Money Coaching

MONEY COACHING

“Not everyone is ready to confront their addiction to not-enoughness.” - Douglas Tsoi

What if you were able to see money with clear eyes? Examining our relationship with money has a wonderful way of revealing hidden parts of ourselves. The internalized money beliefs that we learned as children are largely unconscious, unexamined, and partially true, and exert enormous influence on how we live our lives. We spend time on the work/spend cycle alleviating our sense of unworthiness and building our facades, and somehow think of it as “success.” But the most invisible form of a wasted life is doing a good job at unimportant tasks.

Carl Jung wrote that the first half of life is spent building an image: a sense of identity, importance, and security. What Freud called the ego self wants to build a life of achievement, status, and safety — “I am what I have and what others think of me.” But at some point, the things good and necessary in the first half of life are inevitably not enough.

One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —Carl Jung

Understanding our beliefs about money help us see and interrogate what we were told “the Good Life” is. By using money with what the Buddhists call “skillful means,” you can go past the superficiality of modern culture and live more sufficiently, creatively, and graciously.

People’s problems with money often mask a deeper problem, a lack of meaning and direction in life. As a Quaker and Franciscan spiritual director, I can help you find greater peace, integrity, and gratitude in your financial life. By examining your relationship with money, you examine your relationship with the world.

Any good spirituality helps you fall in love with your place in the world. And requires something of you too. Where does your money fit into that?

financial-spiritual coaching can INCLUDE:

  • Facing common financial-spiritual issues such as:

  • Clarifying and working toward your goals and desired outcomes— personal, relational, or professional— over the next six months. What is it that you really want? What is your deepest desire? And where does money fit into that?

  • Discovering how personal values like voluntary simplicity, gratitude, and integrity work to build the life you want.

  • Concrete look-at-the-books understanding of your financial situation. Know your numbers, but don’t know what they mean? We can dig into the details of your finances to see what’s happening and what could be changed.

  • One-on-one sessions on Zoom with me. We may meet weekly, or bi-monthly, as you wish.

  • Unlimited email support between sessions for the duration of the program

In financial coaching with Douglas, I surfaced a ton of insights that gave me the clarity I needed to make some important decisions in my business and personal life. It's both about the numbers and what they mean but also on a deeper level, what you want for your life. It helped me get seriously unstuck when I was feeling overwhelmed. It was insightful, fun, and catalyzing! Will definitely reach out again. - Tania Anaisse, Beytna Design

“Douglas Tsoi is one of my favorite spiritual thinkers and wise guides. I highly recommend him as a spiritual director for those of you looking for some non-denominational spiritual guidance. He’s helped me to see that often God is the blanket we use to give mystery some form.” — Chip Conley, Modern Elder Academy

YOUR INVESTMENT

For coaching, I typically offer two sessions per month, with brief check-ins as needed in between. I ask you to Pay from the Heart, a financial model designed for spiritual work by Sufi teacher Mark Silver. Pay from the Heart works like this: I share with you what I feel in my heart is fair, based on my internal sense of my own worth, needs, and boundaries. I have a normal and minimum rate.

Then you have two steps: 

  1. Decide if working with me feels right for you. 

  2. If you decide “yes,” then make a second decision of how much your heart wants to give. 

Take time to both think about the reality of your financial situation, including your relative ownership of resources in the world, and to sense into your heart what number feels right.

From my heart:

  • My normal rate is $6,000-$12,000 for 6 months, or $1,000-$2,000 per month, up to 11 months.

  • The minimum rate is $3,000 for 6 months, or $500 a month, up to 11 months.

If your financial situation is such that paying the minimum would put your food or shelter at risk, I want you to pay less than the minimum. No questions asked. On the other hand, if you sense in your heart that it feels good, right, and fair to pay more, please do so.

If you’re interested, please apply for a FREE 60-minute conversation with me to clarify your financial or spiritual desires, discuss your biggest obstacles, and to see if Spiritual Financial Coaching with me is a good fit.

NOTE: In addition to spiritual-financial coaching, I write a newsletter about Money and Meaning and teach a course called Financial Freedom.

THE EMOTIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF CAPITALISM

Reclaiming Yourself from Never Feeling or Having Enough

Coaching Program

Capitalism creates two feelings in you: never having enough, and never being enough. The first is the hamster wheel of consumption, and the second is the hamster wheel of achievement and performative display. Take this 8 week coaching program to contemplate satisfaction, scarcity, and sufficiency and how they all relate to the two pillars of our economic system: consumerism and “workism.” How can you bring more attention, gratitude, and presence into your life and separate from the feelings of insufficiency that capitalism creates?

  • Tier A Coaching: $4,000 ($100/hr+ wage earners, or inheritance-receivers)

  • Tier B Coaching: $2,000 ($60/hr-$100/hr wage earners)

  • Tier C Coaching: $1,000 ($30-$59/hr wage earners)

  • Tier D Coaching: $300 ($29/hr and below wage earners)

So much of what you think and how you feel in the world is mediated through capitalism. This coaching program helps you examine internalized capitalism. Ideology is what you do without knowing you are doing it, and this program helps you resist the constant need to “achieve” self-worth in our society and the feeling of never having or being enough. This program helps you examine time, attention, satisfaction, scarcity, and sufficiency and how they all relate to the two pillars of our economic system: consumerism and “workism.”

The coaching program will be 8 lessons, 1 per week for 8 weeks. You can do 1-1 with me, or with friends as a community.

This program is designed to be contemplative and self-reflective, a spiritual-financial reassessment of how you are, how you feel, and how you relate in the world. The lessons are short essays by me, about 5-10 minutes of reading, and a conversation with a program mate, and a prompt to write to me, to which I will respond. The insight will come from drawing out and verbalizing your feelings and understanding of capitalism, belonging, and worthiness and listening to your conversation partner’s. You’ll be contemplating the emotional consequences of our economic system, as experienced by you, and how you want to be alive in the world. Here is a preview of lesson 1.

The coaching program is laid out in 8 weeks:

  1. What is your deepest longing?

  2. Scarcity, Abundance, and Sufficiency

  3. Individualism, Belonging, and Bourgeois Capitalism 

  4. The Daily Task: “Achieving” Worthiness 

  5. Lagom: The Freedom of Having and Being Enough

  6. Everything Sped Up: Busyness and Experiencing Your Emotions

  7. Primary Satisfactions: Attention, Presence, and Connection

  8. Holding Gratitude and Grief

If you are interested, send an email to set up an introductory call.

TESTIMONIALS

“My mind stretched to new places and can never go back. I gained a new intimacy with life itself. I tell everyone about this program.” - Lindsey

“I loved the space and trust that Douglas created to drop into deep and vulnerable conversations about some of life’s big questions around longing, sufficiency, presence, and connection. The fact that most of these conversations were the very first between me and my partner was even more magical. I wish there were more opportunities like this.” - Brett

“It’s helped me to recognize some of the insidious messages I’ve absorbed without fully realizing it, messages that run counter to my values but that have affected me nonetheless. It’s helped me to start to REALLY understand what an impossible system we’ve been forced into. And it’s helped me to introduce some really beautiful practices into my life -- a sacred personal weekly ritual and a new way of deciding whether to spend money on something or how to spend my time in a given moment, by asking myself what will add the most TRUE value to my life. Thank you for this.” - Rebecca