November 17, 2009

 

The Currency of Thought
In the Beginning…there was wellness, Volume 3
Debi Waldeck
ISBN: 9781890427542
Aviva Publishing (2008)

Improve Your Relationship with Money, Improve Your Life

In The Currency of Thought, the third and final volume of Debi Waldeck’s In the Beginning…there was wellness series, she takes a departure from her talk about nutrition, our physical health and our bodies’ needs to talk about our financial situations. Many authors of health, wellness, and self-help books will talk about spirituality after talking about health, and Debi Waldeck touches on spirituality throughout her books, but money may be a surprise to some readers. A pleasant surprise certainly.

Debi Waldeck is not Suze Orman, but she has many practical points to make about our relationships with money that would pave the way for a person to tackle the more specific advice of a financial advisor.

This third book is my personal favorite in the series because so many people worry daily just about making ends meet, not realizing how they can live lives of abundance if they only look more closely at their relationships with money. Many people probably don’t even realize they have a relationship with money—usually a love-hate relationship. Debi Waldeck makes readers think about that relationship, questioning what we think money truly is, what it can do for us, why we think having a lot of money or winning the lotto is a type of salvation, and why we allow fear and a sense of lack from keeping money coming to us.

Debi knows that those who are rich are not lucky—they have developed a relationship with money that works for them. While Debi Waldeck’s first two books teach us to take care of ourselves physically and nutritionally, this third book is spiritual because it teaches us to value ourselves, and in valuing ourselves, without being overly materialistic, we also put a value, a price on ourselves. We discover we are worthwhile people. We improve our relationship with ourselves, and then Debi shows us how that relationship extends to our relationships with people, material things, positions at work and roles in society. Debi Waldeck gives practical advice for improving our relationships based on how we treat money, so we will have more prosperous careers, better marriages, and children who are financially secure because they have been educated in money’s value and purpose.

Step by step, Debi Waldeck takes us through the process of improving our financial situations. She teaches us how to get out of debt, even going so far as to give us worksheets to track our credit cards, their interest rates, and the balances owing so we can figure out how to pay them off. Next, we learn how to start saving money and how to decide what to spend money on. From there, we learn a little bit about investing—not so much the practicalities of buying stocks and bonds, but what must come first, the understanding that we must pay ourselves for our work, to invest in ourselves, and that we can have multiple streams of income, residual income that works for us, rather than our working for it. Included in learning how to increase our income, Debi provides practical advice about becoming an entrepreneur and small business owner.

Even if you don’t read the first two books of In the Beginning…there was wellness, all readers will benefit from reading The Currency of Thought. Everyone in the modern world has to live with money and learn how to handle it. We might as well make it work for us, rather than our working for it. As Debi says in one of her practical “Debi’s Dialogue” sections of the book:

As with my reviews of the first two books in the In the Beginning…there was wellness series, I have barely begun to touch upon all the information provided in this third book. Beyond the practicalities of money, Debi also teaches us to change how we speak to ourselves, how we think about ourselves, and how to visualize what our lives can be, and then how to take action to achieve ours goals, whether they be financial, physical, or spiritual.

Debi Waldeck is so full of information that I can’t believe her journey has stopped here. I’m certain she has more books to write, and readers of this series will eagerly anticipate them. Thank you, Debi, for extending the care you first gave your family to heal them from their illnesses now to your readers so your message can heal many.

For more information about Debi Waldeck and her books, visit www.debiwaldeck.com .

— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., author of the award-winning Narrow Lives