Were the spice girls right?

A lot of the questions in this book are all about understanding what you want. Not just what you want, but as Mel B exclaimed in the spice girl’s classic what you ‘really really want’

I remember one conversation I had with a client who told me that, whilst having enough money to stop permanently, a realisation that and the desire to stop work, he’d decided to continue doing the job he told me he hadn’t been enjoying. Not only that, but he’d also committed for at least another year of full-time work.

However, in the job he was doing full time work was 60 hours a week. Full time work was answering emails at weekends. Full time work was stress and managing crisis. Full time work was swapping time at work he could spend travelling, and enjoying the wealth he’d build

I politely reminded him that this wasn’t my words. He’d told me this himself during our initial meeting.

“I suppose the challenge I’ve got Chris” he told me “Is I don’t know what I really want?”

The curse of one more year and why change is so hard.

Another thing that’s happened when my clients are ready to move onto whatever’s next in their lives is ‘the conversation’.

They’ll talk to their boss, or the board, or their clients and decide that what they’re going to do is ‘one more year’. One more year sometimes turns into two, or three.

Now the interesting thing is that if work continues to give them satisfaction, autonomy to do the things that make them happy, helps them build their wealth to improve their financial wellbeing and allows them a decent balance in their lives then ‘one more year’ or two or three might be the right thing.

However, I’ve also met plenty of people where the reality of one more year is simply continuing the habits that they know they should change. 

A lack of focus on health. Not spending enough time with people, they love and like. Being at work instead of spending time and money on the experiences which will really enhance someone’s financial wellbeing.

So, what might be the reason we do this to ourselves?

Part of the reason might be the fact that from an evolutionary perspective we’ve evolved to stick with the status quo.

Our ancient ancestors spent their days facing constant threats to their survival. Their were predators, scarce resources and harsh environments…and yes, before you ask, it was definitely worse than Dagenham on a Saturday night.

Taking unnecessary risks in these environments could lead to injury or death and therefore we’ve evolved to be cautious and avoid risks. In these environments, the individuals who weren’t taking these risks were less likely to be eaten by hyenas, bears and lions. 

Palaeontologists from the University of South Wales, Australia, have also found a fossil of a ‘flesh eating killer kangaroo’ which I’d imagine wasn’t one of the friendliest chaps in the world if you were an early human wandering across the bush…and you definitely don’t meet them in Dagenham on a Saturday night.

So, it’s correct to say that our ancestors had a lot of danger to avoid in their lives, and we live our lives still being pushed and pulled by these ‘biases’ (ways of thinking) despite the fact that we don’t live in these environments anymore.

Two of these that apply when we’re thinking about ‘what happens next’ is loss aversion and status quo bias.

Loss aversion suggest that loss psychologically impacts us more than gain. This leads us to avoid risks that could result in loss, even if the potential gains are more significant.

I’ve had conversations with clients where they continue to work often because of their reluctance to lose the regular income work provides even though the ‘deal’ they are making is that they are swapping this for a finite resource they know the value is greater than the income. Time, and the freedom to spend it how they want.

The other gift our ancestors gave us is a bias towards Status Quo. Not the 70’s and 80’s rock band responsible for giving us “Rocking all over the world” but the desire to stick with what we know.

We’re more likely to stick with familiar routines because we prefer things to stay he same. Change is hard for that reason, even if we know we need to change.

So, I get it. Doing one more year might feel safer. You’re got a constant flow of that all so reliable regular income, and you’re stepping into this unknown ‘world’ of scary change. However I suppose the big question is…

Is the security of another 12 months of income worth what you’re giving up? A life you truly want to live?

Three ways to work out what you “really really” want without knowing what you “really really” want.

There is a paradox. We know that we might not want ‘this’, but we’ve not entirely decided what you really really want. 

I get it. From my experience of working with hundreds of clients over the years, not many of them know what they really want when they choose to retire.

The expectation of knowing what we ‘really really want’ isn’t a realistic aspiration. So I’d suggest we thinking about ‘what happens next’ in a slightly different context.

What don’t we really really want?

Ok, I admit it. The spice girls version is a little catchier. I can’t imagine scary spice singing “What don’t you want, don’t you really really want?”

However, as a question it might be a useful starting point.

You’ll remember in the days before smart phone cameras and instant images, we had to take our cameras to our local pharmacy or snappy snaps and wait a few days or more for our photos to be available.

I do love the wonders of modern photo taking, but I miss the anticipation of picking up the little folder from the counter in Boots full of images from a holiday. I also remember the frustration of realising that half of the images were of my hand, or I’d cut someone’s head out of the picture, or the image had been lost.

For those of us who remember this experience, you’ll also remember the film that went in those cameras, which captured exactly the same image but in an inverted way. If I remember rightly they used to be called the ‘negatives’.

So, same image. But a different way of looking at it and I’d suggest looking at the change we want to make in our lives through these questions might allow us to incrementally closer to the life we actually want to live.

Some of us aren’t motivated towards positive outcomes, rewards and personal growth but by the desire to avoid discomfort, pain and negative outcomes.

In fact, the research shows that some of us are naturally more inclined to have motivations which are less about moving towards something (called in the research approach motivation) and more about away from stuff we don’t like (avoidance motivation)

So, if you think in a way which is about avoiding things, reframing the positive questions contained in this book by thinking about what we don’t want might be a sensible next steps. 

So, what are the ‘what don’t I want’ questions you might want to ask ourselves in the key areas we need to think about when thinking about ‘what happens next’?

You might not know what role work plays in your ‘what happens next’. However, you might know that you want to spend less time at work. You might know what tasks you’re less keen on. You might know what parts of your current work makes you truly tear your hair out!

You might not know the best way to define your purpose and values. However, you might be a bit clearer on what you don’t stand for? A starting point for this one might be what annoys you about other people.

You might not know what a perfect social life looks like. However, you know that you don’t want to lose touch with your friends. You don’t want to die without building those memories you love and like.

You’re having trouble thinking about what financial independence means to you. So, you might want to start in the opposite direction. How much do you need not to worry about the necessities in life? 

You might not be sure what an ideal state of physical health looks like for you…however you know you don’t want to be unable to do things which require a chunk of physical exertion. You don’t want to be tired as much. You don’t want to say no to your grandkids when they want to play.

So, if you’re struggling with what you actually want, starting the process by considering the polar opposite might be a great way to start.

What’s our direction of travel?

One of the really fortunate things I get to do is speak to loads of people going through their own ‘what happens next’ journeys. One of those individuals was a lovely guy called Damian.

Damian was a partner in a large financial service consultancy business working with large employers to manage their employees pension schemes and design benefit packages for the businesses who use them.

Damians last employer worked with several large employers including National Grid, Pepsi, Tate and Lyle, The city of London and many more.

Therefore, Damian spent a decent chunk of time talking to people about planning for retirement and how this might look.

Damian even adopted a ’60 paychecks’ technique which meant he started to think about his own ‘what happens next’ moment with, what you’d assume is, plenty of time to go…

However whilst I’d imagine this helped Damian think about his own journey quite a lot, he also realised that there’s still a point in time when the rubber hits the road, the pay checks run out and you’ve actually stopped your main career.

Damian, during our interview, spoke about this and realised that whilst planning might be important, he’d take the pressure off himself.

He did this by simply thinking about a ‘direction of travel’ a way to think about what happens next which takes the pressure off getting it ‘right’.

I’m a big fan of planning and then acting based on that plan. However there’s some great insight, from the likes of Eisenhower, Lao Tzu and Winston Churchill which talk about the fact that regardless of what you plan, all plans need to change as they face ‘contact’ with the real world.

For me, whilst leaders and philosophers may have said the same thing, the world champion boxer and man you definitely don’t want to upset, Mike Tyson most pertinently said…

“Everyone has a plan…until they get punched in the face”

One of the most demoralising things you can do is have a definite plan and hang your hat onto achieving that plan within the timescales you’ve set yourself. In reality, life wil get in the way.

However the idea of planning but understanding that as long as you’re heading in the right direction and planning accordingly it’s probably a more psychological healthy perspective way of achieving your goals than assuming that you’re going to achieve everything you need to, and getting annoyed when you don’t because life has other plans.

The reality is that when we’re thinking about what happens next I’d suggest that we’re thinking in the terms of progress not perfection. We’re thinking about incremental movements into the life you want. We’re not thinking about big changes immediately but how to ease into the new life you deserve.

However there’s one more important point here I want to make. The more time you’ve got to think about your ‘what happens next’ and making the changes, the better it’s going to be.

I’d suggest that planning for ‘what happens next’ is a bit like studying for our driving test. 

We might cram to learn everything at the last minute and still pass, but planning, preparing, getting help if we need it and taking our time to let both the skills and knowledge sink in might be an approach which will give us more success.

Low-cost experimentation and the art of the gradual

A few years ago I decide that I needed more time to do what I love. 

So, I did something which has positively impacted my life in a bunch of different ways…

I went from working 5 days a week to 4 days a week.

So, my week Monday to Thursday is what you might consider ‘work’. I speak to my brilliant clients. I do research and think about the best way for my clients to achieve their life goals with the money I’ve got. I work with my team. I meet fellow professionals. I do everything you’d expect a typical financial planner to do.

Fridays are different. It usually starts with a trip to the gym to either throw myself around pretending I can punch and kick, or on a spin bike with 30 or so other individuals who seem to be losing a decent chunk of their body weight in sweat.

Next, it’s home for a coffee and some writing. A lot of the book you’re reading now will have been written on a Friday. I might even do something you might consider ‘work’ on a Friday, like send some emails, or do some future planning for the business.

However, Fridays allow me a bit more flexibility to live the life I want.

Now, the interesting thing about my personal move from 5 to 4 days a week is that it was an experiment. I wanted to try it to see it’s impact, which on balance has been positive. 

I’m not going from working 5 days a week to one, or zero. I’m trying something new out in a gradual and incremental way to see whether it works for me.

When we’re thinking about our own ‘what happens next’ transition it might be worth thinking about how this might apply to your own life.

It means that when thinking about improving our physical health, instead of committing to a potentially unrealistic three hours a day in the gym, taking your next natural experimental step. This might mean going for a walk three times a week, or a couple of yoga classes.

When it comes to our social lives, it might mean joining the chess club, or visiting a man shed to play with your tools whilst you chat (I’ll leave you to insert your own jokes there). It might mean trying new experiences and finding  new ways to connect with others.

And when it comes to our learning it allows us to try new things which spark the neurons in our brain to fire in different ways. You might want to learn to play the piano, so take that first step. Look at an app like Simply Piano and see if it helps you start that learning journey.

Or it might mean, instead of going from full time work to no work, it might mean taking a smoother path. Moving gradually to less days or less hours, or gradually delegating more in your business. It might mean, like me, ‘experimenting’ with 4 days instead of 5 to see if it works for you.

Part of the reason we often don’t make positive change in our lives is that the gap between where we are now and where we want to be feels like too big a leap. However we’ve got a decent advantage in this regard. The opportunity to be gradual with our planning and make change not instantly but incrementally.

In conclusion

So, if you’re not sure what you really really want, try asking yourself what you don’t want, think about the general direction of travel instead of the specific plan and lean into small changes and low cost experimentation. I hope that helps if you’re thinking either about retirement or ‘what happens next’.