38. Your money is not in your bank, it’s in your head – Peter Koenig
A sudden cough attack somewhat surprisingly leads right into the heart of Peter Koenig’s life work about understanding the mental construct, or should we say the mental blockage, that we call money. What is money? If you ask people, the answer can be anything under the sun: security, peace, happiness, love, a prison, insecurity, war and loss of power. If money can be perceived as all of those things, what is it really? the Zurich based British businessman Koenig asked himself forty years ago. The answer was that it’s not something in the bank. It’s something in our heads. ”The key, the epiphany, was to see that it works through the process we call projection.” Since money is considered retainable and countable, it appears that also the attributes are retainable and countable. ”If you think you need money to exist you've exteriorized your feeling of security and projected it on money. You’re on the hamster wheel. First you aim for one million, but that won’t do it, so it’s ten. And when you reach 9.9 it’s suddenly twenty. You’ve disconnected from your inner security.” Koenig’s proposed remedy is simple affirmation therapy. In this episode you will hear me first affirm that I exist either with or without money and then that I actually don’t exist and that it’s cool... ”You will free yourself from the fear of loss and insecurity, and you will dare to spend your money, and you will spend it on things you love.” Businessmen are by no means free from the projection. ”They are supposed to be the most powerful people in the world, but in my consulting work I saw the other side. They had all these visions, but very few of them were able to realize them. They were not actually manifesting what was deepest in their hearts.” When the businessmen focused on their dreams there was a wonderful atmosphere, but then somebody said ”we must make a budget for this amazing idea”, and the atmosphere went out the window. And the future? Yes, Peter Koenig has an idea of a new money system, a non-centrally created system with wisdom in it. He thinks the industrial system reached its peak 40-50 years ago and has since then gone on automatically. But about now, he says, we are at a transitional point. ”The industrial system was brilliant, but it's very intellectual and mind-centered. Its limitations will entail difficulties if we don't step out of it. And we are stepping out.” Here’s Peter’s blog. Here’s a link to the upcoming congress about creating love in business.