Most of my posts are pure financial planning. Looking at the dollars and cents of how to use your financial resources most efficiently. However, I find from time to time it’s helpful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of how money inter-relates with so many other aspects of our lives. If you’re looking for hard-core financial knowledge, you’ll want to skip this category of posts. Or, if you like to occasionally walk on the philosophical side of life, I hope my musings provoke your own thinking. Feel free to comment.
An important part of living well to me is having my values in sync with my lifestyle. In addition to all the other reasons, that’s one of the main elements that attracted me financial planning because being financially responsible and helping people are two of my top values. I also really wanted to believe in the work I was doing and feel that it served a higher purpose. Providing the tools, motivation, and knowledge for people to make sense of their relationship with money fits right into this.
I had the opportunity on Saturday morning to participate in a wonderful session that brought me back to re-examine my values. Life Coach and Business Consultant Kristin Robertson of Brio Leadership led a wonderful 3-hour session called “Building the Temple of Well Being.” She walked us through activities that looked at how we spend our time and our money and how that reveals our true values. She talked about the difference between the values these two exercises revealed and our aspirational values — the ones we’d really like to have. We also did several activities to reconnect with our spirituality in our daily lives. I found the focus on gratitude and forgiveness as definitive actions that promote personal happiness, optimism, and satisfaction a wonderful reminder that we determine much of our level of happiness in daily life through our actions. If you’d like to read more about Kristin’s workshops or life coaching practice, I encourage you to check out her blog at www.brioleadership.com.