4 X 4 Grass I never Forgot

When Responsibility Becomes Heavy

A couple of years ago, we took a CliftonStrengths assessment, which is designed to identify your natural strengths.

The idea is that it captures a person's natural ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving and then highlights your top five strengths. They could be things like Communication, Achiever, Competition, or Learner.

Do you think any of those were in my top five?

Nope.

My number one strength was Responsibility.

Honestly, that sounded pretty lame to me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it explained a lot about how I'm wired.

I have what feels like an innate need to make sure things happen. The thought of forgetting something or not getting something done is genuinely stress-inducing.

Thankfully, this has worked out pretty well in my line of work because people depend on us to help them figure out their retirement plans and manage their money. I literally tell my team that their number one job is to help me remember things.

I've never really looked into it, but I do wonder if some of my tendencies toward responsibility were learned from my parents.

Watching Amelia

Amelia, our eight-year-old, has developed a new habit.

She'll brush her teeth. I'll hear her brush her teeth. She'll finish brushing her teeth. Then she'll come find me and ask whether I think she did a good job or whether she needs to brush them again.

It's gotten me wondering if she's observing how hung up I can get on details and is beginning to adopt some of those same tendencies. I don't know if that's actually how it works, but it has certainly made me think.

The Lawn Mowing Lesson

I may have naturally been wired to not pay much attention to details, but that tendency was pretty quickly bred out of me with one of my first lawn mowing jobs.

I wanted some extra money as a kid, so my dad's solution was for me to go ask the single lady next door if I could mow her yard. She had a difficult time keeping up with it, and I'm sure my dad hated looking at how overgrown it had become. So, it was probably a win-win for him. I made some money, and he no longer had to look at the neighbor's yard.

Pretty smart.

The neighbor agreed, and when I walked around to the back of her property, I realized that we had only thought her yard looked bad in the front. The backyard was a jungle.

I spent a couple of hours mowing and weedeating, but there was one section, probably four feet by four feet, where the grass was especially tall. I can still remember the conversation I had with my pre-teen self:

"She must have wanted that patch to stay high. I'll just leave it."

What I didn't anticipate was my dad conducting a quality control inspection.

I took the mower and weedeater back home and went inside. My dad walked over to inspect the yard. I was back outside faster than I care to admit.

I hacked and hacked at that patch of grass until it looked like the rest of the yard.

That experience taught me a lesson I have never forgotten:

When you take on a responsibility, you see it through to the end.

Learning What Isn't Mine to Carry

Looking back on my early years as a financial advisor, I can see now that I often took responsibility for things that were never really mine to control.

I felt responsible for whether clients stuck with their financial plans. I felt responsible for how investments performed. I felt responsible for outcomes that were influenced by countless factors outside of my control.

Over time, I've learned that there is a difference between being responsible and believing you are responsible for everything.

Ironically, learning to let go of some of those things made me a better advisor and a healthier person.

A Good Reminder

It's a good reminder that none of us control everything.

We do the best we can. We make thoughtful decisions. We hope for the best. And when life changes, we make course corrections.

But at some point, we have to let go of what I call "responsibility perfection."

Are you trying to manage more than you feel like you can?

If you'd like help sorting through the many moving pieces of retirement planning, we're only a phone call away at 864.641.7955.

Until next week,

David C. Treece,

Financial Planner