Seeking The Uncertainty You Can Comfortably Live With
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The great Tony Robbins once said, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” But up to what extent is it comfortable? How do you measure the amount of uncertainty you can handle in life? In this episode, Patrick Donohoe shares a breakthrough that had him realize the ways we all are seeking uncertainty in life just as much as certainty. He tells us about some of the reflections that occurred to him on what we need to do in order to take in more without reaching beyond the limits of how much uncertainty we can live with, most especially when it comes to our finances.
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Seeking The Uncertainty You Can Comfortably Live With
Thank you for tuning in. I’m excited to be with you. I’m grateful for your support. I’m excited to share with you some things that have been on my mind that have impacted the way I’ve viewed my life, my financial life, viewed financial life of clients that I have. I’m excited to share that with you. As a side note, there has been a group that is advertising and marketing underneath the #TheWealthStandard and they’re promoting different courses and other things, this is not us. This is not me. Please, if you have come across them, we’re reporting them, doing some cease-and-desist stuff. We’re on top of it but we wanted to let you know that’s going on. There are some people who have purchased some of their material that is associating the reason to this show, which is not true. This is not our group. This is not us, so please be cautious.
I’m excited because I had this breakthrough and the breakthrough occurred in a software training that I host every year, at least I have for the last few years. It’s Financial Advisor Facing. I’ve gone and participated in this training many times. It’s also something I’ve felt strongly about hosting here at my office so that my team can participate in it. In 2020, it was different because of COVID and quarantine, so the majority of it was live but it was virtual. Nonetheless, I had some thoughts that I hadn’t had before. It starts with a quote that I learned from Tony Robbins. I’m not sure if he is the author of this quote. He’s the author of some pretty amazing quotes. This is an amazing quote but he also uses quotes by others as well.
This quote says that, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” Uncertainty in his words is a need that we have. He believes we have six human needs. Certainty is the first one. Uncertainty is the second. It’s a contradiction there. You also have significance, love and connection, growth, contribution. These needs that we have, one of them being uncertainty is that we want variety in life, adventure, we want new. We want different. If everything was the exact same thing, we ate the exact same thing, we wore the exact same thing, we did the exact same thing every single day, life would suck.
We're all seeking uncertainty. Click To TweetAt the same time, we want a degree of certainty. The uncertainty side of things is the new movies you get to watch, the new clothes you get to buy, the vacation you get to go on or the new place you get to visit, the new car that you have, a new experience, skydiving, bungee jumping, scuba diving. The uncertainty is this adventure. It’s doing things that are new and exciting. Comfortably live with, that’s a very interesting word and this is where the epiphany is.
This school I go to, this training, the software program that we put on is called Truth Training. It uses a software program called Truth Concepts. I first learned about this software during this 2009, 2010 period of my life, where it was a very vulnerable time in my life. I was in the middle of getting crushed by the 2008 and 2009 timeframe where I almost went out of business. I almost went bankrupt, lost my family. It was very challenging. It was a scarce point in my life where I was afraid. I lacked certainty. I had way too much uncertainty going on.
That is what I pushed. Truth Concepts is geared around validating the financial product, financial strategy claims. It’s objectively looking at scenarios whether it’s a mutual fund, a piece of property, an alternative investment, it doesn’t matter. It’s objectively analyzing it so that you can see between the lines, the fluff of a sales pitch and understand what’s truly going on. It was humbling. It gave me not only a realization of how individuals are making investments and planning their life financially but also gave me confidence in what I was doing.
Uncertainty: Improving the foundation of certainty that you have with your financial life will allow you to experience even more uncertainty than you currently experience.
It was right. It was beneficial. It helped people. It started to help me as well. It gave me more certainty. This is the realization that I had at a much deeper level is if uncertainty is what is required to have a higher quality of life, if it’s not balanced out with certainty, it puts you in this position of not comfortable living with uncertainty. You’re uncomfortably living with uncertainty. In essence, improving the foundation of certainty that you have with your financial life will allow you to experience even more uncertainty than you experience.
Going to human needs, these driving human needs that we have most are not aware of those. I’ve been aware of them for quite some time. It doesn’t mean that I understood them. I continue to understand how those needs manifest in me whether it’s the degree of certainty that I’m looking for, it’s the degree of uncertainty that makes me feel alive and excited and gives me that adventurous experience of life. There’s also the need for significance, the thing that allows us to understand that we bring value to the world. There’s also the need for love and connection but there’s also a need for growth.
There’s also a need for contribution, which is giving back, being of value, of service to others. As we look at where we’re getting these needs, one of the big things I’ve learned in my personal development is to strategically position myself so that it’s not this random way in which I’m meeting needs. It’s not this random impulsive behavior that has me doing this, that and the other, and hopefully getting what I want in the end but it’s strategically doing it.
What gave rise to more people wanting to invest is the dream of doubling and tripling a return and what that would mean to their life. Click To TweetThat’s where in addition to revisiting this software, how financial products work, the combination of financial products and how taxes and inflation and other impacts other financial influences out there give either rise to the claims that are being made or in question the claims that are being made. It allowed me to step back and ask myself the question, “What are our people after?” The driving force behind human behavior is these needs.
As much as I was in this training, there was also a lot of buzz and excitement with regards to what was going on Wall Street, mainly in a few different companies, GameStop, AMC, where you had a group on Reddit and other influence that were combining efforts of retail investors and influencing the rise of certain stocks, which squeezed out those who were short-selling those stock, which are mainly hedge funds. There’s lots of buzz. There was lots of excitement. There was lots of adventure there.
A lot of people made a lot of money but as you can guess, the excitement and buzz led to a lot of people losing money. In the end, what I wanted to do with this very short episode is highlight the fact that we’re all seeking uncertainty. What gave rise to more people wanting to invest was that dream of doubling and tripling, 600% return of what that would mean to their life. It’s exciting. You also had those that were driven by this unbridled control of their behavior and lost money.
The lesson and the connection I made is there are things that are going to pull me, pull you toward adventure, excitement. I believe that degree of certainty that you have as your foundation will allow even more of that. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with everyone but those that understood this principle, whether it’s using the words that I’m using to describe it or using others. If there was a foundation of certainty, certain things that you can count on whether it’s cashflow, your profession, your business, your liquidity, the financial products you have that did provide certainty of outcome or the highest degree of certainty for that outcome, these bets, these risks made you feel alive but did not take you out of the game.
Uncertainty: You can experience more uncertainty, adventure, and excitement in your life when you improve the quality of the degree of certainty that you have.
That’s my breakthrough is before, I was very prone to creating more certainty and more certainty in my life but not equating that certainty to the amount of uncertainty that I could experience. I don’t get a big rise by making those types of bets in the market. That’s just me. I like to have experiences with my family. I like to make bets in my business as far as trying this thing, trying that thing, developing software, developing a course, developing ways in which I can create more value for clients. That gives me a lot of excitement.
Because I have a degree of certainty that backs me, I’m allowed to push more and more of the limits that were in place previously. I encourage you guys to do the same thing. Don’t let your impulses, your passions be a quilt, strategically position yourself to take advantage of those. That’s what gives us this higher quality of life. However, the positioning is where you create whether it’s financial education, it’s a degree of certainty and the financial products that are at the foundation of your financial life, whatever the case may be. Just look at that, it’s a balance. You can experience more uncertainty, more adventure, more excitement in your life when you improve the quality of the degree of certainty that you have. That’s it. Stay tuned for a couple of episodes that you guys are going to enjoy that are forthcoming. Go out and create some value, have an amazing life. We’ll see you next time.
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