PORT TOWNSEND — When considering a new year’s resolution, ask yourself: Is this my ego chattering or my soul speaking?
Such is the message of Sacred Success: A Course in Financial Miracles, Port Townsend author Barbara Stanny’s newest book.
“I was a little nervous to put money in the same place as spirituality,” Stanny said in a recent interview from her home here.
But after six other books about financial well-being for women — from Overcoming Underearning to Prince Charming Isn’t Coming — Stanny believed she was ready. She wanted to write about success defined in a different way, and she wanted to tell more of her own story.
Stanny moved to Port Townsend from San Francisco in 1996, after deciding she needed space.
“I wanted a house big enough so the whole family could come for Thanksgiving,” she quipped.
“Someone had told us about Port Townsend and Sequim. I’d never heard of them.
“We came up. We were charmed. I would never leave,” said Stanny, who after two previous marriages, including one to a compulsive gambler who put her in deep debt, is now happily hitched to “the last, the best” husband.
The only problem with Port Townsend is that it’s a long way to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which Stanny uses to travel the country much of the year, giving speeches, workshops and retreats on wealth.
It’s not only the accumulation of money that she teaches about, but also finding one’s purpose in life.
“For the women who come to my retreats, this is usually the biggest takeaway: Understanding you have two voices in your head. One is operating from fear,” she said, “and one is operating from love and trust.”
The fear comes in the ego voice; the love from the soul. In Sacred Success, Stanny urges readers to slow down and tune in to the latter, as hard as that will be.
The ego, she writes, tells you to keep busy all the time, compare yourself to others and get everybody to like you.
But the soul, Stanny writes, speaks the truth about how, through using your own gifts, you can make a difference in the world.
Stanny has raised three daughters. They’re now 30, 39 and 42. She brought them up while building her career as a financial coach, author and speaker.
And she is highly successful, with a New York City publicity firm promoting her best-selling books and website, Barbara
Stanny.com, where she is billed as “The Leading Authority on Women & Money.”
In Sacred Success, however, Stanny hails her hometown “spotters.”
If you take one thing from this book, she writes, make it the importance of having these companions who, like the people who spot weight lifters at the gym, keep you steady.
Stanny’s spotters group includes Suzy Carroll, former owner of Uptown Nutrition in Port Townsend.
Every woman in the bunch is extremely busy, Stanny added, but not too busy to meet one evening a month for a couple of hours.
It’s a time to share thoughts and ideas, and “clean out those internal dust bunnies that collect every single month,” as Carroll puts it. The spotters listen without interrupting.
Stanny also offers a list of “signs of disciplined action,” keys to moving toward one’s goals. They include:
■ I regularly seek support, and refuse to spend time with or discuss my dream with naysayers (even if they’re part of my family).
■ Every time I’m afraid to do something, I force myself to do it anyway. (And I catch myself when I try to justify not doing it.)
■ I am rigorous about what I think and the words I speak, making sure they’re positive, supportive and appreciative (of myself and others).
The author quotes diverse sources, from the many wealthy women she’s interviewed to A Course in Miracles to the poet Rumi.
She also makes a distinction between two types of earners.
“A consumer thinks: I want more money so I can buy more clothes, take more trips, eat out more often, and have more fun,” Stanny writes.
“The Wealth Builder thinks: I want more money to save and invest for the long term so that I can have more ease, more freedom, more choices, and more opportunities to help others.”
Stanny’s own plans for 2015 include developing an advanced course on creating wealth; giving retreats in Baltimore in June and Seattle in September and continuing to license her seminars, such as “Becoming Your Own Prince Charming: 7 Steps to Financial Mastery for Women,” via her website.
“I hope to reach more women,” she said, adding that she loves men, but doesn’t understand them as well as she does her own gender.
“I was put on Earth to help women,” Stanny said.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
