Moneylove, Prosperity, and The Energy of Money

Here’s A Provocative Prosperity Conscious Idea:

What if we increase the potency of our prosperous thoughts by increasing the number of different definitions we can come up with for financial success? Just a thought, mind you, but one that popped into my head as I was writing the above headline and had not even planned to mention in this post. And I’m not going to give you a list of those words, part of the process will be for you to think of as many as you can, then go to a thesaurus and find as many news ones as possible. Imagine one of your walls, perhaps in your workspace, with cards covering it, each one featuring a different abundance word.

But What I Really Want To Talk About….

This past weekend, I attended the first prosperity workshop I’ve been to in fifteen years. I have been known to rant a bit about the fact that most prosperity websites, books, CDs, and DVDs today are the same old, same old–just rehashing the stuff I introduced and popularized in Moneylove thirty years ago. With a few exceptions. And I am anxious to discover as many exceptions as possible so as to include them in my revised and annotated and updated new edition of Moneylove, which will be published in the next three months. Imagine then my delight in discovering one such teacher of some new perspectives on money doing a workshop at Unity San Francisco, the nondenominational church I attend, whose motto is: One God, Many Paths. Her name is Dr. Maria Nemeth, and she is a clinical psychologist who started coaching people about their money issues after a scam artist ripped her off in a Ponzi scheme some years ago, sending her into depression and a deep analysis of how the human mind works in relationship to money. She runs an organization called: www.AcademyForCoachingExcellence.com and wrote several books, the best known, The Energy of Money. That was also the title of her workshop, which was really a coaching session for a group of about 35 of us, including the minister, my friend Sonya Milton, and her husband, also a Unity minister, Hal Milton.

The Secret Of Being A Good And Powerful And Influential Workshop Leader/Coach

In this case, it was what Maria Nemeth said, as well as the way she said it. She has a wide range of fascinating gestures and facial expressions that illustrate her words. So much so, I asked her assistant, Michele, if she had ever had acting lessons. No, this is who she is.
And the secret of success as a workshop leader? That what you say and do triggers tne creative imaginations of those attending, that you stimulate their minds, conscious and subconscious, into coming up with their own solutions. During the workshop, I did something I have never done before. I had 5x8 cards for notes, and I kept two sets of notes. One set contains the comments Dr. Nemeth made that I liked most, the other set of cards has my own ideas that popped up as my imagination was stirred, as my deepest core of creative energy was tickled into production mode. I am looking forward to interviewing this impressive woman, and am sure I will be sharing more of her thoughts on this blog as time goes on.
You can read her books or go to her website for more information.
But I’ll share a couple of things I especially liked. She talked a lot about how we spend money, and if you read Moneylove, you might remember I had a whole chapter on Prosperity Spending. We agree on the importance of getting pleasure and satisfaction as a result of one’s spending. I liked her terminology in this area, as she talked about Consciously Spending versus Leaking Money. The latter is spending money just for the sake of spending, not getting the pleasure or positive results we desire and deserve.

Maria Nemeth also said, in a slightly different way, one of the points I really emphasize in my work, and is exemplified by the quote of mine Nightingale-Conant sent around the world a couple of weeks ago, “Wealth Is Not A Material Gain, But A State Of Mind.” What Maria says is, “Being financially successful isn’t about how much money you have, but your relationship to money.” And she adds: “It’s doing what you say you’re going to do with money with Clarity, Focus, Ease and Grace.” A nice turn of phrase that can strike a responding chord in all of us. I like that clarity comes first, echoing my Moneylove admonition that you must start with a “Clear Vision Of What You Want.” But Dr. Nemeth expands on these ideas and offers some elaborate, commonsense-filled concepts that explain some of the inner workings of our consciousness. She focuses a lot of attention on what she calls our “Monkey Minds.” Those negative voices inside our heads telling us why we’ll fail and what we shouldn’t or can’t do. If you ever heard my tapes or attended one of my seminars, you might remember I gave my negative voice a name, Stanley, and talked about never being able to totally get rid of him, but that the best way to move past that negative voice is to lose it in a crowd of positive voices. Maria also talks about the fact that the Monkey Mind never goes away, but just eventually becomes irrelevant. And as she talked about this, I had the thought and wrote it down on my cards, that it’s like a child getting a toy for Christmas or Hanakuh, and it’s defective, it breaks, or won’t work to start with. That’s a terrible thing, and creates a very unhappy, upset child. But if that same child gets a lot of toys, and just one is bad, it’s a whole different story. It’s losing the bad toy in a crowd of good ones, making the bad one irrelevant. And we can consciously choose to inundate our consciousness with lots of good toys.

What She’s Not

There’s lots more, some of it very intriguing and juicy and even contrarian. Maria Nemeth, PhD is definitely not the one thing I most dislike in a prosperity teacher–she is not a copycat. A unique, charismatic, and very wise woman in the ways of the financial world and the prosperous mind. A kindred soul I hope to continue to get to know and learn from and maybe even collaborate with in some as-yet-undiscovered way.
Jerry