Lynne Twist and Sara Vetter were delighted to keynote at Wealth Architects University last year. Below is the video “executive summary” of this event that Wealth Architects generously provided. In their introduction, Wealth Architect’s University said:

Times like these can lead us to re-examine our relationship with money. Lynne Twist, our most recent keynote speaker at Wealth Architects University, is the author of “The Soul Of Money” and has made it her life’s work to examine people’s relationship with money all over the world… how we value it, spend it, invest it, and give it away.

 

Video Transcript

Pat Phillips:

Today is the 2019 Wealth Architects University. Our theme is the Soul of Money, from scarcity to sufficiency to a wealthier life.

Lynne Twist:

So, wealth, the term wealth comes from wellbeing, and I even like to say, even more deeply say, the well of being that is in every life, there’s actually infinite.

Mark Johnsen:

My favorite part of the day by far is always seeing everybody come together and just the spirit of purpose and meaning that everybody’s trying to find in their own lives. And how we’re trying to connect that with their stories about money, and the work that we do with them to help them build wealthier lives. I think it’s easy for all of us to lose perspective on our relationship with money, right? It’s very easy. And yet maintaining a healthy perspective is really key to what we believe is building a truly wealthy life.

Sara Vetter:

That whole period in there, I thought I was happy, but I was always afraid it would just completely disappear, and I just was always grasping and hoarding and it’s… Almost the more money I had, the more isolated I felt, and the more isolated my life became.

Pat Phillips:

One of our missions is to connect people with purpose, and the purpose behind their money. So hopefully they can live a wealthier life. And we define wealth as more than just your financial resources, but how you’re utilizing those resources in your day to day life, in driving greater meaning in the things that are important to you.

Lynne Twist:

Our culture that has made money more important than human life, more important than the natural world. More important than God or spirit. How do you live an authentic life? That’s a question. I think a question that everybody wrestles with, whether they have massive fortunes or they can barely make ends meet. So we assign money its value, yes, its financial value, but we also are assigning it its emotional value. Its psychological value, its spiritual value, its philosophical value, its ontological value. We have assigned it so much importance, so much meaning in our culture that we’re at the effect of it, I’m suggesting.

Mark Johnsen:

After we founded the company in 2005, I had the privilege of reading Lynne’s book and it just really spoke to me in how her message about the lies of scarcity and that there’s not enough.

Sara Vetter:

So when you’re in a space of it’s not enough, there’s not enough, I don’t have enough, there’s not a vacation, I don’t have enough perfect blue jeans. I don’t… There’s not enough. You’re in that space. It always reflects and comes back to, I’m not enough.

Speaker:

And I find that having been in a place of gratitude pulls me out of each one of those. There’s not enough. And there actually is enough. And the fact you woke up in the morning is something to be grateful for.

Lynne Twist:

To think that you’ve named your firm, Wealth Architects, the architects for finding that well of being in your life, in a way that your financial life is aligned with that being, is what I understand you’d be doing. So that’s so cool.

Mark Johnsen:

We live in one of the richest communities, in the richest state, in the richest country in the world, right? But are we well? As a country we rank 20th in overall wellbeing in the world. Our kids in California rank 35th out of 50 in wellbeing. And 50% of the people right here in our own communities are struggling or suffering, and so are we becoming rich or are we becoming wealthy?

Lynne Twist:

What you appreciate appreciates. So, I’m talking about a state of being. When scarce is cleared away, what’s there? It’s like that experience of suddenly realizing, the sun is rising. I want to see that. Or watching a baby be born. There’s no scarcity. There’s no wanting more. There’s just being totally in the presence of the magnificence of what already is. And we can have that experience of ourselves, of our lives, of our families, of our children, of our home, of our garden, of our world.

Lynne Twist:

When you nourish what you already have, when you celebrate what you already have, when you give gratitude for what you already have, when you make a difference with what you already have, when you share what you already have, it expands before your very eyes. We call this the principle of sufficiency, the principle of sufficiency. Once again, this isn’t an amount. This is a way of being and seeing a state of being, where the world shows up completely differently. The mindset of scarcity clears away and what’s there is the absolute profound experience of this thing called enough.