheet. And I want to see what are the possible outcomes. I pretty much wanna see the result before I see the, you know, all the pieces that go into it. I’ve gotten better, but I tend to overanalyze. I’m saying I overanalyze. I tend to overanalyze and, and really think about things a lot before I make a decision, especially if it’s a major decision.
So, yeah, I, you know. But then again, I think of that as, okay, yes, that is one of the things that maybe stops you from making decisions that could, you could benefit from. Mm-hmm. But on the other side, I have other tendencies that protect me that, um, that helped me. So, um, I don’t dwell too much. When I was growing up, they would tell me that.
Oh, you are too. You, you think too much or you’re trying to do too much, or you, you are too slow with making decisions. And I would always think that’s such a bad thing. So that’s, I heard those voices in my head. Yeah. And now I’m realizing that sometimes it’s a good thing ’cause it protects you.
You know? Yeah. So, and, and balancing it out with some of the good 10, the good things instead of hearing all those negative voices Yeah. About, you know, oh, you’re not social enough. Because I, I’m an introvert. I like to stay by myself. Yeah. And people think that’s a bad thing, but sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes, you know, I know when to go out there and be an extrovert. And a retreat into my shell. But being an introvert or an extrovert is not a bad thing. It’s, you know, it’s who you are. So now you learn all the levers to pull to make sure that you can fit into the world out there and, well, this is my take, um, fit into the world out there.
And then when you come back to your home, how to. Either unwind or how to ramp yourself up to go back out in the world. So, yeah. Well, it sounds, what, what you’re describing, it sounds a lot like a Type five on the Enneagram. Um, but do you, do you struggle more with anger, grief, or fear, do you think? I think more fear.
Yeah. Um, you know, especially with now that I’m retired, it’s uh, will my money last? Yeah. Uh, will my, do I have enough in, in in my retirement? Yeah. Um, do I have, you know, those kinds of things. They’re not as prominent as they used to be when I was younger, but they’re still there in the back of my mind. Uh, so it’s more fear of what will be, or what could be.
I think type five so far from what what you’ve described, um, you, you kind of hit the nail on the head. Um, and we say for type fives, they, they’re, they kind of ruled by fear that they’ve internalized meaning. The great, the greatest unconscious fear for five is that they’re fundamentally. Incompetent or incapable.
So they, they, they try to be very competent and very capable of whatever they do. So they’re, we call them the observer or the investigator because they’re always taking information in. It’s like there’s an infinite amount of data coming at them all the time, and it’s really overwhelming. The, the reality.
It can feel very intrusive and very overwhelming. Um, you know, I give ’em car names, so I call it type five, the compact car, only because they have a small gas tank for social interactions. But, but they can fit into tight mental spaces where the rest of us are terrified to tread. So, you know, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, these are the kind of the type fives where, where they just need a lot of recharge time.
They, they don’t, their battery just drains in. So in social interactions, they’re always trying to figure things out in their head. They want to take all the information in, make, get perfect information, make the perfect decision, and then they kind of get stuck there and have a hard time coming, getting it out.
Yeah. Sounds like me. Yeah. And, and, and I have a, um, um, and I’m getting over this one. I tend to be a little bit of a perfectionist. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, just trying to, let’s adjust this just a little inch here. Yeah. Inch Oh, another quarter each. Yes. Um, yeah. Those are some things that recognize about myself.
And then I, I also recognize well. How do I, how does it work for me? How can I make it work for me? Yeah. And then where is it not working for me? And I’m getting better at it. Um, but yes, those are there. You’ve, you’ve hit the nail on the head some of the things that I, I am, uh, experiencing or have experienced in the past.
So I sound like a, a five. I need to, I need to do that test so I can see. Because here’s the thing too, and I think you alluded to it earlier. Is that once we recognize where we kind of fit, and of course there’s no perfect fit per se, but once we recognize that and we recognize our strengths and our weaknesses, then we know how to adjust.
And that’s the beauty of it, is knowing how to adjust, not just get so, um, typecast in that negative realm that we can’t move. Now I know that I am an over planner, an over analyzer. Mm-hmm. How does that work for me? For the best benefit or, you know, how does that benefit me? Yep. And, and then what are some things that I can learn to manage that part of me in a better way?
Yeah. Exactly right. You nailed it. That’s brilliant. You said apparent that I could apparently am a five and I’m brilliant. And while we’re mulling over that, let me just invite you to be part of our ecosystem. Hey friends, quick pause. If you’re enjoying today’s episode, the best way to support the show is to share it and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform.
And you know it. Five is our favorite number. And if you’re watching on YouTube, don’t forget to like, subscribe and share. Thank you. Alright, so now that we’re starting to see how this shows up, let’s go a little bit deeper. You introduced the concept of sacred wounds. Yeah. And I love that terminology and what it tells me, even before you describe it.
And I know that’s going to hit hold for a lot of listeners, just as it did for me. Can you walk us through how, what it is, first of all, as you define it? Mm-hmm. And how early experiences or wounds show up in everyday money decisions? We kind of covered a little bit indirectly earlier, but it’s, it’s that anger, that grief or that fear that you experienced childhood.
And so think of it like this. You know when you’re born, there’s a physical umbilical cord that connects you to your mother neck, gets cut with a sharp knife. But then immediately there’s a psychological, what I call a psychological umbi umbilical cord. This psychological umbilical cord egoically connects you to your caregivers and it lets them do most of the driving for you in the early years of your life.
So your emotions and your feelings and your reactions are really codependent on the people around you in, in very deep and powerful and useful ways. But as you age, what you need to. We need to cut that psychological umbilical cord. You need to what we say individuate or differentiate from your caregivers.
And the only way to cut that psychological umbilical cord is with a sharp negative emotion. And as we discussed earlier, those three, the big three negative emotions in the pain box of life are gonna be that anger, grief, or fear. So it’s often how your boundaries were set when you were a child. Like if someone says, you know, don’t touch the hot stove, or don’t kick the dog, or don’t butt your sister.
Like, you need to back those up with a certain kind of negative force. You have to, or else your kids are gonna get killed, right? You’re gonna run in the street. There’s a, it’s necessary to, you know. It inflict pain on your kids in some meaningful ways so that they can mature. It’s a, it’s a necessary suffering.
It’s, it’s, but sometimes we get a little more than was healthy and so it can get to the point of being even be being real trauma, you know, as, as a five, you might’ve had a very intrusive childhood where there was just a lot coming at you, very chaotic household where you didn’t feel like you had any.
Private space or, or, or a place where you felt really secure. So fives tend to retreat into their minds because that’s where they can protect themselves essentially. And, um, but that sacred wound is that, is that cutting of that psychological umbilical cord. So for, for a five it would be with fear, they feel that you couldn’t manage all this chaos around you.
So you reach, you wanna be hyper competent and you, but then that with withdrawal into yourself. For me, you know, it was shame and grief. So that drives me to, drives me to be like hyper achieving and, you know, basically, um, look at me, look at me, look at me. You know, that’s kind of the, the, the motto for a type three.
And, and then there’s just a different sacred wound for each of the nine types, whether it’s anger, whether, which way you’re processing that, that anger, that grief, or that fear. Yeah. Yeah. But without it, you can’t develop into an adult. So it’s, it’s necessary. It’s sacred. And then, and then the great part about it is that.
It comes with your greatest advice or your greatest weakness, but then when you move to the healthier levels of your type, that greatest weakness becomes your greatest strength. It flips. It has a way of actually, because it’s the hardest thing for you to overcome. When you do overcome it, it leads to like this really spectacular place where you can maybe, you know, really living a, a beautiful life.
Yeah, I love that. I love the way you phrased that. So let’s speak to my audience’s internal dialogue. A lot of my audience are smart, capable women who feel like I should be further along by now. So what are some things, and I think we talked a little bit about that makes anything you should add to this.
Why do intelligent, high achieving people still struggle with money even when they know what to do? Well, because they’re stuck in that fear or freeze response. They’re, they need to find a way to calm their nervous system and find a way to tackle this stuff and get a little distance, a little perspective.
Even just naming the emotions you’re feeling is helpful or naming what, what’s happening in the process so you can be like, alright, I see this pattern myself doing it again. You know, and try to take a counter move that is the opposite and push through it without. Trying to, um, load on more anger or load on more shame or load on more fear.
So we, when, when we get stuck financially, we tend to pile on with more of the same negative emotion that drives us deeper into a ditch. So it’s, it’s like, all right, how do I, and again, it’s gonna be unique to you, but what are the practices that will help you? First of all, notice that anger, grief or, or fear when it’s coming up, and then name it and then try to have a little bit of distance from it.
And then move forward with some compassion for yourself and for your situation. Yes. Rather than beating yourself up over it and driving yourself into a shame spiral or a grief or fear spiral anger, right? That just makes it worse. So I think that’s really the root of it many times, and then you’re able to maybe see the situation with a little more clarity and then find a path forward that makes sense for you in your particular financial circumstances.
Yeah. You said a key phrase and it give yourself grace. Yeah. Um, a lot of times, uh, especially, I don’t know if it’s a trait of five, uh, but I have done things where I will be, I can’t sleep because I’m just playing the loop in my head. Yep. Why did you do that? Why did you do that? Just playing that loop. So I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older and wiser, uh, to give myself grace and I try to tell my clients the same thing.
Give yourself grace because you made the best decision you had with the, at the time, with the information you had. So you’ve lived in both monastery styles and corporate boardrooms, taking vows of poverty before advising the wealthy and gone from predawn prayers. To managing millions. What are some lessons that listeners can take from that journey as we wrap up the podcast?
Well, I think one of, I used to, that’s a big.
Uh, being St. Paul who said the love of money is the root of all evil, and he had a point for his time. He, he, we forget that he was living in a very different financial world where it was primarily a slave based economy, where there was no middle class. It was all, um, zero sum is a big term in economics where what that means is in, in the time of, of St.
Paul or Jesus, the, if I hoarded wealth or I, I hoarded, you know. Goods and things, then it almost invariably meant that somebody went without that, that my, my wealth almost invariably created poverty and suffering for another person. And that’s just not how a modern economy works. It’s not zero sum anymore, it’s, it’s more of a win-win.
Like if I build a business and make money and I hire employees, there’s more. There’s no limit to the abundance of wealth we can generate. It’s not zero sum. And so I’m more in the Mark Twain camp these days where he said that it’s the lack of money that’s the root of all evil. Like really the, the, the suffering that poverty creates is one of the worst forms of suffering in our society because we now know that your socioeconomic status is the best predictor of when you’re gonna die.
Poor people just get hit with a laundry list of horrible things you just don’t want to have. Whether that’s, uh, alcoholism, drug abuse, obesity, uh, workplace injury, crime, child abuse, uh, and just poor health in general. So it’s very hard to be content when you have to choose between gas in your car and food in your stomach.
So if you can, if you can understand that money is not inherently really good or evil, it’s a tool that we can use to build something beautiful. Or you can also use it to whack yourself on the phone. But um, to not be afraid of it. To not be scared of it, and not to think that, well only greedy people think about money.
You’re only selfish. People think about money. It’s like, yeah, no, it’s necessary for to, to really live a life that makes your soul sing. The more you have it, the more you can be of love and service to a suffering world. You can’t clothe the naked or feed the sick without money in your pocket unless you’ve master the art of multiplying loaves of fishes.
So really, it’s it’s essential tool and to understand that tool and to wield it wisely and with compassion and with discipline, you’ll be able to really live your fullest and, and mo happiest expression of your life. Yeah, and I Amen to that. So what are you currently working on that people should know about?
What am I currently working on? Well, I’m building up my advisory practice. Um, you know, I’m always growing that, so that’s been a kind of my, uh, I’m starting my own podcast, Monsters and Lighthouses. If anybody wants to tune into that. We launched our first episode last week. It’s gonna be on the Enneagram and Money.
My co-host Darren Newborn, and what else am I working on? I’ve got a, another book in the works that’s gonna be a couple years out and I’m also doing a lot of public speaking, which is an awful lot of fun. Okay, so, um, I know I have a couple of websites for you and now, uh, listeners, I will have his full information in the show notes.
Um, so what can they get when they go to find you on douglynam.com? That’s where you can find if you’re looking for money coaching or you’re looking for a keynote speaker or else you wanna find copies of my books, those are all available on my website, douglynam.com. And then if you’re looking for an, uh, financial planning or investment advisory help, you can reach me on my corporate website, which is innovativewealth.com.
Okay, so there you have it, folks. All of the ways that. You can, uh, connect with Doug. Uh, Doug, thank you so much for being on the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast. Uh, there is so much more that we could have explored, but I don’t know if they wanna listen to us go on and on and on. But, um, uh, again, please check out Doug’s book and, um, his websites so you can, um.
So you can get more information about what he’s doing and hear more about this very fascinating subject that we discussed. So I want to leave you with this. You are not broken and your problem isn’t that you don’t know enough. For many of us, the issue isn’t strategy. It’s the patterns, beliefs and experiences quietly driving our decisions behind the scenes.
And we talked about that today. The moment we begin to understand our patterns, we give ourself the power to change them and not just the negative patterns that we tend to dwell on, but all of our patterns and how they compliment each other, and that’s where real financial transformation begin. So until next time, take care of yourself and your money.
