The more I travel the world, the more I come to appreciate authenticity, the more I come to appreciate artistry, and the more I come to appreciate honesty. Are you honest with yourself?
What do I mean by honesty? There are so many different ways to view that word. Honesty is something that is very important to us. Each and every year, we are required to participate in ethics classes. This is where we come to authenticity. When I think of this word, it reminds me of something I enjoy doing when I travel; many people would find going to museums to be rather boring. When I used to travel to Boston, I would love to spend an afternoon at Boston’s Institute of Art. It is one of those buildings that you can go to day after day, maybe even for a month and still see something unique and creative from their artists.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to Spain and go to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Even though they don’t have as many individual works as Boston, the pieces that you see there are huge! One work of art probably took up a city block. It was so huge and massive, created with iron and steel. It was phenomenal, and it was one of a kind.
Isn’t that what your financial life is, isn’t that what your hopes and dreams are? Do you want a cookie cutter approach that will look just like anyone else’s, or do you want something that is unique?
Moving now from art to food (my other favorite thing when I travel), when you are in Europe and you buy a croissant, it is wonderful to break it open and to have the different layers of the croissant fall apart in your hands. You know that it was put together carefully with butter between each and every layer. It is sinfully good. If you go to your local grocery store and buy a croissant, it will look like a croissant on the outside, but when you bite into it, it’s nothing more than a white loaf of bread. It’s a cookie cutter approach.
This gets us to the ethical question. On our whiteboard here, we have had a quote up that our entire team looks at on a daily basis. It’s a quote from Thomas Sowell, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” That is our motto every week; we have to be authentic; we have to be honest; we have to be ethical. We have to tell people the truth, even though there is a famous line from a very famous movie in which the character says, “You can’t Handle the truth!” Well, sometimes a person can’t, but our job is to tell the truth, with love.
We want to make certain that you are on an authentic trip and to get you as close as possible to the end game that you would like to have in your life. Because of that, we don’t take a cookie cutter approach. Instead, when we are looking at solutions, we are asking questions about your specific life. Do you want your life to look like a cheap print hanging on the wall of a hotel room? Or, do you want artistry in your life? Do you want your wishes, hopes, and dreams to be a paint-by-numbers? Or, do you want it to look like artistry?
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. Let’s have a mindful conversation based on truth. If that’s something you want in your life, then it’s time to schedule your Financialoscopy®.
