Where do you get your inspiration? Life lessons? Over the past 16 years at Personal Money Manager™ I’ve found them in expected and many unexpected places! In the spirit of discovery, I’m sharing this story from a wonderful quilting colleague, Melanie Tauzon, with her permission. (I encourage you to look here and here for her creative work.)
Last week, I was driving on a familiar street and suddenly realized that I was going the wrong way down a one way street. Apparently, the traffic pattern had been changed. But I hadn’t been in that part of town in a while and auto pilot took over.
Suddenly I found myself at an intersection where the traffic light looked like it had turned its back on me! What to do? Turn around? Quickly forge ahead? Was I going to get pulled over?
I put the car in reverse and started backing up. Just then, a kind soul ran out of the bank on the corner.
“Just go!” he said.
“Didn’t this road used to go both ways?” I called back. The man calmly waved me through, without hesitating to answer my question.
“Don’t panic. Just go!” A great motto for: Accept, learn, and move on.
Do elements of Melanie’s story resonate with you in your practice? They do for me.
At Personal Money Manager™ I strive to be the “kind soul” guiding my senior clients and their families. At times from the sidewalk; At other times steering the car. With 16 years experience, I encounter lots of familiar territory—from taxes to a family member passing away to incorrect billing or worse. With both the big picture in mind and expertise in the granular details, I bring calm and reason. And wave clients through to safety.
But what makes my work even more interesting is seeing a financial organizing situation for the first time. Recently, a client’s daughter and I handled a vendor billing kerfuffle that was new to us both. When we got it resolved, I turned to her and said: Now I’ll know next time I encounter this!
In one important way I am different from Melanie’s sidewalk angel: When working with clients, none of their questions need to be put aside. We successfully navigate potentially dangerous on-coming traffic. But thankfully, can do the work while explaining (and sometimes repeating) the “how’s and whys” along the way.
Photo Credit: 12088973 © Lightpoet | Dreamstime.com