Mindset Matters

  When I began my journey as a financial planner nearly a decade and a half ago, the world economy was setting the stage for the financial meltdown of 2008/2009 and arguably the most severe financial storm since the Great Depression. As my own career struggled to take flight, people everywhere were losing jobs and retirement accounts were being halved. And amidst the increasingly ominous news reports, the mounting fear and panic added only more injury to personal circumstances as investors made devastating mistakes that placed their financial futures in even greater jeopardy. It was in this chaos I felt it was my job, my duty even, to help people prevent financial mistakes and do everything in my power to ensure they did not run out of money in retirement. It was, and still is, a noble endeavor. But I have learned a few things along the way, and realize now, that mission was just the tip of the iceberg. I have learned that managing money is the easy part and the more critical piece

  “Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make you.” – Richie Norton   I am not even sure who Richie Norton is, but I love that quote! I imagine a ship drifting out to sea, pushed around by the wind and the waves. No course of direction, yet the captain is frustrated when the ship ends up dashed against the rocks, trapped on a sandbar or marooned on an inhospitable island. It is easy to complain when life takes us where we do not want to go. But who is really to blame if we have never set our sails to align us along an appropriate course? Do we blame the waves, wind and the weather? Or should we blame the captain of the ship? It is our life and our ship. We must set our sails with intentionality and determined choices. Otherwise, we are doomed to aimlessly drift along according to the choices and decisions of others. 

  Being able to survive and exist in this country has become so easy we have taken it for granted. We have been so insulated from life-threatening risks that we have allowed our definitions of life and living to migrate from where they probably should be. Now, in the wake of Covid 19, we are all kinds of confused as to what living and being alive should actually look like. Now, I think we can all agree that the absence of breath definitely means you are dead. But does the presence of it automatically mean you are alive? Just because you can fog a mirror, are you really living? I fear that we have failed to recognize that living should mean a lot more than not dying. Having a pulse is a lot different than having a purpose. You can survive with just a pulse, but you cannot thrive without a purpose. To merely exist, you only need the former, but to truly be alive, you must have both. 

  Excellence is an evanescent occurrence. It is not a status we can attain or an achievement we accomplish. Realizing it in one moment does not secure it in the next. We cannot hold on to it by sheer force of will or secure it indefinitely. Excellence is a journey, not a destination. It is a path we must decide to walk each day. Excellence is a choice we must make continually. Excellence demands a price. A price that must be paid for in sacrifice, dedication and determination. It must be earned. But it is not an acquisition or a possession. Nor can it be stored up for the future. It is an association, a relationship, that must be purchased moment by moment. 

  The Chinese used to employ a form of torture known as “Lingchi,” which is roughly translated as “slow death” or “lingering death.” We know it as “death by a thousand cuts.” It was the brutal and horrific process of slowly dismembering someone one small cut or slice at a time. All too often, we inflict similar acts of torture in our own lives and on ourselves. No one wakes up in the morning thinking to themselves, “Today is the day I destroy my life.” Yet, the choices we make throughout the day might make one wonder if that was the case. Although we may not make the conscious decision to ruin our lives – or to destroy our health, or to sabotage our career, or to endanger our marriage – the way we go about our lives often produces small but significant trauma that does exactly that, slice by slice. It is death by a thousand cuts. Lingchi. It was not any one deep-fried candy bar or skipped cardio session that caused the heart attack. Nor was it a single miscommunication that disso