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Imagine this scenario.
You go to your family doctor for your annual check-up. At the conclusion of the appointment, she says: “There’s a clear connection between your physical and financial health. I’m now offering financial planning services. Are you interested?”
Most of us would prefer our doctors to stay in their lane and deal with medical issues. That’s what they’ve been trained to do.
Yet, according to McKinsey & Company, in an article dated January 22, 2020, “[I]n the next 10 years, advisors will gradually shed their role as investment managers and become more like integrated life/wealth coaches who advise clients on investments, banking, healthcare, protection, taxes, estate, and financial wellness needs more broadly.”
If this prediction turns out to be accurate, it’s troubling. Advisors aren’t trained to be “integrated life/wealth coaches.” As long as they confine their advice to financial and investment issues, there’s no problem. But the temptation may be to embrace the “life coach” label, and volunteer advice outside these constraints.
That’s where it gets problematic.
Here’s one example.
The “no regrets” myth
We’ve all read stories of hospice providers relating regrets dying patients conveyed to them.
For men, the top regret is often: “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
Other regrets include:
- Wanting to live the life they wanted, instead of what others expected of them;
- Expressing their feelings more openly;
- Letting themselves be happier; and
- Spending more time with family and friends.
The message is that living a life without these (and other) regrets is a worthy goal.
If this is a view you convey to your clients in your new role as “life coach,” you’re doing them a disservice.
Here’s why.
Regrets are normal
Most of us have regrets about something. One survey of more than 15,000 people in 105 countries found that 82% said they wished they had done some things differently in their lives.
Are these people failures because they didn’t live up to the ideal of the “no regret” life?
Anna Gotlib, assistant professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College CUNY, believes the idea of living life with no regrets is ridiculous and unhealthy: “To have no regrets, you think that absolutely everything you’ve done and everything that happened to you is perfect just the way it is, or you just don’t have the perspective to see that it’s not.”
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She refers to the goal of having no regrets as a “cult.”
Benefits of having regrets
According to author Daniel Pink, having regrets can be beneficial. We can learn from them and avoid making similar mistakes.
The ability to learn from our regrets is what distinguishes us from psychopaths. According to one study, psychopaths are capable of feeling regret, but it doesn’t cause them to alter their behavior.
Instead of feeling badly about having regrets, be grateful. Amy Summerville, professor of social psychology at Miami University in Ohio, believes regret is “something that signals to people that we’re learning from our experiences and that we’re going to make changes as a result. Not having that emotional reaction is really actually kind of troubling if there is harm that’s happening.”
By embracing regret instead of denying it, we can evolve, change our values and make better decisions.
The misinformation about living a “no regret” life is one of many examples of harm advisors can cause when they expand their services outside the realm of their expertise.
Dan trains executives and employees in the lessons based on the research in his latest book, Ask: How to Relate to Anyone. His online course, Ask: Increase Your Sales. Deepen Your Relationships, is currently available.
Read more articles by Dan Solin
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
