Healing Personal
Financial Anxiety:
WITSEC, Personal
Financial Life Planning & Ethical Wills – Part I
The
origin of the ethical will is said to be
verbal from a dying Jacob gathering his
sons to give them blessings with the
request they bury him in Canaan (to be Israel – Jacob/Yaakov’s other name
sake!) not in Egypt (Mitzrareim – restriction, limitation.) “”Genesis 49:1-33.
Another ethical will example is when Moses instructs the Israelites to be a
holy people and teach their children (Deuteronomy 32:46-47)
Annually
on my birthday, I revisit my Ethical Will.
Today,
the writing of an Ethical Will (Zevaoth in Hebrew) once a Judaic tradition is
an anachronism except for a few revival attempts just like the practice of
writing one’s mission/purpose statement on Yom Kippur (the Judaic day of
atonement/at-one-ment. Ironically while the ethical will is to be read upon
one’s proceeding underlining one’s legacy, and the Yom Kippur mission statement
is to remind one’s his purpose today, both practices refocus on the question of
‘why am I?
Exercise #1 WITSEC
A
valuable exercise to start one’s mission/ethical will is hypothetically
considering one had to enter the WITSEC program (Witness Protection
administered by the Department of Justice featured in TV Show In Plain Sight).
Per the witness
protection program protocol, tomorrow you will lose your present identity, be
relocated, and not allowed to contact anyone past or present who knows you. The
challenge given this clean slate – how
will you reinvent yourself – in particular in vocation, and mission in life
now – and 20 years from now looking back?
Clean slate – no
baggage – what will you be when you grow up this time, what is your ‘why am I?’
It’s only your
life – In
Plain INsight
Exercise 2: Mission/
Vision
Recycle
this exercise twice: first, relative to mission – what can be; secondly,
relative to vision should be and then see if you can reconcile mission and
vision.
Note:
You must define ‘the is not’ as well as ‘the is’ otherwise all you get is
‘snot’ (vague motherhood Obamaesque slogans – all hat no cattle - like ‘hope
and change’ type statements that result in ‘self hoax and chump change.’)
What (and what not – you can’t do the
same vocation)
Why (and the whys you won’t pursue)
How (and how’s that are not acceptable)
Where (and where not).
It’s only your
life – In Plain INsight.
Exercise 3: Yom Kippur Assignment
(You Die / Proceed Today)
(name), age ,died yesterday from.
He is survived by
He was a member of
He will be remembered for:
He will be mourned by
The world will suffer the loss of
his contributions in
He always wanted but got:
The body will be .
In The Future (10 or 20 or 30 years hence)
(name), age ,died yesterday from
He is survived by
He was a member of
He will be remembered for:
He will be mourned by
The world will suffer the loss of
his contributions in
He always wanted but got:
The body will be .
The
above become the foundation for an ethical an outline of which will be
illustrated in the next blog…
