Money Is About Love, Work Is Part Of My Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Psychologist Alexander Roitman tells about why one should not be afraid of the overvalue of money, about the universal “measure” and the triad “money - labor - love” in an interview with Finversia.ru portal

Alexander Roitman, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, RPA supervisor

Works in the USA, Canada, Israel, Russia, countries of the former CIS

In 2017, he founded the Roitman Institute in Israel and is its rector.

Married, father of five children.

Finance for us, especially recently, is not only one of the priority goals, but often - the goal that covers everything. We measure almost everything through finances: our relationships with loved ones, professional relationships, self-esteem, and psychological, and sometimes even physiological, well-being. How healthy do you think this situation is?

- In my opinion, this is more than a healthy system of describing the world, if you do not have an internal taboo on it. This taboo was brought up in our country for at least seventy years, and then it overturned so sharply that it strained us even more. Everything that was formed as a value was blown up. It seems to me that if you overcome this taboo, if you look at the situation as healthy …

On the over-priority of finance as a healthy one?

- I would not call it a super priority. I would call this an adequate priority. Not even a priority. Is gold money backing good or bad? No. Is time as a universal meter, a universal converter of anything, good or bad? No. But if you declare that anything in the world I can measure with money, at first it will cause stupor, panic. This is due to our centuries-old history, Soviet history. I think that it is generally okay to make money, to measure your social wealth with money. You ask me, for example: "And Van Gogh?" I don't know, I think that Van Gogh, having lived the life of Dali, would have felt calmer and would have drawn no worse. I don't know Van Gogh personally, but I'll tell you about myself. For me, the fact that I can feed my five children and my wife, that I can afford to send them surfing or sailing on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, plays a huge role. I can’t take it any longer, but I can’t stay for two weeks. I can make them swim with dolphins. I remember reading Clark's Dolphin Island as a child and knew for sure: I will never know what surfing is, I will never know what it is to touch a dolphin … And today I say to my children: “Anything you want, I give you". And for me a huge role is played by the fact that I honestly earn for it. I feel my value, my self-esteem is growing and this is very important for me. It is important for me that I can give my wife the opportunity to give birth in a good maternity hospital, that I can live on the seashore. All my life I dreamed of living on the seashore, I realized that I would never live on the seashore. But today I live on the seashore and for me it is a kind of marker of my value. You ask me: what about spiritual values? Yes, definitely not "everything for sale". But I need to evaluate any values with something. Either time or money. I do not know of any other universal measure, so I treat money with respect.

Nevertheless, for sure, in the course of your practical work, you are faced, relatively speaking, with "program failures", a lot of stress that people have associated with financial issues?

- And if a person is deprived of air? You have no idea how nervous people are if they are deprived of their air. Air, money - what's the difference? I don't see the difference. Money is a tool for transferring my heart, my love, my soul to another person and receiving gratitude from him. Money is an opportunity to accurately assess and weigh mutual actions. I think this is a very healthy situation.

Let's take an example of such a common psychological problem as divorce. There is a lot that separates a good divorce from a terrible divorce. A good divorce - and I saw such people - people loved for many years, climbed to the very top, made a huge journey, received some kind of golden fleece, then something happened, they decided to divorce, or one of them decided to leave, and they parted, resolving this issue both at the material level and at the level of children. At all levels. There is also a bad option. As a psychologist, I often face a divorce that lasts 18 years, people are suing, even in the end, not for money, but for custody of children. The divorce did not happen, their family life continues in a new form. Just as war is the continuation of diplomacy by new means, so divorce in such cases is the continuation of family life. And, as a rule, such a divorce did not happen quickly and clearly on the material level.

The same happens with the material "divorces" of partners in business, with the division of corporations. Remember how a bank or an insurance company arose in the 90s. The guys got together who played the ball together all their childhood, went to the army together, together they created a bank or an insurance company. Then two more people joined them, they are all friends. In fact, the five of them raise the bank, then head its departments, then one leaves the bank to breed dogs, play sports, almost does not appear at the bank, someone starts to travel, only one of them pulls the entire bank on himself. The story ends with scandal and rupture. They are no longer friends, they hate each other …

If the divorce does not go through a clear instrument of money, then mutual expectations begin, the topic of betrayal. What is betrayal? One person deceives the expectations of another. I expect this and that from him. He doesn't even know about it … Money solves these issues. If this is an "honest contract", then usually everything ends at the table, peacefully.

OK, let money be a universal equivalent, but at the same time a person builds up a psychology around money that prevents him from living. Surely you also come across this? Do they come to you with problems that are caused precisely by finances?

- No. In many cases, the problems are related, in one way or another, to finances. But this is only at first glance. In fact, they come with another problem, which I would call the quality of life. Almost always, if not to generalize more broadly, the quality of life is the value for which a person is willing to pay. And the quality of life is the value on which I am willing to work with my client.

And if, relatively speaking, both the economy is divided into sectors, and the problem of the quality of life is divided into “sectors” - what are the main ones? Self-esteem questions, professional affairs, financial affairs, family affairs? What does a person care about when he comes and says: “I don't live like that”?

- Usually they come and say: "I feel bad." If at the beginning they say: “I feel very bad that I am driving a three-year-old mini-Cooper, and all the neighbors in our house are buying a third Hummer or Porsche, I cannot go out in public, I am ashamed” (this is the real story of one girl), then the key point begins to interest me. Key Point: "I'm ashamed." This means that I will work with shame … Of course, the car and the amount of money do not in any way determine the quality of this girl's life. Defines the phrase "I'm ashamed." Then I begin to understand her relationship with her husband. She is a housewife, her husband earns. He unconsciously, of course, controls it with money. He gives her, no matter how much she wants to take, but she is forced to ask for any spending. And this will inevitably or very likely lead to a crisis in the family. And I, most likely, will offer my husband to arrange a fund for this girl, his wife, which will allow her, in principle, to make any of her purchases without contacting him. And even leave him, having her own capital, which at least will allow her to rent an apartment and live six months with her child on her own. In this case, he gets a wife, not a slave. And the revolution is happening in the relationship. Not everyone goes for it because they think that control is what they need. But experience shows that control is given to them by a slave who does not cook well, behaves badly in bed, in general there is passive aggression and he, the slave, betrays it everywhere.

By the way, my first wife taught me this … I was no longer a boy, I was 30 years old. In the first years of marriage, she showed that any feeling of guilt in a wife in seconds shoots out into total aggression, rage, hatred. She feels guilty: she didn't cook the soup. That's it, you're crazy. When I realized this, I began to take great care of my loved ones from feelings of guilt.

Back to finance. The question of money today has turned everyone a little bit into schizophrenics, created a lot of problems. For example, the so-called consumer boom. The second is professional self-esteem. That is, I assess myself in the profession not as a product of my creativity, but solely through the prism of salary. Therefore, a bunch of people with a small salary experience self-esteem discomfort, and a bunch of people with a large salary experience a mismatch complex. Recently I had a conversation with a very high-ranking banker, whose formalities are OK, but who honestly admitted: “My main discomfort is that I am considered a super professional and I have a super salary, but I know for sure that if everything is over tomorrow, I will not create it for myself. Any small businessman, owner of a tiny cafe is cooler than me, because I didn't rent this office, I didn't make this salary …”

“I understand this banker. Because I have no real instruments to measure my quality, other than money. All my life I have doubted how well I work. And there is no other tool to check this. Today I have a lot of clients, a huge number of reviews, and I am slowly beginning to believe that I am doing a good job. But when I look back, it seems to me that my first group, which I did 30 years ago, was no worse than what I am doing today. So I haven't grown up? OK, then where can I get a self-assessment tool. From the inside, I can’t take it. I can't believe my eyes and ears. And this banker does not believe his eyes and ears. This is fine. But still, money makes it possible to somehow measure all this.

Is the psychologist able to help in this process?

- A psychologist is such a strange creature … I would say this: a psychologist is the bearer of your curiosity. As an external video card is inserted into a laptop, and it is able to force this computer to do wider work with the image, so here it is. The psychologist is the outer map of curiosity. In it there is neither your processor, nor your screw, nor your memory, nor your methods of processing. It only has a social processor that asks questions: “Yes? You are sure? How did you know about it? " And with this genuine curiosity it infects the client. How can I know what to do, how can I give advice? That is, I can give advice, I have my own life experience, only they will not help you, you have a completely different story. But there is a question. When I ask you it, it charges you. Here it is, psychotherapy. You get involved in a problem and ask a question. This question has infected your client, he was turned on by your curiosity and he started working on this issue. He must answer this question. In search of an answer, he also receives an answer for himself. The device for solving the problem turns on. Why does he need my device? He has his own. Powerful processor, fast memory, good life experience. Of course, I will not give him advice, I will not share my experience with him. I will ask him the right question, and this question will "turn on" him. And then let him go home, let him sleep or not sleep, eat or not eat … A week later he comes to me and says: “You put me in a dead end. The question is simple, but I have not slept for a whole week. What do you want to tell me? " And I say to him: “I don’t want to tell you anything. I don’t know what to do with your life”… Just tell the client that you don’t know something, the client immediately begins to respect and love you and wants to help you. If you are so unhappy, you cannot do anything - you need to help you. He takes it and heals. I like it terribly. They recover simply to help you somehow, since you are such a careless and poor psychologist …

Here, I reveal my cards (smiles).

Why do you also call money the equivalent of love?

- I understand that when I give a child a gift, I give it to myself; it’s a way for me to have the joy of seeing that he liked the gift. Or your wife. For this I am ready to work for a month or two in order to receive this joy, to see in the eyes of a loved one the love that I gave to my work. If I am ready to go to work with joy, with delight, to put all my soul into it, then money is specifically a tool for converting my love. Then I convert the result of my work into money, then - as a gift. Yes, money is a nondescript piece of paper. But my love goes through it and turns into my feelings. This is how it works.

As part of a project to improve financial literacy, the survey revealed the following point: parents talk with their children about money less than even about sex, given that sex is, in principle, a taboo topic. People in this study said, "We don't know how to talk to children about money." As a psychologist, how would you comment on this situation?

- I would comment not as a psychologist, but as a father of two teenagers, who faces this problem very acutely. First, in the light of what I said earlier … I have a lot of business trips. I find myself paying off: let's say, I’m on a business trip for a month, I’m bringing my five-year-old daughter a present. How many dresses can a five-year-old girl bring from a business trip? I bring 10 dresses. My wife opens the closet and says: "I tried to clean up Michelle's closet, opened the closet and … closed the closet." Yes, she, her daughter does not need it. I need it! I ask the elders: "Guys, what do you want?" They say a beautiful text: "Daddy, we have everything, come yourself." On the one hand, it sounds beautiful, on the other hand, the horror of history is for me that they do not want anything. I would have already paid off, but I cannot pay off, because they have everything … The other day I met with my friend, under whose supervision a huge farm, and said: "Listen, I need to commission two teenagers of 14-15 years old." He immediately understood me: “No question. I will help you. We rent an apartment near my office and take them to work. Whatever you want - from cleaning floors and repairing snow-melting machines to inspecting power plants. They will receive money, pay the rent themselves”… And I was so grateful to him. Because two weeks ago I had this situation: they both broke phones, good phones. I tell them: "Let's go buy phones." You pay your share, I don’t know, one hundred dollars. They made such sour faces, that is, they had some plans for their own money, apparently. I say: this is true, you had the coolest phones, you racked them up in zero months in five. While we were going for the phones, we talked all the way. By the end of the conversation, they were very pleased. The elder says to me: “I am very glad that I paid 100 dollars for them, for me this phone became mine. I won't break it. I do not promise one hundred percent, but this is how I feel. " The younger agreed …

Probably, somehow it is necessary to act. I now dream of giving my children the experience of making money, receiving money, managing money. And this is more expensive than the money itself. You become a creator, you begin to control the world through the instrument of money. And then you can talk about them. And before that, such a conversation is too vague.

That is, about money through labor, in fact? To simplify …

- Through love.

It would be nice that everyone loved work …

- Who will love dishwashing? New Year, morning. You see greasy dishes up to heaven, it disgusts you. You start washing these dishes, you wash a plate, two, three, then you start to catch the feeling of a squeak on your fingers from a clean plate and a light buzz. You make sense. That is, love appears where meaning appears. Several clean plates appear - then love appears … I just went through these dishes in the army - one and a half thousand plates need to be washed by morning, winter, outside minus 40, inside the kitchen minus 10, and you wash the dishes for 4-5 hours. And - mountains of clean dishes as a result. It's funny, I think, many do not understand me now, but it brought me … In general, there is something orgasmic in this. Not that I like to do the dishes, but I remember this experience as a very important experience in my life. I would love to share it with my children. My oldest daughter joined the army, she served for three years as a sniper in the Israeli army. She has changed. For her, things have acquired a material meaning. When a person passes through your hands who, after 22 kilometers at a bus stop, can blow up your mother, your work as a soldier-officer becomes very concrete. The road from your dislike for your work to disaster is very short … My brother had such a story. A man passed through his hands, whom he passed through the post. This man blew up a cult cafe near the American embassy. 10 years have passed since then. My brother goes to this cafe, he constantly talks about it. And it really puts brains into place, when your work, and therefore money, is responsibility, love, your time, your whole life, the people you love, whom you do not know, all this is tied into this piece of paper. This piece of paper is a bank of values.

In other words, as Prosper Merimee said, “there are things more important than money, but you cannot buy these things without money”. But there is another side of the coin: everyone believes that money can solve any problem, except for those who have money …

- In fact, people who are smart enough come to the psychologist. Even at the first step they say not very confidently that the problem is money, and at the second step they completely abandon this version. A woman in Alma-Ata came to me at the last group, she said: “I have five children, I have no money. I came to have money. " At the very beginning of the group, the question was asked: "Are you sure that we are talking about money?" Everything, this topic was not raised anymore. It was about changing the way she lives. And I think she knew it herself. Otherwise, she would not have come to the group to see a psychologist. I am convinced that she came to the group because she understands that it is not about money, because no one will give her money in the group. The group is not a way to make money, it is a way to build relationships with them. Through labor - again. Until the first plate appears with the feeling of being in a world where all the dishes are clean, labor may not be very attractive. Before the army, I worked at a factory at the machine, my teacher said: never leave the machine dirty, no matter what happens in the world. Never. It's not that the machine is expensive, rusty, etc. The fact is that when you come tomorrow morning, if it is dirty, you will not want to work, and if everything is clean and oily, you will come in, you will immediately smell, a bunch of things that are calling you to start as soon as possible. Do not take care of the machine - take care of yourself, your feelings.

Money is about love, work is part of my love. If your work does not give you pleasure, then something is wrong in what is happening. Think about where love "flows". Think about what will make what is happening to you attractive.