Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 319 Doug Lynam - Taming Your Money Monster
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Today, we’re sitting down with Doug Lynam - Marine, monk, money coach, and author of Taming Your Money Monster. Doug doesn’t just help people build better budgets. He helps them untangle the deep wounds, attachment patterns, and spiritual beliefs that shape how we handle money. We talk about money not as a neutral tool, but as something we carry stories about - stories that often go back to childhood, shaped by shame, fear, or control. Doug shares how the Enneagram and attachment theory can help us make sense of our financial habits and, more importantly, heal them. He offers a vision of financial health that’s rooted in authenticity, generosity, and service to a broken world. If you’ve ever felt anxious around money, avoided looking at your bank account, or struggled to align your finances with your deepest values join us.
Doug Lynam graduated at the top of his class from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1995, then turned down his commission to become a Benedictine monk. During his 20-year monastic journey, he headed the mathematics department at a prestigious private school while helping his community recover from bankruptcy. After leaving the monastery in 2017, he joined LongView Asset Management in Santa Fe, New Mexico—a sustainability-focused B Corp—where he helped manage over a quarter-billion in assets. A sought-after authority on conscious wealth creation, Doug is the author of From Monk to Money Manager and Taming Your Money Monster: Nine Paths to Money Mastery with the Enneagram.
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I didn't understand at the time why we were all in this weird space around money all the time, and so I think this book is really the culmination of decades of financial fumblings and failures and frustrations to be able to help other people avoid some of those pitfalls. I Joshua,
Joshua Johnson:hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, today, we're sitting down with Doug Lineham, marine monk, money coach and author of taming Your Money Monster. Doug doesn't just help people build better budgets. He helps them untangle the deep wounds, attachment patterns and spiritual beliefs that shape how we handle money. We talk about money not as a neutral tool, but is something we carry stories about, stories that often go back to childhood, shaped by shame, fear or control. Doug shares how the Enneagram and attachment theory can help us make sense of our financial habits and, more importantly, heal them. He offers a vision of financial health that's rooted in authenticity, generosity and service to a broken world. If you've ever felt anxious around money, avoided looking at your bank account, or struggled to align your finances with your deepest values, join us. Here is my conversation with Doug. Lineham, Doug, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, Joshua, it's an honor to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to dig into taming Your Money Monster. This is gonna be a fun conversation, because you're an enigma to me, like, you got the Marines. You're a Benedictine monk. You were a financial advisor, you're you're a writer and coach, like, what? Who are you? And how did you get here? This is your your life is fascinating to me. So take us into like where did this faith and money come into play?
Unknown:Well, I grew up in a fairly affluent family where money, we had plenty of it, but it was from my child, my limited childhood perspective, it was, it felt weaponized, like, in the sense of, you know, kind of a Uranus, kind of play to pay, kind of scheme where, you know, you behave how your parents want you to behave, and you get stuff, and, you know, that's a certain way of enforcing a certain compliance and And I suppose it has some benefits, and yet I think it also created a lot of resentment in my brothers and I, we all eventually, at some point in our lives, took a vow of poverty for in very different ways, I ran off and joined the monastery for 20 years. My twin brother ran off and became a homesteader up in upstate Vermont, and my older brother took off to Seattle and joined a moderately successful grunge band. So we were all very poor by any sense of any, any imagination of that word. But I guess what I realized over time, after about I think, as I said, I was there 20 years in the monastery, but around year three, the monastery was facing severe financial hardship, because it turns out that I was living in a community where we all hated money, and none of us wanted to deal with it, and we took the vow of poverty a little too seriously, and ended up in bankruptcy, where the community had many, many years and many decades of mismanagement and some a lot of deferred maintenance and things like that. So over time, that really built up, and someone had to solve that problem. And for whatever reason, it reason, it fell on my shoulders. And, you know, I did. So I went to a bookstore and got all the books on personal finance I could find, and realized I was pretty good at doing that. And then I started working with monastery guests who would come to the community with different kinds of spiritual problems. But what I realized later were mostly financial problems that if you could help people, people would ask me to pray for them, which, of course, I did. But I was also like, hey, you know, if we built a budget that might be more effective, like we could actually solve some stuff here, rather than just wishing for problems to go away. So let's see what practical steps we could put into place to help you through the various stressors of your life, because we know from hard research that you know the quality of your financial well being, your perceived financial well being, you know, has a bigger impact on your overall mental and physical health and almost any other aspect of your life that you Know poverty is a giant neon sign pointing to early death this way, because poor people get hit with more things you don't want, like, you know, obesity and drug addiction and alcoholism and domestic abuse and child abuse and crime and all these things and workplace injury so, so if I realized that actually helping people resolve their financial issues. Years was, in fact, a spiritual practice and one that I found great joy in. And then over time, I think there was a lot of resistance from some of the other monks about some of the work I was doing. They certainly appreciated being financially solvent, and they certainly appreciated the work that I had done. And yet there was, I think, some lingering tension around whether that was something that needed as much time of my time as it did, and that I felt like I was really being called to be of greater service to the world. And being in a monastery held me back. So I left in 2016 and I was in a teaching order. We were all by the way, we were working as teachers at the time, and then I went and joined Longview Asset Management here in Santa Fe where I became a partner. And then I built that book of business up to quite a significant amount, and then exited that business last year to become now a full time writer and speaker and coach.
Joshua Johnson:One of the things that's, I think, fascinating in your new book is that you're taking financial literacy and our financial problems, but then actually diving deep into some of our hurts and our wounds, our pain, our trauma, is that you go into attachment theory, the Enneagram, and helping people Really dig deeper underneath the surface that it's not just about making a better budget or, you know, trying to will your way into something, but it's actually dealing with your wounds. Where have you found that framework helpful? Why is the Enneagram attachment and tending to our wounds helpful when it comes to money?
Unknown:Well, the Enneagram, what it can tell you is, tells you what your deepest childhood wounds are. Essentially THINK, THINK OF THE Enneagram as the physics of consciousness. It really provides a clear and robust model that we can now ground in both neurobiology and childhood developmental psychology to understand core aspects of our personality. So your personality has a nature component, you know, kind of how your genes and DNA express themselves, and that's one part, and there's a nature component to it. And the anagram tells you the nature part, like, what were the biggest stressors or threats in your childhood environment that your ego had to defend and protect itself from? And they were really good at getting you through childhood and helping you to individuate and differentiate meaning, establishing a unique identity and personality in the world, which we all need to have. But some of those childhood defense mechanisms we're still running off of in our adult lives, and maybe aren't as helpful at this point, and maybe getting us into all kinds of, I would say, traffic accidents and fender benders in our adult life, and if we can understand how the Enneagram works, and then which, I can give you an example in a minute, but, but then, on top of the Enneagram, I've layered on, on top of it, what I call the attachment theory of money. And the attachment theory of money is, is identical to basically, what's called the attachment theory of relationships, which says there's, you know, two ways that we can have an unhealthy attachment to our romantic partners, which is to be anxiously attached, or, you know, fearfully avoidant. And so we can have that same relationship to money. We can be anxiously, you know, grabbing on the money, kind of like Ebenezer Scrooge, or we can be like someone like myself, who was very fearful and avoidant of it and hated having anything to do with it. And still, you know, I have to sit down and force myself to do my bills, even though I do it well, you know, it's just not my favorite thing to be, to be spending my weekend doing so. So those are the kind of so. So there's in the Enneagram. Then there's nine archetypal ways that a human ego can form. And then there's these two money monsters and the money anxious or money avoidant that we can then layer on top of it.
Joshua Johnson:Let's go a little bit more into overview of Enneagram and attachments. And then I want to hear your story through the lens of Enneagram and what you did so to help us, like, get a grasp of it. So give us, yeah, an overview of maybe the three, the three core wounds of the Enneagram and the sections, I think that that might help try to situate ourselves somewhere in this conversation. So what are the three core wounds that people have? Okay,
Unknown:so one way to start that conversation is to imagine what, what was it like when you were in your mother's womb like? What was your consciousness like at that point? And I would hypothesize that you were in a state of unconscious unity, meaning you didn't have a clear sense of self, of what was me or not me, and you were in unity with everything you could experience, even though it's very limited. And so if we can start from that, that that hypothetical framework, which I think is fair, then you get popped out in the world. And surprise, you know, there's more to the universe than just you. And so you have a physical umbilical cord that gets cut, but then almost immediately, well. Well immediately, in fact, there's a psychological umbilical cord that that connects between you and your caregivers. So you need your caregivers to basically drive your ego for you for the first zero to five to 10 years of your life, kind of depending. You know, in gradations, of course, but, but that egoic codependence forms, and over time, that emotional, egoic, psychological umbilical cord has to be cut through these three sharp, one of three sharp negative emotions, and that the sharpest negative emotions are anger, sadness and fear. And we know this from the work of a pioneering affective neuroscientist by the name of Jacque pangsep did a study on mice and rats several decades ago, and he found that in all mammals, there are these three core negative pieces of circuitry in the in the mid limbic region of all mammalian brains, of anger, sadness and fear and that and so one of these negative emotions is what's going to do most of the cutting for us of the psychological umbilical cord and causing us to individuate and differentiate, differentiate from our parents. And it has to be a negative emotion, because positive emotions will just reinforce your connection to your caregiver. So at some point there's obviously, your parents love us. Our parents care for us all these good things, but some point, you know, you see kids throwing campions, all those things, those are just normal parts of growing up. And so you've got these three core wounds, but then you've got three ways to process those wounds. So you can either internalize, let's say we're dealing with anger. You could internalize that anger, which is like giving yourself an emotional wedgie. You can externalize that anger, which is a bit like having a food flight with the world. Or you can have both, right? You can have you can internalize and externalize that anger, and then we could do that with anger. We can do that with sadness, and we do it with fear. So that's why we have these nine archetypal personalities that come out depending on what the core wound was, and how you process that wound.
Joshua Johnson:What's your core wound?
Unknown:Okay, so I'm a type three. Okay, so, so I give, I use kind of race car. I think metaphors, because or car metaphor, excuse me, I think they kind of take something a bit esoteric and grounded. So type three. I call them the race car, or the achiever is what they're often referred to. And so type threes have a sacred I call this your sacred wound. So their sacred sacred wound is sadness that we both internalize towards ourselves, meaning we feel sadness or shame or grief about how we perceive ourselves, but we also have this sadness or grief or shame about how we think others perceive us. And so you kind of have this stereophonic shame in a three that creates their core unique fear. And each type has a different core fear. And for three that fears that of being worthless, that there's something in my, in my soul, or in my, in my core of my being, it feels like it's it needs, always crying out for validation, and so that fear of being worthless takes threes and tends to make us high performance achievers. We're always running, gunning for the next achievement, trying to win the race, get the patent ahead, but leaving our authentic selves in the dust because we're so busy trying to be people pleasers and trying to win the approval who, who of whomever is in front of us. We have often have a very hard time knowing what our true, authentic voice is, or what we really think and feel deep down, because we're so busy just changing masks all the time and wearing these personas. So that gives you the quick foundation of
Joshua Johnson:it. Yeah, that's helpful. I'm a three as well, and my wife is a three. And so I got a lot of three energy all the time. And so I could see that, and I could see I'm constantly I love words of affirmation. I love people to tell me really good things about me. And I could really sniff out when people are inauthentic, and what they're saying about me like they're just saying something to say something. And I'm like that. That doesn't do it. Yeah, that's not right, yep. So if you you take this Enneagram, your core wounds, and you said at the beginning that you personally you were fearful or avoidance of of money, that was your attachment style as well. So in your in your story, how did, how did it take the the attachment style, what how you were actually handling and dealing with money, and through then the lens of who you are and your personality, the Enneagram, how did you get to a healthier space in
Unknown:money? Okay, let me. Let me walk you through what I call the shadow structure for a type three. And there's obviously a unique shadow structure for each of the nine types. And we talked, of course, just now, about the the sacred wound, but internal and external sadness and then the greatest fear of being worthless. But then there's what I call the sort of a couple more steps to this. The next thing is what I call. The greatest vice for a three which is deceit. Now, that doesn't mean that we're intentionally liars deceit, just is that mass changing that we talked about, is that always, you know, putting a different persona on and then that creates what I call your primary ego addiction, which is vanity. So threes, we can be very vain about. You know, we're not always even conscious of Annie. We're just every time we engage in something that gets us praise or self promotion, it feels really good, and it feels good to every type, but especially to a three. I think we're more addicted to that than than others. And and other types have their problems too. It isn't there's no one gets out of this without, without their issues. And so essentially, then what I call the money monsters for type three, if you're the money avoidant type three, I call that person like myself the barrier, meaning we tend to be like an ostrich that buries our head in the sand because we don't want to look at the shame or the grief or sadness that all this money issues are causing for us. So we tend to just, you know, not want to look at at it because of all the negative emotions it triggers. So that tends to take our financial life and and send it down the toilet, which is certainly was the case for me. That
Joshua Johnson:was the case for me in my early 20s as well. I did the exact same thing,
Unknown:yep. And then, well, I'm sorry, brother, actually, I actually, I think people who are money anxious have an easier time of it, because, in some ways, because, you know, if you're money avoiding, first, you have to figure out how to become financially literate, and then you have to figure out how to make money. And you know, so you got these other layers you got to overcome where, if you're, if you're money anxious in your type three, a call that person the blinger, meaning they're, again, it's an unhealthy relationship to money, but they're, they're always concerned about the status symbols, or having the fancy car, the fancy house, the corner office, whatever it is that they think is going to, you know, but their their financial life tends to look like a Hollywood set. It's beautiful on the outside, but it's all paint and plywood on the behind the scenes. And so there, there's maybe spending a lot, if you basically, if you my dad was, I think, a blinger type three. And so he actually, although he made quite a bit of money as an executive for an oil company, you know, when he, when he passed, he didn't have much left behind, because he, he, he was in, I wouldn't say it was in terrible financial shape, but he certainly wasn't comfortable, because he had lost so much of it over over the years, through various unfortunate, shall we say, decisions that he made with his finances.
Joshua Johnson:As you were the barrier early on, what were you starting to realize within money, especially through the bankruptcy when you were in the monastery and your own financial literacy, what were you realizing in your life that you were actually being the barrier?
Unknown:Well, I think what part was looking around at all the other brothers in the monastery, and all of whom were good people, all of them who were most of them had advanced degrees. There were PhDs, there were, you know, some of the most brilliant minds I've ever met. And yet, we all had a different kind of Money Monster. We were all avoidant in some different way. And I couldn't quite figure out, like, why there was this sort of almost hatred of money, or this sort of idea that money itself is inherently corrupting or bad, when, in fact, you can't really get anything done in life without money in your pocket. And so realizing that, right? So, so, so what is it in me, and what is it in us that's that's so resistant to this thing and, and why are we even taking a kind of weird pleasure in the in the pain that it's causing, like, what's kind of sadistic insanity are we going through all the time and creating a lot of self imposed austerity that had no serve no purpose? Didn't serve us. It certainly didn't serve the people around us, and it felt, at times, very unloving and in a kind of willful ignorance that I felt I needed to address in myself, first and foremost. And so, you know, I was able to do that over time, but it certainly wasn't easy. But understand the Enneagram. And then, you know, we've, we've talked about the shadow structure, but then there's, you know, an enlightenment structure that each of us have with our with our type, that can help us reach a more, I think, fuller, fuller and happier life in all aspects of reality, but also, but then also, especially when we apply it to money. So for for type three first, we have what I call a Fauci, which is like your spiritual trap door that we all have. There's a virtue that's good for other types, but maybe not good for you. So for threes, I would say our faux virtue is assertiveness, like type nines, for example, need to practice assertiveness because they tend to be a little on the slothful side. But types three is when we're always engaging in Vanity. Assertiveness could, for us reinforce that vanity and it look and because it is a virtue for other types, it may not necessarily be be the best thing for us, but. We want to start really our spiritual journey by practicing what I would call, what I call your primary recovery virtue, and for us, that would be modesty. Now modesty is not the same as humility. So humility is sort of kind of pushing your ego down. Or I would say modesty is more about finding that balance, because we have this stereophonic shame. We've got this internal and external shame that we're dealing with. So you don't want to push yourself so far down that you trigger the internal shame. You don't want to pop yourself so far up that you trigger the the the the Divani on the top side, right? So, so it's that modest, accurate self assessment of your strengths and weaknesses internally for yourself is really knowing what am I really capable of? What are my core competencies are and not at least, speaking for myself, I tend to attend a swing between sort of narcissistic delusions of grandeur and nihilistic despair. Sometimes I'm kind of between these two poles at my darkest moments, and then trying to find that balance, where, where I really where it's not based on, you know, anything else going I know what my where my center is. That would be the first, the first thing that I think threes need to work on. And then we have what I call your secondary recovery virtue and for three, that's faith. Now that's not a faith in any doctrine or dogma. It's the faith to take the masks off and really let ourselves be seen for who we are. So when we practice modesty and faith together, that creates our super virtue for a three, which is authenticity. So when threes can really practice genuine authenticity, that's the thing that I think ultimately solves a lot of their spiritual problem and personal problems. Because now, now that gets you out of the barrier mode. It gets you out of the blinger mode. And when you're when you're feeling, when you're living a truly authentic life, then that for a three, fulfills their greatest hope, and each type has a greatest hope, but I think for a three, it's to feel completely valued. And when we're getting valued for the fake, vain, egotistical masks that we're wearing, it just bounces off like it doesn't really work, right? So we're never going to feel genuine connection and validation until we're being validated for our authentic selves, which comes after the masks are taken off, and that and that, that feeling that completely valued, then I think, leads to becoming a money master for a three, which I call the builder, the builder. So the money monsters are the barrier and the blinger, and then when they become a builder, that's the type three who's using their time, their tools, their talent, in love and service to a suffering world, to build something of significance, in service to the world around them. And whatever that might be, it could be starting a podcast. It could be writing a book. It could be working, you know, in a hospital, whatever or whatever form of service that you, whatever you feel, that God put you on this planet to fix.
Joshua Johnson:And a lot of believers have, there's all sorts of weird attachments to money, or non attachment to money, or just thoughts about money. You know, in First Timothy, 610, a lot of people think it just says that money is the root of all evil, but it says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. So it's, it's really more about the love of money, and it's the root of all kinds of different evils. But what? So then, what should a relationship with money look like? What does a healthy relationship with money look like for
Unknown:us? Yeah. And also in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Greek, there's many, many different types of love. So there's layers of love. And so when you're saying that the love of money is the root of many evils it, we're talking about a kind of superficial, materialistic love that has a negative, avaricious connotation to it. We're not referring to say agape love, or the highest forms of love. And so I think that you know, the Divine Love of God can certainly be in money. How could it not be? Because money is simply the tool for action, and if, if we're using and deploying our wealth and in love and service, then I think that God can, can use that, and does use that very, very well in a very healthy way. Or I also like, I like Mark Twain has a humorous quote where he said, You know, it's the lack of money that's the root of all evil. And I think there's, there's truth there too. So, so it's really about finding that healthy sweet spot, and it's without being too prescriptive about it's like, well, this is how it should be for you. Say, No, my job isn't to tell you what your values are. My job is to help you figure out what your value. Values are to then articulate them for you and help you to live them as fully as you can, rather than posing, you know, my worldview of how I think your life should be run. That's simply not now that ever goes well for anybody, but, but, but being able to have your values articulated and then be being using, you know, not just your because, not just your money, but your time, like, that's the fun thing I've found about having a little bit of wealth is like, oh my god, I have so much more free time when I'm not running around, running for a paycheck every day. I can wake up and I'm not hyper stressed, I'm not snapping at the people I love. I can, I can have more leisure in my day, which is nice, but I also have the time to get out there and and make a difference in ways that I couldn't when I just need to be at a desk, making it, making a living, you know, all day, every day.
Joshua Johnson:So there's three areas you talk about, in dealing with our finances, what is earning, saving, investing and getting healthy in in those areas, let's start with the earning part. If people are like, I just don't really know how to Yes, yeah. So
Unknown:I actually call them the four pillars of finance. So for me, the four pillars are earning, saving, investing and giving. So I think it's about matching all four, all four of those areas. So you gotta earn. So the first, if you're not making any money, you're you're broke, and then you have to save a portion of what you earn, because if you spend everything you make, you're broke. And then you need to save some of that money. And then you need to start off, of course, with an emergency reserve, typically six months cash on hand. And then you need to start taking stuff beyond that and investing it for your long term future, and capturing the compound growth of the market over time. And then that's a it's really it's just that simple. That's how most wealth in this country has been generated in one form or another. It's just a variation on that theme. And then once you have sufficient resources, then, then it's okay, you've taken care of you, you've taken care of your family. Now you now hopefully, you have something left over that beyond your needs and even beyond your wants and desires, so that you can have this extra income and extra capital that you can deploy to fix the crack in the world that you were born to repair.
Joshua Johnson:So if people are caught in maybe cycles of poverty, generational poverty, and they're in a place of well, everything that I have earned, I mean, it goes right away to pay my bills, to rent, just to survive. What does it look like then for people at that place? And I know it's different for different types and all that, but generally, what does it look like then to start to earn something and earn enough where we could, they could start to save and they could start to build this system and wealth over time.
Unknown:You know, obviously, if you have a job that pays more, this is an easy process, right? If you're if you're in a low paying job, everything gets more difficult. Everything in your life is going to be harder, but it's still doable. So every job, whatever you Whatever, let's say you're working construction. Let's say you're going to get a pay raise every presumably, every year, you're going to make more next year than you made this year by some by an amount that will hopefully exceeds inflation. So your net take home pay is going to be going up over time. And so if you wherever, whatever your income is, you want to try to keep your your spending at that sort of base level, and then as your income goes up, that's where you can find that extra saving, that money to save, which then leads you to investing, and then leads to, you know, a more robust financial future.
Joshua Johnson:There's the healthy aspects of taming this, this Money Monster. But what happens when you're in a family, if you're in a relationship where you have two different money monsters, and they're going after each other, right? They're eating each other up.
Unknown:I know that. I know that feeling I've been there. I have, I have a working hypothesis, which is not scientific, but I can base it on my own anecdotal experience and those of my clients, which is don't date your wings being try not to date numbers that are immediately adjacent to you on the Enneagram doesn't mean that they're bad people. It means that you're probably going to trigger each other the unhealthy aspects of your neighbors, if you're in a long term relationship with that person, have a much higher propensity for conflict and strife than other combinations might, for reasons I could explain, but there's probably not time here. So I certainly found that in my relationship, my marriage ended about two years ago, where my ex wife and I, you know, we each had our money monsters, and she was is, and was a very wonderful human being who kind of wanted to jump to the giving part, maybe a little too fast, like who has this huge heart and wants to love and serve the world, but kind of got to earn a lot more money and save a lot more money. Right before you're basically wants to give people my money, which is like, Well, okay, I'm willing to, I'm willing to give my money away, but I want to give my money away. I don't like you necessarily giving it all away or taking it, or whatever the case may be. And I'm oversimplifying, of course, and I'm sure she has her complaints about me. I'm not an easy person to live with, so that's put it all on her. So, so, so, absolutely, and so, I think part of the part of the, you know, solving any problem is just you have to be able to acknowledge it and knowing what your partner's Enneagram, knowing your Enneagram type, knowing your partner's Enneagram type, and then whether you're anxious or avoidant. And, oh, and let me just clarify. I should have, I think you were trying to tease this out of me is that we can be anxious and avoidant in different parts of our financial life. So in those four pillars of earning, saving, investing, giving, you could be, you could be an anxious earner. You could be an avoidant saver. You could be, we could be anxious saver, an avoidant investor and avoidant giver. You could mix and match those in any way you want, but you really need to get healthy in all four of them, at least to some degree, if you really want to build this stable, long term financial future for yourself and for those you love, what
Joshua Johnson:have you found to be the most helpful if you're working with with clients, working with people to move from their unhealthy attachments into health in these areas, like, Are there steps that really help us un unveil what is going on underneath?
Unknown:There's basically three tools of Mana, of monasticism, that will apply to all of us in our different but in different ways, like so. So the thing is that each Enneagram type has a slightly different prescriptive formula for overcoming their money issues, because they have unique ones. But the basic pattern is contemplation, right? You need to think deeply about what your issues really are. Then you need to have compassion, compassion for yourself, compassion for your caregivers, who may who inevitably wounded you in childhood. They had to in order for you to form an ego, to be driving around in and then you need to take action. You need to, like, get off your butt. So it's about thinking deeply, feeling deeply, and then getting off your butt and doing something about it, and then applying that to the to each of those pillars of finance, earning, saving, investing, giving, where, where are you falling down? And you might be falling down in all four areas, but most of us are probably having trouble in one or two but whatever your unique circumstances are thrown at you, then that's what you got to deal with.
Joshua Johnson:And a typical hyper individualistic, individualized culture, we tried to do it all and figure it all out on our own, ourself. What does it look like then to to bring people along the journey to help us move and take steps towards health and
Unknown:growth? One thing is to outsource things that you're not good at, like maybe you need to hire a CPA, maybe you need an accountant, an attorney, maybe you need different kind of financial experts to come in and help you get real specific professional help for a problem that you don't know how to navigate things through. Or it might be getting a therapist. It might be getting I do coaching. So if someone wants to go to my website, douglam.com, and wants me to spend an hour coaching them on their and their money issues like that could be a really helpful way for some folks to to go through this a lot more faster, or just read the book too. So so I think there's, there's lots of tools out there, and I think it's really important that you have a team and that you really aren't going it alone because you can't you need people to mirror you. You need people who can accurately mirror your strengths and weaknesses back to you, and so you can really get to see yourself as you really are and find out, well, where am I like? What are things? What am I good at? And what can i What can I do myself without too much trouble? And what are some, some things like, you know, I'm a tad bit dyslexic at times. So there are just certain things, like, I don't really want to be placing trades all day. Like, that's just probably not something I'm going to be good at. I can do it. It's just very stressful. I can do my own portfolio. But basically, when I'm working in an office, I'm like, okay, somebody else needs to do that all day. I just have a limited capacity for it. You know, it's just a push keys into a keyboard and expecting that the numbers are always going to come out right. So, so that's just one example of something that all right, you've got this weakness now. How do you find a workaround or a hack that allows you to move forward without this one little quirky getting in the way too much?
Joshua Johnson:One thing I love about community is that we could, we could help each other out. So what did you find in your religious order, in the monastery or within churches or different communities? How? How do communities then solve their money monsters? How do they become a place that is healthy? Yeah. Right? That it's, you know, moving from the individual to community. Like, for example, like there are pockets of my I live in Kansas City, there are pockets where there is a whole community, where they have their money monster they can't get over. Like it is eating them alive, but it's the whole community. It's not just individuals in that community. It's the whole community. So what does it look like in the community to move forward? Just go into your own context, your your monastery, that where, how did the community then come together to say, Whoa, we actually have this problem. We have bankruptcy. We have different things like, how did we get healthy together?
Unknown:Well, I wish I could say we did. We got healthy, but mostly it felt like I was a bit of a workhorse and had to just take it on and and other people did other things, and other people were working very hard, but I you know, we were a small community, and think the other brothers were happy to just let me run with it, and that created a bit of resentment over time, I have to say, because I was, I was the youngest monk by, like, almost 20 years, and so as the most junior monk, I wasn't there's sort of a hierarchical structure that you're living in where, you know, it's based on seniority, and I had the least amount of seniority, so I had the least amount of real control or power in in in the community, and yet every thing was running off of the money stuff, you know, and and so I think I would like to say that we ultimately came to a healthy space with all of it. But ultimately that why I had to leave this is I didn't feel like I was not in a position where I You can't it's really hard to change other people. Let's put it that way. Only thing you personally you can really change is yourself. And you can model better ways of behaving, and you can model better ways of living. But if other people don't want to, then you can't force them. And at some point, I just had to say, there's always going to be this sense that money is dirty, that having a little bit of wealth in our community is bad, and that even though they're happy to spend the money for things that are necessary, like, you know, like there were some big medical bills that came up, and it's like, all right, you know, God, thank God, We have the money that like someone needs a quadruple bypass heart surgery. Well, you know, yes, we have insurance, but then there's also some things that insurance doesn't cover. And so, you know, being able to have those kind of reserves, I think every family needs that kind of ability to to be able to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and and so there was, there was genuine gratitude from the other brothers for for getting us out of bankruptcy and putting us in a financially solvent situation. And yet there was also this underlying tension. And I didn't, at that point, have I didn't know about the Enneagram, I didn't know about money monsters. I didn't all this stuff that I'm presenting to you now is stuff I figured out after I had to kind of get out of there. And you know, I was being bombarded with what I didn't unders. I didn't understand at the time why we were all in this weird space around money all the time. And so I think this book is really the culmination of decades of financial fumblings and failures and frustrations to be able to help other people avoid some of those pitfalls
Joshua Johnson:you've hinted a little bit about, like you're you're trying to help people determine their values when it comes to what they are wanting money to do for them and with them. How do we determine values? How do we go underneath like, what does it look like to say this is actually what I want? Like, I could I could earn, I could save, I could invest, I could do all this stuff. I could be generous and I can give. But if it doesn't align to my values, if I don't know what they are, then none of it matters as much, right? So what does determining values look like for us in way we deal with money?
Unknown:I think each Enneagram type has a unique spiritual path, and we have different virtues that each one of the types, and there's all these subtypes as well. But without getting you get it's think of the Enneagram is like a fractal. It's got infinite complexity inside of a firm structure. So we're talking about these, these nine archetypal patterns, but there's an infinite variety inside each of them. So I want to make sure that your listeners are aware that we're not trying to put people into a rigid box here, but there all are these broad categories we've talked about of personality, and so we've just done the type three, but we could, we could pick any, any type we could start with, like type eight is usually where I typically begin, picking up the conversation for reasons that are somewhat arbitrary. But like types eight, for example, they have this inter this externalized anger. So eights have anger that was their sacred wound. And then. They sort of, they externalize that against the world. They're always pushing and challenging against the limits of reality. So two very famous type eights would be Donald Trump and Dr Martin Luther King. Martin, Martin Luther King both type eights, but they're both in very different ways, and are out there challenging the limitations and boundaries of the world around them, and then they have their shadow structures each the type eights. But I think some of their and I could go through the whole ego structure for a type eight. But ultimately, I think the greatest virtue for a type eight is innocence, is really being able to have when you combine mercy and honesty. For them, they get to this sweet innocence, like some people think Mother Teresa was a type eight, and so that you get to this ability where almost the thing that was your greatest weakness becomes your greatest strength. So like we talked about a type three, you know, deceits, our greatest vice, our greatest virtue, then, is authenticity. So for type eight, it's their worst spices is sort of lustful vengeance. And then their greatest virtue would be sort of loving, honest, merciful innocence. And so I think that we could then go through all the different nine types and see All right, here are the value. These are, these are values that I think will help you within your type be the healthiest, most loving expression of your personality possible,
Joshua Johnson:as as a three that puts on different personas and puts on masks and in different groups that I'm in and trying to get approval to really then go deep. Like, what is? What do I desire? What? Who? Who am I? Where is my authentic self? Like, it takes a while, then what are my my values coming out of that? Not my values, because I think these are the values that other people want to see out of me, but the values that actually come from deep in my soul that I know this is actually who God created me to be, and this, these are the values that I want to live out in the world. And it's a lot of work to go through this. It's not easy,
Unknown:no, and, and, and maybe this is maybe the most, the hardest answer to, I think, to the question you've been trying to tease out is, how do we do this? Like in the answer is, suffering, basically, is, is that's really, you have to go through some form of tremendous suffering, to break open your ego and to to help you see what your shadow is and to see how it's causing pain for yourself and the and most importantly, for the people around you that you a good friend of mine. His name is Richard Rohr. He often says, you know, if, if we don't transform our pain, we're destined to transmit it, and most especially to those that we love, like our children. So we all have these childhood wounds that we grew up with, and again, they're necessary wounds to individuate, but if we allow them to fester, that we'll just keep passing that that pain and trauma down to the generations, unless we're willing to do that inner work, let our suffering break US Open, soften our our egos, and then hopefully gain more love, wisdom and compassion in the process.
Joshua Johnson:So Doug, if you can talk to your readers of taming Your Money Monster, what is your hope? Do you want this to get out in the world? I
Unknown:want people to build a robust financial life, however they want to define it, so that they don't have the kind of terrible money stresses and mistakes that I had growing up in my my early adulthood, and that they are able to live a life that makes their soul sing, because it's really about having The time to be creative, to be doing the things that really feed you, in your in your highest virtues, whatever they are for you, so that you know you're doing God's work. And again, it doesn't matter what your faith tradition is or what your belief system is on a theological level, it's like, okay, what, whatever that is for you, I want you to have the resources in your pocket so that you can be a force for love. I
Joshua Johnson:have a couple quick questions I like to ask at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Unknown:That's why I wrote the books. This is my second book, right? So, so the first book was called from monk to money manager, a former monk's financial Guide to Becoming a little bit wealthy, and why that's okay. So that first book was a how to book that really was about, how do you do the nuts and bolts of basics of personal finance so you can, you know, get that under control. And now this book taming Your Money Monster, nine paths to Money Mastery with the Enneagram. It's really a Why do book. This is just a now, I've taken all the psychological insights I've picked up along the way and packed them into sort of a Why do book of why we do stupid things with our money, and how to stop doing that. And so I think together, they're basically everything I wish I had known and someone would have taught me when I was in my 20s.
Joshua Johnson:Perfect. So you just give them your book, your 21 year. Itself has got to hear read this Absolutely. That's perfect. That's good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately you recommend.
Unknown:I'm a really big fan of Jordan Peterson these days. I think some of his writing is exceptional. I find I find his book, 12 rules for life to be the I was reading that again and enjoying his podcasts. There's a podcast called The Diary of a CEO that I also really enjoy. So those are some things I've just been kicking around in my brain.
Joshua Johnson:Where would you like to point people to? How can people get taming Your Money Monster? How could they connect with you?
Unknown:Yeah, the best way is to go to my website, douglineham.com, that's D, O, U, G, l, y N as in, Nicholas, A M as in, michael.com and there you can find links to all my social media and everything. But if you can also pre order my book on Amazon, it comes out July 8.
Joshua Johnson:Well, Doug, thank you for this conversation. Thanks for actually going into the why we're all just not great with money, but we can be and we can move towards financial health in the way that we actually handle our money, that we could actually have money with us, and we could do all sorts of great things, that we could be generous with our money, and we give when we know what it is to handle our Money Monster. Thank you for relaying parts of your story. I think that really is helpful to get a grasp and a hold of what it looks like, and your knowledge of the Enneagram I actually I love your book is detailed. It is deep, deep in psychology and money literacy like it. It has all sorts of incredible things in here. So you're not only, if you you read, taming Your Money Monster. You're not only going to get some great wise when it comes to like money, but you're actually going to be able to deal with your your wounds, your childhood wounds, and you're actually be just a better, healthy person through this. And so I loved that about it. So it's well done. It was great. So thank you for this
Unknown:conversation. High High praise. Joshua, thank you very much. I am deeply flattered. You
