Afford Anything - The Japanese Art of Being a Zen Millionaire, with Ken Honda

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

#198: Money flows. When you receive money, you’re in the path of this flow. Money flows from someone else to you, and eventually, it’ll flow from you to someone else, either in the form of a purchase or an investment. A healthy relationship with money is to feel gratitude when money flows towards you, and to release your money without attachment or resentment when it flows away from you. Today's guest, Ken Honda, is known as the “Zen Millionaire” of Japan. He’s sold more than seven million books in Japan about the intersection between wealth and happiness. In today’s podcast episode, we discuss four core principles for developing a healthy emotional relationship with money. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode198  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time, focus, energy, attention. It applies to anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions become twofold. Number one, what matters most to you? And number two, how do you line up your daily decisions accordingly? How do you spend in a way that reflects your best sell?

Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today, Japan's best-selling Zen millionaire joins us to talk about the Japanese art of making peace with your money. Ken Honda has sold more than 7 million books in Japan about the intersection between wealth and happiness.

He retired at the age of 29 and then spent the rest of his life writing books. Since 2001, his books have sold more than 7 million copies, and many people in Japan refer to him as the Marie Kondo of finances. In our upcoming interview, we talk about how to treat money as a guest, how to let it flow into your life with gratitude and respect, and how to let it go without resentment. We talk about how to improve not only your money IQ, but also your money EQ, the emotional intelligence around money. and we talk about the four principles of money EQ. We discuss five negative emotions that keep people stuck in the myth of scarcity. And we talk overall about how to be more zen with your money. So here he is, Ken Honda, one of Japan's leading experts in the field of money and happiness.

Hi, Ken. Hello, Paula. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for coming on the show. Let's talk about your philosophy of money. You write quite a bit about how to be a Zen millionaire. Let's start with what you need to unlearn. Before you can go into what's good, let's start about unlearning the bad.

You talk about some damaging childhood scripts that people learn. Tell us about that. So most of us have bad relationship with money because we either feel frustrated or we worry about money. It's because we had some experiences from our childhood that we're told by our parents that money is bad or you cannot spend all the money you have. We have to start saving. And mostly we're taught about negative stuff. So we have to unlearn about the negative teaching from our parents and start teaching us about a good side of money. Because money can buy you things that you love and money can give you flight tickets.

to wherever you want to go. Money can buy material things. Money can relieve a lot of stress in life. So you have to learn that money can be a good tool. And otherwise, you feel stuck in the limitation of money. What are some of those negative scripts that we need to unlearn? And how do we recognize them within ourselves when they're not necessarily conscious thoughts? For example, we have this notion of belief that money can hurt people or money. can be bad, but when you think of it, it's nothing to do with money. People hurt other people. But we feel hurt by not having enough money about the experiences that our parents didn't give us money to learn piano and send off to summer camps. And all the experiences teach us that money can be

harmful. So unless you heal the wounds, money wounds, you cannot really think money can free you. So there is this love and hate relationship with money as much as we want money, but if we have money, it could be dangerous because people could be jealous and we lose it all and just regret that we have the money or that could be hurting some people.

So if you just let go and heal the money pain and all the negative belief about money and just start gaining all the positive belief about money, that money can make you happy. And then that way you have more freedom in life. If someone recognizes that they hold some of these damaging scripts, scripts like money is evil, or I'm a waste of money, or it's a shame we have to think about money so much, those damaging scripts that many people have internalized, How do you unlearn that? I asked my students to imagine what happened in your childhood.

For example, I wanted to go to Australia for homestay to study English. At the time, my father had money, but he was depressed so he didn't want to spend money. And my mother was so reluctant to bring up the issue to my father. So without asking, I gave up my idea. of going to Australia for study, for homestay. So I imagine that seeing at a kitchen that I wanted to bring up about my homestay, but I gave up, you know,

I forgive my cowardness for not bringing it up, and I forgive my father for being so depressed, and I forget my mother who didn't want to stir up emotions in my father, so he could be violent. So she didn't want to evoke her husband. So I get a slap later.

You know, in that scene, everybody suffers, and everybody did what he or she could. So if you understand that, although you feel the pain, you understand as an adult that it's nobody's fault. There's just pain about money. And once I understand, I give them forgiving love for each one of them, and then come back. to my present. Now I didn't have a chance, opportunity to go to Australia, but I now feel love for my parents and for myself too. And it didn't really matter if I went to Australia or not. Now, you know, I speak enough English, so I'm happy. So that way, you know, you heal your money wound in general. If you could do that, it's great. If you can't forgive who's involved, it takes time. But that's at least

you can try. So you would recommend thinking back to specific instances in a person's life and then finding peace with that specific instance. Right. You know, you can do so many other things. But you could get so emotional when you remember what happened to you. But, you know, everybody suffers from what happened. And then everybody did his or her best.

your parents didn't want to say they couldn't afford to send you to expensive school. If they had that more money, they would have said yes, but they couldn't. So just imagine the pain that they had to go through because they didn't have money. We understand that now as an adult. So all of us had to go through this scarcity, mindset, and also all of us had to suffer about money. But that's not our fault. That's how life went and that's how life goes. So if you could accept that as it is, you feel lighter about what's going on too. In your book, you talk about the five negative emotions that block abundance, five negative emotions that keep people stuck in scarcity. And you discuss anxiety, fear, doubt, guilt, and self-neglect. Can we walk through each one of those and apply those to how they impact a relationship? with money? Yeah. So financial anxiety is the one that you feel pretty much every day. When you feel like

you're not able to pay the bills, that's a bad feeling. It's like a little crunch in your stomach. So if you feel that, you cannot spend your money freely and you feel like your life is very restricted. And unless you just face the pain, you cannot live freely. That's probably like a number one. feeling among all the money blocks. And so how do you move past that? How do you overcome that anxiety? So it's just not about the money. It's just about the future. We are afraid that something bad is going to happen, that we lose a job where we cannot make both ends meet. So we feel like we have no money or like we have money problem. That's what we are afraid. But when you think about life in a bigger picture, we are afraid of that thing would happen. The worst comes to worse,

will be in a situation with no money. It's not going to kill us. So the money worries will kill us. So if you feel like money in the bank is a security, you have to know it's not. It's more of people. It's more security if you want to have insurance. If you have no money, you could probably have somebody that you can count on, your friends or your family members can help if you're willing to ask for help. But if the worst thing happens, you could potentially ask for help. And if you feel like somebody is going to help you, you can relax more. But if you feel like nobody's going to help you, you'll be in a ditch, that's a bad feeling. So you have to cut the association between money and security. Otherwise, you know, you've been feeling this anxiety forever.

So the fear of not having enough money in the future could be recast or reframed as the fear of being alone or the fear that other people won't come through for you if you need them. Right. Yeah, your survival mechanism, the switch is turned on. So you feel like fight or flight and then you're in a survival mode. But think about it. Nobody's going to do. die if they have no money. It's the fear that kills them. And I met hundreds of people, thousands of people who were once in a situation with no money, but they survived because somebody helped them. So if you are afraid of money, I think you should have many friends. At least, you know, if you have 10 friends to let you stay for free for a week, you can just hold for a while.

So if you just start counting how many friends you have who let you stay more than a week. And if you count more than 50 friends, you can last four years. Right. Yes, that's an exercise that you recommend in your book. Mentally think through, all right, if worse came to worse, if I lost my home, make a list of people who like me enough that they would let me stay at their place for one week. Yes. And if you've got 10 people, then that means that you've got 10 weeks of time to figure something. out, even if you lose your home. Right. So, you know, what I'm saying is not just having many friends.

It's just having a different mentality about money. You know, no money doesn't mean that you should die, you know, but we're so scared of the future with no money, but you shouldn't be scared. All right. So we've talked about financial anxiety and I think we've also talked about financial fear as well. So let's move to the third negative emotion, which is financial doubts. Right. We doubt that, for example, some people are fanatic about banks. Like, what if banks don't give you money back? So they stuck their money under the mattress, you know, that's extreme. But if you have financial doubts about yourself, the company you're working for, or if you're afraid, worried, if your clients who stay or not.

You know, there are so many financial doubts about what's possible. So if you think, like, U.S. government will go bankrupt and you have no money to spend, you know, you may feel like you have to have gold or something, you know, if you have one doubt, financial doubt, that brings another doubt and another doubt, and you'll be paranoia about the whole thing. So you have to clear about this issue, too. And how do you overcome that worry, that doubt, that paranoia, about institutions failing or investments failing or about you yourself failing? So once again, if you can place security in other people,

even if the worst comes to worse, there's no banking system or financial crisis, there will be people. People need food. People need something. So we're going to create a new system. So as long as people live, people there, there will be some kind of economy. So if you have skills to help other people, you can survive. And that's how we have survived over the centuries or as a human being.

So when you take a look at the worst case scenario and then still you feel like you can survive, you feel more relaxed about money and life too. So worries and anxiety will keep more worries and anxiety. So you have to shift your mind to something else. I recommend gratitude will be a great substitute. Let's talk more about gratitude in a moment. But first, let's go through your list of five major negative emotions that keep people in a scarcity mindset. So the other two are guilt and self-neglect.

Let's talk about guilt first. Sure. Your guilt is a funny feeling. When you have guilt, you cannot enjoy money. And when you have guilt, you feel like you cannot relax about making decisions. You feel guilty about giving money. You feel guilty about making money. And wealthy people have guilt when they inherit money from their parents and grandparents.

So if you have guilt around money, even though little money you receive if you feel guilt, you feel like taking away from some other people, you cannot enjoy money. So you have to let go of your guilt too. And how do you let go of guilt? You know, there are so many ways that you have to get out of this trance of scarcity. If you feel like when you have money, you're stealing from other people, it's not what's happening. Money flows through people.

If you have money, that's not you stole from some of the people. The money is flowing among people. So it's not taking away from other people. The money flows from somebody to you and then you pass on to the money. So it's not a zero-sum society that if you have money, other people will lose it. It's just we're living in the circulation of money. Once you know the big picture and once you know that, there are people with money without money and you realize what's going on in life.

When you look at money in a different way, you have less guilt. But guilt is a difficult feeling most out of all the feeling because it's not something that you can let go in two seconds if you've had it all your life. And then the guilt is a feeling to protect yourself from getting attacked. But, you know, like if you have money, you might be afraid that some people feel jealous. But if you have guilt, you feel like somehow guilt will protect you, which doesn't. But, you know, you have to take a look at guilt from many different ways. Otherwise, you'll be stuck in guilt forever.

And it's such an easy feeling to get addicted to. That's an interesting observation that you might feel guilt will protect you. meaning as long as I feel guilty that I'm not a bad person. Yes, exactly. So, you know, you have to face the feeling and then go deeper. Otherwise, you cannot really heal this feeling of guilt. Let's talk about self-neglect. Self-neglect is something that you don't pay yourself first,

and you are in a sacrifice. For example, if you do what you don't like for a job, you're in a self-neglect situation. So unless you make yourself happy, you're neglecting yourself. But it's so easy to fall into this state of sacrifice and self-neglect. Because once again, it's sort of related with guilt too. I'm working so hard for other people, your family. That's why I'm a good person.

But self-neglect is a bad feeling that kills you and relieves you of all the fun experiences in life. So when you have self-neglect, you have to really take a look at the issue. So money brings out all these negative emotions. It's nothing to do with money. But because of money, these feelings will just come to surface. So I suggest you take a look at these feelings and then start healing.

Otherwise, you make it money's fault and you, stay restricted because you think that money does that for you, but money doesn't. It's just your feelings you have around money that restrict your life. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. If you're an entrepreneur or if you have a side hustle or a small business, tell me if this sounds familiar. Have you ever kicked off a project for a new client but didn't ask for a project deposit up front?

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to start a website or a blog. Affordanthing.com slash blue host. When it comes to self-neglect, how do you know the difference or maintain? the balance between on one end of the extreme, completely neglecting yourself, but on the other end of the extreme, overindulging or going too deep into the treat yourself mentality. That's a beautiful question. I've been thinking about this a lot. And what I think now is just if you follow your heart and do what you love, that is the best service for other people too. because if you're in sacrifice or of some sort, you let other people win, but you lose.

But if you do what you love, that's always winning for you and wing for other people, because you're in a state of being able to help you and being able to help other people if you do what you love. So that is the perfect balance. What if you're not sure what you love or what if you're not sure what you want? I'm sure there are some people who are listening to this episode who think, I don't know what my passion is. Yes, yes. I've written probably about 10 books on this, how to discover your gifts and how to find it. I think the most important thing in life is to find what to love and find what excites you the most. Otherwise, you know, we are not living our life, truly.

The reason why I wrote my book is to let people know that there's your life. to be lived. All of us, most of us, are restricted with money. And since we worry about money, we don't start what we love in this life. We feel like we have to pay the bills. So we cannot make a living if we do what we love. So even before we find what we love, we try to be blind to what we want to do. So we suppress our love and passion in the everyday life. So that way, we don't have to worry about something else. But that's a bad idea because that way we lose a passion too. So you've described the importance of discovering your passion and how passion can get muted over time when we let the responsibilities of daily life stifle those passions.

How do, if those passions have been stifled for long enough and we've lost touch with what they are, how do we go through the process of figuring that out? How do we discover that purpose or that meaning once money is not the primary concern? There are at least 100 ways to discover what you want, what you love in your life. For example, when you take up your life, take a look at your life and the time you spend most or the money you spend most, that's what you love. example, I used to love reading books. I used to go attend a lecture or seminar, and later it became my career. You know, focus on what you spend your time most. If you love drinking wine, if you spend most of your time cooking, your passion could be near what you spend

your time and money most. So look to the things that you do when you're escaping the responsibilities of life as a clue to what you might want to do more of? Yes, and there must be something that your friends would be surprised about how you spend your money and time. Like, your friends might say, wow, you spend all the money on vacation overseas. So, like, international travel is your passion. Like your friends might say, well, you spend all your money on food or wine or cooking or aromatherapy.

I don't believe it, you know. So when your friends are surprised at you, that's your passion is, usually. Look to the ways in which you're weird. Yes, yes, yes. Because for you, it's so natural. For me, reading a few books a day was a normal thing. But for my friends, like, they don't read a book a year. So they're super surprised.

Like, you're reading a book a day, you know? For me, I love books. I love learning. So I ended up writing books and I ended up teaching. So if you love something, and you wouldn't probably know because it's so natural for you. In your book, you discussed the difference between money IQ and money EQ. Can you describe that? Yes.

You know, I met all the wealthy people and regular people, and I realized that people who made a lot of money have high IQs. But among those who made all the money, but there are people who are. people who are not so happy. So I realized that they are the smartest people in the world, but they make terrible emotional mistakes. And then I realized you need some emotional intelligence as well to be happy and wealthy at the same time. That's when I became aware of the existence of money. A lot of people are talking about money. IQ, you know, it's about investing, stocks, real estate, all that. So there are many books on that. so I don't talk about it today.

But money EQ is more important than money IQ because if you don't know about your emotions, you make all the bad decisions of feeling all the emotions that you're not available. So there are four principles of money IQ. One is to receive well. You know, we're so good at giving people, but we're so bad at receiving, right? Yeah, that's the self-neglect again. Yes. When we receive money, well, that's a good start.

But we're so bad at receiving that's in general. So that's EQ number one. And let's pause here and let's talk more about that before we move on to the other three components of the EQ. When you say receiving, are you referring to receiving gifts from others? Are you referring to charging your clients or your customers at a rate that reflects the effort that you've put into your work? What do you mean when you say receiving money? Oh, actually everything. You know, we receive in form of money, financial reward,

or receive in a form of compliments. We are bad at receiving, you know, in general. So when people appreciate and trying to pay you more, we say, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's my job, you know. Or like, if we want to raise our fee, but we have a hard time doing that because we are bad at receiving.

So receiving well means receiving our worth. So if you feel like you're in sacrifice and then you're frustrated with your salary, now it's a time to go up to the next level to receive well. It's not like charging people more. It's receiving. It's not you're asking.

It's they're asking for you to receive. So the happy situation is instead of saying, well, I have to. charge you more. You have your clients say, can I pay you more? So that's, that's receiving well. How do you get to that point? How do you get to the point where a lot of people who are listening to this are entrepreneurs or they have a side hustle? And they have the experience where if they go to their clients and say, I'm raising my rates, people will push back. How do you charge what you're worth without encountering resistance? All the resistance is within you.

What's interesting is like if you're a coach and if you charge $50 an hour and if you say you're suddenly charging $100 an hour, all the old clients will be upset. But if a new client comes in and said, I like you, I like your session, how much are you charging? You say, 100. And they'll say, oh, okay, great. So, you know, it's all about the resistance is in your psyche, not your clients. So if you feel like you are willing to take the risk and then go to the next level, and then you say I'm willing to accept clients who are willing to give me $100 per session. So it's not charging more.

It's receiving well. And writers are the same way. If you write a book and then they have to be open to receive, you know, if your books sell 10,000 copies, you get a certain amount. And if your book sell 100,000 copies, you receive 10 times. It's not like how you sell. It's how willing are you to receive.

So to do that, you have to be more open to abundance, which is a scary thing to do. That's why I teach emotional EQ. And there are so many ways and practices that you can do. but the easiest one that doesn't cost you anything is gratitude. If you are open to gratitude and if you thank people more, you're open to abundance. For example, practicality,

if you say thank you to your clients more or if you show your attitude of appreciation to your clients or potential clients, more clients will come and more money they're going to offer you. It's interesting, you know, how appreciation and money are connected. So if you appreciate your clients more, in a few months, you get more referrals and more clients are offering more money or just bring gifts to you.

So try that. All right. So of the four principles of developing a strong money EQ, one of them is to be good at receiving. And that's what we've just talked about. What's the second one? Second one is to appreciate money. A lot of us cannot appreciate money because we feel guilty or we feel like if you enjoy money,

suddenly we feel like a way of become a bad person. But when you appreciate money, that means, wow, I love this money. I love what I can do with this money. What you appreciate appreciates. Clients are the same thing. If you appreciate their business, they want to please you if there are some potential clients among their friends. They will refer to you. So if you appreciate money subconsciously, you attract more because what you appreciate is something that makes you feel good.

And a lot of other people want to give you more. For example, in the United States, I was at the supermarket and I got a $2 coupon. And I simply smile and enjoy the $2 coupon. I said, wow, thank you so much. I got a coupon, you know, because we don't have the system in Japan. Like, I was just genuinely very happy. And I just said out loud, like, thank you so much. I got a $2 coupon.

And so the person right next to me just gave the coupon for me because, you know, she probably wanted to see me with more smile. Wow. I got another coupon. So the second person gave me the other coupon. So if you show appreciation and gratitude, you know, a lot of people want to see your smiling face. We'll return to the show in just a moment. So I've mentioned this before.

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You will get full access to OpenFit, all the workouts and nutrition information totally free. Again, just text Paula to 30-30-30-standard message and data rates may apply. Some of the people who are listening to this podcast, they work in a job that isn't in business or entrepreneurship. They work in a job in which they're not dealing with money as part of their day-to-day job responsibilities. They manage their own money, but they do that quietly at home on their laptop, moving money between accounts, moving money from a checking account into a retirement account, for example. So in those instances, when you're not interacting with others in a way that is money related, how do you outwardly express appreciation and

gratitude and apply this principle in your own life? Yeah. So when you see the numbers coming in, you appreciate your money. And also you appreciate the fact that somebody gave you money. It could be your clients. It could be your spouses. It could be your parents. It could be your bosses, in the company. But they could have so many other options. Your clients could go to somebody else. Your company could hire somebody else too, but they chose you to give the money.

There are so many reasons that you can appreciate the money coming in. And then you feel like, wow, thank you. I really appreciate that somebody gave me this money so I can pay all the bills and I can just pay all the fun things that I enjoy. And also when you take a look at the bills, you are getting something with the money, either goods or services. For example, if you buy something and then you got a piece of furniture or clothes or food in exchange for money, and when you take a look at the credit card bills, like you say, thank you for the food, thank you for the clothes, thank you for the clothes, thank you for the furniture, thank you for the books. and if it's an electricity bill, thank you so I can just enjoy light in the nighttime, the heating, and the shower, and for the water.

So there are many reasons to appreciate when you pay the bills. So I recommend people say thank you, thank you, thank you, while you write checks for the bills. So that way your mind shifts so differently. Writing checks for bills could be a lot of fun. So writing checks and paying the bills then turns into a gratitude practice. Yeah, because your money is giving some enjoyment or paying some other people's bills too. So that money, it will turn into happy money. And how does that have an effect on the rest of your life?

I mean, I understand how that would have positive psychological effect on you yourself internally. but how would that then extend out to attracting more money into your life or bringing more money into your life? That ties into principle number three, that is trust. How does that appreciation and gratitude flow into trust? So trust, this is the hardest one out of all the EQ that I teach because we have a hard time trusting anything in the world right now. because the world is changing so fast and there are so many violence that we see on TV and we have a hard time trusting our life and our future.

But when you think about worrying about money, we are worrying about our future. There is two different futures, good future, bad future. We are forced to believe that the future is bad. But, you know, if you take a look at all the statistics, statistics in the world, we have less crimes and we have less violent death and we have no more world wars. And even though the environment is being messed up, there are so many other things that our situation is better as a whole. So if you can trust our life will get better, we feel

more relaxed about everything. But since we are worried that something is bad, it's going to happen, we feel so tight about money, we feel so tight about everything. So that's why we cannot take a risk. But when you take a look at life in a different way, I've done some research, and then I found out that 99% of the people say that the worst thing turn out to be the best thing after five years, like losing a job, losing a spouse, losing your health. that turned out to be something better to appreciate about.

So if you just think of that experiences that you couldn't make it to some college, you were forced to do something, that later on became the best thing that happened to your life. So if you have that experiences in the past and then look at life in a different perspective, your life may turn out to be something different than what you think.

It should be. But you can find happiness in there too. So once you start thinking, I'll just enjoy the ride, no matter where life takes you. You know, you can enjoy every moment of it. And then you might be in a situation with no money one time, but that doesn't kill you. And that is the time that you're learned to be supported by your friends and family and strangers. So there are many lessons to be learned in hardships too. So either bad times, good times, if you know that you can enjoy both,

you can be looking forward to your future. And the reason why I have no worries and anxiety and fear about my future is that if I have some bad experiences, I can get to write a book on that and then my friends will help me. I have to give my friends some opportunities to help me because I need no help at the moment. So when you think of life that way, you know, you're more excited about more events than staying worried about what bad thing could happen in the future. It's an interesting observation that the more that you trust in the future and the more optimistic you are about the future, the more able you are to take risks as well. Yes, because life is a series of.

many events. And I've interviewed people in their 80s and 90s, and there's nobody who's experienced only positive things in their life, like losing the loved ones or just you say, I love you to somebody, but he or she doesn't love you back. You know, that happens. And then, you know, you want to do something, but you're turned down. So life events are made of all the disappointments and glories, and triumphs and a lot of other things. So if you decide to enjoy both sides of life, you have nothing to fear because everything's about experiences. And I got to stay with the old people at a nursing home,

and they said the fun memories is all the bad experiences, like how they took a big risk and they failed miserably. they lost everything. You know, those are the fun memories. Like, not necessarily all the success were good memories, because it's kind of boring. Why did those hardships turn into fond memories? Because I think it's more exciting, you know.

The heroes in a nursing home were those who had lots of setbacks and failures. Imagine there are two guys in the nursing home. One has no... failures, no setbacks, good life, good kids, good children. It is boring. But look at the other one who's done so many bad things and who just failed so many things and whose stories is more fun to listen to. You know, we love stories of setbacks because that somehow excites you. You know, that's sort of like a secret of life. If you have more setbacks in life, you have more thing to enjoy later on. So take a risk is what I recommend to young people.

Right. And certainly the disparity between when you are at rock bottom and when things are going better makes you appreciate the better times more. Yes. And you know how good the world is. You can appreciate your friends and family members more if you're at the bottom because people are more kind and gentle. And when you're doing great, you don't notice those things. So let's talk about principle number four for developing a strong money EQ. That is to share. Share what you have. So if you share your money, you don't have to be super wealthy, even a dollar or $10, you feel the joy of giving.

And there's a psychological study done that the giver feels more joy than the receiver. So I recommend you start giving a dollar, $2, and even if you have no money, you can give somebody a smile or kind words. So those are the things that I recommend. If you share what you know, if you share what you have, if you share energy, friendship, gratitude, that grows. And definitely that gives you happiness. How do you find the balance between sharing in a way that is healthy versus sharing in a way that's in which you're neglecting yourself? You're overgiving to the point where you're neglecting yourself. Yeah.

For example, if you just give the money you need to pay the rent for mortgage, that's overdoing it. But if you can share what you have and then it doesn't hurt. I think it's a great balance. So you don't have to do too much. Just start something, a law, you know, a dollar or two, or even 10 cents. And the number doesn't really matter. It's just a feeling. So if you feel joy, that's great.

If you feel in a little bit of sacrifice, that's not good. So just do as much as you feel like doing it. That gives you joy. One of the concepts that you talk about in your book is the notion of having enough, that feeling when you look at your money and say, you know what, I have enough. Everything from this point forward I can give away. How do you know when you have enough? How do you get to that feeling? You know, I interviewed a lot of millionaires.

And the surprising finding was that they don't feel like they're wealthy enough. So one millionaire complained that he said he's not wealthy enough because he doesn't have a private jet. And the other one who has a private jet complained, his private jet is not big enough. So there's no limit to how much you have and then you satisfy with what you have. So the idea situation is you feel happy and content with what you have and you can have more. but the feeling of you have more than enough gives you joy and happiness. So anybody can do that. As long as you have a house and a roof over your head, you can say, I have more than enough.

But if you just start complaining about money and if you feel frustrated with money, no matter how much you make or have, you cannot be content. So the key is to be content with what you have. It almost seems like a paradox. If you are content with what you have, then you open yourself up to having more. But if you feel as though you don't have enough, then you set yourself up in such a way that you might not ever have enough. Yes. Thank you, Ken, for sharing these ideas about how to be Zen with money and how to have happy money. Are there any final takeaways that you would like to leave this audience with?

Yes. It's a teaching that I got from... my mentor Wahitakeh Takeda, he says, thank your money. Arigato your money when it comes in and thank your money when it goes out. Just do that. It doesn't cost you anything when you receive money next time, thank the money. And then when you spend your money next time, thank the money. That way you start this happy money flow. And once you find yourself in the happy money flow, that appreciates.

So just have fun with that. I've taught these principles to hundreds of thousands of people, and I'm hearing incredible results. So I have fun with this practice, and it's going to take you to the next level of abundance. And then without knowing, you realize that you forget to worry about money. Have fun.

Well, thank you, Ken. Where can people find if they'd like to know more about you? You can find me at Ken Honda.com. My books will be probably. out there in Amazon and all the bookstores. And if you are interested in doing money retreat online, you can just find all the information on my website. Thank you, Ken, for joining us on this episode. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Here are five. Number one, neither blame nor praise money. Money is not the source of either harm or help.

people are. Ken makes the point that money doesn't hurt people, people hurt people. And likewise, money doesn't help others, people help others. And if you're struggling, money isn't going to help you. You are going to help yourself. And money might be a tool through which you do that. But ultimately, let's not forget the human behind the story. We have this notion of belief that money can hurt people or money can be bad. But when you think of it, it, it's nothing to do with money. People hurt other people. And so this takeaway is that money is neither the hero nor the villain of the story. Often when we talk about money, we forget or we can forget that we're actually talking

about people. And so that's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two. If you're feeling anxious about money, write down a list of people who would be there for you if you needed them. Because ultimately, your social network is your security. The worst comes to worse will be in a situation with no money. It's not going to kill us. So the money worries will kill us. So if you feel like money in the bank is a security, you have to know it's not. It's more of people.

It's more security. One recommendation from Ken's book that I really enjoyed was that he described the exercise of writing out a list of people whose couch you could sleep on if worse came to worse, if you lost your home and you just needed a couch to crash on for a week, who do you know who you could ask if you could just sleep in their living room for a week? Not forever, just for a week. If you've got 10 people in your life who are like that, you've got 10 weeks to figure something out. So this hit me hard, actually, when he made that recommendation because I started thinking about it. And I was like going through the very pragmatic. I was like, well, okay, I'm still going to need a car to be able to get to their home,

and I'm still going to need some money to buy groceries because I don't think that they like me that much. And I guess I'll need gas to put inside the car and some insurance for that car. I mean, I was literally going through all of that in my head. The conclusion that I came to, I was like, man, as long as I, in a worse case scenario, if I were to lose everything, If I were to be reduced down to only a car, some gas, and some groceries, man, I mean, look around the FI community, the financial independence community. There are a bunch of people within this community who'd be like, yeah, you can take my couch for a week. In fact, Ken Honda himself would probably let me crash on his couch for a week.

Actually, which leads me to another story. So as Ken and I were chatting off camera behind the scenes, I mentioned to him. him that I'm going to be going to Japan in September for my September sabbatical. He didn't invite me to stay on his couch, but he did say, that's awesome. Let me know. I'll take you out. Like, we'll hang out around Tokyo. We'll go to dinner. I'll introduce you to my family. Wow. Sweet. Now I've got a friend in Tokyo. And it came from this conversation and it came from being open to having friends. So the key takeaway here is that in times of trouble and in times of joy, don't look to your money, look to other people. So that's key takeaway number two.

Key takeaway number three, worries lead to more worries and anxiety leads to further anxiety. Gratitude, however, is the antidote. Worries and anxiety will keep more worries and anxiety. So you have to shift your mind to something else. I recommend gratitude will be a great substitute. I recommend a daily gratitude practice, whether that's writing in your journal or adding a gratitude element to prayer or meditation. In some way, speaking gratitude out loud or writing gratitude down on paper is a powerful practice. And it's free.

So that's key takeaway number three. emphasize gratitude. Key takeaway number four. When you think about the type of work that you want to do or the contribution that you want to make to society, trying to be too strategic or too analytical can backfire. If you enter a field because it makes sense on paper, but your heart's not actually in it,

then you end up sacrificing yourself and ultimately you end up contributing less. You may think that you're helping others, but you're actually setting up a win-lose situation. By contrast, if you do what you love and you do it in a way in which you're making a positive contribution to society, then you're setting up a win-win situation. If you follow your heart and do what you love, that is the best service for other people too. Because if you're in sacrifice or of some sort, you let other people win, but you lose. But if you do what you love, that's always a wing for you and wing for other people

because you're in a state of being able to help you and being able to help other people if you do what you love. This is an interesting framework because I never thought of do what you love in the context of creating a win-win. But it makes sense because anything else, even if the work is good for the world, if it's not good for you, then it's a win-lose situation. and win-lose situations are unsustainable. So finding that intersection of what you love, what's good for society, and if needed, what people will pay you for,

finding that intersection is a win-win. Just because you can do something that you're apathetic towards doesn't mean that you should. So that's key takeaway number four. And key takeaway number five, turn paying bills into a joyous practice. this. Also, when you take a look at the bills, you are getting something with the money, either goods or services. For example, if you buy something and then you've got a piece of furniture or clothes or food

in exchange for money, and when you take a look at the credit card bills, like you say, thank you for the food, thank you for the clothes, thank you for the furniture, thank you for the books. And if it's an electricity bill, thank you so I can just enjoy light in the nighttime, the heating, and the shower, and for the water. So there are many reasons to appreciate when you pay the bills. So I recommend people saying, thank you, thank you, thank you, while you write checks for the bills. So that way, your mind shifts so differently. Writing checks for bills could be a lot of fun. This is a radical shift in thinking.

To turn bill paying into a joyous practice, to turn bill paying into an act of gratitude. Wow. I love that idea. And so let's make that the fifth and final takeaway from this interview. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please.

Share it with a friend or a family member. That's the single most important thing that you can do to help spread the message of happy money, to spread the message of improving your relationship with money and expressing gratitude for all of the ways that we have abundance in our lives. So please share this with a friend or a family member and make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast. Coming up on next week's episode, we will be answering questions from you the community, But at the end of the episode, I have a very special interview with Jay Money. He was my co-host on this show for the first 26 episodes. And he is coming back to celebrate.

Next episode is episode 199, which means we're on the verge of 200 episodes. And so to end the 100s and to lead us into the celebration of episode 200, Jay Money is going to make a special cameo on next week's episode. So make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast so that you won't miss that special cameo by Jay Money next week. Thanks again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'll catch you next week.