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Today, we are surrounded as never before by all manner of information, knowledge, and advice - but something stops us from using it. Have you ever read a financial magazine or gone to a money-management seminar, but then didn't put all that good advice to use in your life? As one woman said, "I have some of the world's greatest money books sitting on my nightstand gathering dust. I wish I could close my eyes and absorb them all through osmosis or something. I never seem to do anything with the information."

Acquiring information and advice about how to manage or invest our money is easy. The trick is to act on the information, to do something that improves your life and the lives of those you love. That's what wielding the energy of money is all about. The woman with the stack of unused budget and investment books was not experiencing a powerful relationship with money. Her situation had nothing to do with her skills, talents, ability, or intelligence. It had everything to do with her own personal money obstacles - obstacles that she eventually cleared away using the principles in this book.

If you could take all the information available and put it to work in your life - if you could translate all that knowledge into behavior - would you do it? All of my work as a clinical psychologist and in the You and Money Course has been aimed at giving people the tools both to use all the information and knowledge available, and to access their own inner wisdom - because I believe that knowledge plus wisdom equals power.

Using the Energy of Money

To use the energy of money successfully, you need to operate in both physical reality and the metaphysical reality made up of, among other things, dreams, visions, and your Life's Intentions.

Our inner visions inspire us, but we can't be content merely to "metafizzle" our ideas without taking any action in the real world. I can dream forever about taking a trip to Paris, but nothing will happen until I call the travel agent, book a ticket, go to the airport, and gather the funds to pay for all this. If I don't do these things in physical reality, that goal of a Paris trip will languish on my "wish list" forever, the subject of endless talks with friends and perhaps even discussions of how I limit myself. Psychological insight, positive thinking, and reading travel brochures may help me clarify what I really want, but only the energy of money will help me get on the plane.

How do I make it happen with ease? And how do I apply the lessons I learn in my relationship with money to all other areas of my life? That is the subject of this book.

I promise that when you learn to work freely and easily with the energy of money, your life will become what psychologists and counselors call "intentionally" satisfying. You will know precisely what you want, what brings you joy and meaning, and you will see how to get it with ease. It will not be a hit-or-miss proposition. For example, when you understand your true Life's Intentions, apply your personal Standards of Integrity, and learn to release the energy of money within your company, you will do business differently and probably with greater success. You will make the important decisions in your life consciously, never again abandoning your dreams by default because you "can't afford them."

In these pages, I won't be telling you how to invest your money, or where to put your savings. Instead, I will help you clarify what you really want out of life and give you the tools to act powerfully when you use money to move toward those dreams.

My Own Story

If you had asked me to talk about my relationship with money seventeen years ago, I would have been mortified. That year, I gambled and lost. I invested $35,000 on an unsecured promissory note to a man I had known for six months. It wasn't even my own money. I had borrowed it from a family member.

The man to whom I loaned this money promised I would get a 30 percent return on my investment. The money was supposed to be used to make short-term loans to buyers who needed to close real estate escrows. It was a fraud. There were no escrows, and within a few months all the investors lost everything.

Like many of you, I had read investment books and attended money seminars. I had a financially sound private practice as a clinical psychologist. But in the case of this $35,000 investment, what I knew didn't influence my behavior.

When I lost the money, I felt terrible. I have since repaid my relative, but at the time I still felt stupid. It was bad enough to have lost the money, and equally humiliating not to have listened to my friends, who told me to reconsider, that the deal sounded too good to be true. And worst of all was a haunting memory: just as I was about to sign my name to that $35,000 check, I distinctly heard a small voice - my internal voice of reason - say, "Don't do it!" Did I listen? No.

I hoped no one would find out what had happened. I thought that for the next several months, I could just hide in my office, make lots of money, and hope my friends would forget to ask me about my investment. However, Fate had other plans for me. Two weeks after I discovered my money was gone, I got an unexpected phone call from a local newswoman.

"Dr. Nemeth," she began, "the university gave us your name because you're an associate clinical professor there. We know you're a psychotherapist, and I need your help on an article I'm writing for the Sacramento Bee."

© 2000 by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D.

Tags: Career & Money

About the Author

Maria Nemeth, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with more than twenty-eight years' experience, a former clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, and former columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal. Her popular Sounds True six-tape series, The Energy of Money, and her "You and Money" seminars have helped thousands of people to create ongoing affluence and financial ease.