A Letter from our Financial Literacy Team:
Dear Friends,
Are you on a mission? Is your Family Vision driving your life? These questions are not trivial. They are crucial.
As We All Approach the Close of 2022 and the Dawn of 2023, What are You Thinking About?
All of us have a myriad of issues, concerns, challenges, heartaches, and hopes pressing upon us from all directions. So then, how do we carry the weight of it all? How do we move into a new year with many unknowns, variables, and the like?
Perhaps there is a different way to bring in the new year. Maybe there is a structure, framework, and perspective which is more grounded than just good intentions and resolutions. Now, I really like that word, resolution. It does carry a lot of potencies. We often hear of individuals who resolve in their hearts and minds to do something, and we recognize it as a noble task.
Is it enough? Is it appropriate? What will being resolved accomplish?
Let’s go back to our first two questions. If we are on mission, living in and out the family vision, then any resolution we have will be filtered and governed by our values and we will be utilizing a system to live it. If there isn’t a vision, we’re not practicing our values, and there isn’t a system in place to live them out, then resolutions will often fall flat on their well-intentioned but weakly rooted and poorly executed faces.
With the new year quickly approaching, let us consider a new way to make changes.
Start with WHY.
Why are we doing what we are doing? Why do I want to make a change? This is more than “I want to start reading classics.” “I want to drink less.” “I want to finally start flossing.” Whatever your resolution is, it must be rooted in a deeper set of values. These are the things that get you up in the morning. The thing that winds your clock. Take reading classics for example: perhaps the deeper drive is to be connected to history and to works that have had generational impact, to set literary precedence in your family that will outlive you. Notice how much more meaningful that is versus something like, “I read a blog post that said I should because they’re ‘classics’.”
Get Specific with WHAT.
Once we know why we want/ought to do something it’s clearer to create the specific what. Let’s keep with the reading example. What do you want to read? How often do you want to read? Make sure the specifics are connected to the underlying value set.
Create the System (the HOW)
Build the plan to help you succeed. Stuff isn’t going to naturally get done. We know this. It’s taking the goal of reading every day and applying the mechanisms that help you actually do it. How = When? Where? Which book at which time? Put it on the calendar, set an alert on your phone, sticky-note your house to death. Create the environment and space to help you succeed. Have a specific place (if you can) where you read. Connect to an already established behavior to start a new habit/routine.
There are many books, articles, podcasts and blogs around changing behaviors. It’s easy to get lost in reading about making changes and not actually make the changes. The undesired outcome can become “I’m working on it,” versus choosing to enact the process of change.
Here’s to making 2023 that much more deliberate. That is much more aligned with your family vision.
Rooting for you!
The Financial Literacy Team
P.S. Below are more examples from WHY to WHAT to HOW. And you can find more information and a link to a template to create your own Family Vision here.
