My Father Worries
As featured in the October/November issue of the Winchester Resident Magazine
My father worries. I love him dearly, but this particular habit can become wearing. To be fair, he had a tough upbringing and then later, in the 1970s with four young children at home, he suffered redundancy several times when his chosen career as a chartered mechanical engineer fell out of favour.
The worry habit is well embedded now and even in retirement he says that before he gets out of bed in the morning his mind races to remember the most important things that he “needs to be worrying about”.
Things that matter AND you can control
Several years ago, he and I were on a road trip in Europe and days before our return he was already fretting about missing the flight home. We were on a beautiful mountain road, so I stopped the car and we got out to admire the scenery. I put my arm around his shoulder and asked him to “just enjoy being here, with me, right now”.
It reminded me of a diagram by a financial cartoonist I once met called Carl Richards (he publishes regularly in the New York Times). He drew two slightly overlapping circles to represent everything that is important and everything we can control. The small overlap indicates things that are both important and that we can control, so that’s where we should focus our energy.
It was obviously important that we caught the flight, but at that moment it was outside our control. Being there together is what was important.
When we rebranded Collingbourne Wealth Management this diagram was my inspiration for our new logo and it’s remarkable how often it applies to our work.
Our own focus is building long term relationships with our clients: to protect their lifestyles, to ensure their money lasts as long as them and finally to pass on whatever remains to the people and good causes they love.
Thanks to Behavior Gap and my Dad.
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