How will you change your life?

My favorite book last year was the “The Myths of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky. In a 2021, year-end ‘best of’ post, the website and magazine Financial Planning featured my book choice along with the favorite titles of a dozen other planners. (This is the third time I’ve been quoted. I’m a rising voice in the planning community!) 

Sonja takes aim at the idea and myth that happiness – or unhappiness – is tied to significant life events like marriage or job loss. Her research shows that we misestimate how these events will impact us, in both directions. The average uplift from marriage lasts two years but trauma survivors are more likely than not to report positive change afterward. She coined the term hedonic adaptation to explain this tendency for life satisfaction to come back to baseline even for big life events. (We already know we get severely diminishing returns on acquisition of money.) 

Having come through my own tough life events, I opened this practice wanting to help people on a deeper level. Last year, I began coursework and early this month completed the “Registered Life Planner” certification from the Kinder Institute, the most serious of the financial life planning training organizations. 

In the training, we spent a lot of time working on listening skills and other tools, including a meditation practice. The most famous tool is “The Three Questions” which, challenge us to think beyond the conventional and focus on our deepest dreams.   

Financial Life Planning is not therapy and it’s not coaching. It’s classic, robust, technical financial planning with an existential layer. Those are odd bedfellows at first appearance but they really belong together! One survey showed that people were evenly split when asked, “What scares you more, retirement or death?” This is profound and rewarding work. 

Kinder’s third question goes like this: “Your doctor shocks you with the news that you have only one day left to live. Notice what feelings arise as you confront your very real mortality. Ask yourself: What dreams will be left unfulfilled? What do I wish I had finished or had been? What do I wish I had done?” 

You aren’t dying tomorrow.   
How will you change your life?