Read any number of self-help books, articles, or videos and they have you convinced that you can control your destiny. A beautiful picture, catchy sayings and motivational quotes and you are now ready to go to work earlier, be more organized, eat better, exercise more and boom, a “new” you. But can you control yourself right into financial and emotional destitute?
One of the major points of contention we often have with our clients is over-optimism. Don’t get me wrong, we love optimistic and all-around happy people, but sometimes we lose sight of reality. As humans, we did not evolve to make logical decisions, we evolved to survive. When we are overly optimistic about certain specifics of our life, we tend to lose sight of the other details. Life now is more complex then ever and demands rational calculations as opposed to survival instincts.
When we are in control of something, we tend to think optimistically (as you should) about our endeavor, whether it be your business or employer, your house, a project or an investment. The problem then becomes that you become attached to the endeavor succeeding and lose focus on the situations that you cannot control. This is known as Control Bias.
We think because we are steering the ship or because we are involved in the steering of the ship that we can navigate ANY waters. So, what does this mean for our finances and for us emotionally? When we are busy “controlling” our destiny, we often lose our peripheral vision. Often the wave that takes down a business, industry, project or investment is an outside factor that was never seen by an individual working in that business or industry. We have seen or heard the stories time and time again of someone losing everything because their company/employer/investment went out of business or was extremely devalued, but it won’t happen to me! That is what the people of Sprint thought, Polaroid? Blockbuster? Toys R US? Enron? Not only did these employees lose their paycheck, the majority also lost all their retirement savings, because they were investing back into their employer. It was what they knew, and what they knew was the company was doing well! Of those that lost their jobs and retirement savings, how many of those also lost their house, their relationship, their family? What we often see in financial loss, compounds to one’s personal lives. Those are very large companies that were dominating their industries and went belly up. Now think of all the smaller businesses that went out of business virtually overnight or the tech companies in 2001, investments that dropped off and never came back. So how do we protect ourselves?
I spoke with Certified Life Coach, Samantha Lane, from Lumina coaching and we spoke about how individuals who hire other professionals to help with navigating their lives (waters) are often living better lives. The overwhelming majority of the time, individuals that hire professionals to make more money, deploy their money more efficiently, have better and more diversified investments, have less stress and have a better life. So, what do the professionals do? Professionals help navigate you on your journey, they watch your blind spot, they are an advocate for you and keep you level headed, and they are an accountability partner for you to get things done. Think of a yacht on the ocean, a skilled captain could most likely navigate the waters from port to port without any help. But a captain with maps, radar, sonar, and a skilled crew can get port to port safer, faster and with less stress.
What professionals are you currently leveraging to watch your blind spots, make your life more efficient, less stressful and overall better? Call Taylor Richardson at 913.681.9155 or email taylor@engageadvisors.com if you want to know more.
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