You’ve heard the phrase, live your truth, but what does it mean?
For me, it’s knowing who I am, who I want to be, and working every day to close any gaps. When we know what our truth is and we’re living in accordance with it, that’s when we’re living our truth.
I’m a high character individual. I do my best every day and endeavor to be genuine and authentic. Guided by my beliefs and values, I work to reach my goals. I live my truth.
Maybe it comes easy to you. But for me, I need to work at it. To know what I believe to be true, I need to spend a good amount of time thinking it through. I believe it’s never been more important to have a process for determining what is, and what isn’t true. My goal is to help you better define your process. While I’m going to focus on truth and money, you can apply this process to every other aspect of your life.
As a financial advisor, I’ve been helping people gain clarity on their truth about money for over 20 years. I’m honored to be named to Investopedia’s list of the top 100 financial advisors many years running.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- To live it, you must know it
- Embrace new learning
- Accept ownership
- Position yourself for success
Let’s get started.
To live it, you must know it
Most of us, myself included, aren’t in the habit of exploring truth. We don’t sit around pondering life’s big questions; we’re too busy solving life’s never ending problems. To help you investigate and find clarity on what your truth is about money, I encourage you to focus on four questions and apply the following framework to them. Here are the four questions:
- What is true about money?
- What is financial success?
- What is career success?
- What is investing success?
Take as much time as you need to think and write your answers.
From there, apply this framework to dig deeper. The idea is to understand what your truth is, and to identify how to live it.
- What are your thoughts and feelings about it?
- How would you like to feel about it?
- What changes will you need to make to feel that way?
- What would happen if you made those changes?
- What will you do?
I’ll go through an example based on answering, “What is financial success?”
Financial success is not worrying about money and being on track to meet all of my financial goals and objectives.
What are your thoughts and feelings about it?
I’m worried about my ability to do it. I’m anxious about the stock market, and unsure about what I should do with my money.
How would you like to feel about it?
I’d like to feel confident and assured that what I’m doing will work.
What changes will you need to make to feel that way?
I’d need to learn more about investing so I can be more in control.
What would happen if you made those changes?
I’d have more peace of mind.
What will you do?
I’m going to spend two hours a week learning about the stock market and investing.
When broken down into digestible bites, we can find solutions to most every problem we face. This is true of financial matters. Spend the time to do the work. This simple step will immediately help you feel more confident and in control.
Embrace new learning
Being stuck in your ways is a sure path to mediocrity. Instead, embrace new learning and the constant pursuit of truth. When you shift from being a static to a dynamic thinker, the world will open up to you.
If living your truth is something you’re serious about, it will require you to take in new information and use it to challenge your existing beliefs. Doing this will allow you to find holes in your current thinking or fortify your existing beliefs. Both are great outcomes.
Accept ownership
When things go as planned, be happy. When you fall short, take responsibility. Don’t point fingers or blame others, there’s no value or future in it.
When you do something wrong, apologize, and move forward. Obviously, this is hard to do. Particularly if you’re not in the habit. Politicians, companies, and people you know don’t do it. But you do. And that’s all that matters.
You can choose to live your truth. To live according to your values. When you do, you’re leading by example and giving evidence for the best way to live.
Position yourself for success
Goals = What you want
Values = Who you are
Habits = How you do things
Your habits are your truth in action. When you’re clear in your goals, values, and truth, it becomes easier to form habits. That being said, everyone will form habits in their own way. It might take you shorter or longer than I take.
As you’re getting started, keep your goals, values, and truth top of mind. Review them daily and think about how you can create systems around them. Eventually, you’ll develop self-discipline and you won’t need to think about doing them. But until you get there, work to put a structure in place to position yourself for success.
If your truth is that you’re good at money, what does someone who’s good at money do? They make plans, spend less than they make, don’t have credit card debt, pay themselves first, invest consistently, and review their progress. You should do those things as well.
In service of helping yourself execute, automate as many of those things as you can. Set up automatic contributions, create recurring events in your calendar, and get the resources you need.
Closing
Spend the time and do the work to determine your truth about money. Once you’ve done that, start living it. When you know what you believe, and you’re living it, I doubt anything will keep you from having the life you desire. You got this.
If you’re ready to take control of your financial life, check out our DIY Financial Plan course.
We’ve got three free courses as well: Our Goals Course, Values Course, and our Get Out of Debt course.
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