What are you Practicing?
This weekend as I worked on building a few raised beds, mowed my lawn, and cleaned the grill while my wife made a cake, I was lulled into a feeling I almost didn’t recognize—that things had gone back to normal. Of course, that false sense of normalcy was immediately dispelled by reminders that the community and economy around me shutting down piece by piece. We crave normal—we’re hard-wired that way, no? For my family, the long-familiar patterns of being busy working on our hobbies and avocations brought a welcome, pacified calm to our weekend. We like to practice staying occupied and industrious. What are you practicing these days?
Among other practices, I’m sure you have a certain practice at work. Are you practicing what you normally do at work in these interesting times? Most of our clients are asset managers and financial planners—this means most of them are in the practice of educating the clients about the plan they have built and how it is engineered to endure the unexpected. My bet would be most of you have some version of this practice as well—informing clients, or perhaps loved ones, of the thoughtful steps you have taken to buoy or protect them. We’re blessed in the modern world because all of this can be done over the phone, when it needs to be. Maybe you are practicing building a new and better service model for your clients, as we are here at BPI. We try and deliberately take time each and every day to think about the thinking that goes into our support of clients. One question particularly central to this kind of introspection for us is—are there things we believe that are wrong, that we only do because they have been practiced? Do we do things that are stupid, just out of habit?
In your spiritual life you have a practice. You may open the day in prayer, meditate and/or study the texts that support your spiritual growth. I think of spirituality as a dialogue between an individual and the form divinity takes to that individual. These times in which you may feel isolated and quarantined could be the perfect time to scrutinize those spiritual practices, or lack thereof. What have you retained via habit that could be improved? Have you yet to try and add something new to your spiritual practice simply because it is un—practiced?
All of these different areas of our life have some sort of practice. Practice is the parent of structure; structure is the parent of planning; and planning is the parent of confidence, stability, and equanimity, especially in times like this. As I said last week, we don’t always know what’s around the corner—practice armors us against whatever may come.
Written By: Chad Ramberg
Today’s BPI Advice: Share what you are practicing. This can create a collaborative chain reaction that helps people improve theirs, or at least be thoughtful in them. How will the world look if we practice sharing good ideas? Could those ideas in turn spark other ideas and support solutions—incremental footsteps towards enormous personal growth?
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