Some tips for how to deal with financial advisors, real estate agents, and other similar "advisors"

Every day, a large number of people become victims of "advisors" (also called "financial advisors", "real estate agents", and many other names) e.g. when buying insurance, taking out a home loan, or buying financial products. To minimize this risk, consider doing the following:

• Never be afraid to ask: "So, if I go ahead with this, how much money would you earn with this?". An honest advisor will not be afraid to answer, nor dodge the question. If possible, also consider hiring an advisor that you pay by the hour, rather than somebody who earns a commission by selling specific products.
• No promise or assurance is worth anything, unless the advisor provides it in writing. Insist on adding a written sentence to the contract for anything that is vital to you. For example, "The parties agree that this insurance/home loan can be terminated by the customer after 5 years without any additional cost". After all, companies expect you to usually sign hundreds of legal clauses, so why should you not be allowed to insist on the things that are important to you? If an "advisor" refuses to accommodate your wishes, politely end the conversation and talk to somebody else.
• Take the time to read each clause in a contract. Cross out anything that you do not feel comfortable with.
• Always ask: "What is the full cost including all fees and levies?". Get it in writing.
• Avoid "advisors" that only sell products of one particular company. Contact at least 3 different advisors that each sell products of multiple companies. Openly communicate that you are "shopping around". For example, say "Thank you for your offer. I will think about it, compare it with other offers I received, and then select the one that suits me best." Thus, you can communicate in a polite way that you are not easily taken advantage of.

Overall, these tips might sound simple, but most people (including me at times) fail to do them in practice. It takes some time to get comfortable with using them. So, let's practice them as much as possible, so that we will not be the "sucker" again. :-)

Three important questions to ask before starting any project of personal development

Before you start a new project, it is a good idea to pause for a moment and ask yourself the following three questions:

1. Why am I doing this? It is easy to get lost in a lot of activity without being sufficiently clear about the purpose of your journey. Have you considered other ways of achieving the same goal? For example, many people work extremely hard and burn themselves out in the hope that at some uncertain point in the future they are going to travel, practice their hobbies, and enjoy life. However, there are ways to enjoy life in the here and now that do not require much money and come without the risk of burnout. Moreover, travelling and practicing hobbies might also be better done now rather than later, since in the future you might no longer be able or interested in doing so.
2. Who says that it is worthwhile pursuing? Is it really you who wants to undertake this project? Or is it a mere result of peer pressure / other people telling you what you should do? If your goal is in line with what everybody else is doing, you should at least be slightly suspicious :-)
3. What will I do once the goal is reached? It is a common phenomenon that people become discontent shortly after they reach a goal. They have to face reality and can no longer hang onto the idea that everything is going to be better once their goal is reached. So how are you going to handle this situation? For example, Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, found it very hard to adjust to normal life after returning to earth. Moreover, achieving goals often has decreasing marginal returns, i.e. you need to achieve higher and higher goals in order to keep achieving the same level of contentment. Additionally, once a goal is reached many people find that they get over the initial excitement pretty quickly, and face the pressure to keep working very hard just to maintain what they achieved.

For your next or current project, how are you going to answer these three questions?

Based on: Niazi-Shahabi (2014), Ich bleib so s... wie ich bin - Lockerlassen und mehr vom Leben haben, p.221-224

A very important life lessons to be learnt from the movie "About Time" (2013)

"About Time" is a beautiful movie about time travel and how to make the most out of life. A great key to happiness is the following:

"Live every day as if you had traveled back in time just to enjoy this very day!" :-)

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Reviews of the "About Time" (2013) movie can be found e.g. here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/about_time/

How can we become more persuasive?

The ability to persuade others (via speaking or writing) is absolutely key to success in life. The good news is that we can all work to improve our persuasion skills. These skills are not rocket science and many might call them 'common sense'. However, the truth is that most people are not good at applying them in practice. So, what can we do?

The Greek philosopher Aristotle provided a great framework to categorize persuasion skills into three main areas:
(1) Logos: the rational logic content of your message
(2) Ethos: your credibility as the messenger
(3) Pathos: the feelings and attitude of your audience

For each of these areas, we can take practical steps to improve. Regularly practicing these steps will make us more persuasive. Here are a few examples:
Logos

• Ask: "What are the 1-3 key points that I would like my audience to remember?". Focus your message on these key points.
• What analogies and metaphors can I use to illustrate my points? Will these suit my audience?
• Draw two overlapping circles. In the first, write the topics you alone are interested in. In the second, write the exclusive interests of your audience. In the overlapping area, note topics that are interesting to both yourself and the audience. In your persuasive message, focus on talking about these common interests.
• Repeat your main points several times.
• Where possible, be specific without adding irrelevant information.
• Where possible, make comparison with facts that your audience already knows.

Ethos

• Practice to really listen to people. Sounds easy, but is one of the hardest things to do in life :-)
• Always answer the implicit question: "Why should my audience listen to me?"
• Use humor where appropriate, i.e. it suits your personality type and the respective audience.
• Think of things that you can afford to give away as a gift (material or immaterial). People usually feel like returning the favor.

Pathos

• Spend extensive time to know your audience. Who exactly is your audience? What is their background? What are they most interested in?
• Give examples of other people and organizations that are already doing what you are proposing.
• Actively engage your audience, e.g. by asking questions or practical exercises.

So, what are you going to do to regularly work on your persuasion skills? What is your time plan to achieve these goals?

The power of "power postures"

For those who have not seen it, I highly recommend watching Amy Cuddy's TED talk on power postures. Available, for example, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc

Here are some useful key take-aways we can apply in our personal lives:

1. Assuming a powerful, confident and relaxed posture, e.g. opening up your chest and arms, can significantly boost your level of confidence prior to crucial events, such as job interviews or presentations.
2. Pay attention to your posture during the day and correct whenever you notice a problem. For example, try sleeping in a power posture and enjoy the additional energy you will have the next morning :-)

How can you apply power postures in your life?

Some take-aways from the book "You don't have to be born brilliant"

Just finished this very good book by John McGrath and thought that there some very valuable insights that I would like to share with you.

1. Retrain your mind to habitually think thoughts that are useful. Being positive and solution-oriented is always the best choice. This does not mean to ignore pain or suffering, but rather to look for solutions wherever possible and to accept what is not changeable.
2. Most change comes slowly and requires hard work and persistence. Don't give up and you can improve your life in the areas that matter most.
3. Be disciplined and use systems to automate mundane areas of life, e.g. checklists, routines and information technology. Note: A brilliant example of this is described in David Allen's "Getting Things Done". This way, you free up your mind to do the really important things, e.g. doing creative thinking and working on your most important life projects.
4. Regularly update your personal goals (long and short-term) and discuss them with people holding you accountable. By clearly knowing the direction of your life every day, you are much more likely to make the right decisions and find new creative solutions to problems you encounter.

Summary of Chapter 11: "Playing Inside the Piano"

Most of us think we understand biblical spirituality; we think we have heard it all before. Yet the more I learn, the more I realise that biblical faith radically surprises you, just when you think you understand it. The Bible is like a never-ending river of spiritual resources, like on of those computer-generated fractals that keeps going deeper and becoming more vivid. The Bible has radical ways of teaching us about the redemption of our desires and the path towards holiness and shalom.

Take the story of a couple with marital difficulties where the spouses seemed to be bored and take each other for granted. Their counsellor advised them to make a radical experiment. He told the wife to dress up, head down to the bar, and sit at a table. The husband was ordered to enter the bar separately and sit away from his wife, watching her. The husband began to notice that men in the bar were sneaking glances at his wife. Some men even made advances toward her. When one man initiated an attempt to seduce her, the husband, enraged with jealousy, rushed across the bar, his heart pounding with passion and anger. Suddenly, the husband no longer saw the woman he had become so familiar with; instead, he saw this woman whom other men were trying to seduce. Likewise, the wife no longer saw a man who had become bored with her; now he was a lover, fighting off other men just to have her. The couple, whose sex life had been almost non-existent lately, who had fallen out of love with each other, were so filled with passion that they couldn't even make it home and ended up making love in their car. The point is: jealousy, brought under the Lordship of God, that is in its correct place, can be holy.

Similar truth applies to sexual desires or lust in general. Our culture tries to turn the physical into a commodity. Instead of seeing beauty as a fleeting pointer to a reality beyond, lust turn us onto a dead-end street. The antidote to list is to put beauty in its divinely ordered place, to treat it as a calling card from the redeemed world to come. Sexuality is about so much more than just the act of sex; it is about the whole person. We need to learn to stay on the path of holiness, moving closer and closer to our true self.

To find our true selves, we first must give up our lives. We see this most clearly in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The victory for humanity, the defeat of evil, death, sin, flesh, sarx, and injustice, comes through the giving up of life. This is the last but hardest part of our journey toward our true selves. It is the final step - to become our real selves, we must die to those parts of us that are not truly us. As Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it" (Mark 8:35).

Once you begin to shed your media masks and false public self, you begin to walk the path of holiness and shalom toward your true self. You will find that you begin to see sparks of eternity in your own life. You will see tiny signs each day of how you are becoming more like Christ. But you will also begin to see that spark, that potential, in others. You will often see it in people who cannot see it in themselves - perhaps in a family member or friend. But other times you will look down into the mud and much of contemporary life, and behind the public selves, the media masks, the actors in your life movie, the people turned into products, you will look into the eyes of others and you will see that undeniable spark of the image of God. And you will find your fingers fumbling in your pockets to find a white stone, with a new name on it. Everything within you will wish that you could pass them that smooth, cold, tangible reminder that Jesus stands holding a white stone with their true name written on it.

And so I wish that I could reach into my pocket and hand you a white stone. But I cannot, so this book is my white stone to you. A stone that also works as a key, opening a doorway out of the cramped, stale confines of the horizontal self, filling you with the gusts of fresh air perfumed with the scent of eternity.

Conclusion, I want to recruit you to become part of a revolution of the vertical self. More than ever individuals need to see themselves as God sees them. So many of the problems in our culture stem from a misunderstanding of our true identities.Let's not beat around the bush; if you are to shake off the effects of living under the horizontal self, and if you are to journey toward your true self, you will need people to keep you accountable and that journey together with. Three people would be a good number, even though it could be more or less. Now, here is where the magic lies. Just imagine if the three people that you choose go on to each choose another three people and so on. You have the power of multiplication at work, and before you know it you have affected hundreds of people. Keep multiplying and you are talking about a movement of people discovering their true identities in Christ. Be creative and find ways that work with your personality type. So it does not matter how you do it; what matters is that you do it.

Let the movement toward our true selves begin!

Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.151-171