"Investment" Advice

I am writing this on my laptop in a local Starbucks hangout. At the table to my right a high school girl is listening to music on headphones with her cell phone on the table in front of her (waiting for a text message?). Further to my right two young women with textbooks are quizzing one another on anatomy, obviously for an upcoming exam. To my left a Latino couple is talking animatedly (in Spanish) about life. And in front of me, sitting by the fireplace in an easy chair, a gray haired man is absorbed in writing something, perhaps a letter.

What do we all have in common? Coffee? Actually, that is what brought me here. My home espresso machine broke down, and for me that is a disaster of major proportions. You are talking to someone here who roasts his own coffee beans. But I was thinking of the fact that we are all busy investing. Investing our time and energy and mental resources. And what we invest in is a major clue as to what is important to us. (Yes, you would have to conclude that very high on my list you would find “coffee.”) For reasons which perhaps even we ourselves don’t fully understand, we are busy investing in studying, letter writing, conversations with significant others, and dreaming dreams.

One of the concepts that I frequently deal with in my counseling office is that our lives are characterized by getting a return on our investment. This is what so often goes wrong in relationships. Early in a relationship, people are investing in one another—time, attention, energy, cooperation. But then the relationship is taken more for granted, our expectations increase, and our investment drops off. More and more withdrawals are made from the relational “capital.” If there has been a meaningful investment for a significant period of time before this happens, then some ups and downs in the relational bank account can be weathered without undue stress. But eventually, as we continue to draw the capital down, we will one day find ourselves overdrawn. That is the point when some people turn up in my office. Others come earlier, seeking “investment advice” before things get that far.

There are other things besides relationships to invest in, of course: financial and material things, artistic expression, spiritual growth. What I am suggesting is that we need to be intentional about our investments. One way to do this is to imagine ourselves at some point in the future—say, ten years from now—looking at our investment “statement” for the previous ten years. What do we want it to say? Remember: no investment, no return.

In fact, just as in financial matters, we will be either receiving interest or paying interest. If there is significant “capital” in a relationship, for example, people tend to assume the best, interpret words and actions in a positive light, and give the benefit of the doubt. This “interest” makes it much easier to continue to build the account. When we are “in debt,” however, we are paying interest; that is, trust is lacking, interactions tend to be interpreted in a negative light and it becomes much harder to build relational capital. This is much like the struggle of getting out of debt. Some people “declare bankruptcy” in the form of divorce or relational failure. But, just as in the financial metaphor, there are significant consequences to taking this step.

On the positive side, we all have “equal opportunity” when it comes to the most important investment capital. If money were the most important investment, someone like Bill Gates or Howard Schultz (founder of the Starbucks phenomenon, in whose territory I am writing these words) would have a huge advantage over the likes of me. But we have all been given 24 hours each day. In my counseling office, the thing I hear most often that people are craving or missing from one another is time. Very few people tell me that they wish their parents had given them more material things when they were growing up—but they do wish their parents or other key people had spent more quality time with them.

More...

The Three P's of Successful Investing
Making the most of those investments that matter the most

How NOT to Spend Quality Time Together
Learn from John's mistakes: an article with some suggestions for quality time and communication.

What it really means to invest our time is that we are investing ourselves. Each unit of our life—a minute, a year—is being invested in something, whether or not we stop to think about it. It seems best, therefore, that we choose to think about it. When we look at a calendar, we can think of it as a sort of investment statement ready to record the deposits that we are going to be making. And, no matter what we are investing in, the Biblical truth applies that was first stated two-thousand years ago: “where your treasure (investment) is, there will your heart be also.” If we believe certain things are truly important, and we want those things to matter in our hearts and feelings, we need to participate in the process by making a regular investment of ourselves.

For some further thoughts on how to do this, check out the “Three P’s” of maximizing our investments. Also, my article on quality time may give you a laugh (at my expense) and additional ideas.