The Gift

Look at that picture. How would you describe it? Hold that thought, we'll get back to it...

We have the power, ability, and responsibility to write our own story, choose our own adventure. We don't know the exact outcomes or the final pages, but we are shaping them with our thoughts and actions today. What we see is always shaping our thoughts and point of view; if we stay in our bubbles we only fall further in. That phrase hurt people hurt people makes a kind of sense - we are influenced by our environments, what we see, what we hear.

The conversation around our money situation, inter-generational, inter-familial will be so important to what happens in the next decades. Each of our legacies will be shaped by the conversations we have.

The more we hear other perspectives, and about the amazing lives people lived, the things they did to create their story, the better our minds will be. I really believe that.

How we hear shapes what he understand. Tune into more stations...

Focus on what gifts you have, maximize them and appreciate them. They are a blessing on your head but they can also lead to a road to nowhere and ruin. If you are blessed - and honestly, if you are reading this, you are breathing and able to read, so you all are - then be ready and willing to give of your gifts to others.

That is what makes your story last forever. That is how you create legacy. That's how you teach and show what is really important to you and provides a model for the rest of us.

Danielle Patterson says it so well here, it's all about the moments that take our breath away.

The practical, the tactical - it's important but it's not what this life is all about. Yes, you will need money. Yes, hopefully for a very long time, with no worries, and no uncertainty, and good health, and lots of love all around you.

But having the strategies and the accounts full doesn't keep that cup full, it never does. So you may be able to pass this quiz -

but are you passing the most important test?

Like so much else in life, the determinant to that will be the human to human, honest conversations that will be happening. We can control some things in this crazy world.

Let's control that conversation as much as we can. Legacy is not left to chance. Dr. Ruth Gottesman did not just wake up this week and decide to change countless people's lives. It doesn't just happen. The money is not just money. It's impact, it's thought, it's being in the right places at the right time, it's riding your winners until they compound into actions that take our breath away.

Secure the bag.

Oh, and that picture above - a fake

Our brains can be tricked because we all are looking and hearing with eyes and ears trained a certain way. Guard those closely because these tools can be used in some incredible ways, for good and bad. Be careful out there.