Spencer Sherman joins Marc to talk about money, why so many people struggle with it, and why it’s often the root of fear and anxiety, and a feeling that there is never enough, regardless of whether we make little or have great abundance. They discuss the power of “beginner’s mind” or not knowing, and letting go of our fixed beliefs about money. Spencer leads us in a guided meditation on letting go of fear and cultivating a felt sense of “enoughness.”

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Spencer Sherman has been named one of the nation’s top wealth advisors, He is the founder of Abacus Wealth Partners. a sustainable financial advisory firm, with more than $4 billion under management. He has an MBA from Wharton and is the author of The Cure for Money Madness.

 
Guest Disclaimer: All materials are for educational purposes only and are not to be considered investment, financial, or tax advice, nor do any of the host’s or guest’s opinions represent the opinion of Abacus. Please consult with a financial advisor or CPA before making financial decisions. Should you wish to find a financial advisor that fits your situation, we welcome you to schedule a free introductory 15 minute phone call.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones : Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. My guest today is Spencer Sherman, named one of the nation’s top wealth advisors. He’s the founder of Abacus Wealth Partners, a sustainable financial advisory firm with more than $4 billion under management. Spencer has an MBA degree from Wharton and is the author of The Cure for Money Madness.

In today’s episode, we talk about money, mindful money, and how much so many people struggle with it. It causes fear and anxiety, and a feeling that there’s never enough, whether we make a little or whether we have great abundance. We talked about the power of beginner’s mind, of not knowing and letting go of our fixed beliefs about money. Spencer leads us in a short guided meditation, on letting go of fear and cultivating a quality of enough and enoughness. I hope you enjoy and appreciate today’s episode. Thank you. 

Hi, this is Marc Lesser of Zen Bones : Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times, and I am very happy to be here today with Spencer Sherman. Spencer, good morning. 

[00:01:45] Spencer Sherman: Good morning, Marc. Great to see you. 

[00:01:47] Marc: Great to see you too. I think this topic of money and mindfulness is one that is super important and really difficult, I know for me and for a lot of people. I think I want to just jump in, and share this story that I told you earlier about when the historical Buddha is walking with a group of students and a farmer comes running along, distraught farmer, and says, ”Have you seen my cow/ Have you seen my cow? This is my livelihood. Have you seen it?” The Buddha and his followers, they try to be helpful, but they say sorry, and the farmer goes running past. The Buddha turns to his students and says, ”Aren’t we the luckiest people on earth? We don’t own anything.” 

I think this points right to the rub here. The challenge in that is that we are mindfulness, meditation practitioners or not. We live in the world of money. We live in the world of ownership. I think that story to me points right to the heart of, how do we practice mindfulness? How do we have a healthy, supportive relationship with money and not one that’s filled with a sense of anxiety and fear and lack? I know this is something that you’ve given an awful lot of thought to, and that you’ve written a book about it, The Cure for Money Madness, and you’ve started a company. Jumping right in, how might we practice in a more healthy way with money? 

[00:03:42] Spencer: First, I would say practice. My initial thought is that we don’t bring practice to the domain of money, and yet it affords us many opportunities. So often, we are either spending or saving or investing or giving, or we’re thinking about money, or we’re having a conversation that includes money in it. Yet, we leave out our practice. Somehow, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore all the cultivated practice that we’ve developed over time, that to shine that light of awareness on the domain that is so dark, complicated, confusing, filled with fixed beliefs. Which we know fixed beliefs are not a healthy thing in any area of our lives, but especially with money, we have these very strong beliefs and fear, and anxiety around it. I say, to start a practice of every moment when a money thought comes up, when a money decision is arising, to intentionally bring your awareness practice to be aware of what’s happening in the body, what’s happening in the mind, to start to notice the patterns of beliefs that are driving us to certain behaviors. That’s where a tremendous amount of learning and transformation can happen. I think, unfortunately, we have sectioned off money from our lives as it’s this other domain. I say, money’s crying out for attention. Actually to me, it’s an incredibly– Money has the potential for offering us transformation. It doesn’t just have the potential of offering us food and shelter and all that, but it can be one of our greatest teachers because it makes us uncomfortable. What if we start to see this opportunity, that the discomfort is a doorway to personal growth, spiritual growth? Often, it can be a doorway to actually maybe even having more ease with our financial life or even more flow of money in our lives. That’s the result of doing this inner work, which I feel has been so omitted from our lives. 

[00:06:25] Marc: I want you to say more about how to practice with that, the sense I think of not enough. I was remembering, NPR did a story some time ago that still stands out for me, where they interviewed people about their relationship with money. I distinctly remember this woman being interviewed who lived in New York City. She was saying how she could barely pay the bills, and she was always fretting about money. Then they said, ”And by the way, what do you do?” She says, ”Oh, my husband is a banker and our yearly income is $500,000 a year, plus his bonus.” Of course, me and everyone was like, ”Wow, isn’t that amazing?” It doesn’t seem to matter how much money, it’s easy to harbor this sense of lack. 

[00:07:26] Spencer: Yes, yes. The affliction of anxiety, worry, the threat of our survival is there. I’ve seen it there at almost every income and wealth level. In fact, sometimes there can be an inverse relationship that as our money increases, instead of our anxiety going down, or happiness or our ease increasing, we can become less at ease with money as we gain more money. Some of that depends on how you come into money, but I’ve seen it especially true for people that have sudden money events, like lottery winners. I’ve seen it even for people that have that build-up money slowly over time, their lives become more encumbered. Going back to that story, there’s more ownership. There’s more attention going outward, less attention going into this inner landscape, which we know is the source of our happiness, is to be with what’s right here. That is right here enough. When we start accumulating everything, even the most dedicated practitioner is taking their eyes off the prize [chuckles]. It’s going out there instead of right here. I think the Buddhist teachings really point to this middle way, finding this ease with who we are and what we have, and what we’re doing in this moment. Not continually grasping for things to be different, which is the American way. I’m saying that especially with money, it’s time for us to explore another possibility, which I think could bring us a lot more freedom with our finances. 

[00:09:25] Marc: Spencer, I think it might be useful if you would just take a few minutes to tell your story. How you’re not just some random guy. You’re this random guy who started a company, which is now an enormously successful and influential company that manages large amounts of money in socially responsible ways. What are some of the highlights? How did you enter this space? 

[00:09:55] Spencer: Well, I had the belief in my early 20s that. money would deliver, that it would bring me freedom. It was very much fitting with the culture I was raised in, that if only I could acquire a home of my own because we grew up in a small apartment, if only I could have the sense of financial abundance, that life would be easy, that there’d be the sense of happiness and ease because everything is available. I had this belief that money was more important than anything because that money could deliver everything that one wanted in life, that I wanted in my life. 

I was working for a large investment firm on Independence Square in Philadelphia, and a fire broke out. I have this panic attack, as they were still putting out the fire. It was unsafe to go into the building. I panicked and felt that the most important thing in my life was still in that building. I somehow convinced the fire marshal to let me in, to grab what I thought was so important. I walked through these darkened hallways with murky water, horrific smells, it was the worst day of my life in many ways. 

I come out of that building and I looked down, and what I thought was so important was now my worthless desktop computer that contained all my client files. Everything that was about my identity, that was about earning money. Of course, all of that stuff was backed up, but in that moment of panic, I felt like I had to rescue my life. Even though I was in a sense, sacrificing my life for getting this computer. It was a huge wake-up. It actually was the lightning rod, Marc, that led me onto a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I knew I had to do something significant because I was pretty upside down in that moment. 

I just realized that my body was shaking from the terror of what I put myself through, how dangerous it was. There was asbestos, electrocution, all kinds of risks, to retrieve that worthless computer. That was one of my entry points into this work. This was after business school. The silent retreat put the incredible antidote, because I’m on retreat, and I have nothing. I have no material possessions, very simple food, a very simple room and I’m sensing this ease and peace and abundance that I never felt in my life before. That was in my 20s. That’s what really propelled me forward, it’s like, “How is this possible that in the space of emptiness, I’m feeling this fullness?” 

That’s like, I like this path. This is a really interesting [chuckles] path out of suffering, out of this idea that the more stuff I own, the more attachments I have to the world, the happier I’ll be, and discovering on a visceral level that the opposite is true. 

[00:13:28] Marc: How did you go from there to launching and growing Abacus? 

[00:13:33] Spencer: Well, I really had this passion around helping others discover a new way of being with money, that I felt that money was such a trap door for suffering. I wanted to help people realize that they are ready enough, that they might already have enough, that they do enough. That this striving for more is just a cultural phenomenon, that there’s no basis for going for more and more. There’s been no study that shows us that extra efforting for more or the gaining of more entanglements of ownership actually brings us what we’re seeking. 

I felt compelled to go into this dark space that had caused so much suffering for me, as well as my family. Money was a huge source of pain in my family and my father and his sister completely separated over a money issue, inability to speak about this taboo topic. 

[00:14:50] Marc: When did Abacus start and how’s it going? 

[00:14:54] Spencer: I started the first version of Abacus way back in 1988 and it was built with this idea, this “don’t know mind is beginner’s mind”. See a lot of the ideas that I was learning from my meditation retreats from Buddhist practice, seem to flow so well into financial practice. This idea that what this Zen teacher in Rhode Island knows [unintelligible 00:15:24] was his name, the Rhode Island Zen Center. I met him in Boston and he kept saying, “Don’t know,” to questions. 

When you look at finances, and you look at some of the Nobel Prize-winning economist on what they recommend, they say, basically, to go in with a don’t know mind. That if you don’t know, you would lead you to invest in everything, to spread your money out, to not take these enormous risks by buying. Putting all your money, like in Tesla stock, or Amazon, which both went down 50% or more last year, that this not knowing is a very powerful place to be in life. It’s actually a place of wisdom to admit you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That was one of the premises of Abacus. 

Then this idea that instead of promising clients, that once you get to this higher level of wealth. It’s interesting, the financial advisor profession because there’s always a higher number, that then you’ll reach this exalted state of wellness. Instead of that, to be advising clients that, “You’re already there.” To find a way to show that their plan can work. Just as you are today was one of my intentions with the company, to be more present focus rather than future focus and to focus on this possibility that enough exists right now. My belief is it’s only possible to sense enoughness in this moment, that it doesn’t exist in the future because if we tell ourselves, “I’ll have enough when I retire when my kids become independent,” or whatever, we’re training the mind to be okay in the future. 

A mind trained for the future will still be resting in the future, will never arrive in this present moment. To me, there’s like, if not now, when? Now is the time as we’re speaking, to feel into the possibility of enoughness, of sufficiency. 

[00:17:41] Marc: This is I think the rub, it’s easy with money especially to feel comparative mind. No matter how much you have, there’s always people that have more so there’s that trap. There’s many traps. 

[00:18:00] Spencer: Each of these traps, I’ll just say Marc, give us an opportunity for practice. That’s what’s so amazing about this field of money is that instead of when you notice your neighbor’s house, or you’ll notice your neighbors meditation practice getting better than yours, or there’s the envy of anything, but especially comes up around material possessions. Look at the car, they’re driving the house they have if only we have designed our house the way they did, or that’s the lot I’m going to buy my next lifetime, that we have all these incredible practices like the Mudita practice with sympathetic joy practice, which can be so penetrating, so powerful to dissolve that comparison mind. 

[00:18:47] Marc: I, actually, last night began reading The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté. I think money really taps into something about normal or have to or need to and it taps into our anxieties and our fears. I think I appreciate that you’re saying it is great terrain for practice, it’s really great terrain for practice. I wonder how? How to practice with this sense of enoughness? How do you find a sense of equanimity right in the midst of being uncomfortable about money? 

It’s interesting too, the studies saying that after a certain level, once you do have enough, having more doesn’t bring any more happiness. Although, I recently think that some new studies are contradicting that, saying that actually that levels may be higher than what we thought. It’s interesting, a lot of contradictory information about what really is enough. What if you’re not there and you’re still a young person and you’re still building one’s career and you can’t afford a home. Homeownership has gotten harder. I also think of the madness of our tax laws and how it makes so much more difficult for people to be able to afford homes. 

I was thinking of Winners Take All, which I imagine you’ve read that book where he describes the financial systems as a crime scene, which has only exacerbated I think our anxiety and deep feelings, struggles around money. 

[00:21:04] Spencer: You said a lot there, but let me see if I can respond to some of the things you said about. The studies on enough. What they discovered when I’ve read those studies is that when you ask people in the moment, how’s your life, how happy are you? They’re not seeing differences. Once people get beyond and it’s a number that varies, but it might be 60,000 to 100,000 of income, depends on geography, family size, many, many factors. They’re not seeing a correlation beyond those numbers when you ask people in the moment. When you ask people to give an assessment of their whole life, a narration of their lives, they tend to say, “I’m happier today than when I’d less money.” It depends on what you trust. I trust more in-the-moment responses, “How are you feeling now on a scale of 1 to 10.” 

There is some debate, but I think we know from anything in life that you get diminishing returns as you get more and more of anything. Then we come back to the story you shared about when you have so much around you, so much ownership, what does that do to your state of being and wellness and your equanimity? I would say that, yes, I feel that for many people, they will benefit tremendously from increasing their income to get to a place where they have enough for basic food and shelter, et cetera. 

I think in some ways, one could make an argument that Scandinavian countries or some other countries have a certain built-in floor because they want the best of everyone. When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if we’re stressed about our next meal, we’re not in our creative best brain place. I think that there’s wisdom to figuring out how do I increase my income if I don’t have the basics. 

It can vary. I know people who live on, well less, like live on $20,000, $30,000 a year, and have a very robust life. Then the opposite, like the example you shared of people who are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars a year and still feel like it’s not enough. It depends, where’s your compass pointed. Are you comparing yourself to another or are you looking at your own life and your moment-to-moment wellness? 

Is that house or whatever you’re fantasizing about actually going to deliver what you think it’s going to deliver? Having said that, yes, there are many issues with the housing system and many people have written about that. I’ve written about that. More and more articles are coming out, supporting some of the things that I’ve shared for years that to me, there’s not [unintelligible 00:24:15] home ownership, and many people might be better off renting. 

It can be a slippery slope at times depending on where you are. For many people, there’s a freedom in not having [unintelligible 00:24:29] story, this ownership, the risk of something going wrong, the timing of getting in and out of that house. All of that could complicate one’s life and one’s finances. What I say is that, is to find this way of meeting yourself where you are in this moment and to practice letting go of the thought that if only I had an extra X dollars, I’d be okay or I’d be happier. 

That’s a great place to practice. I think what we discover and there’s many stories, I don’t know if you know the fisherman story that we come back to– like we reach out, we reach out, we reach out but actually, our happiness is right here, our wellness is right here. I want to say that some of us actually can use some more dollars or food or housing to get to that basic level of sufficiency. 

I also want to say, Marc, that there’s nothing wrong or shameful about wanting more money in one’s life. It’s the grip. It’s how attached are we to that. Money can give us more options in our lives. It can allow one to say, devote more of their lives to sitting on a cushion if that’s what one wants. Although I think that all those practices are available to us in our work lives, as you’ve spoken about. Having intention to have more money, I think is great. Naming the steps that you’re going to take to bring more money into your life, wonderful. Then let go of the result, let go of the idea or really take in the possibility that nothing really will shift necessarily internally. That you’ll have this more money, you’ll have more options, but that it’s not going to bring you this abundance of inner wellness and joy that it’s already here. It’s already right here. \ 

I think that to me is what the Buddha talked about. That there’s nothing wrong with going for something in life. It’s the attachment to it that gets us in trouble, that causes us the suffering. I think we get so easily caught around money because the culture is so strong. There’s so much noise current telling us that this will happen once we reach that level. 

[00:27:11] Marc: I’m hearing you describe the practice or maybe the aspiration of becoming an emotional Jedi when it comes to money. Part of that I think is like in anything that we’re trying to accomplish, whether we’re growing a business, growing a family, building a product, developing ourselves, it’s interesting to see the gaps, the gaps between here’s where I am now and here’s where I’m wanting to be. In terms of again, whether it’s developing how I work with conflict or growing my company, there’s always some sense of gaps and some discomfort with those gaps. I think so much of the practice that I hear you describing is not getting caught by those gaps and finding. How do you find a sense of enoughness and even joy and appreciation with what is, while you work toward shift? Earning more money or coming to grips with, “Oh, maybe this is enough, and what’s underneath my feeling of not enoughness or what happens to me? Why does comparative mind come up?” That’s something that I say to myself like, “Oh, there’s my comparative mind thing happening. Isn’t that interesting? I’m comparing myself. What’s that about?” Somehow, naming the discomfort and naming the gaps. 

[00:29:02] Spencer: Yes. We can come back to that comparing mind. I also want to say that the irony of taking on these enough practices, this enough mindset. [unintelligible 00:29:16] if you will way of living, is that ironically, we often end up with more. I’ve seen this happen with many clients, students is that you walk into the job interview and you’re at ease. You’re not desperate for the job. You’re more likely to get hired. 

I think that metaphor, you can stretch that out to almost anything when we’re in that zone. Like I once was listening to Michael Jordan speak about basketball and he’s not thinking about winning the game. He’s very much in the moment of how his hand is moving when he’s making that shot. It’s not on the end prize. That’s the result of many, many moments of presence, of sufficiency, of enoughness, of not striving. He’s absolutely relaxed and having fun. It’s like if we can bring that joy, that ease into each of our moments and recognize that for many of us, there is this enoughness– and enoughness takes many forms. There’s enough of money, but there’s enough of resources, intelligence, wisdom, sense of humor, perspective, health, friends, time. We actually have, in some ways, more than enough or more than we might imagine right here. 

[00:30:46] Marc: This might be a good time to shift a little bit towards some practice if you would be interested to leading some mindfulness practice in helping us to make that shift toward an enoughness. 

[00:31:07] Spencer: The context for this is that very few of us, especially in the West, think that enough is possible at any amount of wealth, that more is always better. There’s the famous interview with the journalist and John D Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire. “How much is enough?” The journalist asked John D Rockefeller and his answer was, “Just a little bit more is enough.” That, I think speaks to the culture, that it’s always about more. As soon as we get– I’m actually going back to when I was like 15 or 16 and learning to drive. You get used to a certain speed and you want to go faster. It’s not enough, that speed anymore. 

This is a practice that invites us to play in the sandbox and jump in and try something on, even if it sounds absurd, and let’s see what happens. Let’s play a little bit. I invite you to either close your eyes or keep them slightly open with a downward gaze and come into a relaxed, open presence, bringing awareness to the back of the body, sensing the sensations, the back of the head, the back of the neck, back of the spine, and down the legs, and up the front of the body. Being aware of the belly, moving with each breath, aware of the heart beating, aware of any tension in the face. Maybe gently inviting the facial muscles to soften the muscles behind the eyes to relax and sensing as you’re sitting here in this upright but not uptight posture. 

As the breath is flowing naturally on its own, coming aware of this presence, feeling your feet sinking into the earth, top of the head rising to the sky. Aware of this presence, this fullness, this sufficiency of this energetic presence that you bring to yourself and all others. 

[pause 00:34:25] 

This relaxed, vibrant presence. [silence] Taking on the possibility that you have enough presence, that you have enough intelligence, enough sense of humor, enough resources, enough house. Just trying that on, that in a world where no one thinks they have enough, and the mind is full of comparison. Experimenting with the possibility that you have enough, enough friends, enough health, enough breath, enough money, enough time. That in this moment, you have enough. Sensing the enoughness of your presence in this moment of all that you bring, all that you have. 

Then sensing the possibility that you do enough, you do enough at work, you do enough at home, that the voices might be saying, “Oh, you could just do a little more,” but in this moment, playing with the possibility that you actually do enough. 

[pause 00:37:19] 

Then playing with the possibility that you are enough, just as you are, even if none of your New Year’s resolutions come to be. That with whatever’s arising, you are enough. Sensing that potential in this moment, this enoughness. You have, you do, and you are enough. From this place, you might ask yourself, how you might show up with your finances, with work, with your family or friends. Take this, this mindset of enoughness with you. Then as you’re ready, you can open your eyes if they’ve been closed and just staying with yourself. Stay connected to that fullness, that presence that we’ve cultivated of ease, of enough. 

[00:39:20] Marc: Thank you, Spencer. May you and all of us have enough, be enough. 

[00:39:28] Spencer: Yes. My belief, Marc, is that it would be a very different world if we opened up to this idea of enough, that it’s possible, very possible by any measure, for all of us to have enough. That there’s just this great inequality that we’re experiencing, that’s very divisive. These principles of enough, I think, could really bring so much wellness, both to us personally and collectively. 

[00:40:05] Marc: Well, thank you. Thank you for the good work that you do in the world. Thanks. Really appreciate your time and your presence. 

[00:40:15] Spencer: Thank you, Marc. 

[00:40:21] Spencer 2: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and help change the world. Thank you for listening. 

[00:40:45] [END OF AUDIO]