Where Am I Going? By Lewis J. Walker, CFP(R)

At spiritual retreats three questions often are posed to help attendees center thinking and contemplation: Where have I been? Where am I now? Where am I going?

These questions easily could apply to families: Where have we been? Where are we now? Where are we going as a family?

The same questions occupy planners of all stripes, applied to business, community, charitable, or military efforts in tactical and strategic realms. In business and professional pursuits, given pressures of the daily round, we often hear that key people are too busy working in the business to step back and work on the business. Hectic lives are why retreats are popular.

In military parlance “to retreat” means to withdraw, fall back, sometimes to regroup, restore energy and attack again with renewed resources and vigor. Purely “running away” is seen as less than noble.

Religious traditions frame retreats as an important element of spiritual formation and discernment. It’s time set aside to focus on your Creator and your role in his scheme of things on earth and the afterlife. Those who do not believe in God or eternal life also need to pause and contemplate how they will leave their circle better off than how they find it today.

Spiritual leaders at the monastic Northumbria Community on the Isle of Man in the U.K. see a retreat as “time consciously set aside for God, a change of focus, a deliberate act of stepping outside of normal routine by withdrawing (not running away) from noise and pressures; the immediate and insistent claims of our social, domestic and workaday responsibilities in order to be in a quiet place where all our senses are open and ready to listen.” It’s contemplative “away time.” When you put a child in “time out,” aren’t you asking a young mind to consider the three questions, although the tyke most likely is not into philosophical musings?

Northumbria retreat masters say it’s about “perspective.” Can you step back and see a situation objectively, free of emotion that clouds your view, seeing yourself in a new light, seeing things as others may do, grasping the bigger picture, getting outside of self? The principal aim of a retreat is “to stop, listen, reflect, pray, share so that we see with new eyes, think with new minds, so that even though we have to go back into the very same situations, the same set of circumstances, the same roles, responsibilities and relationships that we left behind to come to the place of retreat, we do so having changed inside.” If you look in a mirror as a pussycat, can you see the lion that can be?

To know where you are going you must know where you have been and where you are. Innovative thinker Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach, a coaching resource for entrepreneurs, said, “I’ve always believed that it’s more important to have really great questions than really great answers. Really great answers tend to close things down, while really great questions open things up.” In financial planning, questions initially are more important than answers. When working with a financial planner are enough questions being asked?

As in medicine, questions are the essence of holistic diagnosis and planning. In any life planning situation, you must have a clear picture of challenges ahead. Challenges may be positive or negative. Positive life transitions may center on births, adoptions, educations, marriage, career progress, lifestyle investments like a home, a secure and meaningful retirement. Life also throws difficult challenges at you often when you don’t expect them—a career or family crisis, accidents, health problems, divorce, financial reverses, loss of a loved one, addictions, forced retirement, etc. Insurance planning underpins liability and contingency planning but that’s only a part of a comprehensive plan.

To move to a new reality, your envisioned future, what offers the likely best alternatives? What resources—financial, human, community, or government—are needed to power each alternative? Do you (and team or family members) have a clear understanding of the desired outcome, what you wish to experience?

A road map to your future is de riguer. Do you also have a role map? Go beyond a job description of what is needed to achieve objectives. What role must you play, as well as others key to accomplishment of the goal? What strengths must you and key players have?

See what we mean about questions?

Lewis Walker is President of Walker Capital Management, LLC. Securities and advisory services offered through The Strategic Financial Alliance, Inc. (SFA). Lewis Walker is a registered representative and investment adviser representative of SFA which is otherwise unaffiliated with Walker Capital Management, LLC.

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