If money were about math, none of us would be carrying any debt.

The numbers are simple. What's complicated is what we do with money. We use money to soothe our feelings and buy respect, to show how much we care or how little. We don't simply earn, save, and spend money: we flirt with it, crave it, and scorn it; we punish and reward ourselves with it.

Without realizing it, we give money meaning it doesn't really have--what former psychiatrist and current business coach David Krueger calls our "money story." And in the process of playing out that money story, we often...