Money trouble is very common in the human experience, but even more so is worrying about money trouble. Many of us have had thoughts like these about money, and they cause stress, anxiety, resentment, and/or lack of freedom: “I need more money”, “those wealthy people have all the fun”, “I never want to be poor again”, “money causes tension in relationships”, “money is evil”, “I won’t have enough money for retirement (my wedding, my family, my future, my spouse), “they ripped me off”, “they sold their soul for money”.
When our relationship with money is unfriendly, and we feel distrust and anger about how money intersects with our lives–no matter how much or how little we have–we suffer. Our attitudes and perceptions of money, often stemming from childhood experiences and conditioning around money or decisions about money we made in the past, run our lives every single time we encounter money in the present.
And not only does money appear to be an enemy, uninterested in us, neglectful, even a monster that causes hurt for people….we feel ashamed to be so concerned with it, embarrassed to want more of it, and secretly believing we shouldn’t care about it so much. Or at all.
If we don’t investigate our money stories we feel stuck in stressful ways of living with money. We feel trapped in jobs we hate. We feel confused about how to get more money. We feel guilty about the money we have. We feel nervous about other people and what they want to do with our (or their) money. We love money, and we hate money. It’s very painful.
The Work is a way of clearly identifying the beliefs and stories we have about conditions, people, situations we’ve encountered, and life itself…and taking these beliefs through a self-inquiry process. Once we identify a stressful concept, we ask four questions:
Then, we turn around the thought several ways; to the self, to the other, to the opposite.
For example, the concept “I need more money”, after walking it through the four questions, we turn around in the following three ways: “I need more of myself” and “money needs more of me” and “I don’t need more money”.
These become profound to consider, and our original stressful stories break apart, one by one. As this happens and the old stories dissolve, we find new possibilities coming to mind, new actions to take, new connections and synchronicities occur we hadn’t seen before. Money, or anything that happens, can become a fun and friendly companion. Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted?
Money touches our lives nearly every day, from quick moments of exchange at the grocery store, to receiving our monthly housing bill. Money flows in and out of our lives. Doing The Work on money is a way to gain clarity in all these different areas of life, and often around life itself. Learning how to identify your stressful thoughts about money, and question them, can be a powerful path of self-inquiry.
The cool thing about questioning stressful thoughts and beliefs about money is that it accomplishes two things simultaneously.
How you see money depends on the beliefs you inherited from your family, the conclusions you came to through your own experience, the beliefs and taboos of society. Many times, money is not something we talk about. We are often alone in dealing with money, with very few tools or understanding of how to manage it.
In this course, we will dive directly into the world of money and our thinking about it. You will find out that you are not alone in dealing with this topic and that shame, fear, and frustration about money are distributed equally among all of us. You’ll also learn how easily this experience of stress can be shifted with a little self-inquiry.
You will have access to 12 hours of video recording with eight participants sharing their honest experiences, discussing, and doing The Work on money. The topics covered and the exercises we provide will give you many options for exploring your experience of money and doing The Work on it.
First, you will meet 8 unique participants from varied cultures, countries, and experiences.
Our participants were honest and willing to share their deepest fears and most painful experiences about money, relating, and life. While we’re aware we can never know the full extent and story of anyone’s suffering, the following summaries offer the situations people bring to this program. You may find one of them is similar to yours, and track how the participant holding this story about money grows in insight during the course of the workshop:
It does not fully matter what the ‘story’ is behind someone’s life. We discover there are no new thoughts. And, how dear to notice we are not alone, we understand the conditioning of all the people and stories rising here. It is so good to come together in this process of inquiring and seeing our lives in new, fresh ways when it comes to money.
I took the course Living With Money with Todd and Grace. I have signed up for so many self-paced tutorial types of programs and never finished them, but I DID finish this one because it was sooooo good. I did the whole thing. It’s changed my relationship with money. And, I then got to go to the School for The Work in L.A. and I feel like I want more. This is a game-changer for me.
I really enjoyed this course. I felt a bit part of the sessions even knowing that it was recorded. The fears and stories that the participants were sharing were mine also. I felt a lot of connection. I thank these kind participants for being so open. I love how flexible the course is. We can tailor it to our needs. I did a session per day and that suited me really well. Had time to digest like that and do the Work on my particular situations. I was often touched and it’s wonderful to listen to the realizations people find. Lots of wisdom. Thanks to all the participants and as always I love Grace and Todd deep and caring way to transmit how to do the Work.
The retreat was incredible for many reasons but most of all because:
– I loved the fact that the both of you shared your own experiences. I could relate to them and they helped me see my situation in a more loving way. With Todd’s situation, which is the same like mine, I felt “normal”. I felt that I can be ok with where I am at. I felt that I could actually cherish it and thus lovingly accept it. It helped me talk to my partner more openly and see (for the first time) his point of view. Since then, I have been able to talk and ask more questions with regards to how he feels about our situation; and this I was bale to do with curiosity and openness, which is an incredibly freeing experience. On top of that, it’s become easier to come with new and inventive ways of finding solutions to the problematic issues in our relationship.
– I loved the fact that you made us work on a diverse variety of “money problems” for it helped me see my blind spots, I realised that I was bothered by them but I hadn’t been able to spot them as clearly I had on the retreat.
Thank you so much for the wonderful weekend of enquiry, it was really interesting and I’m sure it will stay with me and it will keep working in me in depth…
The Saturday session past midnight was really tough, but it was much easier on the Sunday night, so I do not regret at all!
I had one big insight by the end of that really stays with me.
As Todd mentioned that we often use money as a buffer to keep certain things at bay, I realised that I use money to keep people at bay. With money I can buy for myself what I all “space”, “privacy”, “quietness” but what it is actually, is distance from others.
Private transportation, more spacious place to live, things I can buy instead of borrow, help I can buy instead of asking around…etc
The funny thing being, that like most people I’m very afraid of feeling lonely and abandoned…
So my biggest fear is to be without money, and thus feeling lonely and abandoned… But having money is one of the main thing that keeps me separate from other people, leaving me fewer chances to connect and enjoy other people company…
To realise that really made me laugh and helped me to relax a lot around that fear of having no money…
Work in progress!
It felt so good to be immersed in inquiry for that many hours and not multi tasking, knowing that the other 7 participants were also in agreement of that level of being present also made it special for me, I felt very united in enjoying the inquiry together.
I felt like you were both in self inquiry “with us” as participants at times and that was very nice for me. It still felt like you were “leading us” but showing that you’re enjoying inquiry too. My biggest take away put into words with the feedback from Todd was that I don’t need to justify or quantify everything/anything in order to spend my time on it especially if I feel like it is something that I do simply because I like it. So simple, but the most profound comforting knowing landed in me … I’ve heard people express these as God breezes before… and all of the sudden this clarity of how beautiful and nourishing it feels for me to slow down all the thinking and fully settle into self inquiry is reason enough to “spend the time”. I am worth spending time with and I am worth letting the people closest to me know that this is a very important part of my time budget (daily) and not locked into an emergency time fund only and not tied into a retirement plan. Yay!
Yes, you move through this course at your own pace. All of the course materials will be available as soon as you purchase the course and you can come back again and again to review them.
We have no plans to limit your access. As long we are offering the course, you will continue to have access to it. This allows you to work slowly through the material and to come back after years to review the course.
The course is $197 and you will have access to the entire course immediately.
Yes, you have the option to pay in one payment of $197 or three payments of $67 on the check-out page.
Yes, if finances make it impossible for you to participate, please contact us and request a scholarship application.
No, this is a do-it-yourself course which simulates being in a live course. Your participation will be through watching the videos of the course sessions and doing the exercises on your own.
You can send Grace or Todd an email at any time with specific questions and we’ll be happy to support you.
The Work 101 is an intensive, interactive course with trainers and live sessions. This course is self-directed, allowing you to go as deep or as shallow as you like with the materials. In addition to taking this course, I encourage you to take The Work 101 and join our Inquiry Circle community, making The Work of Byron Katie an ongoing practice in your life.
No, you don’t need to know anything about The Work of Byron Katie to take the course. However, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the four questions and turnarounds of The Work before you begin. You can do this by reading “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie or watching videos or listening to audios of Byron Katie doing The Work with people–free on youtube or at www.thework.com.
No, this course is focused on stressful thinking about money and how to move through it. We identify and question the thoughts that hold us back with money. By doing this, we open the doors to creativity and freedom in earning, spending, giving, borrowing, investing, asking for, and receiving money. We do share a few tools for dealing with money as a bonus, but money tools are not the focus of this course.
Yes, each module will have exercises for identifying stressful thoughts and will invite you to inquire into those thoughts with the four questions and turnarounds of The Work.
Yes, this course is for all levels of experience with The Work of Byron Katie. If you are new to The Work, you will find everything you need to do it. Simply follow the directions at each step. If you have questions, reach out to us at any time, or bring your question to an Open Session.
Of course, if you find that this course does not meet your expectations in any way, just let us know and we’ll be happy to give you your money back.
You will find that this course is easy to do on your own. Think of it as a TV series, if you like. Binge-watch the whole series in a day, or watch each section whenever you have the time. Our hope is that you will find the information compelling enough to keep coming back to the course no matter how you organize yourself.
In addition to the six modules of Living With Money course, you will also get these bonus modules:
We’d love to have you with us. Todd and I have both found astonishing differences in our circumstances and relationships with money after we questioned our old out-dated, fearful thinking about money. We are still learning and growing with money, still making discoveries about money and life.
One thing we can both say is that doing The Work on money has allowed us to build appreciation for money, reconcile with money, and most of all, enjoy money. Money, instead of a dangerous neighbor, has become a true friend. Money has become a loving truth-bringing energy to our lives that shows up to dance with us in just the right time, in just the right amount. And when and if we feel the heat of worry, disappointment or suffering, we know what to do: The Work.
We are not meant to live stressed lives. Learn how to address the root cause of your stress and find your freedom again. Otherwise, stress will keep accumulating. Learn how to break the cycle of stress here.
