After a long campaign season, it’s finally over. Whew! You’re either very happy or sad this morning.
So, in order to give you a break and avoid inundating you immediately with my views on what this election return means, I’ve decided to answer the age old question “Do People Really Walk in Circles When They’re Lost?”.
I, of course, also tie this into my views on the importance of goal setting in your financial life.
Relax, sit back, and hear something refreshingly non-political.
TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning, Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management speaking to you from Boulder, Colorado. And today I’m here to answer the question- do people really walk in a circle when they’re lost? Do they end up where they started when they’re lost in a forest, or just lost anywhere.
And so, there was this great article (and this is what actually prompted my thought for this video) in Mental Floss, which is this great magazine, really interesting articles… I’m going to throw up on the video here the link to this article, but there was a scientist who put a bunch of volunteers in a Bavarian forest, and a bunch of volunteers in the Tunisian desert, and basically they had GPS on their body so they could track what happened-whether or not they did go back into a circle.
Click here for Mental Floss Article
And the answer is- every single person veered off course. They were told to go from point A to point B, and every single person veered off course. However, the degree to which they veered off depended, frankly, whether or not they were able to have some vision. The people in the desert, when there was a moon out, were the straightest line people. They were able… they veered off a little bit but they had it in their sights and were able to navigate by the moon. When there was not a moon, when it was overcast, they were much less accurate and they did veer either left or right.
Those in the forest, very similar, but what is interesting is when they were in the forest, more than half went back into a circle- right back where they started. But every single one, the degree varied depending on whether or not they had some sight in the future. If it was a cloudy night they also went back and veered off but just much slower. And what’s really interesting is that when they had a blindfold on, the quickness with which they went back to the beginning was even faster.
So really it had to do with having a point in the future that you are going towards and being able to navigate and having other things around in order to keep you on the right track. That’s the way I read it. And it was a very interesting article, in my opinion, because it relates to what we’re doing in our lives.
We’re at point A- that’s today. And we need to determine where point B is. We might not know exactly where point B is- but seeking it out, and identifying it, and stating it I think is really, really important. And this relates of course to our finances as well.
Having a retirement plan, having a retirement analysis, does not guarantee that that’s going to happen. However, it’s my opinion that it does give you something to go towards and those that have that point in their mind and are tracking it consistently, perhaps every year or so, as you go toward your goal. You’ll vary, of course, some because we don’t know what the future holds, but vary less than someone who is completely blindfolded. And some people who are completely blindfolded absolutely make it to point B but it might be more luck, or happenstance than an actual plan of how they get there.
That’s really what I wanted to talk about today. I feel that so much emphasis is placed on “this investment” or “that investment,” which is important, don’t get me wrong, but I also think that one of the best things that you can do for yourself, and one of the best things that I do for my clients, the dynamic value that I bring, is really identifying what it is that we want to do first and foremost. Then how are we going to get there; and reviewing it in a systematic, professional way. And I think it increases our odds of getting there. It does not guarantee it unfortunately but it does increase our odds of getting to where we want in the future. If you don’t have that, if you are sitting here saying, “Gosh, I don’t know what point B is.” Talk with me. I’ll be happy to try to help you out with that. That’s, I believe, one of the dynamic values I and my firm, Generosity Wealth Management, brings to the table.
Hope you’re having a good election week. Half of you are probably happy with the result and the other half are not. But I just wanted to throw that in there as well. Mike Brady, Generosity Wealth Management-303.747.6455. You have a wonderful week. Thank you, bye, bye.