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Investing in our future

 People who hire personal coaches are often very future oriented and they see the coaching relationship as an investment in achieving their future goals and dreams. This is a modern trend that replaces many of the traditional ways we invested in our future security. 

For example, last weekend we went to see the new Amitabh Bachan and Hema Malini film, Baghban, about a couple who invested their whole lives in raising their four sons and ensuring that they became well established in their careers and families. The expectation was that when the couple retired, they would go to live with the sons and their families and reap the rewards of their previous 40 years of “investment”…..however, the shock came when not one of the sons was willing to look after their parents in old age. Sign of the times? Even in the Asian and Arabic worlds where family values have been strong enough to create powerful enterprises with the combined resources of a whole family working together? 

What is YOUR biggest investment in your future…I mean, what will you still have when your career/business comes to an end and you have to retire? Education? Children? Stocks & Shares? Property?

I read somewhere that the sign of a very poor person is someone who only has money…..and yet, so many clients are focused on seemingly attractive goals that will give them lots more wealth, the justification being that it is in order to achieve “financial freedom”. I have noticed that those who achieve so-called financial freedom had never made it their goal…..they were in pursuit of something much deeper….in the Bollywood film Baghban, Amitabh Bachan and Hema Malini achieved financial freedom  by writing a sincere account of their pain. The book was published with “serendipity” (the making of important discoveries by accident)…and sold like wildfire because it touched the hearts of millions of readers…..what made them millionaires in their old age was not a goal they had set and successfully achieved but the process of getting in touch with their real selves, soul-searching and being able to connect at that level with millions of others….. 

So, the real fruits of investment may not be in the future but right now….the future is really the present.

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