It’s Detroit, It’s the Superbowl, It’s Clint Eastwood
The Superbowl’s half-time commercial shows Detroit’s streets—dark and shadowy. Clint Eastwood strides down them and talks tough about America’s rough economic times. In his compelling directness Clint then shifts to talking about Americans as a community and how we all have to pull together —getting up again and again after we are hit with assaults and disappointments. America’s brand, our core fabric, is resilience.
Resilience means not only facing down troubles. It also means learning how to take care of ourselves as well as looking out for our family and neighbors. That is what I call Holistic Wealth. What, you say, is Holistic Wealth? It has 4 components: physical, psychological, financial and spiritual. It is easy in troubled times to look after everyone but ourselves. If we do that physically by over worrying, working at 3 jobs and leaving no time to eat healthy or exercise, we run the risk of getting sick and running up huge medical bills. If we worry ourselves into inaction or feel too ashamed to ask for help from friends and from the community, we are psychologically putting ourselves “up the creek.” And then there is money. Avoiding our money realities by not opening credit card bills, not keeping track of how we spend money or getting impulsive and trying to fight depression and anxiety with “retail therapy” only makes money problems worse.
One client I work with feels virtuous when she DOES open the credit card bill. Only problem? When she looks at the numbers, she squints so she really doesn’t see them clearly. She locates the MINIMUM DUE box and pays that with great satisfaction that she has done a hard job well!
The last component of Holistic Wealth is spiritual. That means having a sense of meaning and purpose beyond yourself that gives you a sense of grounding, connection and importance.
Taking care of ourselves in these 4 realms then allows us to develop the resources needed to get up again and again when we are facing down adversity or hard times of any sort. That is being American, that is our true grit.