There is an old saying in the financial service industry that financial advisors and financial planners earn their money in down markets when their clients' natural tendencies are to make emotional decisions that damage their financial futures. Your financial advisor should help you to make rational decisions and avoid emotional decisions that will reduce your future results. Is your advisor helping you to really create wealth?
Most consumers tend to have trouble with their financial advisors as they are not really advisors but paid commission agents who sell investment and insurance products. To help customers achieve their financial goals is not their priority. There is no law that can prevent the unethical practice of representatives and agents calling themselves planners or advisors. And it is impossible to regulate their verbal statements as they say can just about say anything until they get hold of your assets and can deny everything later. Hence do ask for documentation of all advisor information.
One of the biggest mistakes that investors make while selecting their advisors are placing too much emphasis on brand names, advisor personalities, and verbal statements. For example, advisors can lead you into believing that they can produce high returns for low risk.
The consequences of choosing unrated advisors who are selected based on their sales pitches are that they control all information that investors rely on to make their selection decisions. They do not reveal much information about themselves to their investors. You need to question your advisor in this regard and listen carefully to their answers. You must also be able to distinguish a good answer from a bad one. Advisors will sometimes try their best not to give any written commitments even for routine matters. Also know that you have the right to seek all the information you need do not get carried away by the advisors? personality.
About Paladin Registry
Founded in 2003, Paladin is an information services company that provides free public services to consumers who use the services of financial advisors and financial planners. The Registry educates consumers about financial professionals and provides ratings and documentation for criteria that impact their competence and ethics. You can learn more about Registry services by going to http://www.paladinregistry.com.
I've been reflecting about The Comfort Zone given that I see so many financial advisors stuck in it and my evidence is I just spoke to groups of financial advisors in two cities and when I asked them to raise their hand if they had a written vision, business plan and 90 day goals on January 1, 2009, not one of them raised their hand.
What is The Comfort Zone really?
It should be relabelled as The Experience Zone ... we do what we are comfortable and experienced with.
Once in a while we will jump into The Willpower Zone and get what we want for a time and then fall flat back on our ass because The Willpower Zone is unsustainable.
Let's not forget about The Instant Gratification Zone were we look for a quick fix in the form of drugs, shopping, TV, gossip, alcohol, and the consumption of all products containing alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, fat, salt and sugar. Note that I nicked the above list of medications off of James Redfield, who wrote The Legend Of Bagger Vance and The War Of Art, and his full quote is at the bottom of this article.
Like The Willpower Zone, after we get our quick fix with The Instant Gratification Zone we are right back where we started - struggling to survive versus being all that we can be.
There is another zone that we must face and to quote Chris Barrow; "To achieve a resolution that has integrity and sustainability it is inevitable, indeed necessary, to enter the discomfort zone. It cannot and should not be avoided, as it is an integral part of the process. Any resolution that has side stepped this area is unlikely to be robust and will collapse at some point."
Going through The Discomfort Zone will lead us through to The Inspiration Zone which is essential to be all that you can be in any economy.
The Inspiration Zone is where we live our values and our vision and experience them through our personal and business goals combined with a business plan and 90 day goals.
Why do we resist The Discomfort Zone in our venti, half caff, non-fat, easy foam, extra hot, almond latte instant gratification society?
We have plenty of learned quotes to remind us:
"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain" - William Faulkner
"We cannot learn without pain" - Aristotle
"Doubt is pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother" - Kahlil Gibran"
I believe the answer lies in this final quote that suffering is a choice.
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." - Anonymous
To bring it all home, Carl Jung's quote confirms that many of us are asleep in our subconscious mind doing what is easy staying in our justified busyness while our lives turn into dust.
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain" - Carl Jung
Yes you will face fear by getting into The Discomfort Zone and the sooner you face it, the quicker it goes away.
I can show you how to eliminate your greatest fear in fifteen minutes. The same fear that is preventing you from writing your business plan, setting your goals, asking for referrals, attracting higher net worth clients and more.
The answer lies within, 'Curing The Unmet Needs Disease'.
The theory is simple. Within The Discomfort Zones lies your unmet needs that generate negative beliefs and negative emotions and the book includes simple yet effective assignments that will help you break through to The Inspiration Zone.
These unmet needs that generate negative beliefs and negative emotions keep you stuck in a worse place than The Comfort Zone - The Sabotage Zone.
The Sabotage Zone includes behaviours like:
1. Being a victim believing the world is always doing it to me
2. Resisting change
3. Withdrawing into the TV set
Unmet needs must be met and we will either meet them functionally or dysfunctionally gaining negative energy, through making excuses, not taking responsibility, and justifying.
"Avoid resistance at all cost. Resistance is an all-encompassing term for what Freud called Death Wish. Resistance cannot be reasoned with. It understands one thing. Power. Resistance takes on the form of drugs, shopping, TV, gossip, alcohol, drugs, and the consumption of all products containing alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, fat, salt and sugar. The greatest danger is Resistance knows when the finish line is in site and it will throw out one final assault." - Stephen Pressfield - The War Of Art.
What are you going to do that is different than yesterday? When did you decide to quit?
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