Your Wealth Building and Retirement Plan Need a “Why”

Over the last couple of posts, we’ve been talking about money mindset. We talked about how beliefs are important and how they drive actions and outcomes and evidence and how all change starts with beliefs.

We’ve talked about identity. We talked about money mindset and scripts and how medium is an exchange and a tool to be used. We talked last week about stewardship in relation to the wealth building process.

And in today’s post, I want to continue to pull on that thread just a little bit more. And I want to give you a couple other perspectives that might be beneficial for you when it comes to navigating financial decisions, intentionally building wealth, and retiring with confidence. And that is having a compelling. Why? 

Start with Why

Simon Sinek wrote a book really started from a TED talk that called start with why and in that? It was really a business book geared towards businesses, but it could be applied to people as well But it was the idea of companies that started with a why a strong Passionate belief of why they’re doing what they’re doing Outperformed other companies so he talked about Apple for example Apple is a computer company and they you know design great computers and devices and stuff like that.

But their core thing is, you know, think differently, make life better. 

He talked in that speech about Martin Luther King, about how many people, you know, could have led the civil rights movement, but it was really Martin Luther King who did it because he had a. Strong, why? 

He talked about the Wright brothers, the ones who founded and discovered flight as an example compared to others, which I should talk about from a book that I’ve read here.

But the thing is they think differently. They have a strong compelling why.

Now, in that speech, he talks about, you know, there’s a why, why you do what you do. There’s what you do and how you do it. So, what we do right in terms of money, right, what we do, how we go about doing it. But the thing is the why is important.

The why is where we find the motivation, the cause, the inspiration. And very few people, when it comes to their money, have a strong. Why? A strong purpose. 

The Wright Brothers

So, like I mentioned a couple years ago, I read a book on the Wright brothers by David McCullough. Very, really good book. If you want to go read it about how Orville and Wilbur Wright, and how they first discovered flight down in Kitty Hawk.

Well, that in that book, and as a play down in true life too, was there this kind of unwritten competition between them, the Wright brothers and Samuel Langley. So, if you, you probably never heard of Samuel Langley, unless you’ve read that book or know about the story, 

but Samuel Langley at the time, he was a professor at the University of Pitt. He is an aerospace engineer. He had all the connections, had all the money. He was supported by the war department to basically discover a flying machine. He worked with the Smithsonian. So, he had all the money, all the intellect, all the education, all the connections, all the resources, and yet he failed in his endeavors.

And because of that, most people have never heard of him. Compare that to Orville and Wilbur Wright from Dayton, Ohio. They owned a bicycle shop. Their mom, I think, died at an early age, and she’s often sick, and their dad was a traveling preacher, minister. They didn’t really have any money. They didn’t really have any resources, neither one of them were college educated, yet they discovered flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

And no one was there, no one was there to see it except for some little, you know, family that lived on the outer banks at the time. The outer banks were not like it is now, all built up and stuff. It was kind of desolate. And there was just one little family that lived down there that helped them along the way.

And, and he was the, they were the ones who kind of took the picture of, of them flying.

If you go to Kitty Hawk today, there’s a National Park there and at the top There’s this memorial tower that reads in commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orrville Conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unquestionable faith.

So, what made them so different than Samuel Langley? Well, they were both trying to achieve the same thing. So, what they were doing was the same thing. They’re both trying to achieve flight. How they went about it was obviously different. But really what drove the difference was the why the Wright brothers had a different why?

Dauntless resolution and unquestionable faith and if you’ve read the story about how they took all these parts and how they crash and landed and They expected to fail over and over and over and over again But they were just consumed with it because it brought about a strong purpose and they used their resources like we talked about in the stewardship from the from the bicycle shop to furnish this greater cause this external endeavor that they’re doing.

It’s the classic. David and Goliath story. Goliath was this big soldier, trained, had all the armament. David had a little, little rock. But you know what David had?

A Deeper Meaning

David said, is there not a cause? He had a strong why, and this can be applied to really everything, every facet of your life. Personally, I’m a financial planner. That’s what I do. I help people with their money and their finances. 

How I go about doing it. I’ve done it from coaching. I’ve done in planning. I work with personal clients, but now I’m trying to help more people via YouTube and podcasts. It’s a different medium. 

But the why I do it is because I believe you can do better with your money. And I believe the better you do with your money, the better you do with your life and the better you do with your life, the better meaning you’ll have, which will make your world and the world around you better. See, that’s, that’s it.

And frankly, I don’t want people to experience what I experienced in the past. 

So, for me, this is more than just a profession. This is a calling. This is something that is meant to really help people. 

So, we’re going to talk a lot of time in the future about tactics and techniques and strategies and frameworks and what to do, but that only take you so far if you don’t take the time to define your why.

 The why provides the fuel. Now you can have a nice Lamborghini or Ferrari all souped up best engine in the world, designed, engineered. But if there’s no gas, there’s no fuel, there’s not going to be any progress. It’s not going to go anywhere. The compelling why adds the fuel for the journey ahead.

Now I want you to be able to navigate financial decisions wisely and intentionally. I want you to be able to intentionally build wealth, and I certainly want you to retire with confidence, but none of that is going to happen to the extent that it could without having a strong why. 

Your Why

So, what is the compelling why for your life?

Not just your money, but for your life. Why are you here? What’s your purpose? What are you trying to achieve? What is it that you really want in your life?

If money was no object, meaning if you were not limited by finances, and you didn’t have to go to a job, and you could do whatever it is that you wanted to do, what would you do with your life? 

But if you had all the money in your life that you needed, how would you live out the rest of your days? What would you do? And more importantly, why would you do it? See, the why brings a bigger purpose to life.

I’m currently rereading a book. by Dr. Viktor Frankl called Man’s Search for Meaning.

I’ve read it before, but after recently visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, I wanted to reread it. 

Viktor Frankl is, was a psychiatrist in Austria, around Vienna. He was also a Jew. And he was working on a theory. Prior to his time in the concentration camp and a manuscript on a thing called logo therapy but then he got arrested and was taken to Auschwitz later down to Dachau, which is by Munich.

And it was there in the concentration camps that he tested his theories and applied it to life. And what he found was the people who had a bigger why a meaning to their life survived the concentration camps. in a larger percentage than those that didn’t. 

See, Frankl studied a lot of other psychiatrists, and he read about Sigmund Freud. Freud’s main thing was that what man wants is pleasure.

Frankl believed that what man really wants in his life is meaning. And when they can’t or don’t have meaning, then they seek pleasure as a means of kind of distracting themselves. And see, meaning really comes from within. And it comes from the experiences and the aspirations that you have throughout your life.

So, the way I’ve heard Logotherapy, which is Dr. Frankel’s meaning for life, is threefold. One, you need a project or a cause or endeavor, something to work on in your life. Number two is it needs to be external to you. It needs to benefit others. And three, you need to have a redemptive view on your sufferings because you’re going to have tough times.

So, part my, my thing is I don’t want people to struggle like I did with money, and I want you to be able to fulfill your life’s callings and meaning, whatever that might be. 

So, the question for you today is, what is your compelling why? What’s your life’s calling or purpose? What are you trying to achieve bigger than yourself? And are you on the path to achieving it? 

Hopefully you are. And I think, as we described before, that money can be the tool to help enable that life. 

So, the irony of it all, sorry for the history lesson here, but it’s just something I’m interested in now. And it does apply to our money and our money mindset, which is kind of what we’re focusing on. The irony of it all was that Hitler also was from Austria. His father died when he was very young.

Was raised by a single mom and after the death of his mother, when he turned 18, he went up to Vienna, which is where Frankl ended up being as well. And he, Hitler pursued the idea of trying to be an artist. He drew as a child, his, that was his dream. That was his purpose if you will. But he ultimately got rejected.

By the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and he was not admitted to art school. And so, he ended up kind of joining the military in World War one. And, and at the end of it was a corporal when he, when the World War one ended.

 So somewhere along the path, he took that rejection and couldn’t process it and stopped the passion of trying to pursue being an artist and got into politics, eventually became a ruthless world dictator, but it only reinforces It’s Frankl’s theory of Logos Therapy that without true meaning, without truly achieving the meaning in your life, you’ll distract yourself with pleasure.

And Hitler’s, I guess, pleasure was world domination. I don’t know. But again, the idea being that had he pursued what he truly wanted to do and fulfilled that compelling vision and that why in his life. Maybe all of that would have been avoided. That obviously is an extreme consequence of not having and not pursuing a vision.

But here’s the thing, how many people were impacted by it? The whole world. Now, will you impact the whole world by fulfilling or not fulfilling your why? I don’t know, but I know, do you know this, that there are others that are out there that will be impacted positively by you fulfilling it. 

A Micro Action

So, the micro action for this week. 

Take some time to reflect on what’s your compelling why. Why are you here? What’s the bigger calling in your life? What’s the meaning in your life? What is it that you’re trying to achieve? What would you want your life to be if money was not a hindrance?

Take some time and write that down and reflect on it. Because the clearer you get on that, the clearer you will be with your money that will help you navigate financial decisions. It’ll help you intentionally build wealth. It’ll help you when you get to the retirement stage. It’ll help you with your life and it’ll help you with your money because that belief drives actions, causes outcomes, or reinforces that evidence that comes back around to those beliefs.

I hope this is helpful for you. Thought provoking. If you have any questions or feedback, you can send me an email at mike at the true wealth dot show. And until next time, I hope you have a great day.