Why is Financial Stewardship Important?

Excerpted from my new book Financial Stewardship:  A Guide to Personal Financial Health and Wellness©, July 2014

‘Individually and collectively we are at a critical point where we must address financial stewardship and adjust our intentions and actions if we are to create a longer term, more rewarding life for ourselves, our planet, and our future generations – which may well include us personally again in a different earth role, so there’s extra motivation right there!. I believe strongly in our ability to heal and dream positive, expanding visions into future reality. However, existing energy draining behaviors of pessimism, entitlement, abdicating responsibility, short-term focuses, and similar responses from many surrounding their financial awareness will continue to derail our current and future lives individually and as a whole unless we step up and change these patterns. The time for a dramatic shift is right now.

In both my own personal experience and in working with countless individuals over the years, the downsides and harmful outcomes of not taking financial stewardship to heart are as numerous and diverse as there are humans on this planet. I’m sure some scientist could come up with a calculation that expresses to the quadrillionth place the different iterations of scenarios that result from various combinations of unthoughtful, unhealthy financial choices, but does such a measurement really make a difference to the bottom line question of whether we opt to take personal or collective action? We know in our gut that the above myth and mask statements actually relate to fear, anger, self-protection, abdication of responsibility, and other very basic reactions.

And we also understand that reactions are far different from using the individual gifts of thinking, considering options, communicating, and consciously choosing that we’ve all been given. If we continue to ignore personal financial stewardship, then we remain stuck in the same loop that seems comfortable but is actually damaging…stuck listening to a world that tells us we are financially incapable and need latest product or someone else’s program to be saved. However, if we choose to move into the stewardship and apply our attention first, then we gain the real balance, integrity, and sustenance we seek’.

 

The main message: As Buddha is reported to have said, “Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end.”