Mindfulness, Freedom, and a Fiduciary Driven Civilization

Maddy Roche: Hello Lora and George. Welcome back to XYPN Radio.

Lora Woodward: Thank you, Maddy. Good to be here.

George Kinder: Yeah. Great to see you.

Maddy Roche: Yes. Listeners, if you can believe it, it has been four years since I've had these two on XYPN Radio and we were just reminiscing, time flies and we are so excited to be back together out of the depths of COVID talking about the topics that excite some of us so much. The ideas of mindfulness, the ideas of being fiduciaries to the world and George to talk about your new book. So why don't you get us up to speed just a little bit about what's happened over the past four years for you, George.

George Kinder: For me, well the writing of the book was incredible. It has really changed my notion of financial services in a way and elevated it in I think a pretty profound way, in that one of the things that I'm advocating in the book and the book by the way is it's really a small book And it's a book of wisdom So it's like you could read it probably in an hour if you just read through. But you want to pause and go through the exercises meditations and different things, but I'm really passionate about fiduciary and about our being fiduciaries.

And what I realize is we need a fiduciary civilization, fiduciary society, fiduciary institutions everywhere. And I think I've got, I've come up in the book. I think I've come up with a pretty intriguing way of doing it and I see our advisory communities as being the possible leaders of it because we know what fiduciary is.

Nobody else in our society does.

Maddy Roche: We're going to dive into all that in just a moment, but Lora would you please introduce yourself and the Kinder Institute?

Lora Woodward: Sure. So my name is Lora Woodward. I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Kinder Institute. I've been with the organization for the past six and a half years, or so. Kinder Institute has been around since 2003. We're the brainchild of George Kinder. Our mission is to get more advisors focused on, guiding their clients into their life of fulfillment, so that their financial resources are backing the life that they desire, one of profound meaning, one that they are just excited to deliver into the world.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. For the listeners that maybe aren't super familiar with the Registered Life Planning® designation, Lora, would you mind just explaining what that is and tie it back to what many advisors are familiar with, which are your three questions.

Lora Woodward: Sure. So the Registered Life Planner® designation can be earned, over anywhere from nine months to eighteen months. And it's comprised of three courses. There's the seven stages of money maturity, which is a two day course. There's the evoke life planning training, which is four days online or five days in person, and then our six month, life planning mentorship. So each of those courses has a different focus and they help to build the advisor into someone who can really put the life of their client before diving into their resources. They really understand, the who the client is and can help to support them with their financial resources. So the three questions come up, in each of the courses.

So in the Seven Stages of Money Maturity, we introduce our inspirational exercises. That's the three questions, the Heart's Core Grid, Goals for Your Life, Ideal Day, Week, and Year. We have a series of exercises that a client is encouraged to go through to help to clarify, and to bring out who they authentically are. And so they have to put it on paper, they have to really contemplate it and feel it for themselves. And in those three questions that George is so famous for developing, it kind of funnels their ideals from thinking that you have absolutely all the means in the world to do anything that you want, and to live a secure financial life, to all of a sudden, you only have 5 to 10 years left to live. To, oh my goodness, it's the last day. And it's not about what you would do this day. It's about what did you miss? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do? And so by funneling, all of their answers into understanding what the priority order is of their responses, we can help them craft a vision that puts them anywhere from three months to maybe three years, but we like to keep it a very short period of time so that they're then looking back at achieving all of the things that they've wanted. And that process enables the client to actually start moving. And that's some of the heart of what we teach at Kinder Institute. but we also teach listening skills. We teach mindfulness. We teach our planners to really understand how to be with their clients so that the client feels completely secure and trusting of their advisors so that they really do share who it is they are authentically and what they want to achieve in the world.

Maddy Roche: So beautiful. I've been so familiar with this program over the years that I just take it for granted and assume all advisors are practicing listening and mindfulness. And I assume it's table stakes for any good relationship, but then I do meet advisors that are unfamiliar with these concepts.

And I'm wondering, George, what prompted it originally in you many years ago to define practices like this and bring it into the financial planning realm?

George Kinder: Well my passion has always been freedom. And it's been a passion since I was probably an infant, it probably goes back that far. But not experiencing it and having to do tax returns for a living and not really wanting to, that said I loved working with my clients and I loved the experience of it but I wanted to experience freedom.

So I became a CFP® and, I as I met other people in the financial world, I discovered that they were also struggling with who they really wanted to be and not being able somehow to be that person. Anyway it was natural for me to work with my clients this way and then it became natural.

There are stories all the way along the line, as you might imagine Maddy, and then working with the financial advisor community, and really one of the beauties of our training that Lora was just describing is that it's all inside out. It's you become life planned in these trainings.

 particularly the four or five day. Yeah, so you end up at the end of the training going, Whoa, I'm living my life, my life of freedom. I'm here. I got it. And at the same time you're practicing working on your partner in the training to unleash that freedom in them. So you're practicing the skills and you're experiencing it inside.

What better way could there be of actually learning how to work with your clients?

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. Just for some context, how many Registered Life Planners are there?

Lora Woodward: We have 660 globally.

Maddy Roche: Globally? I love that.

Lora Woodward: Yeah, we're in the US, the UK, Netherlands, Germany, India, Australia and actually I think we've counted up to 30 countries that we've trained advisors in. We've trained over 5,000 advisors, but some people have chosen to go on to earn the full designation.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. Okay, thank you. And listeners, at the end we'll talk about how to get more information and the next right steps for you if you are interested in this designation. But George, I'd love to talk a little bit about what we talked about four years ago, which was the practice of mindfulness, the practice of meditation.

It's not a topic I get to talk a lot about on XYPN Radio. I wish I could more, because it's a personal interest and passion of mine, but would you be open to telling us a bit about your development in this space and how you landed upon it and where you are now today with mindfulness and meditation?

George Kinder: Sure. I'm just beginning to come out about this stuff. Because for years I haven't been known. I wrote a modest book a few years ago, but the truth is I've been practicing mindfulness in a very significant way in terms of significant hours for over 50 years in my life since college, really.

And I've probably averaged three or four hours a day. So I do it a lot. And then I've taught, I've had small communities I've taught in for 35, maybe it's going close to 40 years. And, some in Europe, Hawaii, and then here in Massachusetts. I know it very well and my passion for it early on was coming from this place freedom.

If you look at the literature of freedom. You end up coming to places of wisdom literature basically, and in that wisdom literature you find that in virtually every tradition, whether it's religious or now secular, you find that people in order to achieve that wisdom, have had some kind of contemplative practice. And so I got passionate about doing that for myself. I thought, wow, those folks can do it up in the mountains or in the caves or whatever. I'm going to do it myself, but I'm going to do it right here. Right where I am. I got to make a living. I'm in this world. I got to make a living. So I started doing it and it's meant the world to me.

In some ways I owe my career to probably two things. And one of them other than my my spouse, but I owe it to the mindfulness practice and I owe it to the three questions That I always kept my eyes on the prize. What's really important. So all my success in life, I think, comes from those two things.

So one of the extraordinary things that I probably didn't share with you back then. But you're always developing with it. It's something because the surprising thing about it, most people hear, Oh, it's about health. Yeah. It's about health. It's about my mental wellbeing. Yes. It's about your mental wellbeing. It's about what we realized over time is it's about emotional intelligence. Yes. You gain great emotional intelligence with this. And it's about listening, which is why we use it for financial advisors. It's a training in listening interiorly so that you're actually there for the client.

Full on very focused and quietly present with them. But the deep thing, the surprising thing, usual thing that you won't even find in Google on the web is that mindfulness is a practice toward the mastery of the present moment. It's a practice toward the mastery of the present moment.

And it's why the first subtitle in my book is each moment is yours as a domain of freedom. So it's a practice toward the mastery. And I say toward the mastery and practice because you never quite get there. Right? the present moment just keeps coming up again and again. It's brand new, it's a new challenge but what is happening as you're practicing is you're learning to let go of, diminish all the distractions. You're learning to either escape from your anxieties or feel at ease in the midst of them and find freedom there as well. So it's an extraordinary thing. And, freedom one of my trick questions, I don't know if I asked you this four years ago, Maddy but I would do it with a group of a thousand.

How many of you experienced a moment in the past, a moment of freedom in the past? And I get everybody to raise their hand. Well, nobody's ever experienced a moment of freedom in the past. The only time you've ever experienced freedom is in the present moment. So why is it that we don't have all of our focus in our life on mastering the present moment?

And it's a question I would ask academics quite a bit, because their focus is really on the past and the future history and the projections and all that. Same thing in financial planning. But if we know that mindfulness, experience of freedom inside of ourselves, the client picks up on that and has more room for their own expression of and exploration of the present moment.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. I want to come back to that, but Lora, I'm interested in your personal practice, if you're willing to share around mindfulness and meditation and your relationship to freedom.

Lora Woodward: Yeah, thank you. So working for George, I've found that it's imperative that I adopt a mindfulness practice. And he's always recommended a half hour a day. And so I've been a pretty studious student to adopt a half hour a day, in the morning. And, what I really appreciate about the intentionality of going to the same place, sitting, at the same time and just being with my breath. Is that, I still get all of these thoughts, but I've worked through the process of just allowing them to be thoughts and allowing them to go. And so I start to settle more and I feel the sensations in my body more. I feel when I'm experiencing different emotions more. Not just in the meditation but just throughout the day, I'm much more aware of who I am in each situation. And I can differentiate between my emotions and the emotions of the person I'm talking to. And that's really important, especially in financial advice and working with clients is that money matters are so emotional. So naturally, the client is coming up with, is experiencing different things at different points in your meeting and you're experiencing different things as the advisor. And to be able to separate them and understand what is yours and to move through that is really incredible. And so I owe that to George and his continued push for all life planners to have a mindfulness practice. And so for me also freedom is very much tied to I think just being who I am authentically and figuring out I feel like it's a process to know who you are. And so for me, freedom is the journey of understanding who I am authentically and delivering that into the world.

Maddy Roche: Oh, thank you for defining that for me. That is so beautiful. And I do know advisors and clients don't feel free. I'm just thinking about that word freedom can sometimes be, it can like zing you because you may not have it yet. And what I'm hearing is that, and what I've experienced is that it's very much available and that we should bring some of that pressure down around this concept of freedom.

It's not living on some boat and not working and, doing X, Y, and Z. There's freedom right here to be found and to know oneself. George, I'd be interested in your perspective around why. Not why, but how a practice like this could impact an advisor, and how do we convey the importance of it to the point where people really want to adopt this more and more?

George Kinder: Well, I do think, again you can go on Google and research and you'll see that you'll have better health. You'll have better focus, you'll have more patience. My sense is you have greater access to every virtue there is. Greater access, much greater access. We all know we can be virtuous, but you have much greater access. You're fluid with it.

You can move toward whatever you need. And that's extremely valuable when you're attempting to be with a client in a way that has authenticity at its root. So you're finding greater authenticity. If you really dive into it, you have this experience of freedom, that is available to you.

And it's the cool thing is it's available every moment. So even when the plumbing has exploded in the house and everything, you still have access to that experience of freedom. So, but very cool. But then practically you've become a better listener. You're going to be a better listener to your kids.

You're going to be a better listener to your partner, and you're going to be a better listener to every client and every colleague that you have. And they will notice it after just from our trainings, they notice it after the two day, after the first two day experience, they notice that they're a better listener and their partners will tell them that.

Maddy Roche: We as humans are so uncomfortable with silence sometimes, and that can really hurt a relationship, whether you're in a coaching position or an advisory position, to not give space to people to also be slightly uncomfortable with that silence and do the thinking that's needed on the other end of a really meaningful question. Just within a few months of beginning a meditation practice a while ago, I found that my pause was so much stronger in every scenario. And I've always thought that, wow, I could have said that and the whole world would have been different. My whole life would have been different. Had I said that one thing. Instead I waited 10 seconds to say it, or I didn't say it.

And so there's this like flywheel feeling now in my life of, I'm constantly changing the trajectory of it with these quick check ins and silence in my life. But let's define it a little bit. Are we talking, we all have a practice so it's coming naturally to us to say we find the same place and we sit down, we come back to the breath but George, could you give us like a two minute quick teaching on what actually meditation is?

How could an advisor do it in their office?

George Kinder: Well, there are thousands of different kinds of meditation. And, all of them have a major theme to them. And I do want to say something about the pause, which you just mentioned, Maddy, because it was probably five years ago that I came up with the term, the pause, and introduced it into the whole Evoke® program.

So it suddenly became a big thing, which is right. Because that's the awkward moment of, can you pause and let the client, let it be the client's meeting. We're fiduciaries. Can you pause and let it be the client's meeting? And pause in such a way that you're connected with them, that it's relational at the same time.

So, how do we do this? So, Lora was describing it. I think the best way is to take, is to find time to do a 30 minutes a day or two 20 minute sessions a day. Find a course someplace where someone will teach you and take you through so that week after week there's an accountability factor where you have to come back and report what's going on and how it went.

You want to find a place where you can sit quietly, where the kids aren't gonna disturb you, the phone, you got to turn your phone off, no cats sleeping on your lap. And yay for cats right now, but the you want to find something where you can sit really still and not move at all and that means even not for an itch.

Let the itches roll through you. And just, and what you do is you bring your attention to the present moment. And the simplest way is to find a place either at the belly as you're breathing, or at the nostrils as you're breathing, and bring your attention just to that. Keep returning to it.

The practice is not to stay with the breath. The practice is to return to the breath. The great value is in the returning. That's where real practice occurs. So, and that what you're doing is you're practicing mastery of the present moment by returning every time you do. So it's, pretty cool. And it's a cumulative practice, meaning that you could do it for a few weeks and abandon it and come back two years later, and you will have already gone those two weeks.

You don't have to return. It's really cool that way. The other thing that's really cool about it is you can do it in your old age, like I can. And you can continue to get better and better at it, even the older you are. So, it's a wonderful practice, adds lots of freedom to your life.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. Thank you. I hope this conversation, listeners have encouraged you at least a little bit more to do a little research in this space and incorporate it. But George, let's talk about the new book. I'm looking behind you. You are an author of many books. And so I'm interested in how this book is different and why is it timely to us in our world in 2024?

George Kinder: Glad you used that word timely, because I think it's, I think it's really timely, Maddy. The truth is that, here we are, we're all enjoying each other and we're friends and it's great to see you again. And, Lora and I have the privilege of working with each other on a regular basis.

But, the world. We go out into the world and we don't know if we can talk to the person next to us about stuff that's important to us. We certainly don't know that politically, but it's gotten so that the, there's so much polarization that there's a whole culture over here and another culture over there.

So there's, I call it craziness. I think this is just absolutely nuts. And, and so I wrote the book because I think there's a relatively simple solution to that craziness. And part of it is addressing what's happening inside us here. And then the other is recognizing that there's a problem the way we've structured civilization and going there.

And the thing about civilization that's really interesting is that civilization is who we are. We think it's something out there. We think there's bosses over there. There's politicians pulling the strings over here, news media moguls over here. No civilization is who we are. Civilization is us as a species.

So everything we do has an impact. And even though they may have this enormous power coming out of money and all of that, ultimately it's up to us and about us in terms of where we go. We've had this incredible experiment for the last 250 years coming out of the Industrial Revolution. It's actually been closer to just 150 years, because it's been since incorporation really occurred.

Look at any graph of human history going back to the beginning of the Homo Sapiens, or to the beginning of humankind, and that 250 years is a tiny period. So we tend to think that we're stuck with where we are and this is what it's all about. It's not. We have the ability to actually shift gears and make a move.

To make civilization work in a sustainable way, in a resilient way, in a vital way that brings freedom everywhere. And I think one of the cool things about your audience, Maddy, is that they're fiduciaries. Primarily, they think of themselves as fiduciaries, right? That's so cool! And it is, I think that is the secret of all of this, is that we are fiduciaries.

And we get in this weird thing where we're battling against salespeople, it seems. The Department of Labor rule makes that, Oh, it's us versus them. Well, wait a minute. They're people just like us. They've got hearts just like we do. They've got integrity inside of themselves. Just like we do. They care about their clients. Okay. Where's the problem. The problem is we are fiduciaries and it's not that they aren't. It's that the industry isn't. Why, isn't every bank, every mutual fund company, and every corporation even in America. Why aren't they fiduciaries just the way we are to humanity, to democracy, to the truth and to the planet Earth.

Why on Earth would we create an experimental system where a powerful, essentially small government, but huge corporation, can put their own interests ahead of planet Earth, or ahead of the truth when we as democratic citizens, we need the truth in order to be able to make decisions and vote. We need to be able to debate on it.

So I've leapt into, you asked me what the book is about. And I left to the third domain of freedom, which is civilization. And that's because the first domain is each moment is yours. And that's mindfulness. Your life is yours. That's this incredible hero's journey that we all have inside of ourselves of becoming the person we really want to be.

That's life planning. And then the third one is civilization is yours. And we buckle at that. We freak out around that. We think we don't have any power in that. And what I'm trying to do here is say, nope, we got all the power. And it's time to do it. And you were talking about timely. What has happened in the last 20 years, maybe over the last 100 years, is we've become a global civilization.

And that wasn't true in the old days. What that means is, in economic terms, they talk about negative externalities. That's the oil companies ending up burning up the earth, even though they didn't mean to, originally. So, you have, these negative externalities and we talk all the time about going to scale and scalability.

It's one of Michael's favorite terms. And how do you become scalable? Well, in a global civilization, you scale globally. And when you scale globally and there are negative externalities. Those negative externalities take over, which is why we have this failure of truth in media. It's why we have a planet that's burning up.

It's why we have democracy in trouble. And there's a simple solution for it. And I call it fiduciary in all things. And it's really becoming, insisting that our institutions become fiduciary. We can make that happen. We're a democracy. We can make that happen.

Maddy Roche: I keep thinking about how it's so beautiful to hear this language. Yet we're still in this financial industry of ours, working and supporting advisors who are helping people amass enough wealth to be able to live what they define as freedom. There, there seems to be like inherent conflict in that. Do you see that too?

 Am I making sense?

George Kinder: Well there is. Where, do you see the conflict primarily? Where's the piece of this that you feel is conflicted?

Maddy Roche: That, when we think about the work of financial advisors, it is to help individuals achieve financial freedom is about as broad as most people are comfortable talking about. And that financial freedom then could trickle into a larger sense of, life freedom and alignment. Yet, the goal is to help people have enough to retire.

It's enough to do and achieve the things and the places, or go to the places and be the people they want to be, which feels instinctively selfish, that we're helping people still amass capital to achieve their goals.

George Kinder: Yeah, there's a huge negative externality right there. Even in the term retirement, even in the term financial freedom. And this is why life planning has such appeal and why life planners feel so much more ease in a way. I don't know if you noticed it, but they seem to be much more at ease than many of the other planners out there because there's this incredible joy that comes from actually helping.

Their clients live into their dreams of freedom and that the dream of freedom. That's important not quote retirement. It's not financial freedom. It's real freedom And it's the same problem, you go back again civilization wide you go back to the incorporation of everything and why is it that after 250 years of this explosion of innovation in society, that we don't find, we're so creative, we're so innovative, how come we don't find at the top of every hierarchy of power, the very best of humanity, our wisdom and our compassion?

Why is that? And the answer is there's something inappropriate at the base as we incorporate, there's something inappropriate that has negative externalities built in. And it's simple to fix it. The thing that I'm offering in the book is just a single sentence, legislative proposal that would change everything and would insist that all of our institutions act humanely, put their humane nature ahead of their own self interest, so that they would place the truth, democracy, the planet, and humanity ahead of their own self interest.

Maddy Roche: Lora, how are you seeing this new book complement or change or shift or add on to the theories that have really been embodied by the Registered Life Planning experience?

Lora Woodward: Yeah, well, I think it is summarized in the subtitles of the book. Each Moment is Yours, Your Life is Yours. Civilization is Yours. George talked about mindfulness and we agreed about the value of understanding the present moment, gaining a mastery of the present moment, for your relationship with your clients, the relationships you have with your spouse, your friends, because your ability to be at ease in each situation and to know that you can find freedom there in every moment is empowering. It's something that, with all of the constraints that might be, you might be experiencing in life, that you can continually go to the present moment and find freedom. That's just to me, it's just unbelievable.

And that's inspiring. Your life is yours. George talked about the hero's journey that we're all taking, of wanting to figure out who we are authentically and to bring ourselves and our desires into the world. And, we can do that through the life planning process, through understanding who we are as individuals and dreaming big, and putting a plan in place to make it reality.

That's what you can do if you work with a Registered Life Planner as your advisor. And then, civilization is yours. I've never thought of it prior to this book, coming out as something that I have a role in, civilization. It's something that seems like an other. But when George says, civilization is yours, well then it's mine.

It's yours, Maddy. It's George's. It's everyone's. And I do have an impact. I have an impact on my local community, certainly. I feel that in my community service. But that extends, to a global impact, just like the butterfly effect. And, so I think that the claiming of civilization as being something that is mine, that actual claiming of it is empowering, in a new way.

And each of these different domains of freedom, they build upon one another so that, I think George, says that you can go to any one at any point in time, but I love the concept that you can layer them, that when you are in the present moment you're often living into your best life of fulfillment. You are also in touch with all that is civilization and you're connected to humanity. And so for me, like the three domains of freedom are your ability to feel really connected and grounded in this world.

Maddy Roche: Well said.

George Kinder: I have one more thing I want to add, and I don't know where, maybe it's toward a final question that you might have, but I want to say one more thing about the community that we all share, which is this great, I think it's an incredible community of financial advisors with the capacity to bring their clients to genuine freedom and then add the finances in. So certainly financial freedom is there, but it's not putting the money first. It's putting the, dream of freedom first and understanding the importance of that. But, the key thing here in terms of civilization, because that's where the craziness is right now, that's where we all feel this dilemma of what is going on, in our world.

And we have an incredible role to play. We are at this point where we have become global. The negative externalities have risen up and are shaking their fists at us or their heads at us or something and their weapons at us at times. And, they talk about the weaponization of everything. And the truth is that we are at this time, and as a democracy we can choose to make a world that is fiduciary In all things. And if we choose to make that, the problems go away. If banks had been fiduciary in all things, they would only have lent to companies that were fiduciary in all things. And we wouldn't have a planet that's burning up. We wouldn't have a crisis in democracy.

We wouldn't have a crisis in the truth or in the media. So what's interesting, we tend to look in this kind of codependent way up at these big organizations up there thinking, oh, they're banks. I don't dare say anything to them. And I don't want to offend the sales force and all that. No, Hey, it's time.

It's time to claim civilization as fiduciary. I'm a fiduciary. You two are fiduciaries. Every advisor that we know in this organization is fiduciary. Well, it's time for all of us to say to the banks and the insurance companies and the brokerages and everything. Hey, we're fiduciaries. Why aren't you? And, it's time. And just simply say it's time that you became fiduciaries. Stop fighting us. This is the right thing for the consumer. And if you did it in a civilization wide way, we wouldn't have problems in civilization. So we can do that. And just the final thing here is I'll give one little tiny sales pitch, not to the book, which I do hope you'll buy but we need conferences. At our conferences we need whole days. We need platforms. We need focus on. Making a fiduciary society, making our institutions fiduciary and all things because we need to debate about this. We need economists saying, no, you can't do it. Politicians saying, no you can't do it and debating with them. We need it out there and energized talking about it dramatically backwards, back and forwards.

Otherwise it's not going to happen. So I'm looking. Anybody has any ideas about conferences or anything? Let me know. I'm eager to do it.

Maddy Roche: Yeah. my natural next question is like, George how do we do it? And is it, beginning with that individual that individuals all have to first adopt that each moment is theirs? Then that their life is theirs. And then we can begin having that civilization conversation.

Does it require all the participants to have done the first two domains or accomplish the first two domains to be able to really effectively have these conversations?

George Kinder: I think it's incredibly helpful too. Maddy, We've all known people who've been really active in politics and are just beaten down by it and are just fighting for something. And we can feel that energy and it doesn't feel uplifting to us. And we also know people who lift us up. And really that's what these two domains, first domains of freedom do, is if we experience them. They lift us up. They give us joy. They, as I said earlier, they give us access to these virtues. It's pretty incredible. And then even in civilization, there's this whole field that, I'm sure you've interviewed people talking about it, that Steven Pinker is the big thinker of that where we talk about all the cool things that civilization has done.

His ideas, we've gotten better and better, and we have in some ways. So there's a value in celebrating all of that. And then we have to look at how do we finish this work? There's no there is no excuse for there still being corruption in the world. There is no excuse for a corporation putting their own version of truth ahead of the truth or putting their own self concerns ahead of the planet or ahead of democracy There's no excuse for that and the civilization is us and it's meant for us. It's not meant for big institutions. So, how do we take it back and still valuing the institutions because they're one of the great inventions that human beings have made. Incredible.

Maddy Roche: One of the more profound experiences I've had with meditation is how much it connects me to my civilization, that there is this deep connection to the other's suffering, the other's experience, the other's inability to quiet and to find peace, and to also accept that part of life is suffering and that there's, a practice of becoming comfortable with that. And, that being able to also share that love and grace with other people as you sit in this practice. And I've often thought almost on a daily basis, it really is the only way we can heal as a civilization is if we could all adopt a practice that brings us internal enough to be able to look externally with love, versus kind of the armor and the swords that all of us carry so often and society has given us.

George Kinder: It's hugely important and and there have been for years in a way there's been this split between people who veer toward internal growth and internal practice and people that veer toward let's fix civilization in its structures. And I think one of the things I'm excited about in the last two books I've written, The Golden Civilization, now The Three Domains of Freedom, is that I think they need to be brought together.

And, if we don't think about the structures, there's the old saying, I grew up in rural Ohio and we had apple trees and there was the saying, one bad apple spoils the lot. And that can be true. Even if we have people who are wonderful practitioners of meditation and you can go back to spiritual societies, look at history, you can go back to really spiritual societies and discover that in fact, they fell apart.

Around self interest around war and different kinds of things got in the way. So I think doing both is really helpful. And the fact that we have become suddenly a global species where we are able to be self aware, not only of ourselves, but of the whole species in confluence with this incredible environment of freedom that the earth has given us.

 It's time for us to make something really special happen.

Maddy Roche: Lora, almost every year XYPN Live has been around, we've incorporated some of the Kinder Institute into it, at least for the past five years or so. George, you were a keynote, I think two years ago, but we've always had PreCons that have given advisors opportunities to engage in your training. So this year we have the seven stages of money maturity coming to Minneapolis, would you mind kind of painting the picture of what advisors can expect in that program and, how to make the decision whether it's right for them?

Lora Woodward: Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. So, yeah we're very pleased always to partner with XYPN. And so the Seven Stages of Money Maturity is going to be led by Mary Zimmerman and Scott Frank. Scott Frank has been a long time XYPN member, probably one of the early members. Mary Zimmerman, joined George very early in the life planning genesis and has been a long time advisor.

And so you have two great trainers and the seven stages of money maturity really focuses on helping advisors understand the biases and the issues that come up in the client's experience and that all humans experience in their relationship with money and they're often formed in childhood.

And, these different, factors that affect our relationship with money, impact all of our decisions into adulthood. And so by understanding what's happening in childhood and in going through our early messages around money, whether they be good or negative, and then understanding kind of this journey into maturity.

And we use, storytelling and listening exercises and interactive exercises for the advisor to really understand themselves and then understand ways to help their client move into, the life that they desire and just, unfolding that picture more. What advisors can gain from this is a better listening ability for their relationship with their clients. They're going to leave with the different inspirational exercises we use at Kinder Institute to use with their clients. They're also going to understand themselves better. They're going to understand their relationship with money in a more profound way. And that's going to make them better advisors. George, is there anything you want to add to that?

George Kinder: The only thing I would say is it's stunning when you get a call from someone after, right after often it's after the first day and they say, I was just talking to my partner, my spouse, and she couldn't believe that I was actually listening to her. She said something's changed in you. So it's, it starts right away and it's beautiful.

It's relational. It's great. 

Maddy Roche: Oh, that is awesome. And Lora, I so appreciate the focus on the advisor through your programming. As a business coach to advisors, it is fascinating. I don't think I have a single client that works with an advisor themselves. And I am always so amazed and I encourage it so much and to really particularly work with a Registered Life Planner because they have to know why they're building this business.

And it is so hard to help them game plan and strategize and talk about their profit margin without knowing what we're working towards. It's the same thing advisors are up against with their clients. And so I'm always just amazed with that, the lack of attention they put on themselves around their own money scripts, their own values, their own biases, their own conflicts that may be getting in the way of their peer alignment.

I have a lot of advisors over these 10 years at XYPN who build very successful businesses to find out they're burnt out and they hate it. And that's not what we're in this business to do. So how do we get the attention back on the advisor to empower them to put the light on themselves to be able to better define their future.

And it sounds like these programs is their opportunity to do so.

Lora Woodward: Yeah, that's so well put. One of the things we find, there is so much burnout in this industry. And when you go through our life planning training programs, we find that, one, we're bringing more meaning to your personal life. And more clarity around why you're being intentional about and how to be intentional about building your business and building the relationships you want to have in life, going to the places that you want to visit. But you understand who you are as a result of going through our programs with so much more clarity that alone is worth the investment. And then on top of that, you are learning how to deliver this to your clients. You become their guide. And that is just such an incredible role because you're shifting from problem solver to a trusted guide. And you allow your client to be the expert in the conversations. And that's what they need to be. and so you have your financial expertise and that is so important and that will come, that follows the life planning process, but you really need to know who your client is. And our process helps to deliver that.

Maddy Roche: And what a beautiful way to differentiate yourself as someone who can lead by example. I'm so deeply attracted to people who I can sense are in alignment with themselves and who have been honest and clear about their own goals and have shifted their lives bravely into a new realm. To achieve it that when you look at websites and you meet with different advisors, you can be very attractive to consumers if you really are living that life yourself.

So, just couldn't encourage it more. George, as we approach the end of this conversation, any words of wisdom, and you're filled with them, so that's a big, broad question for you. For our listeners who, maybe feel a little stuck in their lives and maybe are looking for more alignment, any words of advice around how they can engage you and your programs and the experiences you've had?

George Kinder: Yeah. What I know is that freedom is accessible and it's, right here, it's here in every moment. It's here in how we passionately want to design our life. And getting support to design that life so that it actually happens. That'd be the number one thing at the end of the book, even though Your Life is Yours is the middle domain.

I say the most important thing is get life plans, so you really live your life. But then this third element, it's not insignificant. If we are constantly working under the onus that the cloud, the dark cloud of these big industry forces that are not fiduciary toward the planet, toward the truth, toward democracy, or toward their own clients.

 We feel like little children again, back to Lora's, talking about the Seven Stages, it feels codependent and it feels unhealthy. So I think another thing is to stand tall is to gather this strength from being life planned, from adopting a mindfulness practice and from delivering life planning, if you can to your clients, gather this strength and then speak truth to power and connect together with this incredible community.

Bring the community together around this issue of fiduciary that we have a place. To raise an incredible banner, a flag of great truth to all of civilization because of what we're doing. We can sometimes get ashamed that we're working on money and just big money for big people and all that. No, we're fiduciaries.

And that is an incredible thing and it belongs everywhere. And if we take that and pride in that and move forward with it, gather together around it and take it to our institutions, the world's going to change almost overnight. Certainly our children are going to feel that change.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful. Lora, I've been dying to ask you, we've been on this call for almost an hour and your clock behind you has not changed. Is that significant?

Lora Woodward: I really should have it set to 11:11 because that's my favorite time, but it's significant only in that. I've done trainings in this room and when I have it on it ticks and so that's come up and the training is like there's this noise every time you speak and so I've said it at noon just to avoid that but I appreciate you bringing it up

Maddy Roche: I really found it to be meaningful of this, like remaining present and that like time is not real. And I thought there was this whole thing 

Lora Woodward: maybe I'll dig into that more, I think, but actually the clock is meaningful only because it's from my grandparents and they, got it in Scotland and so it's an heirloom for me to have and so it's really lovely to have it in my room and able to see it in the video calls.

Maddy Roche: Beautiful, beautiful. And folks who are not on a video with us, George is also in this big, bright yellow room, which must have significance. Cause I know the power of yellow are you, bringing in that color energy, George, with your walls?

George Kinder: Well, I like the yellow. I like the energy of it. And, when I designed the house, when we bought the house, I suddenly colored all the rooms. They were all just, your normal beigey white. So the dining room is a reddish color.

It's a little muted, but it's reddish. So it's like energized for conversation. And the living room is more blue to cool you down and feel more serenity. And I just wanted a little spark of energy here and the yellow brings it. So there you go. In the room in back here that, Lora has spent time in.

It's a purely neutral white. To allow room for the emotions to go either direction. So anyway, it was fun to do.

Maddy Roche: Love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Okay, folks, you can find more information at kinderinstitute.com Lora and George have always been wonderful people to work with a great team and they've each had a really impressive impact on this industry. So I can't thank you both enough for being with me for an hour and for treating our listeners to a really unique and empowering conversation.

I will. hopefully be chatting with you both soon. But for now, thank you very much.

Lora Woodward: Thanks Maddy.