Ask questions instead of jumping to solutions

People seem to be better at giving advice than receiving it, and I have a theory as to why.

I would suggest there are three barriers to accepting personal feedback. First, we go to solving too quickly. Second, we make the stakes higher than they need to be. And third, we tunnel-vision on a single outcome rather than potential ranges.

Let’s look at how this works in our financial lives.

Imagine being at home, looking at next year’s calendar and trying to figure out what you are going to do with your days off from work. Rather than jumping to planning vacations, staycations or home projects, think about this more broadly. The decisions we make for next year will likely affect options in subsequent years.

Rather than jumping to making a decision, explore questions. What do you want to do in the next three years, and how can you prioritize them in your life? If you don’t lay out those goals, you might spend money on something that is less important to you.

Another question: Why are there some obligations that you keep putting off? Maybe it’s because you don’t really need to do them, but you are responding to some unexpressed rule you’ve made. Or it is something you just don’t want to do and would be better off delegating. When you expand the questions, you will come up with different answers.

Being afraid of making a mistake also limits our decisionmaking. Almost anything you do is reversible, so why make the stakes higher than they need to be? Accept that we are running countless experiments throughout our lives, and each result gives us new information for our next decision. Almost everything is more good or more bad, rather than right or wrong.

And don’t be so focused on an outcome that you end up paralyzed with indecision or disappointed in a hasty choice. We create stories about how making a different decision would have been better. There are countless possible results, and you can only deal with what is now in front of you, rather than what could have been.

Don’t just take my advice; give some to yourself.

Spend your life wisely.

Ross Levin is the founder of Accredited Investors Wealth Management in Edina. He can be reached at ross@accredited.com.