Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
102. The Role of Strengths in Achieving True Contentment
Unlock your true potential and redefine happiness with insights from Gallup-certified coach Johan, who joins us in this thought-provoking episode of "Know Your Money." Johan sheds light on the startling fact that only 7% of the global population is truly happy, urging us to reconsider how we spend our time and energy. Drawing from Gallup's extensive research, we explore the five crucial areas of well-being—money, relationships, job, community activity, and finances—and challenge you to assess where your focus lies. This conversation promises to guide you toward a more balanced and fulfilling life by understanding and leveraging your natural strengths.
As we navigate the complexities of financial and personal well-being, Johan emphasizes the importance of focusing on our inherent strengths rather than fixating solely on weaknesses. With a backdrop of the pandemic prompting a global reassessment of priorities, we delve into how understanding oneself through CliftonStrengths assessments can lead to greater fulfillment. Craig Finch, Bronwyn Waner, and Warren Grimsley join forces to bring financial wisdom to the forefront, showing that money is just one piece of the happiness puzzle. Don't miss this engaging discussion that offers practical steps for transforming your habits and enhancing your overall well-being.
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Welcome to Know your Money, where we will explore our relationship with money and how the psychology of it impacts our financial decisions, as everyone thinks about money differently. In our podcast, we'll be presenting a variety of financial topics in an easy to understand way, which we hope will assist you with managing your money.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Craig Finch, co-owner of Growth Financial Planning, an independent financial planning practice, and I've been a financial planner since 1986.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody. I'm Bronwyn Wehner, co-owner of Growth Financial Planning. I'm a certified financial planner and our philosophy at our company is to grow yourself to grow your wealth.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. My name is Warren Grimsley. I'm a director at Rogue Media and help facilitate this wonderful podcast. My main goal here is to try and understand what these two lovely people are saying, so that we can all understand.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money, johan. Welcome to the studio again. It's really good to have you here the last two weeks and just for our listeners who may not have or joining for the first time, why don't you just give us a little bit of background? What do you offer and what is Gallup and CliftonStrengths, as we've spoken about in the past episodes?
Speaker 4:Thank you for the opportunity, greg. I've been a financial planner myself for over 27 years but left the industry to pay back to the industry and in my capacity as a Gallup certified coach. So it's to tell people about who they are. What are their natural capabilities. We do a little assessment with the people. It's all about understanding yourself, and understanding yourself better can add a lot of value to your life. That's what I try to do.
Speaker 2:And the strengths are the most important facets that you focus on. Is that right in the last?
Speaker 4:episodes. We want to focus on your strength, not saying that we ignore your weaknesses because we can't do that, but rather manage around your weaknesses and put in more time and energy into that natural capability your strength.
Speaker 2:Why the return on the investment is so much higher if you start doing that In the last episode you ended off quite disturbingly to say that only 7% of the world's population are happy. Is that correct from the stats that you have?
Speaker 4:gathered Right. That's correct. If you look at the Gallup research over the last 85 years, only 7% of the people can honestly say that they are happy and they've got fulfillment. Is this a world survey? It's a world survey in 166 countries all over the world and they do it on a regular basis. You can go onto the website and you can get the information there. I think what COVID point out to the people is guys, you have to look at happiness and fulfillment, and I think COVID give us the opportunity to start to think about what are we doing.
Speaker 1:Are we just?
Speaker 4:working or what are we doing?
Speaker 1:How can we change our listeners to not be 7% of the happy people to all out of our listeners? How can we get 93% of them to feel that happiness through the Gallup?
Speaker 4:It's to expose them to the information, to say there's more than just making money or work, because the stats also point out if you look at the five areas of well-being your money, your relationships, your job, your active how are you active in the community and your finances 66% of the people focus on just one of those areas. And can you think what is that area?
Speaker 1:Finances.
Speaker 4:Job. They work, just got to work. Yeah, they just work. And how many of our clients are just working every day and not thinking about other things? They get up six o'clock in the morning and they drive from Pretoria to Joburg to go and work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And they get back late, when it's eight o'clock. They don't see their kids, they don't really have a relationship with their family, they're just working all the time. Yeah, and why do you want to do that? So making them aware of there's a different way, just exposing them to the information, is already a big aha moment for them, because it's not difficult to change it. It's just change your habits. And I always ask the question go and monitor yourself. How much time do you spend on those five areas? How much time do you spend there every week? How much energy do you get when you spend time there and how much money do you spend there? And monitor yourself over a weekly basis and you will very soon pick up. I'm not looking at my health. I've been in the gym, not for the last three months, so that's a red flag. So just by exposing yourself to that little thing, you start to change your habits.
Speaker 1:And how do the strengths show that, or how would doing this assessment help a person?
Speaker 4:Well, if I know discipline is one of my strengths, I can then lean into that discipline strength to change my habits. Or if discipline is not a strength for me, I know I'm going to struggle. I'm not getting up early in the morning to go to the gym, so that's why I don't have that discipline. Maybe I have something called achiever. I want to achieve stuff. I want to lose that 5Ks, I want to achieve that. So lean into your achiever talent. So that's just how you start to do that Again. Coming back to really understand yourself and who you are can help you to have a more happy and fulfilled life. Spending time on all those areas.
Speaker 3:I remember hearing someone say that if you look at say you are fortunate enough to live to 80, you know the median age. I think the highest for Monaco is the highest in the world at 59. So the median age I think the highest for Monaco is the highest in the world, at 59. So the median age people live to. If you're fortunate enough to live to 80, well, your first 20 years or so are in education and becoming an adult. You may retire at 65, by which point you're no longer working and you've got a lot of time on your hands, whatever. But that time in between there's 45 years, and it seems like a long time. But let's break it down. It's 45 summers, it's 45 summers, and if you spend all 45 doing something you do not enjoy, why are you living?
Speaker 4:Or you have a crappy relationship. There's that too, yeah, or your health is not where you want it to be, or you're not really spending time in the community. You're not giving back, because all those things add up to your happiness and fulfillment and what the research point out it's not about the money that you earn. You have to focus on all those areas. They are interlinked to each other. So that's where we see many people that have got a lot of money in the bank account but they've got no relationships. I know a lot of them. Their health is not where they want it to be. Why do you want to go that route? It's not really worth it.
Speaker 3:No, it's not ultimately fulfilling you. It's not ultimately fulfilling you.
Speaker 1:How would you help a person, let's say, for example, in the top strengths is mainly influencing and strategy, so that person is very career driven and they actually get their fulfillment from that. But now they want to look and say, okay, but I don't have relationships. If their strengths from the Gallup-Clifton strengths is that, how do you help them lean into their relationships or other things? How would looking at their chart or it's a very good question.
Speaker 4:Thank you for asking that. I can't change the individual. If they are driven, they've got a lot of competition and things like that. All that I say is okay, go and use your competition and discipline strength in your relationship area.
Speaker 1:Okay, I call it.
Speaker 4:You play on different playing fields. So I want to get you off the playing field of work. Go and play with your strength in your relationships with your family. Go and play with your strength in your health relationships playing field. So I can't change you, I don't want to change you, but I want to educate you that there's something more and take your strength and go and play on that other playing field and, as I say, very, very soon people start to see the difference and they can't believe that they can change everything into a positive, as soon as three to six months from when they make a decision.
Speaker 2:And, as you said before, they know that's the decision. They already know before they see it, but it's maybe by showing it to them from a piece not a piece of paper, but the assessment.
Speaker 4:then they realize that is actually where they should be concentrating their life on the strengths, not and Craig, as I said, a simple way to measure yourself on a weekly basis how much time that you spend in each one of those areas. If you see that you're spending 80 hours a week in your job and zero at your family or zero for your health, obviously that's a red flag, Definitely. So how much time did you spend there? What's the energy that you get when you spend it there?
Speaker 1:And also I think it's about reframing how you can get that energy from your relationship. So sometimes people just spend all their time at work, because that's where they get that fulfillment and that drive. But what you're saying now is, if you can bring some competition to your relationship, so then you'll get those same feelings, but now from the relationship also. So I think people lean into their strengths, like work feels so good, I'm going to stay here, but this would then show them okay, but you can have that. But there, right, right. Then show them okay, but you can have that, but there, right.
Speaker 4:Right. I want to use an example of a client, very competitive, working long hours. I said okay, why don't you take your competitive? You love to play golf, but you haven't played golf for many, many years. Go back to the golf course and take your son with and compete there on the golf course in a very positive way. So immediately you start to address the relationship side of everything. You're having time outside, so it's part of your health, so you can do simple things and address all those different areas in one.
Speaker 1:Awesome Sounds good.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful, jan, because I mean this kind of stuff I haven't ever heard. You always look at what your personality type might be and you don't realize that your strengths are more important. And if you concentrate on those or you do stuff in those areas, your day-to-day life is much happier.
Speaker 4:Much happier, greg. And again it's. People don't know these things. They don't teach you these things in school. You never have a class in university expose you to these things.
Speaker 2:You should yeah.
Speaker 4:But there's a simple assessment that you can do in the moment when you get the information. It's always an aha moment for people and the other beauty is that, no, you get the information. It's always an aha moment for people. And the other beauty is that no one is the same. Yeah, no one's report is the same, and that's what I say to people. Think about it you are unique. There's only one like you with that set of strength.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So why don't you play out of that, your uniqueness? Because I can't copy you. I can't beat you if you do that. And again, I want to go back to the sport scenario, the top sports people in the world. There are many golfers, but no one plays like the number one golfer in the world and I can't copy him. So be yourself, Find out what is your uniqueness and play out of your strength and your uniqueness, and no one can beat you. You're going to love it and you're going to make a lot of money in the process as well. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Awesome stuff. Thank you so much for all your time and I hope that everybody found it valuable, and if any clients have any questions or want us to chat about anything else, please drop it in the comments or send us an email.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks, johan, thanks for the last three weeks. It's been really good, thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy it and let's get the people to have a more fulfilled and happy life, absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Thanks, Johan. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast would Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to subscribe, please visit our website wwwgrowthfpcoza. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.