In this episode, Elizabeth Husserl discusses how to find joy in our relationship with money. She explores the roots of scarcity thinking and how it fuels discontent. Elizabeth also shares specific strategies for cultivating a mindset of enough and offers insights into redefining wealth beyond just money.
Key Takeaways:
- Embracing the power of “Enough” and how this concept can transform your financial mindset
- Understanding the scarcity mindset and how to shift from scarcity to abundance
- Discovering the benefits of a satiation journal and the impact of gratitude through this practice
- Building a healthy relationship with money Uncover the keys to fostering a positive and sustainable connection with money for a more fulfilling life
- Exploring the interconnected nature of human needs and how fulfilling them can lead to greater satisfaction and financial fulfillment
Connect with Elizabeth Husserl: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
Elizabeth is a registered investment advisor and cofounder of Peak360, a boutique wealth planning firm. She expertly guides people to a deeper understanding of their relationship to money and wealth. But more than anything, she loves her life.
Elizabeth’s debut book, The Power of Enough: Finding Joy in Your Relationship to Money is a paradigm-shifting exploration of how our relationship with money impacts our overall well-being and the financial systems that hinder our pursuit of experiencing wealth and genuine satisfaction.
If you enjoyed this episode with Elizabeth Husserl, check out these other episodes:
Distracted or Empowered? Rethinking Our Relationship with Technology with Pete Etchells
How Relationships Shape Our Happiness and Well-Being with Robert Waldinger
How to Navigate Relationships and Personal Growth with Mark Groves
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Episode Transcript:
00:00:27 – Chris Forbes
Welcome to the One youe Feed throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or your are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
00:01:12 – Eric Zimmer
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, what does enough actually feel like? Not as an idea, not as a number in your bank account, but as a moment, a deep, embodied sense of satisfaction? In today’s episode, Elizabeth Husserl, author of the Power of Finding Joy in your Relationship with Money, helps us explore this powerful question and why most of us are stuck on what she calls the scarcity hamster wheel. We’ll dig into how defining your enough can transform your relationship with money, time, and even yourself. Elizabeth shares tools for creating more fulfillment and talks about the discipline and joy of truly savoring what you have. I’ll also reflect on my own struggles with money, a topic I usually avoid, but maybe that’s the point. By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with practical ideas for finding more balance in a world that constantly tells us we’re not enough. I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed it’s time to feed the good wolf. Hi Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
00:02:18 – Elizabeth Husserl
Thank you so much, Eric, for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.
00:02:20 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I’m really excited to talk with you about your book, the Power of Finding Joy in youn Relationship. Relationship with Money. This is not a topic we have covered very often on this show, and yet I’ve begun to think about how central its importance is to every person’s life. Whether we want to admit that or not, it’s a pretty big area of thought. We spend a fair amount of time on it, in our emotional energy, so we’ll get into all that in a second. But we’ll start the way we always do, with the Parable. In the parable, there’s a grandparent talking to their grandchild. They say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops. Think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
00:03:24 – Elizabeth Husserl
Thank you, Eric. I’ve loved sitting with that parable. And I would say the initial message is clear, right? Whatever wolf you feed or you give your attention to, that’s what amplifies in your life. But as I sat with it deeper, for me, it’s less about good and evil or black and white, but in my work, it’s really around the light and the shadow, right? So what are those light qualities that potentially can bring out our more purest essence? And then what are the shadow qualities that potentially trip us up or, you know, dim our essence? And I feel really fortunate that in my life I’ve had teachers who’ve helped me find the wisdom in both. Right? It’s like in the shadow, sometimes we have some of our unmet potential, right, that we have to go digging to find the compost or the nuggets of gold in the fertile ground. And in our light, we have some of those qualities that we can use to shine towards the shadow and the darkness, to be able to reveal some hidden opportunities. So for me, it is the yin and the yang, right? It’s like, how do these two qualities interact with each other?
But ultimately, as we strengthen those positive qualities in our lives, and that’s why I wrote the book, how can we strengthen our experience of enough, right, to counteract scarcity, Right? If I were to think of what are the two wolves in my world, it’s enough in scarcity. I think it’s more contemporary to say abundance or scarcity. And we’ll talk about why. I think that’s a little bit of a fallacy, but it’s more. How do we really deepen into the strength of the wolf that knows their light, their enoughness, their worth, so that they find the courage to almost, like, take that other wolf under their arm to create more of a den and realize there is potentiality if the two of them also understand who they are and can work together.
00:05:12 – Eric Zimmer
I love it. I don’t think anybody has ever used the word den in all these interviews. Nobody’s referenced the wolf den. I may be wrong about that, but I can’t remember anyone ever saying that. So that’s great. The wolf den.
00:05:24 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah.
00:05:24 – Eric Zimmer
Let’s start with something that you say in the book and you say, for decades, I’ve been exploring an essential question. Why do we have so much and yet feel so poor? Talk to me about the we have so much side of that. Because some people might go, no, we don’t. I don’t. So talk to me about what perspective you come from that says, you know, we have so much.
00:05:47 – Elizabeth Husserl
Well, I think it’s both. I think it’s theoretical, and it’s also lived experience. I think, theoretically speaking, right? If we look at the US economy, there is so much resource, right? Is it being properly allocated or is it concentrated in some people versus others? Yes, but as an economy, there’s so much resource, and yet we’re still stuck on this hamster wheel of more, more and more. And in fact, Eric, I feel like if we were to start to practice the power of enough, we would be grasping less and probably reallocating better, so that the resources that this country has as a whole would be better allocated, because in reality, there is enough for everyone to have what they need. So I think theoretically, that’s the concept, right? And that’s kind of what a lot of the economists that were studying the 1950s into 2000, like, we make enough as a country in our GDP. Why are we still chasing abundance? Right? So that’s one level, I think, personally, you know, I was raised with two working parents. And so generally speaking, my needs were taken care of. Like, my dad was a doctor. W2, there was a consistent paycheck. My school was taken care of. You know, I was closed. We would go visit my family, who’s in Colombia. But there was still a sense of scarcity in my household. And I was like, what is that about? Right. It’s not matching up where there is enough. But there’s scarcity, there’s tension, emotional tension, Right. My parents were dealing with their own stuff that we can talk about, but I remember just that, that discrepancy. And I think in reality, Eric, part of why I wrote the book is that I’m not alone in that experience. Right? We have financial DNA that takes the past of our lineage, our ancestors, what they’ve experienced. We feel it in our bodies, viscerally. We don’t digest it, and we continue to operate from that place without stopping and saying what really is enough.
00:07:40 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.
00:07:41 – Elizabeth Husserl
I think that’s what prompted me to write the book was like, this isn’t lining up. And if it’s not lining up for me, I bet you it’s not lining up for other people.
00:07:49 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting. If you look at where we sit in the US and let’s just take most people, not people who are in abject poverty, but most people, we have more than humans have ever had.
00:08:03 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah.
00:08:04 – Eric Zimmer
We have more convenience, we have more comfort, we have more safety from those measures. It’s the best time to be alive. I mean, I just spent some time in Europe and I study a lot of the history and I go to the museums and you just kind of look around, you’re like, that would not have been a good time to live. And I’m glad I wasn’t born then. And let’s avoid the Black Death time. Like, we do have a lot and yet, as you say, none of us feel like we do. Yeah. What do you think is contributing to that?
00:08:28 – Elizabeth Husserl
Well, so Eric, I mean, I’ll reference one of your recent podcasts with Anders Hanson. Right. It’s like you all were talking about this conversation of how we’re wired both in our brains, but I also think that we’re wired in our bodies to be seeking more. And so I think that’s just an important kind of starting point, is like, okay, how am I wired? Right. How do I build different behaviors? And so it’s similar in the book I talk about that. The scarcity brain. Right. I use similar examples where we’re craving higher calorie foods because that’s what our ancestors did. And so the craving muscle is.
00:08:59 – Eric Zimmer
Just part of our being human kind.
00:09:02 – Elizabeth Husserl
Of reality as human. Exactly. That we need to deal with. And so part of what I did in the book is it’s theoretical, but it’s equally part practical because I wanted to give people really tangible tools to be able to work with their desires and cravings and situate it within a bigger context of let’s redefine what wealth is. Right. It’s not just about having money. Wealth is connected to well being. So if we put the wealth in a more expansive way and talk about our human needs and how do we satisfy our human needs and how do we do that in monetary and non monetary ways. We don’t make our desires bad, we just are wired to desire. Right. That’s actually a good mantra. We’re wired to desire. So let’s not fight it, but let’s be more conscious and aware of how are we satisfying those desires, because it can have impact on our own lives and impact more globally. I mean, I just want to say one thing about the US Kind of like, we have enough resources, generally speaking. Right. It is our responsibility to figure this out. And that’s a big piece of my push, is that it’s our responsibility to figure out our own relationship to money. And people kind of scoff at that. They’re like, what do you mean? It’s so much easier to scapegoat money and blame it for, I have too little, I have too much. You’re too complicated. But no, it’s our responsibility to figure it out so that we can be more conscious of how we just manage resources, not just for ourselves, but for the greater world.
00:10:26 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I love that idea of desire because I always see extremes happening. And on one extreme, there’s. I just let my desires drive me, and they just sort of carry me along. And I think that’s where a lot. A lot of people are. On the flip side, though, you start to venture into spiritual circles, particularly Eastern spiritual circles, and you start hearing, you know, the Buddha’s second noble truth, that craving desire is part of what causes us to suffer as humans. So at that point, then we go, oh, it would be great not to have desire. And I think that that’s an impossibility for the reasons that you’ve talked about. I don’t think there’s any way to turn that thing off. So I love what you say. I think the question becomes how to relate to it wisely and how do we use the energy that it has? Because that is where a lot of energy comes from.
00:11:19 – Elizabeth Husserl
Exactly.
00:11:20 – Eric Zimmer
A lot of energy comes from going and getting what I want. How do we align that? And to your point, how do we turn off the never enough mentality?
00:11:32 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:32 – Eric Zimmer
Because that’s part of the problem is that any of us can probably look at our lives. I certainly can. And be like, there was a time where I thought if I made X amount of money, I would be set. Oh, great, good. I made that amount. Okay, well, now it needs to be X.
00:11:48 – Elizabeth Husserl
The goal post moved.
00:11:50 – Eric Zimmer
It could be the same thing with anything. Podcast downloads. If you told me 10 years ago that we would have. I don’t know how many. I’ve almost stopped counting. Somewhere upwards of probably, like, 40 million downloads, I would have said, oh, my God, like, yes. But now I look at that and I go, well, you know, But Joe Rogan gets like, 100 million a month or so. I mean, you can always move the goalposts and compare upwards.
00:12:13 – Elizabeth Husserl
I have so much to say, Eric, and what you just said. But I would start by saying it’s really important that we have clear definitions of what our metrics of success are, right? You as a person, that’s really important. And you need to have that metric of success dialed in. And then the second piece is that when that metrics of success is met, AKA the downloads, then you really have to take the time to let yourself be satiated and satisfied. It is a visceral experience. And I think that’s what’s missing in our conversation around money and finance and wealth is that we talk about it, it’s abstract, we map it out on spreadsheets. I mean, I’m the first one. I love spreadsheets. That’s what I do for a living. But equally important, and that’s why I wrote this book, we have to learn how to equal experience wealth, because if not, we get stuck in the cycle of accumulating for accumulating sake. So let me give you an example, right? I’m about to publish a book. It might be out by the time this podcast or this episode is live. And I’m super clear on what my metrics of success for this book is. And it’s these one on one conversations. These meaningful conversations is why I wrote this book. Now my editor told me what my pre orders number was. I was like, oh my God, that’s amazing. They’re beyond what I thought they would be. I don’t know that many people, right? I mean, I know I’m a super communal person, but like there are more people pre ordered the book than I know. And I can slowly start to see the partners, like, oh, do I go for the New York Times bestsellers list? You know, all this stuff. And I’ve, and I’ve had to have conscious conversations with myself. No, Elizabeth, you wrote down what your metrics of success are. If you get it, great. But it’s these four things stay connected to that. And that’s where the discipline is, right? And this is really important. I am married to a spiritual practitioner who is stabilizing awakening, I would say. And so for him, he’s working on not feeling desires. That’s not me. I’m considering myself a very human, desired oriented person. And that’s where my work is, right? But what I can help people is help them channel desires towards a more purposeful, meaningful life. And then desire has a reason to be versus A fleeting, compulsive or impulsive. Right. And they’re unconscious. They’re like. And so that’s the difference between more of an adolescent desire and a more mature version of ourselves. And I do think that we have the ability to become that more mature version. Let’s go back to the wolf den, the mama wolf holding both of her baby wolves there and teaching them both how to be mature versions of themselves. And we can do that in our relationship to money.
00:14:47 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah. There’s a lot in there. I think what you’re talking about a little bit is our values.
00:14:52 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah.
00:14:53 – Eric Zimmer
And can we try and get our values in line with our desires? If we can bring those things closer together, I think we experience more satisfaction. But I love that you use the word discipline because I do think it is a discipline to not just get into the more, more, more mentality, given that it is in our evolutionary wiring and it is our cultural story. It is both those things. And if we don’t have the discipline to do what you are suggesting, which in essence is saying what is enough? But it’s a hard discipline.
00:15:31 – Elizabeth Husserl
It is a hard discipline. But that’s why in the subtitle I use that word joy on purpose. Right. It can be a very joyful experience once you start. Right. It’s kind of your example that you’ve used, Eric, of like, it’s not like you wake up wanting to go to the gym and work out every day, but when you do that hour workout, you always feel better. And so it’s a similar experience. Right. Remember, what is that short term outcome that potentially the discipline can bring and stay connected to that, Let me say something really important, because values is important, but that can feel still abstract to people. They’re like, oh my gosh, is there a whole list of values? Where do I choose? I really leaned on the work of both Maslow and another economist from Chile, Manfred Max Neef. And both of them did some really deep research and work around needs. Right. We’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Funny enough, he never wrote an as a hierarchy. That was later. No, people don’t know that. And so it’s like, let’s flatten the playing field. Right? Let’s treat needs equally. I know that when one of the needs are on fire, that’s where your focus has to go. Like if you’re going through a health crisis, if you can’t pay your rent for the month, like there are crisis and fires. But generally speaking, if we flatten it and we work with 12 human needs. One, we realize that needs are natural. That’s really important. So we take away that language of being needy. It’s like, no, needs are natural. They’re universal. The way we satisfy them is personal. That’s the difference.
00:16:53 – Eric Zimmer
I love that line. Say that again, because I’ve heard you say that and I love that idea.
00:16:58 – Elizabeth Husserl
So needs are universal. They’re natural. The way we satisfy our needs is personal. And that’s actually where we can bring our unique expression, our creativity, our purpose can be in how we satisfy the needs, how we potentially find synergetic satisfiers. Like, are there things that you do that satisfy multiple needs? Right. And by the way, Eric, the needs mandala, a free resource on my website. You don’t even have to read the book. You can still go to my website and download and do the exercise. And I put 12 needs and there’s a little space for choose your own. Because maybe there’s a really important need that you have that’s not on that mandala. By all means, get creative. But the way that I work with this is that I have people, right? On a yearly basis instead of New Year’s resolutions, right? We take the wealth mandala. So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being like, I’m actually feeling super fulfilled and satisfied in this need. One being like, oh, my goodness, I’m feeling empty. They color it out. And so it ends up being this mandala that looks like a flower at the end of the day. And you put it on the wall, and it’s amazing how no matter what you color, it looks beautiful. It’s like a flower that always has unequal petals. And you just take a moment and you admire. Okay, that’s my life right now, right? There is color in some capacity. Then you sit with the needs that you’re satisfying. Well, and you ask yourself, okay, what are my strategies here? Monetary and both. Monetary, that’s a key component, right? Because we don’t want to just throw money at satisfying a need. We have to have non monetary, non financial ways of doing it. For example, need for connection. You could say, oh my gosh, I love taking friends out to dinner. I love hosting, and I end up buying all this food. And you know, it costs you more than what you think, right? Yes, it’s fulfilling your need for connection, but maybe it’s putting you in debt. So how can you have connection met also in non monetary need? Invite a friend out for a walk, right? You know, have a phone call. So I think that’s really important. Because then you can take the strategies that are working in some needs and be like, hey, is there an overlap to some of the areas that aren’t met? Right. And so you start to see the conversation where like, okay, I have desires. We generally tend towards wanting most of our needs met. We might gravitate to more than others. But how do you then channel that desire to use resources, consume resources, exchange? Those are neutral acts. But how do you channel them in a way that brings you a sense of fulfillment it differently? And then how do you take the time to truly consume that? And that’s really important. I actually tell my clients to stop and to swallow when they feel fulfilled and let their cells in their body recognize and digest what this moment of meaning is. Because then you start to compound moments of meaning viscerally and your body starts to learn what enough feels like.
00:19:46 – Eric Zimmer
It’s similar to the process that’s been described by different people of savoring, right. Learning to savor something, which is the same thing. Dr. Rick Hansen has been writing about this for years. This idea of you’ve got to pause when something good is happening and really sit with it and amplify it and allow it to drop into you. And this is something I am, as I think about, I am just not very good at. Good things happen and I just kind of like, oh, good, okay, next.
00:20:15 – Elizabeth Husserl
But what’s really important though is that we want this in our portfolios. We want our money to make money, right? We love compound interest. So we see how it works there. And if we were to take that same principle into savoring these moments of meaning, they will start to compound inside of you.
00:20:33 – Eric Zimmer
I think that’s a really important point because a lot of these little practices that we do, I fall prey to this all the time. You listen to some people on a show and they describe something, you think I really should do that, you know, and you think it’s gonna be great. And you do it and it’s nothing, nothing different. You do it again, nothing really different. And you go, eh, not for me. And you’re done. Whereas the idea of little by little, little becomes a lot, or, you know, compound interest is that these little things accumulate. I mean, the story I always talk about is when I had a job that I worked, went to and went in and out of the office every day, I had this little practice. When I walked out to my car, when I walked from my car to the office, from the office to the car, back to the house, when I was walking, I played this little thing Called grounding in your senses, where I would just say, what are five things I can see right now? What are five things I can hear right now? And doing that one time is mildly pleasant, I suppose. But what happened is by doing that again and again and again, five days a week, month after month, my capacity to be present deepened almost immeasurably at a time. But if you looked at the beginning of that to the end of it, I was very different in my ability to remain present. And now that that discipline is gone, I can tell that I don’t have the capacity I had back then.
00:21:57 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah. And I think what’s really important, Eric, is coming back to your example of Buddhism or some Eastern traditions. I would even say kind of Western traditions. The discipline of going to kind of mass or sitting in meditation or going to sangha. Right. You’re with other people practicing a discipline and how important that is. And what’s tricky in my field is that a, we don’t talk about money. Right. And much less do we talk about our experience with money. If we talk about money, we’re talking about stock picks and investments and best things. And so I think that’s what’s really important, is that it’s not only hard to do these disciplines on our own, sometimes it’s easier in community. But we don’t have ways in to talk about money in a safe way. And that’s the other reason why I wrote this book is when I was having this conversation with my compliance officer, I’m like, I do not talk. There’s not a word about investments. It is about your relationship to money. Because I wanted to give people a doorway in where they could start to explore their own relationship with money and potentially have ways to talk about money with people that felt more approachable. Because I think once we start to. I mean, I would love, like, a savoring Sangha. That’d be freaking awesome. Maybe we’ll start that one day.
00:23:09 – Eric Zimmer
But, like, let’s just form a little text group where we text each other and savor something every day.
00:23:14 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah. I mean, I see it, like, at work, we do a daily scrum. We’re a firm of 14, and every day we say one thing. We’re grateful for one thing. I’m working on one obstacle I have, and every day via email, and it’s amazing. That is a discipline. It gets started off the culture that has been built because we have that shared discipline. And there’s days where I’m like, oh, my gosh, I really have to dig deep. What Am I grateful for today? But I know that I have to show up because I’ve asked all my team members to show up. Right. And so sometimes when we’re also holding ourselves accountable, these can be easier.
00:24:08 – Eric Zimmer
We’re going to get into more of this relationship with money in a minute. And I think you’re going to answer the question I’m about to ask by going there. But here’s the experience I think almost all of us have. And I’m curious what you think about how to work with this, which is, I’m going about my day. I’m feeling just fine. I hop on Instagram and I see so and so on a yacht in some beautiful ocean with beautiful people around. And I’m suddenly now filled with envy and desire and craving and all of that. And it’s around us all the time. We are constantly being fed images of what we do not have, and it does not feel good. So how do you think about responding when that comes up? Because I think we’ve sort of said to some degree, maybe it’s natural that that comes up. But what’s the response? What’s your response?
00:25:08 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah, I mean, I do feel like it’s natural. And so the first thing I try to do with myself is to not shame myself. Right. I’ve learned how not to be so hypercritical, which I think is often like our first response. And then what I’ll do, I’ll put the phone down, right? Cause you’re gonna have to the doomless scrolling at some point. And I’ll be like, okay, let me go back to that picture of the yacht. The beautiful people, the ocean, the water. What of that scene am I truly jealous of? And I asked myself that hard question because in my experience, Eric, jealousy, it’s a little red flag that goes up and says, there’s something there that you do want. Right. And what of that scene that I really don’t want? I personally don’t necessarily need a yacht that I’m like, my brain goes. And that’s actually really expensive to maintain. Right? You need. That’s where my brain goes. But I love ocean. And I love the sense of, like, beach and sand and like sun on my skin. That is something that I know I need in my life a lot. And so if I’m like, okay, great, that’s what I’m identifying, that I really want some of one. Can I satisfy that right now? Could I just step away from my computer and just go stand outside in the sun? Can I tell my body that it can Experience that feeling of relaxation, sunshine. Do you see? Like, is there something that I can immediately feed myself with with?
00:26:23 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah.
00:26:23 – Elizabeth Husserl
And, you know, it might be a super rainy day and cold, and you’re like, well, that’s out, right? Or until, can you take a warm bath? That’s the case. But can you give yourself the comfort of what you’re craving? Maybe you’re like, God damn it, I’m working too hard. I really want a vacation. Maybe we can’t conjure up beautiful people, but you do want to conjure up some leisure time. Is there a way to bring some more leisure? So I’m naming these again needs that we have. What need did it touch? Can you one, satisfy that immediately? And if you can’t immediately, what’s the strategy to bring more of that into your life? So treating it as an experience of information versus something to shame or get really upset about. I mean, you have to be careful not to go down the comparative spiral, because that’s no good. That’s where the comparative wolf just eats your head off. But if you’re like, okay, it’s showing me something that I want to pay attention to, pay attention and bring it back to the needs conversation. And is there anything that can be met today?
00:27:21 – Eric Zimmer
Yeah, I love that idea. My partner, Ginny, said once, talking about emotional eating and overeating, that when she thought what she wanted was a cupcake, there was only one way to get it. It’s a cupcake. What? When she realized what she wanted was not to be bored or not to be sad or some sort of comfort. There’s lots of ways to get that. Back to your point about needs are universal. There are lots of different ways to satisfy them. I like that idea of, what is this bringing up in me? And for me, sometimes there’s a phrase, mimetic desire, right? We want something because we see others want it, and we get conditioned by that over a long period of time. And so I describe this scene in my book that I’m working on of we’re in Atlanta a lot because that’s where Ginny’s family is. And driving down certain streets in Buckhead, there are enormous houses on lots of land. They’re gorgeous. And I can find myself driving down that road and starting to get the. I don’t have that. Why don’t I have that? I wish I had that. But I had this experience where at the same time, I turned my attention to what I was listening to, and it was a band called the Gaslight Anthem. And they’re sort of a semi punk rock kind of band. And I realized that the values that I get from that are completely opposite of those values, right? And I saw myself flip back and forth between these things really quickly. And so what I then kind of had to do is go, well, which of those values do I want? Or again, values. We could talk about needs, but which of those things do I want to orient my life around? The music tells me the value of connection and belonging and being yourself and creativity and expression. Right. I want to orient around that, not around having more and more money, Even though having more and more money does pull on me sometimes.
00:29:18 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, as you’re speaking, Eric, I’m like, oh, my gosh, that’s the revolution I hope for. Like, I hope to live to see a revolution where people are reclaiming the power of knowing what enough is. Because I think the more of us that talk that way, the more of us that share that way, the more of us that express. That’s enough. Right? And let me tell you what my values are, and let me express who I am, the more we can start to. To shift the cultural mainstream definition of success and wealth, right? And we were talking about this with someone else, where it’s like, we drink this kool aid that the way to feel wealthy and feel abundant is to have more money. It’s just a kool aid, right? And so part of it is like, wait a second, let me backtrack and be like, what is my definition of success? What is my definition of wealth? And then you can drive down that street and be like, you know what? That’s someone else’s awesome, beautiful house. Keep going. But I’m driving towards what mine is. And the more we know that, the more freedom we find. Because I think people forget that financial freedom or financial retirement or independence that people so desperately want is a formula of how much do you spend and how much do you need to save to support that spend? If you spend less, you actually need to save less. Right? There’s this irony to it, is that people want the freedom in life. And that’s. I think one of the beauties of being a financial planner is that I can think about the yacht, I can think about the house, and my brain goes like, oh, my gosh, what’s the property tax? That feels overwhelming. Why would I do that? You know what I mean? But that’s how I’m trained, because that’s what I do all day long with cash flow. And I’m like, not worth it, because here’s the thing, Eric. If that image of that house keeps coming and being like, you know what? I would just love to experience that one day. Great. You know the cheaper way to do it? It book an Airbnb for a weekend, right? And book that really nice house, invite 12 of your best friends, have a freaking awesome party, get it out of your system. You didn’t have to buy the house.
00:31:15 – Eric Zimmer
Right. The other thing is, it is just this perpetual myth that I think is tied back to what we talked about. It’s partially in our biology and it’s in our culture that if I had X, I would be happy. Before we talked, I was talking with Tim Shriver, who’s a member of the Kennedy family. So he’s around rich and powerful and famous people all the time. He said the thing that we all know, which is they’re not happier. A lot of them, they’re not any happier. And we know this. We look at people like Robin Williams. That’s just the one that comes to mind. Famous, rich, beloved, killed himself. Anthony Bourdain. Right. So we know on some level that this idea, if I had that, if I had that, if I had that, is a myth. And there’s a lot of reasons why it is. I mean, one of them is just habituation. You move into that big house, soon it becomes normal. Soon, it’s just what you’re used to. And it doesn’t generate the joy that it does the first week or month. And so this myth is here. And so I think what you’re pointing us towards is really some practical tools to turn in a different direction towards what enough might be.
00:32:22 – Elizabeth Husserl
Exactly. Because I think in reality is that every single human being on this planet will deal with anxiety, depression, scarcity, you know, all the human stuff. Right? Right. You know, shame, isolation. Like, it’s just part of being human. And what happens is that we mistake and scapegoat, that if we throw money at the problem, it will go away. That is the number one thing that I hear clients tell me, Eric, I wanna make so much money, I don’t have to think about it. And what they’re trying to tell me is that I wanna make so much money that I wanna feel anxious for whatever comes with being human. And so I think that’s a really important piece. I’m like, huh, now that’s interesting. Right? And one of the exercises in the book, Conversations with Money, right, is a gestalt chair exercise, or the empty chair exercise, where you literally sit down and have a conversation with money or you Have a conversation with the part of you that deals with money. And what quickly emerges is that it has nothing to do with money. It’s about your relationship, right. To scarcity or abundance or worth, or you name it. And that’s where. Where. You know, my job as a financial planner is to separate what money is and what it’s not. I’ll do all the cash flow organizations. But sometimes what’s more interesting is what’s the angst around being human that you’re feeling? Yeah, it’s really uncomfortable. I don’t wish it on you, but kind of part of being here. So let’s go there. What tools do you need to be able to not get stuck there? Right. How do we feed the wolf that has the light, that can shine light and gain kind of more clarity so you can move through it? And so I think that’s the important piece is that I think if we were to just wake up and realize money doesn’t solve the issue of being human, we would just kind of like rest into that and be like, okay, well, I can stop grasping for it. I can still be in relationship with it, but I’ll stop grasping for it and let me just deal with being human.
00:34:08 – Eric Zimmer
That’s a really kind of amazing point. And I think about this sometimes. I go back to that line you said about needs are universal, strategies are personal. Because I’ve sort of explored that from a different angle. It’s how I relate to other people. If I can, I relate to them from every human wants to have some degree of pleasure and avoid pain. It’s just kind of at the most base level. And then I say, so we all are like that. Everything up from there starts to become about strategy. And so I can say, well, I am like you. I don’t like your strategy. I think your strategy’s a wrong strategy, or I think that strategy hurts other people, or it’s not the one that I choose, or, oh, God, that’s a good strategy. But underneath I’m saying, okay, and you’re doing the same thing. You’re saying, Everybody has these 12 needs. Doesn’t matter what you do, wherever you get, if you can’t somehow arrive at a relationship with that need, an ability to more or less say, I have enough or adjust in a wise way, you will struggle. Right. Because being human is to struggle. I love that idea that money doesn’t solve our human problems.
00:35:22 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yes, exactly.
00:35:23 – Eric Zimmer
It solves some problems.
00:35:25 – Elizabeth Husserl
It does. And it very much has a place. I mean, I love my relationship with money. It often Sits on my shoulders, kind of whispers to me. But what I want to say about.
00:35:33 – Eric Zimmer
What’s it say?
00:35:34 – Elizabeth Husserl
Well, in my book. I’ll tell you about the first conversation when I was in my early 20s. Money was like, Elizabeth Husserl, you are smothering me. Back off. And I was like, oh. And partly because I had just graduated from grad school, I was trying to start a private practice. No one had taught me how to be an entrepreneur. So I was holding on too tight. I was angry at money. I’m like, oh, like, f you. Why aren’t you showing up? Where are the clients? Da, da, da. And how am I going to make it work? Like, all the. All the angst of, you know, starting a business.
00:36:02 – Eric Zimmer
Yes.
00:36:03 – Elizabeth Husserl
And money was like, Elizabeth, you hold on too tight. You’re smothering me. You’re angry because you don’t have the answers to things that you gotta go find out how to do. Like, do not blame me. And I remember that I just felt like money, you know, in a kind way, had just kind of, like, slapped me and be like, wake up. Like, take responsibility for your life. And I was like, whoa. The first thing I remember, Eric, was like, huh? I treat money as I’ve treated some of my old boyfriends with a lot of control and little grace. And I’m like, and they have told me that doesn’t work.
00:36:33 – Eric Zimmer
And so ex boyfriends for a reason.
00:36:35 – Elizabeth Husserl
Exactly. I was my younger self. Fortunately, I mean, I’ve learned still not to micromanage my husband. We have, like, safe words. So money wasn’t telling me something new about myself, which was interesting because other humans have told me that never felt good. So I was able to be like, oh, yeah, I know that doesn’t feel good. And I’m like, okay, money, so how do we have a different relationship? And money’s like, what are your questions? Get clear on. What are your questions on building a private practice. Who do you know in your life that can model or help you? And start there. Start to really get clear. What does it mean to build a private practice? Why are you so afraid for charging your fees? Da, da da, da, da, da, da. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, there’s a lot of different starting points, and I’m better utilizing my resources if I stop being angry at money. Because anger, right, is a resource that I’m, like, spending my time being angry at something that it doesn’t want to be controlled. How about I get clear on what I need help with and I start there and just something shifted Eric. And so, you know, for years I would have daily conversations with money. And sometimes I’d be like, I’m struggling. Or sometimes be like, hey, we’re doing great. And it’s just an ongoing conversation as I have with my husband. Sometimes we’re doing great and sometimes we’re not. But I’m having an ongoing conversation with money. And so it’s a very alive experience. Right. And I also let it be cyclical. Here’s the other interesting thing about humans. They like money in one direction, up. Right? They want their accounts to go up, they want their investments to go up. Even when I’m saving, helping clients save for something, like they’re going on a big trip with their family, when it comes time to bring that money and spend it, no one likes it. Which is fascinating because it’s almost like saying, I’m attached to my partner always being happy. And we know that’s not the case. Some days they’re going to wake up in a bad mood and I and give them their space. And so I think too, if we learned to be more in a cyclical relationship with money, recessions happen, depressions happen, stock markets change every single day. And if we learn just to let that cycles exist and understand where they fit in our life, then we could also just create a little bit more healthy spaciousness and not be so co dependent on how money performs. I feel like we went off tangent.
00:38:53 – Eric Zimmer
But no, I don’t think we went off tangent at all. So let’s talk about this conversation with money thing.
00:38:59 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah.
00:38:59 – Eric Zimmer
Here’s the truth of my reaction to that. It scares me.
00:39:04 – Elizabeth Husserl
Oh yeah, 100%.
00:39:06 – Eric Zimmer
A, I don’t know how to do it and B, I’m not sure I want to do it.
00:39:09 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yep. Oh my gosh. That is what everyone says. And so resistance is the first reaction. I will say that. Right? And so resistance is the first reaction. 1, 2. The second reaction often hears like, money doesn’t talk, right? And I’m like, you know, just play with it for a second. Or there’s a part of you that pays the bills. I mean, I wish it weren’t true, but it’s true, right? And so imagine the part of you that’s paying a bill online or writing a check or paying your taxes. That’s the part you’re talking to because they’re the one who’s dealing money with your life. If you feel total resistance, Eric, you know, bring it to a therapeutic container, right? Therapists know how to do this exercise or have a friend or a spouse Or a partner just watch you and be like, hey, just hold this container and then set a timer on your phone. Right? Because sometimes it feels too abstract. If it’s too like open ended and all these guidelines are in the book, but you can say, okay, let me just set a three minute timer. And what I like to tell people, Eric, don’t tell money your story. Money knows your story. It’s been in your wallet your whole life. Life. Tell money how you feel. And so sometimes I’ve had people like throw something at money and like push the computer away if I’m doing it on zoom. Or sometimes they’ll just grab it and hold on tight. Like, really, what’s the emotion you have with money? And try to give voice to why you’re feeling that and just speak it until you feel complete. And then you switch chairs. And that’s why sometimes it’s important to have someone else in the room because you’ll probably get stuck and you’re not going to want to switch chairs because that’s the hard part. And so they’ll gently no you and say, okay, time to switch chairs. You literally switch chairs and you hold your money object on your lap and you just respond and you don’t edit what comes out. And that’s the best part. I feel like it cuts through years of therapy because you are being honest with yourself and saying, this is what’s happening. And then nine out of ten times there’s relief because the truth got named. And when we name the truth, we know where to start. And then you can go back and respond. And there’s a way in which like, oh, that’s what’s at the core of the dynamic. And then we start.
00:41:39 – Eric Zimmer
It’s interesting that I’m just sort of stuck here all of a sudden. You know, Chris is editing this, right. I’ve just been sort of dumbstruck for about a minute here, which doesn’t normally happen, as you know, I just keep talking and talking.
00:41:53 – Elizabeth Husserl
Can I ask where you went? What did it touch?
00:41:55 – Eric Zimmer
I think there’s some sort of fear. Yeah, there’s some sort of fear, which is kind of what I named before. I mean, the experience was the experience that I often have when presented with something that feels overwhelming or difficult, which is. I just go blank. Yeah, it’s like all my systems just go down. And that’s kind of what happened. For a second I just went sort of like blank.
00:42:16 – Elizabeth Husserl
But can I say, Eric, how important that reflection is? Because that’s, I would say 8 out of 10 clients experience that and that’s why money feels so confusing, right? That’s a lot of times the internal experience of it is that when we get so overwhelmed with money matters, right, we have to make decisions like how does the mortgage work, how does all this, that we can, right? We start to go blank and then we push through, right? But we don’t push through from a place of integration. We push through sometimes just kind of like from a mental muscle. And then again, it comes at the expense of being able to feel the wisdom in what’s coming up.
00:42:53 – Eric Zimmer
or we don’t push through.I am better, much, much better than I used to be. But I was an avoidant. Like, avoidant. Like I don’t pay the bills because for whatever reason, the money is there, you know. Now again, I was the 24 year old homeless heroin addict. So you might imagine by like the age of 27, I hadn’t really. I still had a lot of things to figure out about anything in life, right? But money was a weird one because, you know, I would get the electricity turned off. It wasn’t because I couldn’t afford to pay the bill. It’s because I just keep it out of my mind. And I’m very good at out of sight, out of mind. And so as I’m having this conversation, I’m sort of reflecting back to, you know, again, I’ve gotten much better, but I still don’t really engage with money in the way that probably would be wise, both emotionally and financially when it comes to running the business. I do what I need to do and I’ve learned to hire people to do the things that I know I won’t do, right. Like just having a bookkeeper. Like when I started this company after my last company, I was like, I’m hiring a bookkeeper. I can’t really even afford a bookkeeper, but I’m hiring one because I know I won’t keep track of these things. I just know myself well enough now. But I always approach the money aspect of this business as a great chore that I only do kind of when I have to. It’s the end of the year and I say, all right, I gotta have some kind of financial plan for next year. We gotta have some idea. So I’m just reflecting all this in real time.
00:44:32 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah, well, and I want to say at first, I appreciate you having me on because it doesn’t sound like there’s that much joy in all of this. And so it feels like it was a stretch potentially to have this conversation.
00:44:42 – Eric Zimmer
It might be why this is the first time we’ve talked about money in any depth on this show.
00:44:48 – Elizabeth Husserl
Let me also suggest one thing too, because you’re not the first one to draw a blank, right, with this exercise. And that’s why, I mean, I feel like I have, like, five different or multiple exercises in the book, because you have to find your starting way. And what comes up when you were talking about, for example, you know, your stage of going through being a heroin addict and, you know, not being able to pay bills, not because you didn’t have the money, where my brain goes like, huh. There’s another exercise that I offer, which is like, writing your money story from the beginning. Like, what do you remember was your first money memory? And writing it out chronologically. And you can skip some ages if you don’t remember. And what I like to tell people is, like, write out as much as you can, right? When you start writing, then more memories start to come. Put it down for a week, come back to your story, Eric, and read it as if it were the story of your best friend. And from that lens, what patterns do you see? What connections do you see? If your best friend told you, hey, I blank out at times, right? I don’t find any joy in my relationship to money, and sometimes I didn’t pay bills even if I had the money. You’re like, okay, I’m coming in with that, knowing now I’m reading the story, what are the connections that I make of where that pattern and behavior is coming from? And it’s not to necessarily just get stuck in searching for the why, but it gives a little bit of entry point. Like, again, going back to your wolf’s den, which I freaking love. That story is, you know, maybe the shadow wolf is so burdened by this unknowing that it’s kind of hard even to lift the head and to see, right, or to see a possibility. And so it’s like, what I love about the money story piece is that you can start to become your own anthropologist and seek what connections? Because the reality is, one, you’re not there anymore. You’re living a very different life today. The reality, too, is that you have gotten your yourself. You and most people I talk to have gone through hardship, and they’ve gotten themselves through hardship, right? And you start to look back, you’re like, whoa, check that out. That’s where I got grit from. That’s where I got perseverance from. That’s where I got that from. And you know what the reality is? I haven’t put Those qualities towards money. Okay? But I know what those qualities are. And as I start to design my relationship to money. And again, it doesn’t have to be in spreadsheets. You design your relationship to money and the qualities you want to bring to it. Maybe this year I’m going to pick one word and I. I want to bring a little more perseverance to it or whatever your word is. And again, there’s different entry points to looking at your relationship with money that’s outside of spreadsheets. And I think there’s a lot of freedom in that.
00:47:11 – Eric Zimmer
I like to compare myself to my best friends because I have a couple of them who’ve declared bankruptcy a couple times. And it just makes me feel good about myself not naming any names here.
00:47:20 – Elizabeth Husserl
And here’s a comparison.
00:47:22 – Eric Zimmer
Oh, okay.
00:47:23 – Elizabeth Husserl
I said you’re helping your best friend, Right?
00:47:27 – Eric Zimmer
I know, I know.
00:47:29 – Elizabeth Husserl
Comparison gets us back on the yacht.
00:47:32 – Eric Zimmer
That’s right, that’s right. Let’s go back to this idea of enough, because I think it’s central to everything we’re talking about. Before we get into enough, I think it’s related. Talk to me about why you use the words abundance and scarcity trap.
00:47:48 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah, no, that’s a great, great question.
00:47:50 – Eric Zimmer
Talk to me about what that is, and then I think that will lead us into maybe you can give us some thoughts on how we start to define enough.
00:47:57 – Elizabeth Husserl
Yeah, no, that’s a great question, Eric, because I think to your point, we’re all in this conversation around scarcity, abundance. No matter how much money we have, how much we make, et cetera, it’s like part of the human experience. And so what I’ve seen over the many decades of being a financial advisor, and I also have a degree in psychology, so just tracking people in the relationship to money, I feel like people are caught between pushing scarcity away. So imagine pushing your arm out and grabbing onto more money. Like I want to call more money in while pushing scarcity away. And it’s a really awkward way to kind of like, position your body and live your life. Right? And so what happens is that we get stuck on thinking that more, more, more, more will solve scarcity. So even though abundance has a role to play in the sense of it can start to bring awareness and consciousness to a different mindset. We have to situate it within a bigger framework of meaning and fulfillment. And that’s the why, right? Like, why do we build wealth? Why do we work? Why do we spend? Like, and again, a lot of times people live their life by default and not by design, right? And so when we start to ask those questions of why we can loosen the hold hold of trying to grasp abundance and push scarcity and be like, oh, actually that question conversation may be a little bit more interesting. What is meaning and fulfillment to me? And then the abundance scarcity cycle fits within that bigger spectrum of wealth. So it’s giving people a little wider perspective so that they can get out of that cycle of pushing scarcity away by thinking the only way out of it is wanting more or getting okay.
00:49:38 – Eric Zimmer
So if the way out of scarcity is not to accumulate more, what is the way out?
00:49:43 – Elizabeth Husserl
The way out, I mean it goes back to part of our original conversation. So the power of enough, right, is the experience of embodied satiation, right? That savoring, right? That’s the power of enough. That’s how you activate your well of worthiness. And I would argue Eric, that just that alone, if you start to truly feel your sense of worthiness and your ability to do all these economic activities generate, exchange, consume, but if it comes from that place of worthiness, our relationship to all those activity changes because the reality is those activities are neutral. Consumption is a neutral act, right? We were talking about it before with eating, like every day I wake up hungry because of course it’s time for breakfast, right? I can choose what I have for breakfast. And that choice allows me to feel a certain way. And so it’s the same thing, right? I can choose what I spend my dollars on and my choice allows me to feel a certain way. And so that’s what I really encourage people to start tracking. One of my favorite techniques is to keep a satiation journal, right, for 30 days instead of writing what you’re grateful for because that’s more of a heart experience. Write down at the end of every day three things that satiated you because that’s more of a visceral body experience. And I think that’s really important, right? As we start to kind of like build new strategies for our mind, minds our bodies can support with real data and real information and you start to track what are those strategies that are working. So coming back to if the point isn’t to accumulate, right? I mean I’m the first one that my grandfather like, I wrote this book for him. He was a survivor, he was Austrian Jew, left Austria during the World War II, ended up in Colombia, South AmErica, which is why I look Latina, because my dad married my mom, but he died with holes in his socks and a lumpy mattress because he never spent on himself. He was so deprived and waiting for that third World War, which so many of our past generations, our ancestors went through persecution, war. I mean, so many different countries. That’s just one example. And so part of it, right, is my grandfather never experienced wealth. He had wealth, thankfully, that paid for my college education because he didn’t spend it. So I spent it on college, right, Which I’m grateful for. I was able to graduate without a student loan, which is huge in this country. And I feel that responsibility of being like, I can’t pass scarcity onto my daughter. There’s no need. I make enough, right? You know, I make enough that I was able to help my husband leave his W2 because he wanted to write a book too. I’m like, okay, let’s map it out. It works. So we cannot pass on scarcity to my daughter because that’s not a reality. And so where’s the software update button, right? We all want to push it. It’s not a button you push. It’s a muscle you exercise.
00:52:30 – Eric Zimmer
It’s a muscle you exercise. And unlike a software update where you push a button and updates and it’s now updated, the updating of our mental software is a little by little process again, particularly if you’re dealing with thought patterns that you’ve had for 40 years. You can change that them, but generally you change them by finding the thought you didn’t want, replacing it and doing that somewhere around 14,000 times.
00:52:58 – Elizabeth Husserl
And I think that’s a very similar approach that I have. For me, it’s like a visceral. It’s a body experience, right? Similar to thought patterns. It’s our body patterns, and it’s the little things. You change it. One moment of satiation, one moment of savoring, one moment of fulfillment at a time, and something will happen. Eric. I had someone tell me it takes nine teachers or it takes nine books. It’s not just one. You kind of have to like, stack them. And then something, an aha moment happens. And I’ll never forget the day where I’m like, I love my life. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And nothing really changed. I just like, I love my life. And then I forget. And I’m like, wait a second. I remember that feeling. How do I make my way back? And over time, I was able to come back there quicker, right? And so they do compound when you start to recognize what fulfills you. Because I’m like, oh, I can add those strategies of fulfillment. And I start to feel resentful when I can’t and it’s not that I’m resentful at anyone else. I’m like, oh, am I not? Am I prioritizing things inappropriately? Because I’m like, oh, why am I working so much? That is a negative return on my investment of quality of life.
00:54:02 – Eric Zimmer
Talk to me about this satiation journal. What are the kind of things that go in that? So I can imagine like, okay, I ate and now I feel satiated. Okay, I could feel that, savor that. But what are the others? Body wise satiation type things that you’re noticing and trying to deepen.
00:54:21 – Elizabeth Husserl
So for example, I keep that practice every day. I choose three. And so yesterday my three were one. I had also recorded another podcast. And these conversations fill me up. Like literally after a podcast, I take five minutes before jumping on work email, which is discipline. Because I’m like, what happened?
00:54:39 – Eric Zimmer
100%.
00:54:40 – Elizabeth Husserl
And I literally, literally step away, Eric. And I let myself just close my eyes and I swell. I’m like, that filled me up. And I make sure that every cell in my body knows what it feels like to have a meaningful experience where I felt connection, I felt belonging, I felt connected to my purpose and I participated. Those are four human needs. Satisfying, right? That’s a synergistic satisfier. So I take the time to not forget why that was important to me, right? So that made my list yesterday. I’m sure yours will make my list tonight. You know, yesterday I have a teenager who sometimes doesn’t give us the time of day and I happened to have breakfast with her yesterday. I’m like, again, I could go on my work email because guess what, there’s always work emails to respond to. I’m like, she’s in a chatty mood. I’m gonna take 10 extra minutes just to see how she’s doing, ask her about finals. And I walked away feeling, huh. We had a moment of connection and I saw it and I carved out time to protect it. And then I took a moment to satiate like connection with my daughter. It was really important. And then lastly, I was finished my recording. I was down in la and I’m like, ugh, do I want to wait two hours in the airport? I don’t, right? I’m like, go to Southwest calendar. Can you help me get on an earlier plane? I was met with the most cheerful person and we had the sweetest conversation and I walked away. I was like, wow, that’s what kindness feels like, right? And again, I was in TSA line, just kind of waiting, closed my eyes, I’M like, let, let me just tell my body that’s what kindness feels like so that I know how to be that way with someone else. So do you see how it can be very simple things. And I had the practice of the wealth mandala, which, by the way, I would encourage people just like, go on the website, print it out, put it on your bathroom mirror. It doesn’t have to be public. I’ve trained myself to know what needs I’m satisfying, and then I take the time to connect it and I just take the moment to let that compound. And then I go about my day feeling more full, right? I eat less garbage because I’m actually more full, right. I spend less time scrolling on social media. I just feel different.
00:56:43 – Eric Zimmer
Thank you for sharing all that. That’s really.
00:56:45 – Elizabeth Husserl
Was that helpful?
00:56:46 – Eric Zimmer
It was completely helpful. And as I said when we talked about this earlier, I don’t think this is. Despite having heard about this idea a long time ago, I remember early on interviewing Rick Hanson and talking about it like probably nine years ago. All those things that you described are the sort of things that I also appreciate but don’t reinforce exactly. Like, my son came over last night, he’s a 26 year old and I don’t get to see him as often as I would like. And it was a lovely moment, but I didn’t, at the end of it, spend a minute and try and internalize that. I too, when I get off a podcast conversation like this, feeling, okay, I love what I do, but I’m just on email or I’m like, okay, preparing for the next. A moment of kindness with a stranger is another one. Like, I genuinely appreciate those and I notice them. So I think for me, what I’ve learned to do is, which is an initial step at least, is to notice those things. But I think I could do better on pausing like you’re doing and just giving them a couple moments to settle in.
00:57:54 – Elizabeth Husserl
And there’s two kind of takeaways or nuggets from that. Is that one, what’s going through my mind, Eric, is that these are economic acts, right? We’re just not tracking how we’re feeling fulfilled just for the sake of it. These are economic acts. And two, they will contribute to an experience of wealth and a deeper relationship to wealth and money. And there’s a real reason to do it, right? It’s not just to feel good. It will help transform our experience personally and collectively to wealth, money and resources.
00:58:31 – Eric Zimmer
Well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post show conversation because I want to talk more about a phrase you just used that I’ve forgotten. What was it when you said that something satisfies multiple needs? Needs?
00:58:46 – Elizabeth Husserl
It’s a synergistic satisfier.
00:58:48 – Eric Zimmer
Bingo. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk a little bit more about defining enough for ourselves and we’re going to talk about Hungry Ghosts. So listeners, if you’d like access to the post show conversation, which is going to be wonderful, you can get access to ad free episodes, you can be part of our community monthly meetings, all that stuff, you can go to oneyoufeed.net join and we would love to have you if the community Elizabeth thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure and a really great conversation.00:59:16 – Elizabeth Husserl
Thank you Eric. I have loved being here.
