As advisers, we spend lots of effort and time helping clients set goals. That’s because goals are foundational to financial decisions around investments, asset allocation and income planning.
On certainly one of our recent weekly radio shows on WCCO in Minneapolis (AM 830), we invited our long-standing friend Doug Lennick to debate the connection between achieving purposeful goals in life, and the way these should be tied to values.
Doug is the founding CEO of think2perform, a high-performance leadership development firm, and is well known as an authority within the art and science of human behavior. Following is an abstract of our discussion, edited for length and clarity.
Doug’s latest book is “Don’t Wait for Someone Else to Fix It: 8 Essentials to boost your leadership impact at work, home, and anywhere else that needs you.”
Doug, your latest book draws a robust connection between self-awareness and goal achievement. Why is that?
Self-awareness is in regards to the ways we go about pursuing our goals. The book breaks down the strategy of achieving purposeful goals into 4 steps that my co-author, Chuck Wachendorfer and I call the 4Rs: Recognize, Reflect, Reframe, and Respond. Recognizing is most closely tied to self-awareness. It’s tied to our experiential triangle of thoughts, feelings, and actions. Within the financial world, lots of our money decisions should not only heavily influenced by our thoughts, feelings, and actions but in addition by those near us. It’s the rationale why I consider we must invest with our personal values front and center, and never some abstract notion of maximizing returns simply for the sake of returns.
It’s also why the flexibility to have a goal and visualize it’s so essential. For instance, you wish to know where you wish to take your life now or through the next chapter and visualize what getting there’ll appear and feel like.
Once someone has settled on a goal — whether it’s to retire at 63, travel, or buy a second home — what are the subsequent steps?
Step 2 is having a plan. In my a few years working as a financial adviser and financial planner, I discovered that folks who’ve a plan do higher than those that don’t. Before you may plan, nonetheless, it is advisable to assess your current behavior and the way you’d prefer to act. A plan helps to shut the gap between these two points by setting mission-critical activities you may take to advance toward your goal. Then, the subsequent step is to implement the plan, which is when the exertions really begins. Remember, an ideal plan is meaningless unless you may execute it. An implementation may require setting micro goals and nudges to get you to alter the best way you could have been doing (or not doing) things up to now — including turning bad financial habits into healthier ones. The purpose is to start, and never to expect 100% change overnight.
That’s an interesting insight. What we tell our clients is that a well-crafted financial statement shouldn’t change that much, however it have to be resilient enough to anticipate and adjust to potential dangers and changing life events.
Exactly. Step 4 in our strategy of achieving purposeful goals is to regulate direction. That doesn’t mean changing direction with every shift in wind direction. It means tracking your progress toward your goal and redirecting as needed. The goal just isn’t perfection: It’s about charting a course in order that as events unfold, you may make needed adjustments while staying clear in regards to the overall direction of the goal. Let’s say you and your spouse are 4 years out out of your intended retirement date, and certainly one of you is laid off in an industry with diminishing prospects. Ideally, a thoughtful financial statement would permit you to have the financial respiration room to either discover a recent profession path or shift to a part-time job to maintain you heading in the right direction to succeed in your retirement goal.
How do you advise people to maintain working intentionally toward their goals when life throws such big curve balls?
Make no mistake: Pursuing recent goals within the face of adversity or changing life circumstances is difficult — they often entail doing stuff you’ve never done before. It’s quite likely for mistakes to occur that result in unintended consequences and discouragement. Throwing off discouragement means tapping into your resilience and getting support from others you trust and respect. I also think it’s the large reason that folks selected to work with experienced, qualified financial advisers. A superb adviser can do an excellent job at helping you set purposeful goals and aligning them with what matters most to you. And that, I believe, is certainly one of the keys to having a protracted, meaningful, and joyful life.
The opinions voiced on this material are for general information only and should not intended to supply specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Wealth Enhancement Group and Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services are separate entities from LPL Financial.