“What do you want to be when you grow up?” A new school year is underway, but it’s not just children who feel like they have to have answers to the big questions.
New clients will on occasion visit our office with apologies ready: they don’t exactly know what they want or what they might need in the future.
And that’s okay. Plans and hunches and visions… It’s all welcome.
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by Caitie Leibman, Director of Communications
Sometimes I marvel at my brain. I might wake up from a vivid dream or be surprised by a random thought that pops into my mind while I’m innocently doing the dishes, and I’ll wonder, “Where did that come from?”
It’s a gift to be able to notice when thoughts come and go. Sometimes, our thoughts can start to feel so familiar, we don’t notice them anymore. They turn into wallpaper: we can be surrounded by them all day and never notice. We take them for granted as fact.
Maybe you’ve heard some of these sentences before, swirling around in your own mind or coming out of someone else’s mouth:
“Never go into business with family.” (Ha!)
“I’m not good with money.”
“I can’t do something that risky.”
Are these sentences—or life sentences? Are you serving time in the name of a belief? It’s not “the big house” we get trapped in: it’s a small life.
Our words can become cages when we take them more seriously than we need to. But a thought can just be a thought. Like a cloud we watch in the sky, can we allow it to do its thing, and then go on its way?
We can’t stop those stories from popping up any more than we can keep clouds out of the sky. But maybe we can sprinkle in some more helpful sentences, ones that won’t hold us back.
“What if this works out?”
“What if there was a different way?”
“What if I could?”
In any case, we’re glad to be here with you—for whatever comes our way.
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It’s a new school year for so many of our children, grandchildren, and neighbors. Maybe you’ve enjoyed the flood of perennial back-to-school photos. Some families have their children hold up chalkboard signs, to record the details—their new teacher’s name, their favorite color right now, and even what they’d like to be when they grow up.
I can’t help but imagine what surprises are in store for some of these little ones! Who among us could’ve known exactly what form of work would find us in the future? Bike courier, hotel manager, a director of photography who specializes in making food look good in commercials—did any of these folks call their shot as kindergarteners?
It’s an interesting question, and maybe we should keep asking it. What do I want to be when I… reach my next birthday? Or the one five or ten years hence?
What do I want to have in the next chapter of my life?
What doors would I like to keep open?
These might sound like daydreams, but even the hazy hunches of children can be revealing, if not instructive. Sometimes new clients visit our office with apologies ready: they don’t exactly know what their goals are, they don’t know what to ask for, or they can’t begin to imagine what will be possible down the road.
And that’s okay. Just like the question on those little chalkboards, a hunch is good enough. Memoirist Katrina Kenison wonders, “Who knows, really, where dreams begin?” Maybe we’ve been on a certain winding path since we were children. Maybe we discover what we’re about later in life. Maybe our circumstances change, and we get dealt a hand we didn’t imagine we’d ever be playing.
A friend of mine used to tell their children, “This is the plan… until it isn’t.” And that’s life, right?
It’s okay to settle on a general direction, even in your financial life. Growth, an eye on sustainability: these are worthy plans all by themselves. You don’t have to know the destination of every penny. Such a privilege means that you’re buying your future self some options. Resources bring flexibility.
You can always invest wisely, now; the “spend well” part can wait. And what a journey that will be! We’re glad to be here with you.
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