Ep 2: What is Life Planning?

George Kinder, the father of Life Planning, describes Life Planning as "the most efficient method of delivering freedom to the individual."

I share my experience of getting life planned with Financial Life Planner, Drew Schlotter, of On Point Financial Planning.

You can sign up for one-on-one life planning at Dare to Dream Physician (https://daretodreamphysician.com)

You can find Drew at On Point Financial Planning (https://onpointfp.com). Send him a question that he can answer in his blog here (https://onpointfp.com/contact)

Transcript

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 0:00

Welcome back. I'm excited to have drew slaughter, financial life planner and founder of OnPoint financial planning. Join the dare to dream physician podcast today.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 0:13

For having me.

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 0:13

Yeah, I'm so glad that that you agreed to come. So drew and I recently attended a transformative yeah. Life planning workshop where we not only learned how to be a life planner, but we also went through the life planning process for ourselves, all the attendees did. And at the end of this workshop, this week long workshop, when I posed the question, well, how can I convey life planning and what that is to physicians, drew said, well, I know of a physician who recently went through life planning that I could interview. And I got really excited. I thought, Oh, wow. He's going to give me the name of a physician who I could interview for my podcast and explain to everybody what life planning's about then. And then drew said, well, that physician is you. I was no longer as excited because fear set in, I thought, Oh, what am I going to say about this? But after thinking about it for a few minutes, I was very grateful that that he came up with this suggestion and equally grateful that he agreed to do the interview. So here we are.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 1:30

Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you taking that off the wall. Suggestion. To get us started George kinder, the father of life planning defines life planning as the most efficient method of delivering freedom to an individual. So how would you describe. What life planning is.

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 1:53

Wow. Yeah. So that's part of the difficulty is in life planning is an experiencial process. And when we try to use words to describe it I almost feel like it takes away from it. But I do have some. Observations that I made, after our life planning workshop. one is that life planning allows for the client to discover what's most important to them. Most of us walk around and we. Just assume we know what's important to us. It's sort of obvious, right? But, through the life planning process, we're creating space, a lot of space, more space than we ever imagined we needed for the client to explore. What is the most important in your life? And as George says that process is liberating. As I went through the process, it felt really good to actually be able to voice what are the most important things to us. sometimes It's the afterthoughts for me, family is very important. I have a husband and three kids. And work because it is important for me to feel like I'm making a difference I remember for me as I was listing these things I'm an only child and my parents live 12 hours away from us. One of the things that I didn't realize was important to me was to be there for my parents. As they age as, especially as gay, the older are they they encounter end of life issues. So that, to me, that was an afterthought, but when I had the space to explore, I thought, wow, I didn't realize how important this was to me, because I just had to assume that I want to be there for them. What if I couldn't take time off from work. I realized that that is a top priority for me So I think just having that opportunity, dedicating the space and the time to explore that was very valuable. And so that, that's the, the beginning of the life planning process, right. Is the exploration. I think after that, after we have a clear view of, what are the most important things to us then the other part of life planning is allowing the client to be. More authentic to their true goals, because so now I know what's important to me, then I'm translating this to a goal and a plan Especially as physicians, we're so used to living a prescribed life, ever since we decided that we wanted to go to medical school, you have to take the pre-med classes. You have to take the MCAT, you have to apply for medical school. And then in medical school, there are a series of exams. There are three step exams, and then you have this application process to apply for residency and on and on and in-service training and then board certification. The next step is very clear. This is what you got to do. If you want to become a practicing physician. That's a long process, right. As you know. So over 10 years later, it's comfortable. Part of me appreciated that because I knew what I had to do. That's the next check Mark, but in that 10 plus year time, where that's, you just have to do the next thing and the next thing. It's easy for physicians. Certainly happened to me to lose a sense of. Who I am. And Once we're done with the training the next steps are also quite clear. Well you have to get a job or some people open a private practice. I am employed through a hospital. So there are certain things I got handed an ID badge. I got handed I log in to the computer and I have these RVU targets that I'm supposed to meet. So it's all very prescribed. Somewhere along the way, the true goals get lost. The next part in the life planning process is to let us translate the things that are most important to us into a vision of what this is, what your day week. Year should look like. The nice thing is you have the space to dream of what that looks like. Most of us have known or heard of. People that are encountering their mortality earlier than they expect. Right. You know, whether it's the, the cancer patients who at 40 years old, get this cancer diagnosis that now they're not sure whether they can live to see their kids grow up. Whether they have a month more to live or a few more years to live. As a physician and also in my own family I see that nobody ever really wants to encounter their mortality. Whether they're 40 years old or 70, 80 years old. George kinder uses a series of questions, three questions. Really they're the. Three most important questions that anyone could ever answer for their life. If you have 24 hours left to live, what could your life have been? What would you have missed in your life? Who did you not get to be? What did you miss? Doing. You can do this exercise on your own, but it's through the entire life planning process where it becomes not so much an intellectual question, but more about a heart question. Not that I wish cancer on anybody, but sometimes I meet people who survived cancer and they just have the zest for life. You know, they, They know what they want in life and I think, wow, I wish I had that. You know what I mean? They have this new energy and that's actually part of what life planning does without necessarily having to have these events happen to you. You can use the life planning process to get that, to really connect with the fact that really for all of us, tomorrow's not guaranteed. And we all know that, right. But we don't necessarily process that in a way that makes a difference in how we live our life. One of the things that became very clear to me during this process was family's very important to me. But when I'm being honest I look at my schedule and if I look at how I prioritize my time, my energy I am not really prioritizing my family. It's so easy especially as a physician, I have to take time to take care of the urgent stuff every day. So going to work, seeing patients answering patient messages, answering emails and I'm tired at the end of the day. I get home late and I'm just beat I see my kids running up to me and. This is, a terrace thing to admit, but the last thing I want to do is to hug them. I actually just want to lock myself in a room and yeah. And be alone and just unwind. I think Sad. It didn't hit me as hard until I did the life planning process that, the urgent stuff is always going to look and feel urgent, but the important stuff, if I don't dedicate time and energy to it, then it's never going to get done. I'm not gonna read a book to my kids and a month later I didn't even read one book to my kids. Even though that's important to me. So I think this is the value of the life planning process. And there's so much more, but this one last point that, I would bring up is that life planning also allows the client to discover their own energy. To execute the things that are most important to them to execute their life goals and their passions. And Ooh, this is so important and this is where it is really in that experience, in that process, in going through one-on-one life planning. The first life planning workshop that I attended. I did the exercises. I listed the things that were important to me and my goals and then I volunteered. Even though I usually wouldn't do this, but I thought, Hey, I take a chance. What's the worst that can happen. I embarrass myself in front of 20 strangers. I volunteered to have the master life planner do the demonstration in front of the whole group. Using me as the clients and all of this was real. That's part of life planning is we have to be authentic. The life planner has to be authentic. The client has to be authentic life has to be authentic. actually it made it easier cause I said, well, I just have to be me. Within. A few minutes of this process. The master life planner delivered my torch statement to me, which is basically painting a vision a moment in time where all the things that I said are important to me are. Our real as he's saying this I started crying. I started crying in front of 20 strangers and people who know me know that I'm not a super emotional person. I wasn't expecting to cry, but connecting with the heart level and, that's what energizes people. After that experience I really I couldn't, I couldn't not change my life. As physicians it's easy to just, everything's up in the head, everything's intellectual and cerebral. Cause that's what we do. We have all those medical knowledge and, and yes, we have to be empathetic and compassionate, which, I thought myself with those qualities and certainly that way with my patients. But if I have to be honest, I don't think I was that way with myself Being a client for life planning really, really. Change that for me. And so it helped me become aware of what, what are the things that are important to me, it helped me dream. Sometimes it's scary to dream because, what are those dreams don't come true? We have to believe in the client's dreams. Bain know what the obstacles are. The most important thing is to have that energy, to pursue the passions and the troubleshooting process Going through life planning is the reason why I founded dare to dream physician because I believe that Physicians are some of the most altruistic, capable and hardworking group of people out there. And the reality is physicians are overwhelmed and burned out. The latest Medscape survey is over 40% of physicians exhibit signs of burnout. My mission now is if I can connect physicians back to their passions, back to their why then society will benefit immensely. Because I don't even know what everybody's dreams are, but if, we can give them the space to discover their dreams and the energy to pursue their dreams, then the results are going to be unfathomable. That is my attempt at conveying what life planning can do. And I'm excited.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 13:25

That's really awesome, Wally. So if a physician is out there and is listening to this and gets inspired and wants to see what it's all about, find out for themselves, go through the life planning process, where can they reach you?

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 13:41

They can find me on my website, dare to dream physician.com. That's also the same place where they can book a discovery call with me. And see if pursuing the one on one life planning process is the right fit for them. And of course, subscribe to the dare to dream physician podcasts. Thank you so, so much drew for being here and for posing this crazy idea of interviewing me for this podcast. I would love for you to also tell our listeners a little bit about, what you do and where they can find you because you are a life planner and you're also a financial planner. Which is a very rare breed.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 14:23

Sure. Thanks. Yeah, so I been a financial planner for a few years now. And just recently I stepped out on my own. I've started point financial planning And my goal is to focus on financial life planning for physicians helping positions both with life planning aspect, and then also marry that with the financial planning aspect to bring the two together because so much of what financial planning should be is supporting that life plan.

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 14:53

Hmm. Yes.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 14:55

so I that's, one of the things I really love about your vision is really bringing that life planning aspect to physicians. So I've got a very similar mission for OnPoint FP. And so people can find me@onpointfp.com. Then you also find me on Facebook under OnPoint FP, and on LinkedIn on point FP as well. I cover things like all of your traditional financial planning topics, retirement investment estate planning in temp tax planning. But then also areas that most financial planners don't go into like student loans. Management student loan analysis and then preparing to send your kids to college because for physicians, y'all are in college for so long, but just about as soon as y'all are done paying off your student loans, you're getting ready to send your kids to college. So I've identified those as areas to work with people on

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 15:46

Excellent. Wow. Well, we're definitely going to have to bring you back on the podcast and talk about some of those topics, because of course, when, we think about pursuing our dreams I think most, physicians often think of money as one of the obstacles.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 16:03

Absolutely. Yeah. If listeners have any questions or Want to read up on some things. I do have a blog on my website and I'm open to topics. So if somebody has a question that they want to see an article on that's, life planning or financial planning related, they can message me through my website and I will happily write articles and respond to all of that.

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 16:25

Okay. Excellent. So please take drew up on that offer. I may send you a question.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 16:31

Yeah, absolutely.

audio_only_16778242_Weili_Gray 16:34

Thank you again for being on the podcast. And I look forward to collaborating more with you in the future.

audio_only_16779266_Drew_Schlotter 16:40

Oh, absolutely. And thank you for having me. This was fun.