As financial advisors, part of our responsibility is to help clients visually process their world. Every time we see something, there is the opportunity for attention to follow and be directed there. Anytime you direct attention somewhere, you create a series of probability waves or probabilities of fulfillment.
Every time you review your goals for the next 12 weeks, six months, one year, or five years, you create a probability wave for their fulfillment. There is always value in having a visual representation whether it’s a goal or an ecosystem.
Couple with that understanding is knowing that one of our largest roles in our relationship with clients is to help them see and think clearly – helping them determine what their target really is and if they are visually processing it. Or are they caught up in busyness and the noise that comes with everyday distractions or controlled by self-doubt?
We all are afloat on an ocean of infinite input. Think about how much stimulation comes at you on any given day. Actually, it’s hard to think about it because it is honestly too much to imagine. Really, if you take a minute to reflect on the number of books you’ve read and the amount of knowledge you’ve gained, it exceeds that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Aurelius, or Genghis Khan. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had extensive libraries, but their knowledge ended with their bookshelves – no internet access nor the world literally in their pockets or the palm of their hand.
We have been exposed to more information and know exponentially more than any of these wise politicians, philosophers, and sages. It represents a huge amount of processing. We are inundated with stuff all the time – some is quite valuable, a lot is useless noise, making it hard to focus and even harder to decipher the gold from the bulls**t.
Layer on to that is the need to determine whether what we deem as real truly impacts us. Is it part of our design? More often than not, it doesn’t affect you nor is it part of your design. However, it can easily grab our attention and divert that attention from where it needs to be placed. Some headlines are interesting, but you must continually be monitoring how much, if any, of your attention they deserve. The danger is always that your attention on a current event is attention that is not going somewhere else – somewhere that can positively impact you and your design.
That said, a very large part of your job is to teach this concept to your clients, and you cannot teach it until it is ingrained in you. The best way to understand and implement is to teach. Be a teacher. But to be a good teacher you should also be a good student. Join us at www.gettingresultsinc.com and complete an assessment.
