Why money and wealth require imagining the future: Use the power of visualisation
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Why money and wealth require imagining the future: Use the power of visualisation
Why money and wealth require imagining the future: Use the power of visualisation
Perhaps you all know this situation. You are standing in front of a shoe store, and you see lovely high heels for 600 CHF. You instantly go and buy them. You can see the nice result instantly at your feet. Investing 600 CHF into a financial product, your pension, is a completely different story.
Why? Have you ever thought about visualising your future with a decent amount of secondary income flowing from the investments you made a decade ago? Why is it so difficult for us to invest money in our future wealth and so easy to buy us new hardbacks, perfume, and shoes? My point here is two-fold.
- We are not looking at the tradeoff between our present and our future selves. We nourish our present selves with nice shoes and forego the opportunity to invest in our future selves, the old women we will become. This old woman still wants a decent life. The idea of a present and future self stems from Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann, who created the new science of behaviour economics and behaviour finance, himself being a psychologist. H was the first psychologist, by the way, to win the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.
- So this brings us to the question: How do we make decisions? Looking into decision-making is like looking into a Trojan horse. Normally, we make the same decision that we made in the past. This is due to our neuroscience programming, says Kahnemann. If we feel our decisions have been good enough for now, we will not think about making changes. For your finances, this is fatal, as you will see the downside of your decision-making only very late when you are already grown old, divorced, or struck by any other life-changing event, so don't do that. Reflect on what your future self needs. And find a way to imagine how you want to live 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. Use visualisation. What kind of person will you be? Where are you living? What brought you there?
Visualisation enables you to better achieve your personal and professional goals. You practically paint a picture of what you would like to achieve. You imagine certain situations in your mind's eye, live through them, and feel them. This helps steer your subconscious in the right direction. Goals help you to focus your energy and attention on things that are really important.
This enables you to master challenges better and be more successful. Use the 1 percent method. Make very small changes in your life every day. So if you want to do more sports and do jogging again, you haven't for a long time. The first day, you just put on your sports shoes and walk down to the ground floor and up again. The next day you may walk for just 5 minutes or even only two, and then step by step you keep changing this habit of "Oh, I do not have time, oh, now it is too late, oh, I do not have a babysitter.
One of our board members was walking and jogging with the trolly. She called it the trolly strolly strol, and she was filming herself educating other new mothers on finance. You can use the 1 percent method and enrich it with indoor innovative ideas like those of our board member Caro. To overcome your inner procrastination, visualisation is extremely helpful. Imagine yourself as the person who already achieved the goal.
How does it feel?. Why do you need it on your journey? Combine it with the 1 percent method. Imagine how small steps will bring you to the place where you want to be. Small steps help you become your future self. And try this out with money. For instance, you could say that instead of buying a coffee today, tomorrow, and for one week, I will invest 5 CHF a day in an ETF.
Investors club https://emotional-agility.dg1.com/vc4diversity/pages/memberships
Webseite https://swissfintechladies.com/
Karen Wendt
President of SwissFinTechLadies