by
Aileen Miga, CFP and Dr. Janice Hughes
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0067-9
Disclaimer: Inspired Wealth: Financial Leadership for the 21st Century contains the opinions, thoughts and ideas of the authors. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Readers should be aware that the opinions and interpretations expressed herein are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the current opinions or attitudes of their employers or other organizations with which they are affiliated.
Copyright © 2004 by Aileen Miga, CFP and Janice Hughes, DC, LCP(hon) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Published by INSPIRED WEALTH.
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I dedicate this book with love and gratitude to my family: to Stan for helping me discover my path; to my parents Ursula and Henry for believing and teaching me faith; and especially to my daughters Alexandra and Katherine, who inspire me daily to keep climbing my mountain.
— Aileen
“How we live one day is how we live our lives.” — Buddha
This simple truth allows me each day to show up and play full out. I am blessed to share these days with my husband Dave. With his patience and love we are bringing these same truths to our sons, Robert, Jackson and Kobi. My wish is to go forth and live each day fully, as if it was the last!
— Janice
Acknowledgements
They say it takes a village to raise a child; the same is true in writing a book. Without the vision and support of others this book may not have materialized. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our editor John Stevens for seeing the potential for this work and helping us fine-tune the 12 Principles for Financial Leadership. We would also like to thank Sarah Graham of Graham Graphics for instantly understanding the nature of this project and helping us take this book from vision to paper. Her professionalism and eye for detail in design and layout have been instrumental in creating our desired finished product.
On the idea side, we owe a debt of gratitude to many people who have helped evolve our ideas about financial leadership. We would like to acknowledge contributions both in the worlds of coaching and financial planning. Janice has been guided in her coaching career through the influence of many wonderful people involved with Coach University. She was fortunate to study under Thomas Leonard, the developer of the coaching profession, as he founded and created Coachville and many unique and wonderful programs. Aileen would like to acknowledge her friends at the Sudden Money Institute and the Nazrudin Project for providing a forum of exchange on the deeper issues about money in our lives. Aileen also extends her gratitude to her colleagues at Berkshire Investment Group, her friends and her family for their feedback and support throughout this project.
We are deeply grateful to our clients, who embraced our enthusiasm for this work and through their experiences have helped us shape Inspired Wealth into a workable framework and effective process. Their openness to these concepts was an essential element in the development of this book.
We acknowledge all people who are attracted and pulled to the idea of intentionally using money to achieve their highest goals. We welcome you as fellow travelers on the journey.
“The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.”
— E. J. Hobsbawm
The Quest for Inspired Wealth - A Journey of Self-Discovery
We live in the most affluent society in human history, yet we lack the wisdom to use money intentionally to achieve our highest goals.
Inspired Wealth is a guide that takes individuals to a new level of interaction with money, leading to a more balanced life and the fulfillment of meaningful life goals. This is a journey through mountainous terrain; there are challenges and breathtaking vistas, unexpected opportunities and bridges to carry us across seemingly impassable chasms.
While most of us are taught to think about wealth creation as calculated, linear and primarily quantitative in approach, a closer look at how wealth is created makes one thing abundantly clear: wealth comes from within. Our capacity for wealth creation resides in our character, beliefs and attitudes.
We believe: You can’t talk about wealth creation without talking about personal evolution. Taking your financial situation to the next level will require that you delve in and investigate who you are and how to realize your true potential. What most observers fail to see, and what we hope this book will teach you, is that the quest for wealth involves more than meets the eye. Creating wealth from the inside out is a journey of self-discovery that demands each of us become leaders - willing to explore and nurture the seeds of our own greatness.
The Quest for Inspired Wealth
Throughout the book you will find reports from those who have traveled this path before. Every individual’s path is unique, but the experience of others can guide and inspire us when we are facing our own challenges.
Abraham Maslow believed that actualization was the driving force of human personality, a concept he captures in his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality.
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
What a man can be, he must be.”
More than ever, our basic needs for food and shelter are met. We have more discretionary money than ever before and we also have more choices to make than ever before. Choices about money require knowledge and the wisdom to apply this knowledge appropriately in our lives. Knowledge is easily acquired by processing information, but where do we get our wisdom about
