Coping with the financial crisis starts with reassessing our relationship with money
THE ONGOING global and local economic crises have drawn our attention to money and its links to power, wealth, greed and corruption at levels many of us previously never considered.
Some people have described our emotional reactions to these financial crises as akin to the process of bereavement: we move from denial to anger to bargaining to depression and then - to a stage many have not yet reached - acceptance.
Dr Kai Romhardt, an international speaker and writer on the subject of money and mindfulness, will visit Dublin later this week to lead a weekend workshop entitled, My Money and Me: How Mindfulness Transforms our Relation to Money.
"Collective greed is not good for a society and when collective structures in a society have been based around the attitude that greed is good, it is destructive," he says, quite simply. And while this may be self-evident now, working out the best way to fix the problems seems to cause more difficulties.
According to Romhardt, the crucial issue is that we return to ourselves rather than try to solve the problem on a collective level. "We can very easily jump onto the collective level and try to fix the legal and political structures, but really we must start with ourselves and try to understand ourselves better, to see what drives us before we can work on the collective level," he says.
Now based in Berlin, Romhardt studied business administration in Hamburg, Germany, and St Gallen and Geneva in Switzerland, where he obtained his PhD. But about 12 years ago, he moved away from business consultancy to study mindfulness and after an intense personal journey, he has returned to the business world, sharing his knowledge and understanding of mindfulness meditation.
"People say that business and Buddhism don't go together, but together with other trainers, I have set up a network of mindful business consultants in Germany," he explains.
"When we first went on retreat together, we did a meditation on money and we all got a headache after one hour and no one wanted to talk about money for two days. It was then that I realised that our relationship with money is a hidden dragon that so many things are linked to," he says.
"Since I've started this work, I've met millionaires and people with very little money and they often had the same problems with money."
Returning to the financial crisis, Romhardt says that the first thing we must do is ask ourselves: What does this have to do with me? What have I added to the situation? Have I been greedy too? Have I not looked deeply enough into the investments that I have made?
"Many people became disconnected from their investments and got involved in financial products that they didn't understand," he says.
During his mindfulness meditation workshops, Romhardt encourages participants to ask themselves four key questions.
Do you understand the true nature of money? For example, do you know how much you spend, where you invest your money and whether you are cheating in order to get more money?
How do you deal with money? Is it from a position of fear, shame, joy, greed or generosity?
What is enough money for you?
What do you expect from money?
"Looking at what you expect from money is to ask yourself what your personal motivation is," he explains. "Money can give people access to power, sex, fame, wealth and a sense of pleasure and these are often deemed to be the routes to happiness.
"Mindfulness teaches you that if you look for happiness through searching for power, sex, fame, wealth and a sense of pleasure, you are on the wrong path."
In dealing with these financial crises that many believe will become worse before they get better, Romhardt insists on returning to the personal.
"A crisis is an opportunity to check how you have lived your life and what you have spent your time on," he says. And, perhaps most succinctly of all, he quotes Thich Nhat Hanh, the spiritual leader of Plum Village monastery in France: "Time is not money, time is life."
My Money and Me - How Mindfulness Transforms our Relation to Money
with Dr Kai Romhardt takes place on April 17th and 18th in Oscailt Integrative Health Centre, 8 Pembroke Road, Dublin 4, tel: 01-6603872, oscailt.com
