I had the pleasure of a lunch with an old friend today who works in finance, where I explained one current realisation: I needed to learn to invest. His advice was simple…well I’m not such a bad storyteller to give the answer straight away!

Happy reading…

Ah yes, my need to learn to invest:

This need stems from a reality that has just dawned on me - though likely dawned on many of you - that I am unlikely to have a traditional career. 

It isn’t that I have ever really had one and I am not clear I ever intended to. And I know that there are lots of those quotes out there about people today having ‘7 different careers‘ and loving the freedom of change.

But I’ll be honest with you, change agent as I am, I am not clear that my mental schema for my life’s work has caught up the realities of not having a tradional career path.

And I don’t believe our concepts of career and life (by ‘our’ of course I mean ‘my’)  have actually adjusted to accomodate 7 careers in one lifetime either.

ie I am mostly clear I will not have a job with x company in x profession with x title [substitute doctor, lawyer, accountant etc] for x years.

And yet I had not let go of the perceptions?! of security [social, economic, intellectual, title etc] that such a choice follows/leads to.

This has led to all sorts of feelings, anxieties, pressures and so forth - real and imagined, founded and un- that are resolving, as time allows, and in today’s world financial stability invariably comes up.

I just ended a conversation with another friend, a psychologist, who I also love and happened to say something along the lines of:

‘…And I understand that in reality I may not even be financial unstable, it is just that when I am feeling unclear and unstable in my mind about my life and career path, I will invariably perceive the reality of my finances as unstable too."

I did say it more eloquently then and yet he deemed it worthy of committing to paper so here I hope to have retained a trace of its succinct meaning and impact.

Now back to the advice. I can analyse sufficiently to understand that I am having a challenge not with my current state but with my fear (?) of an unstable future state where I might be financially unstable. Lots of future focused stuff.

Thus a desire to learn to invest to ensure that ‘I am secure in the future’.

As I usually pride myself on ‘good analysis –> action’ chains and I was somewhat shocked at what my finance friend from the beginning of this post replied "I understand where you are coming from, but I am not convinced of your conclusion."

"I’m not clear you need to learn to invest. I think you may prefer writing a book.

Which rang loud and clear with "do the things you love and enjoy and get other people to do the things they love and enjoy".

Now of course he wasn’t telling me NOT to invest in the stock market or commodity market or property market. What he was suggesting to me was I should get on with investing in myself and suck up my albeit untraditional traditional career involving words and stories and dialogue and change and so forth.

So yes, my investment advice:

- find some good friends and people whose advice you trust. Get a good accountant.

And most importantly, unless your passion is finance get out there and invest in what makes you tick. (And if you have some surplus, perhaps invest in people and organizations who love and understand investing more than you do). 

 

PS I desperately wanted to add in another war vignette of my grandmother’s about financial stability for safe keeping but couldn’t find where. It does relate though - about the ‘poor’ state of mind I have been in. And the importance of keeping an abundant and rich one: "…I never think about it. I didn’t think about it when I had nothing and I don’t think about it now. After the bombing where we lost everything my mother turned to me and said "we are not poor. We will never be poor. Money comes and goes and you can be a rich person and feel poor - we are not poor." 

So here’s to stepping into abundance. And investing in oneself. I suspect it is the best investment one can ever make! And certainly goes towards growing and nurturing a healthy future.

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 7:44 pm and is filed under action, change, conversation, musings, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.