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Men and Money:
7 Secrets for Becoming Super
Rich Without Stress
Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for the last 45 years.
He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,
Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your
Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome . He offers counseling to men,
women, and couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout
the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s Health and a
free subscription to Jed’s e-newsletter go to www.MenAlive.com

I grew up poor. Being poor was really more of a status symbol than a
description of our economic state. In my family I was taught that there were only
two kinds of people in the world: The rich and the poor. The rich walked around
carrying big bags of money, exploited others, and were morally inferior. The poor
walked around with holes in their shoes, helped their fellow man, and were the
real salt of the earth. I wanted to be a poor man when I grew up, which my family
whole heartedly approved. But they also wanted me to go to college and get an
advanced degree. It’s not easy being poor when you have a Ph.D.

Sigmund Freud would have been proud of the way I resolved the conflict:
How do I remain poor and at the same time fulfill the American dream of being
rich? Over the years I’ve tried various approaches.

1. Go to medical school, but drop out early.

After I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara with my B.A. in biology, I began
medical school at U.C. San Francisco. It was very clear from the get go that
most of the doctors I was meeting there were quite rich. Since I had a 4 year,
full-tuition fellowship (which proved I was poor and needed help), I was invited
with my fellow scholars in residence to attend dinners and cocktail parties on
school breaks at the homes of rich professors in Marin County. The message
was clear: “Do your work, don’t rock the boat and this will be yours in short
order.”

I dropped out of medical school at my first opportunity. Before they would let
me leave I had to see a psychiatrist. Clearly I must be crazy to leave a place
where others were selling their souls to get in. I had no idea why I left, but my
unconscious mind was busy keeping me poor and making me rich.
2. Become a social worker and help the poor.

After I dropped out of medical school I came down off the hill (the school is up
high and overlooks Golden Gate Park) and enrolled at U.C. Berkeley school of
social welfare. I found that social work has a long tradition of helping the poor.
At the time I was there, we worked a lot with people of color in Oakland.
Interestingly, one of my classmates, Mel Newton, was Huey Newton’s brother (of
Black Panther fame).

The problem I had being a community organizer was that I would get so
enraged with those who seemed to be getting rich at the expense of the poor
(police, politicians, businessmen) that I felt I was in danger of killing someone. I
went to see a psychiatrist to deal with my anger. It didn’t help. Instead I joined
Synanon (a residential treatment center for recovering alcoholics and addicts)
and learned to play the “Synanon game.” The game was an intense group
session where we learned to express our anger in way that didn’t endanger
people.

I found out that combining psychotherapy with community action fit my


personality well. Not only that, but people kept wanting to pay me money to help
them make their lives work. Since I was now married and had children to
support, I accepted the money and learned to make more.

3. Make money the easy way.

Although we did our best to save some of what we made, we never seemed
to pull it off. With children there was always things that were needed. Like most
of our friends, we spent what we earned and went into debt to buy what we
needed.

They grew up and eventually made their own money and supported their own
families. I found I was still good a making money and quite enjoyed spending
what we had and going without when we didn’t have the money to buy it. Many
of my friends worried about their “investments” and how to make their money
grow. They planned for retirement. I couldn’t imagine retiring. I loved the work I
did and I enjoyed helping people. Why would I want to stop?

4. Learn to stop running after you cross the finish line.

One of the strongest memories I have as a child was being in our kitchen
while my mother and two friends talked about their husbands. “My husband lost
his job and can’t seem to find work,” one said. Another lamented that her
husband never really had a steady job that he could lose. My mother sadly
recounted that my father was alternately manic and depressed and wasn’t likely
to be able to ever hold a job, though she appreciated that he was a writer and an
artist.
I still remember the mixture of sadness, anger, and disdain in the way they
talked about there men and their lack of job success. I remember making a vow
then--when I was just 6 years old—that I would never let a woman talk about me
like they talked about those men. I told myself I would rather die than face that
kind of humiliation.

For most of my life I worked hard, made a good living, but continued to run
from the voices of the women I had forgotten I had ever heard. I was determined
to be successful. One day it occurred to me that I had looked at my work life as
though it were a race. I was determined to raise my family, take care of my wife,
and be a man they would be proud of—even if it killed me.

But now my children were grown, my wife had her own career, and I had
“made it.” I realized it was OK to slow down now. I had crossed the imaginary
finish line of success and I could accept my winners ribbon and relax. It wasn’t
easy.

5. Be a man among men even when the other guys have more money.

I’m part of a men’s group that has been meeting regularly since 1979. We’re
7 guys who came together to offer each other support and who enjoy each
other’s company. Over the years we’ve gotten quite close to each other. We’re
all successful in our unique ways.

But I always had some plan to make money which I would excitedly share
with the guys. One time it was a risky investment scheme. Another time it was a
multi-level marketing plan for selling neutraceuticals. I always hoped one of my
books would sell and I would be an instant millionaire.

One day one of the guys asked my why I was so keen on making a lot of
money. I didn’t seem to really have an interest in learning about finances or
about investments or any of the other things that these guys did that allowed
them to have what they had.

Once again a childhood memory popped to mind. After my father tried to


commit suicide when I was 6 years old, he was hospitalized in a mental hospital.
My mother was forced to go to work, learn to drive, and take care of me. My
father’s family was well to do and all lived in Florida.

They had offered to take me to live with them, but my mother refused.
Looking back I realized I had always been terrified that if my mother ran out of
money she would send me away. I realized that the men in my men’s group
were symbolic of my father’s family. I wanted to show them that I would always
have enough money to be independent. I would never be so poor I would have
to be sent away.
As soon as I had the image, I quit trying to “become rich” so I could show the
guys I couldn’t be bought. I could relax and enjoy what I did do well, which was
writing books and helping people.

6. Live well in a world with limits.

Most of us know that money can’t buy happiness, but you wouldn’t know it by
our national obsession with stuff. We are told that it is our patriotic duty to shop
‘til we drop. We are no longer citizens. We are consumers. I think Will Rogers
had it right when he said, “Too many people spend money they haven’t
earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

We are finally recognizing that we are living in a world with limits. We can no
longer continue to build an economy where we take natural resources from the
planet and turn them in stuff, most of which becomes garbage that ends up in a
landfill.

The big banks and financial institutions had it partially right. We can’t
continue to create material wealth. On a planet with finite resources we must
create wealth that doesn’t depend on exploiting the earth. So they created
various kinds of monetary derivates that are non-material. The problem is that
they aren’t real and can’t ever really satisfy people’s real needs.

7. Learn to Live the New Good Life.

My friend, John Robbins,--whose father was one of the founders of the


Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire--walked away from the family fortune. As he
recounts in his new book, The New Good Life, Living Better Than Ever in an Age
of Less, “When I was twenty-one, deeply troubled by the damage I saw being
done to our world by the forces of materialism and entitlement, I not only told my
father that I didn’t want to work with him at Baskin-Robbins any longer, but also
that I didn’t want to depend on his financial achievement.”

Over the years he learned to live well on little. He became well-known and
successful and accumulated enough money to take care of a growing extended
family. He seemed to have been able to combine a life of spirit and one where
he was comfortable financially. That is until 2008 when he received a fateful call
from his broker.

“Richard called with excruciating news. He had invested the money, it turned
out, with a man who had just been arrested for perpetrating the most massive
financial fraud in world history, the former NASDAQ chairman, Bernard Madoff.”
In an instant John lost all the money he and his wife, Deo, had accumulated over
the years.
“At first, I felt such enormous shock that I genuinely wondered if it might kill
me,” he remembers. “The anguish was so intense I could hardly sleep, and
when I did, my sleep was roiled with nightmares. Fear became my constant
companion. When I heard someone say that money doesn’t buy happiness, I
wanted to tell them they were full of crap.”

But in the course of surviving and recovering, John and his family,
reconnected with what it means to be truly rich. Friends helped and supported
the family until they could get back on their feet. He remembered the words of
Henry David Thoreau, who had inspired him as a young man. “I love to see
anything,” Thoreau wrote, “that implies a simpler mode of life and a greater
nearness to the earth.”

Seeing people too often make themselves what he called “slaves to the
acquisition of money and things,” he suggested that “a man is rich in proportion
to the number of things he can do without.”

Whether we join the movement of “voluntary simplicity” or we are thrust into it


because our financial foundation is torn out from under us, all of us have the
opportunity to live the new good life. That’s what it really means to be super rich.
More people, more time, more love. Less stuff, less stress, less anger.

For more information on my work, come visit me at www.MenAlive.com

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