The first step to living a life that's truly satisfying is to see it in your mind.
As children, it's easy to dream. Our imagination has no limits. As we get older, the reality of adulthood, whether it’s the situations we come across or the people we meet, can create boundaries to our thoughts.
‘Thinking outside the box’ can take practice but it's an essential first step. From here we can start to understand what's really important to you and focus on ways to achieve it.
Seeing our current situation in the cold light of day means that we have two choices.
We can choose to ignore it and hope it sorts itself out or we can embrace it and take some action.
This can be a difficult stage because, whatever our situation, it provides the comfort zone of familiarity and stepping out of this comfort zone can be scary.
But it can also be liberating and things usually aren't as difficult to change as we think.
Here we use the things learned from ‘facing things head on’ and start to set goals and take action.
Our future is in our hands and by committing and taking it seriously we can mould it to meet our aspirations.
This means making a plan and sticking to it while allowing it to change as our life changes.
Think of this as a personal ‘Business Plan’. Few businesses would operate without a business plan. Even fewer businesses would ‘wait and see what the future brings’ or ‘hope for the best’. So if we want the best from our lives, we have to think like businesses and start to plan.
Successful financial planning has no time frame. It's a living breathing process that begins in early adulthood, continues through working life into retirement and stays with us until the end of our life.
You could even argue that the effects of good financial planning continue way after our death. So it’s never too late to start!
We work with you through all the stages of your life. Our goal is to get to know you as well – if not better – than you know yourself.
From here, we can plan for all the important stages of your life and most importantly, help you enjoy them!
While there's a serious side to our work together, we can't lose sight of why we are doing it.
It's sole purpose is to help us enjoy life more, not just at in the future but now.
Life is not a rehearsal and it’s important that, whilst there are some challenging decisions to make, we enjoy the challenges and the benefits they provide.
Arguably this is the most important principle of all. Here we’ve come almost full circle.
As we read in ‘Dare to Dream’ we can unknowingly allow situations and people to distract us from what’s important.
This principle is all about keeping the focus on what’s really important to you personally. Not your friends, neighbours or work colleagues, but you.