How money reveals your deepest fears and values

Yahoo

23-06-2025

You can catch Warrior Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Can money really heal? On this episode of Warrior Money, Douglas Lynam unpacks how his journey from Marine to monk to wealth coach taught him that money is never good or evil, it's a mirror. Lynam shares how to break free from 'money monsters' and build true financial confidence.
Hosted by former Congressman Patrick Murphy and veteran investor Dan Kunze, Yahoo Finance's Warrior Money is a weekly vodcast dedicated to uplifting military veterans transitioning into civilian life. Through insights from fellow veterans and high-ranking officials, Murphy and Kunze are helping set vets up for success through financial education and inspiration.
This post was written by Langston Sessoms.
Welcome to Warrior Money, the show devoted to supporting our brother and sister veterans in business.
My name is Dan Coons, and I'm Patrick Murphy.
We're honored to have you here today.
Today we're sitting down with Douglas Lyman, a former Benedictton monk, US Marine, and now a leading voice in values driven finance.
Over two decades in monesthetic life, Doug made an unlikely leap into the world of wealth management and brought his spiritual wisdom with him.
Through his bestselling book and coaching work, he's helping people align their money with meeting.
Please welcome Douglas Lyman.
Douglas, how are you?
Thanks.
I'm doing great.
I to be on your show.
Yeah, of course.
Welcome to Money.
So listen, hey, Douglas, listen, you spend 3 different careers Marine, Monk, and now wealth manager, your, your, your second book's coming out.
But what are the 3, what are the lessons from all those 3 worlds that you're bringing that you would advise young warriors out there?
Oh wow.
Well, I certainly my time in the Marines gave me a warrior spirit, which I'm very grateful for, and the discipline and the ability to like focus on tasks and get stuff done.
So that was a real gift.
I, I really I'm grateful for the Marines for all the training and the discipline I I got from them, and also a sense of community and in a corps and That that will desire for community and connection for a higher purpose that I think has been a theme line through much of my life, no matter what wild and crazy twist my career has taken, even though my resume looks like a roller coaster designed by Salvador Dali on a sugar high, you know, I've kind of got all over the places.
But, but certainly those lessons from the Marines served me very, very well, as well as a level of, um, I think it gave me a certain little introspection about, you know, that ability to course correct when, you know, you're doing something not quite right, like that that that ability to accept feedback, that ability to be self-critical, and, um, you know.
Really check in with your, with your, with your peers and say, hey, how, how, how am I doing really like being able to take the kind of honest feedback and not make excuses and to be responsible for your life, that sense of responsibility that that there's no one else gonna be responsible for your, your life, your finances, everything except for you.
It's all it's ultimately on your shoulders, so I'm grateful for that and then um my time in the monastery continued that theme.
And really, um, deepened my sense of living in community and and living for a higher purpose and learning to be of service to others, um, and then that came of course in the form of financial advice and in the monastery, there were people would come to us all the time with Guests would come with all kinds of problems and like, would you pray for me?
Like, of course, but like, you know, a budget might actually work a little bit better, you know, if we actually sat down and try to dig into some of these things, um, and get into the weeds, that that would uh like a lot of people's spiritual crises were either directly caused.
Of or sort of the secondary cause of a lot of their financial issues that they're going through, whether someone's dying in their family, there's an estate to probate, there's bankruptcy, there's wills, there's all kinds of, you know, stressors that are, they're they're impinging on people's personal lives that are having a deep impact for them psychologically and ultimately spiritually, and, and really being able to find out, get to the roots of some of those money issues for people and help them navigate them a little more grace and skill.
Um, and then of course, I, I, I left monastic life after 20 years to take some of the wisdom I learned.
You know, getting our our community went bankrupt at one point in the monastery, that's really kind of became my, my, my crisis point where I had to sort of figure this stuff out and and and learn to have some, you know, again, take responsibility for the community finances, my own finances and try to really build something, take action and put it into practice and so.
So I just, can I just real quick before we get in the book though, Give us your, you know, you were a US Marine and then that transition to become a Benedictine monk.
I mean, walk us through that process.
Were you always a man of faith growing up in Chicago?
Was it something that you that the Marine Corps, you know, afterwards during it?
Walk us through that if you wouldn't mind.
Oh, I, I would say I joined a monastery to find my faith.
Like I didn't, I didn't come in there with some deep conviction.
It was sort of like if I'm gonna figure the meaning of life out, where would be a better place to do it than in a monastery.
Yeah, because growing up, I, I grew up in a, in a fairly affluent household, but we that weaponized money and and treated it with a certain kind of some anger behind it and the way it was used and wield in our house to create some conditional conditions on love, like do this and then you'll get the toys and if you don't, you won't.
And so that kind of gave this kind of pay to play mentality that I really resented.
And my brothers and I, we all, my brothers and I, we all rebelled and took a out of poverty in our own ways.
I went and became a monk.
My twin brother went off and became a homesteader in upstate Vermont, and my older brother went off and joined a grunge band in Seattle.
So we all basically said, you know, kind of gave the middle finger to the world of finance early on in our years and had to overcome some of that money trauma, and then I think I'm good to help people through that, having been through it myself.
that answers your question.
I, I didn't.
I gotta ask, how did you grow up in a spiritual household at all.
How did you leave the Marine Corps?
Like, so like that that had to have been kind of a trippy pivotal moment where you're like, hey, I'm done officer candidate school.
Oh, and by the way, I was an honor grad and I'm going to leave and I'm gonna do something that doesn't make sense to me.
Talked about that a little bit.
Well, the nice thing about the Marines is, is, is they have this officer candidate school program that you can apply to and you can train during your summers of college.
And they don't require any commitment from you because if you don't want to be an officer, they don't want you there.
So you can pretty much leave at any time, more or less the first two weeks you're locked in and then at that point you just ring the bell and you're out, you know, it's not hard.
But um cause they they only want the best of the best there and so but yeah I did graduate, I finished up my class from officer K school and and loved it.
But I also kind of realized that maybe I had a lot of unresolved anger issues and maybe unresolved anger issues, high explosives weren't a good combination for me to be projecting my things out on other people, although I love the Marines and nothing against them.
It was just like maybe this isn't the world I need to be, I need to be living in full time.
And um had also had a bit of a spiritual awaking at that point it was like, OK, what's what's this all about?
What's what's really, what am I doing here?
Why am I here and what's the meaning of life?
And so that kind of prompted this, and then if I was gonna leave the Marines, what would be a higher calling?
Like I didn't want to just leave that to just go to civilian life that felt kind of uh, so I was like, well, what would be that next step up for me in my it makes it in my own head, I'm not saying it, that that's exactly true, but like that what would be that higher calling that would give me all the things I loved about the Marines, I mean without some of the downsides.
That's great.
And it was a it was a tough transition.
It was tough.
So maybe to to answer your question more fully, I finished my training with with with the Marines at the end of my junior year in the summers, and then they had to send me back to my senior year of college.
I still had to finish my degree in order to get my, get my, get my get pinned.
And as I had this kind of year off in between, which is a big gap year between finishing training and then the opportunity to receive my commission, and that's where I really, I met a mentor who said maybe maybe monastic life is what you were looking for and so I.
Took a shot, why not?
Let's try to see what this adventure, we'll see where this monastic life.
There's a vow, there's a vow of solitude and poverty that you have to take, which is the Marine Corps is the exact kind of the exact, well, maybe the poverty side, but definitely you're definitely not solitude in the Marine Corps.
Talk to us about the transition from the Marine Corps to monastery life and then how that eventually got into your spirituality and money.
How they talk to me through that bridge.
Yeah, well, I mean, monastery life is not as contemplative as you would imagine.
It's it's quite busy.
Thomas Merton was a famous Trappist monk, he would make fun of monks all the time saying, you know, like they're more worried about making cheese or whatever they, whatever the thing is that they're trying to get done to keep, you know, food on the table, but sometimes that takes priority and, and, and you're living in community, so you're living in a in a in a home.
Essentially with all these other men, and you're just like a barracks and some is maybe a little bit nicer than a typical barracks to be sure, but you're, you're, you're never, um, I have more time for solitude and contemplation now than I ever did in the monastery because my day is my own, right?
I can schedule anyway I want, where in the monastery, it's like, OK, you got the schedule of, of monastic thing.
We're all working full time as a teaching community.
So I was in a classroom all the time while I was also in the monastery.
So it wasn't, it wasn't as contemplative as you might imagine.
Yeah, so you do that for a period of time and then you transition to wealth management and you say that money is the last spiritual frontier.
What like what does that what does that mean?
I don't that doesn't make sense.
Oh well, money, money we touch on it touches all of our deepest hopes, fears, anxieties, desires, longings, um, it's, it's really our path to wholeness is that money, put it more simply is that money is a tool for most action, right?
That's, it's just a it's just, it's stored work energy.
And so, you know, it's, it's really what I learned and what I had to really overcome was my initial sort of a version of money.
I had a what I call a very money.
Avoidant style where I would either demonize it or put it in a weird box that project a bunch of nonsense onto it that wasn't there.
Well, you know, so this demonization of or we can over glorify it and think that somehow the end all and be all of our existence and this is what's going to make us a complete human being.
And so this is the money is not good or evil.
It's a tool that like a hammer that you can use to build something beautiful or whack yourself on the thumb.
But too often we have, this is why I explore in the new book, what I call your money monsters, so the the ways these unconscious psychological wounds that we all have that that get projected into everything that we do, but particularly in how we relate to money and can create a lot of suffering, unnecessary suffering for ourselves and for those we love and we're not in a healthy relationship to it.
So money is so that frontier touches everything.
Like if you, if you follow someone's, if you, if you were to open up your bank account and show me your, your, your spending transactions.
your savings and your investing, it's, it's basically a breadcrumb trail to your deepest insecurities, fears, and desires, and you can learn more about somebody by, by, by walking through the budget than you can just about anything else because it tells you what the priorities really where you spend your money is how you vote for what exists in the world and what you really care about.
And so you really learn about these things by by di digging into people's financial life and uncovering the deepest parts of the personality that come through in their financial decisions.
Interesting.
Well, listen, real quick, I know because we're gonna be in a break in a second.
Um, walk us through the Longwood, uh, the assets under management.
They had $2150 million assets under management when you were a money manager, when you're an advisor.
What was that like and how did that Take you to the next chapter.
Oh, I was fine.
It was, it's a great adventure, so I, I, I just took an exit strategy from that business about a year ago to become a full-time writer.
I couldn't be doing 60 hours a week doing portfolio management and 60 hours a week writing and promoting my books.
So I took it, I decided to to take another career pivot to try to get these books out, um, and maybe I'll go back to one of these days, but it was a lot of fun.
I, I really enjoyed it.
I, I was really good at the marketing sales side of things, that was kind of my specialty is really um.
You know, client outreach and and cost client acquisition, and that was something I really enjoyed, uh, working at Longview Asset Management for many years as a partner there, and we really focused on sustainable and ethical investing, which I'm really proud of and did a lot of really firsts, you know, in the industry in that in that regard, um, some big breakthroughs that I was able to do for folks that I'm really, I'm really proud of, like building the first sustainable retirement plan for any school or nonprofit ever.
That was really cool.
There was some big regulatory hurdles we had to get through to get those things done.
But um, but it was great.
It was a great adventure and I really enjoy it.
Yeah, well, listen, we, we'll dive from the that when we get back from break.
We'll be right back, more with Douglas Lyman in just a second.
Welcome back to Warrior Money.
We're joined by Douglas Lyman.
Hey, Douglas, welcome back.
Hey guys, thanks so much.
Uh, no worries.
All right, so, uh, I'm gonna DAgram 8.
I, uh, one of my, one of my colleagues, former colleagues, Nina Watson, and when she watches this, is like, hey, you gotta take a gram.
I'm pretty sure you're an 8. what, what is in a neagram and how does that impact your what does it tell me about me about my money, but also how does it impact everybody's perspective on that?
I'm thrilled about thrilled to learn more.
Sure, it's it's a super complicated system and we'll just touch on the surface of it here.
But essentially what the anagram tells you and what we know from the latest research in neurobiology is that your person has a has a bunch of components to it, right?
You've got your nature, which is your DNA and your gene expression, that's unique to you and we're not gonna.
Touch that.
But the anagram is sort of the nurture portion of your personality, help explain, um, how your childhood environment had a key role in shaping your ego defenses, because your anagram is essentially your, your childhood coping strategy to the biggest threats you faced in your childhood environment, um, kind of remixed to help you survive, whatever those biggest stressors were in your childhood.
But those things that help you survive in that environment might be driving your adult life in the ditches.
And so the way I, I used to use car metaphors because I think it's helpful for people because just like you drive a unique car that has a unique year, make and model distinctly yours, there's still patterns for cars and there's patterns for egos.
And so the gram is a tool that's come down to the millennia, we've discovered it different cultures, different religions, lots of contributors, and we've really been able to like really make it a robust system in the past.
You know, 1500 years is when it's really come about as a as a really useful tool, though it's always been there.
And it says that there's these 9 archetypal ways that your personality can form and in childhood, in order for you to individuate as an individual ego or consciousness.
And here's kind of the quick fascinating part is is to think of it like this, at childhood you had a physical umbilical cord that had to be cut to separate you.
From your mother, but you immediately develop a psychological umbilical cord that connects you to your caregivers, and that allows them to do most of the driving for you in the early years of your life.
But that psychological umbilical cord also has to be cut slowly over time, and they explained how that was cut for you, and then it that cutting, which I call your sacred wound, or, you know, it has different terms.
But the sacred wound that we have that's cutting the psychological umbilical cord, creates for each of us our unique unconscious fear that sort of shapes our ego and it kind of forms the chassis of our ego, you know, you can have all kinds of modifications, of course, depending on your DNA and lots of lots of ways to individuate that into a very unique ego.
It's different from everybody else, but still there's a chassis essentially, and that's what the aiom tells you is.
So if I could take a, let's just use you for an example, your psychological umbilical cord would be cut by anger.
That you've externalized at the world around you because of the injustices you may have felt in childhood.
So you have a real strong sense of justice or injustice, um, and then to push back at anything that the greatest fear for eight would then be being harmed or controlled by your environment.
So you tend to be, I call you the the Humvees and egos because you're kind of like the battering ram they can run over anyone or anything easily just 100% don't expect to be fuel efficient with their opinions because they just, they like, they like to always challenge people and create a strong.
boundary around them in order to others aren't controlling them and they also like to be in charge because being at the top is the best place to be where you where you have the least people controlling you 100%.
That's one example.
We could go around real quick.
Yeah, so we talk a lot about like, um, personalities and purpose driven, and you talked to originally about the impact that you had your home life had on you and, and that now I'm understanding where your purpose comes from.
How does that manifest itself in money management?
Like walk your way through how you've come to peace with that.
And then be able to give that advice to other folks.
Well, OK, let's talk about the money monsters for type 8, the ways that the, so we can all have a healthy la secure emotional relationship to money, which is where I'm trying to get people to.
But in those times when we're maybe unhealthy or we're we're maybe our unconscious fears are acting out in our finances, one way is, is, as we've talked about a little bit, is you could be avoidant of money, like anxiously avoidant, pushed away like I did joining a monastery, like, I don't want nothing to do with this.
Let's get me away from it.
Or there's people can be more like kind of the Ebenezer Scrooge where they're driving their financial life with a little bit of road rage, a little too tight-fisted, and that's the anxious type.
So for, for, for the 8, the challenge, we call you the challenger, as I call you the Humvee of egos, the, the money monsters for you, the avoidant is what I call the detonator, meaning you tend to detonate prudent financial boundaries and limitations that might control you, like you don't want to be the one.
Like, like grab the check at a restaurant just to be feel important, even maybe the money isn't there, you want to feel in charge, so maybe you're blowing through a prudent boundary right there for yourself, or you can be anxious about money, I call you the domin where you are maybe a little obsessed about money you want as much as you can.
But then maybe use it to manipulate and control the people around you, kind of like what I had in my childhood environments like you're using it, but you're using it to dominate others and, and keep them from controlling you by controlling them first.
So those are two ways.
That's 11 example of the 9 types we could, we could jump into to give you a little sense of how that all plays out.
And that's, and that's what folks when they buy your book that comes out in July, that's what folks will get when they buy that book, right?
Like if I'm a Marine, I'm a soldier, or if I'm a veteran, I wanna buy that book.
Why?
Well, because it's gonna tell you a bit more about how your ego is, it's gonna tell you the unconscious lens that you're, you're viewing all of reality through unknowingly, and then how that might be causing problems for you in your life, and, and how it might be, um, a good friend of mine, Richard Roher, he often says if we don't transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
And especially to those that we love most.
And so money is a tool for most actions, it easily transmits our trauma and our pain, uh, if we're not.
A careful and we can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering for ourselves first and foremost, but most importantly for those that we love.
So if you want to have a healthy, secure relationship to your finance, I think this book gives you that roadmap for for for for both your personal and your spiritual growth that it works.
The nice thing about the end game it plays well with all spiritual traditions.
I, I don't think it's an understatement to say it's the underlying mechanics of all of our world religion.
That are sort of running off of it, sort of this underlying code that seems to permeate all of our, all our different faith traditions, giving us a sense of virtue.
Like, why do we agree that there's virtues like honor and courage and integrity and generosity and, you know, humility or mercy.
Like these are things that are seem to be baked into the human species, even if we disagree how to practice them, we don't disagree that they exist.
And I think The antigram tells us why those virtues exist and how they, how we understand a basic level of ethics within the human conscious, to be conscious, to be self-aware, you need to have a conscience.
And the anagram has explained how that conscience is formed in you, and they'll give you a healthier tools to live a better life in all respects, but also the lens of this book, of course, is through the lens of money.
That's fascinating.
There's um.
I, I, I'm very aware of the limitations of a gram 8 and I'm very, uh, also aware of the positive sides of an ogram 8 as well as a disc survey and as well as all the different other psychological like approaches to it, right?
So there's a positive side to it and there's always a negative side to it and it's basically how you're, how you're being torqued at the time you're being torqued, right?
So if something torques you, you can be negative and something torques you can be positive, and it works its way through that.
So, all right, before we let you go, we're gonna take, will you take our warrior Q&A?
Absolutely.
All right, what is, what is something you know about money now that you wish you knew when you were growing up in your dad's house?
I wish I had known that money isn't good or evil, it's neutral, and you can use it for love and service, and you can use to whack yourself on the thumb or people on the head, and, and just because someone's whacking you on the head with money doesn't mean that money is the problem, it's they're the problem.
Yeah, what's the biggest financial mistake that you see people make now that you wish you could help them correct?
Um, I would say helping them overcome their anxieties and fears around it, like all the anxiety that gets in the way of, of taking action, making prudent decisions, becoming financially literate, um, just to be able to give people a little more self-confidence and awareness of where your blind spots are and how to, like you said, every strength comes with a weakness.
It's, it's, it's the yin and yin yang, like you're as an 8, you're gonna have tremendous strengths, but the very thing that makes you strong in one area is gonna inevitably make you weak in another area and you can't get away from them.
And just to understand what those strengths or weaknesses are, so you're playing more to your strengths and minimizing your those, those, those pain points for you or or when to take a nap or when to go for a walk, when to take a nap or or or when to unwind myself so that I don't go to again.
I totally, I totally understand.
I very much appreciate it.
Um, all right, so Marine Corps, monastery money manager, uh, of all the things, what's been the most unexpected part of your journey?
Oh, The most unexpected part would be Being here, like I just didn't like I I didn't think it was all gonna take me to this point.
Like I wouldn't have, I couldn't have planned this adventure.
It wasn't a linear path, but um I'm just so shocked to be where I am at this point, having written this book which I think is great and very proud of, um, and to really be able to be of use in the world to actually find that all these stories, all these struggles, all this pain actually can be.
Redeemed in some way, but can be used to help heal myself, but and ultimately I think every writer is writing themselves.
So at the end of the day, this book is for me and and but but hopefully along the way, I'm able to share that with others and it can give them, help them.
Many bring some unexpected joy and happiness when they in their financial life and their personal life.
They didn't expect that money can really help be that tool for them.
Yeah, and I think the one thing is, I think we'd all agree that every marine, every soldier, you have to shoot, move, and communicate.
And Doug, you're communicating the lessons learned, you're communicating the way forward, you're communicating, you know, how to use money as a tool, and that it's not good or evil, but it is something that you can use for good or for bad.
So we appreciate that, uh, Taming Your Money Monster coming out in July.
We can't wait, uh, for it to sell like hotcakes.
I wanna eat it.
I'm gonna get it.
I'm pre-ordering it.
Yeah.
So listen, hey, Doc, thanks for joining us on Word Money.
We appreciate you.
Uh, that's our show.
So listen, subscribe, and review Word Money on your Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast or find us at Yahoo Finance.
I'm Patrick Murphy and I'm Dan Coons.
We'll see you again next week.
This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.