All the money circulated with love, care, and friendship is Happy Money. Happy Money makes people smile and feel loved and cared for deeply. It is in many ways an active form of love. Money circulated in frustration, anger, sadness, and despair is Unhappy Money. This kind of money makes people stressed, desperate, aggravated, depressed, and sometimes violent. It deprives people of their dignity, self-esteem, and gentleness of heart. Whenever you receive and spend money and you do so with negative energy, it becomes Unhappy Money.

Happy Money and Unhappy Money: what kind of money are you carrying around? Even though you can’t see the smile of the money physically, you can pretty much guess if it is smiling or not. If you are happy with your work and life, your money is more than likely smiling in your wallet. If you hate your job and always complain about something in your life, your money is crying or angry in your wallet.

People who live “in love” with money are doing what they love and make enough money. They may not be rich, but they truly have everything they need. They put what they love in the center of their life. They are financially comfortable, so they don’t feel stress around money in everyday life.

There is always an emotional drive behind wanting money. But if we become disconnected from the underlying emotions, we can get stuck in a cycle of trying to make money without understanding what we really need.

Ken invites people to examine their beliefs about money, and how they developed those beliefs. By exploring whatever feelings you project onto money, you can recognize your own emotional baggage. If you can do that, you can see money clearly.

If money were a person, there are several personas it could have. What would your money’s personification be? Is that person gentle and kind, or mean and unfriendly?

The happiest way to receive wealth and abundance in your career is by doing something that brings you joy. When you combine this with an expression of your unique gifts, you can create a one-of-a-kind brand and even start your own business in a way that transforms the energy of support into Happy Money, too.

We all understand concrete assets like cars, homes, and the things we own, but there is another type of asset which is essential to our abundance and happiness, called “Invisible Assets.” This includes our relationships, health, experience, wisdom, and skills. Our emotional assets and debt play a huge role in the way we acknowledge and create our wealth.

Whether you are wealthy, middle class, or of lesser financial means, you may struggle with your relationship to money and be perpetually dissatisfied. In other words, there is no magic figure that equals happiness and financial satisfaction; the distance to happiness is the same for everyone, asserts Ken.

When we earn and spend money, we do it either with love or fear, says Ken. If you don’t pay much attention to your mind, you would hardly be aware that fear is what motivates your actions, whether at home, at work, in your community, or the way you behave with money.

We manifest what we believe in life. However, most of us aren’t even aware of the many negative subconscious beliefs about money that we’ve been operating under for years. These beliefs have been encoded in our blueprints and passed down to us from generation to generation. Here are six of the most common ones, and five to try out instead.

Ken Honda discusses money personality types: 1) Compulsive Saver (Stockpiler), 2) Compulsive Spender (Spendthrift), 3) Compulsive Moneymaker, 4) Indifferent-to-Money Type, 5) Hippie, 6) Saver-Splurger, 7) Gambler. There are combination types, too: Hoarder + Spender = the Repressed Spender type; Spender + Moneymaking Addict = the Gambler type; Hoarder + Spender + Moneymaking Addict = the Worrier type.