Your part in the tragedy (XI) - When the bullets don't bounce off anymore...

One of the problems we face as advisers is the subject of immortality. I may have already mentioned the fact that I was born in 1956, which makes me 28 of course, and in my busy life I was forced to confront immortality reasonably early on into proceedings. Primarily it was other folk's lack of immortality that drew my attention but more recently my own came in for an enforced review, triggered by the untimely departure of a close friend who was 2 years younger than me.

My own uncomfortable observations confirm that at a height of about six feet in thick socks, I appear to be about four feet shorter than I was not so long ago. I note with some sadness that bullets don't seem to bounce off anymore and in fact some have gone in and don't appear to have come back out again. Luckily my chronic cynicism lends me some sort of temporary comfort.

Part of the problem I mentioned earlier before this wave of nostalgia swept me away, is how human nature fights common sense when we think about giving up part of what we do for others. There is some merit in the suggestion that "you could do that yourself".  Why get other people involved in your affairs when clearly you are an intelligent, eloquent, well educated and eminently capable of running your own life? Why indeed!

Well the part you're missing, the pages that stuck together if you like is the part about you not being able to do it for yourself.  Please turn to the page in your planning which details the following:

1. The people who will continue to do the things you do now when you can't
2. The specific instructions that those people will follow
3. The authority these people require to act for you and
4. The resources that they will need

Well......where is it then? If you can't produce and refer to these pages now when you are probably reasonably fit and well, then how is it going to work when a bullet doesn't bounce off and you can't talk, write or think?  Don't worry, I know the answer and I'd be surprised if you don't know it too.

Every year the commonest bullets we encounter as New Zealanders are heart disease, stroke and cancer. About 65% of the 29,000 deaths each year and about the same proportion of the people who become too disabled to work are caught in the cross fire of these three conditions alone. 

If you were to invest about 10 minutes of your busy lives in yourself and making a difference to your future, then my recommendation is to do this. Make a list of all of the critical functions that you perform in your family, your business and in your investment and wealth creation.  If one of these bullets were to hit, and God forbid you couldn't speak, see, write or think either at all or as well as you can now, then how do you think these critical functions could continue?

There isn't much doubt these days that actually dying is the least likely thing that will happen to you - well dying quickly anyway. I don't think that there is too much doubt either, that you may become incapable, either short or long term, of continuing to effectively run your life. You shouldn't have any doubt in your mind that your goals and objectives can continue despite you being incapacitated.

The missing piece is the plan that you are following and that others will follow for you should need to "go off injured". 

Some things to be wary of with planning:

1. If it's a plan it's in writing. If not it's probably a vision or a dream or hallucination
2. Everyone named in the plan has a copy - an updated copy.
3. All the people affected by the plan are named and informed
4. Plans go stale, become irrelevant because we grow, change and achieve
5. There will always be something you forgot.

Plans don't have to grand, leather bound or crippling due to complexity but they do have to be followed.

An acquaintance regularly boasted about being a self-made man and I regularly remarked that it didn't look like a professional job. It was a tradition between us, one of those comfortable routines that people develop over years. But he went and ruined it. He was the bloke at the end of paragraph one. But he had a plan. I had a copy, his lawyer and accountant had copies and his children's' guardians had a copy, so did his trustees, we all had a copy.

It was a good joke made better by repetition over the years but it's all over now.

Funny how that plan is still around and his goals and dreams for his family are continuing.

Wouldn't it be funny if you had one too?.

Why don't you find out what's involved. Get in touch with us.

* thanks for the emails and phone calls but Part XII was put up ahead of Part XI on purpose as a test of your levels of consciousness and it was comforting that a number of you achieved conditional passes.

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