“Now, this is what I really want you to understand: to get into the unitive world underneath, underlying, and supporting the everyday practical world, there have to be certain alterations in one’s common sense. There are certain ideas—and beyond these ideas, certain feelings—that are difficult to get across not because they’re intellectually complicated—not at all because of that—but because they’re unfamiliar. They’re strange. We haven’t been brought up to accommodate them. In exactly the same way that, in past times, people knew that the planets were supported in the sky because they were embedded in spheres of crystal. And if they weren’t embedded in spheres of crystal—and, of course, you could see them, because you could see through them—they would fall down on the Earth. And now, when astronomers finally suggested that there were no crystal spheres, people felt unbelievably insecure. See? They had a terrible time assimilating this idea. Now, do you see what it involves to assimilate a really new idea? You have to do quite a flip.”
This is Alan Watts, Understanding the Unitive World” Part 1
In our world of helping people with their money and wealth, I often see how people have “a terrible time assimilating” what appear to be new ideas but mostly they are often “unfamiliar”. In context, there is a familiarity that employing wealth managers or similar firms, you get outperformance. You see graphs of outperformance. You are told you are getting outperformance by the same people who are supposed to be delivering outperformance! Whilst what you are doing is familiar, it doesn’t mean its right. The hope is one day, “You do a flip” and see things with new eyes.
Are you prepared to challenge your thinking about your money in your life?