Hello and welcome!
A short personal introduction:
I started researching the relationship to money in the early 1980s out of personal need and curiosity about my own behaviour. To my surprise at the time I couldn't find anyone in academia or business who had yet performed comprehensive research on how the relationship to money affects us as people or our organizations — let alone in society and civilization. To explain how money can on the one hand lead toward materialization of goals, success and happiness, yet on the other so frequently appears as the cause of the opposite. This not just with those at the poverty end of the spectrum but also those with considerable wealth and apparent power.
So started a period of “Action Research” with small groups, which then continued in a “forum” setting over a 10-year period.
The challenge was to develop a conceptual framework within which any person can themselves elicit, see and understand the particular behaviour patterns they've adopted in relation to money and work, usually from parents and other outside influences from a very young age. These are normally invisible to the person themselves, because each pattern becomes so “normal”, self-reinforcing and long-held that without giving it this focus of inquiry the person has the impression that this is “structural” rather than personal and something set for life.
After a clear diagnosis of each pattern however, on offer is also a simple method to help the person change or expand it if they wish, especially where they find it limiting rather than facilitating their ability to realize their personal or professional goals.
This process, which I named “moneywork”, is now represented in several countries by an expanding community of practitioners who offer consulting, coaching, seminars and trainings/master classes.
What you'll find in this site is an archive of items I've selected for relatively quickly deepening your knowledge as an introduction to this topic. What you'll read first below was a “temporary posting” in 2006 and though the financial landscape has been through enormous changes since, the content is virtually unchanged. The reason for this is that my focus has always concerned itself with shedding light on the longer-term dynamics — and these don't change so fast. Whether you’re a financial expert or novice you’re likely to find new material here since the content has been researched from first principles.
Hoping you enjoy this and find something in it useful.
Peter Koenig, 2024
You can start by clicking on
Who is ‘moneywork’ for?
This will give you a brief indication of whether the remainder of this website will be interesting for you.
And here a short continuing guide:
The Subliminal Messages about money — check out to what extent these apply to you and how they set the frame of (y)our everyday economic environment.
Then have a look and a laugh at my list of
Favourite Quotations by famous people,
followed by
The short History of Money.
Written in 1998, I leave it unchanged as the history has remained the same and you’ll see the part that’s prophetic is realising itself.
Optional is a brief subset of conclusions on
The Future of Money,
drafted at a workshop in 2001 and again prophetic.
And for those interested exclusively in deepening their knowledge on design of monetary systems there are
links to my favourite experts on the subject.
All this should be readable in about 5 minutes.
However, the “moneywork” relates to more than the surface designs of these money systems. The central focus has been to understand the underlying human dynamics that have led to their specific creation, individually and collectively. Because money, unlike something in nature — a tree or your liver — is a human creation. So if we could create it, it must be possible for us to fathom, understand and explain how it affects us. This was the basic premise of my research.
If you’re interested to explore this deeper, here is what’s on offer:
- “30 Lies about Money” — a short book based on hundreds of real, live situations in money fora and seminars. It contains essentials to help you understand your own particular relation to money and free you to do (even) more of what you want to do than presently. At the same time you’ll understand better why things run the way they do in the organisations you’re associated with — at work, home, and in your financial partnerships.
- A series of seminars, presentations and trainings with the same purpose as “30 Lies about Money”:
– Money Seminars for Individuals, enabling you to research first, and then consciously develop your own particular monetary path, congruent with your life goals.
– A Money Seminar for Couples, as above but focussed on the relationship.
– A Money Training for Coaches, Consultants and Therapists, to integrate the methodology developed in the book and seminars into their work with clients.
– A Money Seminar for Executive Teams, custom-designed for those aspiring to be part of values-oriented enterprises.
Since 2011 these seminars are being offered by a variety of practitioners in several countries. For an overview, please see the Calendar.
If you have an interest in “Money and Spirituality”, I set out a special description of this work showing how these are interlinked. Included is “10 Theses” — a controversial perspective on the present state of the world, humanity’s part, and the role of money.
Thank you for your interest.
Peter Koenig
peterkoenigsystem®