A solid foundation in communication skills is essential for financial planners. Additionally, some basic principles and tools from counseling and psychology can be useful in establishing meaningful and trusting relationships with clients. Several of these techniques have been integrated into financial planning. In Psychology of Financial Planning, we introduced counseling approaches such as solution‐focused, cognitive behavioral, positive psychology, and motivational interviewing. In this chapter, we offer some tools and techniques planners can use with clients that are drawn from solution‐focused therapy (SFT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and positive psychology.

Solution‐Focused Techniques in Financial Planning

One of the hallmark techniques in SFT is the miracle question. It is designed to help create an image of what someone would want their life to look like if a “miracle” occurred overnight and they woke up the next day with all of their problems solved and all of their goals met. After the client paints the picture of what their life would look like, the planner can ask follow‐up questions to help them understand the positive changes the miracle would make in the client's life.¹ What follows is an example of the miracle question with some possible follow‐up questions.

Exercise 29: The Miracle Question

As with all counseling techniques, it is helpful for a financial planner to go through the experience themselves before using it with a client. So take this opportunity to answer these questions yourself.

Tonight, while you're sleeping, a miracle happens and your biggest financial concerns are now solved. What would be the first signs you would notice in your life? What would other people notice? How would your thinking change? What would you be doing differently? How would it feel?

Follow‐up questions could include one or more of the following:^2,3

• “How would you know that the miracle occurred?”
• “What is the first thing you notice after the miracle occurs?”
• “How do you know that things are different?”
• “What would you be doing differently with your finances?”
• “How would you know things are improving?”
• “What would your family and friends notice about the differences in your life?”
• “How would your feelings be different around your financial life?”
• “What else would be different?”
• “How would those changes make a difference in your life?”
• “How might others act differently because of the changes?”

Cognitive Behavioral Techniques in Financial Planning

CBT assumes that our thoughts, feelings, physiology, and behavior are interconnected. It asserts that what happens to us shapes our thoughts, those thoughts affect our emotions, and those emotions drive our behaviors. The concept of money scripts, the Money Script Log (presented in chapter 4) and the cognitive reframing exercise New Money Mantra (presented in chapter 4) are all built on a CBT model. What follows is an additional CBT‐influenced model that can help inoculate a client against anxiety related to their worst financial fears.

Exercise 30: Stress Inoculation: The Worst‐Case Scenario

One of the tenets of CBT is that anxiety is made worse by avoidance and to reduce anxiety it can be helpful to expose oneself to the source of the anxiety. Rather than dismissing fears as being invalid it can be helpful to talk about the fear in detail. Crisis events and periods of unhappiness are a normal part of life. In fact, some experts suggest that the assumption that life should be free of challenges and that our normal or ideal state is one of “happiness” is a problem in and of itself. Happiness is overrated, and much of our suffering is related to our pursuit of happiness.⁴ Often this pursuit is based on reaching a happiness goal—moving to a new place, making enough money, finding the right partner, publishing a book, having children, and so forth. Since a problem‐free life of utopian happiness is unattainable, it is unreachable. So in the end we experience unhappiness when we reach our goals and unhappiness when we don't reach them. Recent research has shown that true happiness is only attained by accepting our unhappiness. It turns out that acceptance is a very important prerequisite for change.

Happiness is not a destination. It is not a goal. It is a state of mind, to which we all have immediate access. We can experience overwhelming joy when we bring our attention to the wonder of the moment. The key is to immerse ourselves in the experience of life—the wonderful taste of a cup of coffee in the morning, the incredible warmth of a hug from someone we love, focusing on feelings of gratitude for all we have in this moment, and so forth.

This exercise can be completed through a discussion with a client or as a journaling exercise.

1. What are your greatest financial fears?
2. Assuming that your greatest financial fears are realized, what is the worst thing you can picture happening?

   For example:

   • What would you lose?
   • How would it impact your living situation?
   • How would it impact the people you love most?
   • How would it impact your self‐concept?
   • How would it impact your emotions?
   • How would it impact your quality of life?
   • How would it impact your goals?
3. Follow the worst‐case scenario down as far as it can go. For example, if your fear is that you would lose your job, ask yourself: “Then what would happen?” At this stage DO NOT look for solutions; instead, dive deeper into the most likely worst‐case scenario. For example, if you lost your job, the question “Then what would happen?” could lead to a statement such as “I would lose my house.” Keep answering the question “Then what would happen?” and follow the most likely worst‐case scenario spiral all the way down.
4. Prepare to accept these most dire consequences as if you have no choice. Then answer the following questions:
   • What would you do?
   • Where would you live?
   • How would you get your needs met?
   • How could you handle it cognitively (e.g., what would you say to yourself?)
   • How could you handle it emotionally (e.g., how would you cope with or manage your feelings)?
5. Assuming the most likely worst‐case scenario above, identify 10 things for which you would still be entirely grateful for having in your life.
6. Now that you have accepted the most likely worst consequences, what could you do to improve on the worst of these outcomes?
   • What could you do to improve your situation?
   • Assuming you made progress on improving, where would you see yourself in 5 years? In 10 years?
   • What might you have learned from this experience? How might it have helped you?

Positive Psychology in Financial Planning

Positive psychology explores avenues to help people live fulfilling lives, and includes many areas of importance to financial planning, including: well‐being, happiness, goal setting, gratitude, altruism, pursuit of meaningfulness, social support, and relationship connection.⁵ Exercises from positive psychology have been proposed for use in a financial planning context by researchers, including the Gratitude Exercise (Exercise 35) and the Three Good Things Exercise (Exercise 36).⁶

Exercise 31: The Gratitude Exercise

Gratitude is a positive emotion that we feel when we consider the positive impact others have had on our lives. The Gratitude Exercise is a positive psychology technique that encourages clients to express gratitude to someone who has had a positive impact on lives in a meaningful way.⁷ This exercise can be used in several ways in a financial planning context:

• It can be presented as described below in a workshop or client seminar‐type setting.
• As described below with clients who are seeking a financial planning experience that incorporates such self‐discovery exercise.
• When working with multiple generations within a family or family business or non‐family business to strengthen family relationships.
• Adapted to be just conversational in nature, and seamlessly integrated into the standard data‐gathering/getting‐to‐know‐your‐client phase of the engagement (example below).

The gratitude exercise includes the following instructions for use in the first two case examples:

1. Reflect on a person who made a positive contribution to your life.
2. Write a thoughtful, clear, and brief letter to the person (approximately 300 words).
3. Describe their contribution, how it impacted you at the time, and what it means to you today.
4. Reach out to the person and arrange a call or visit.
5. During the meeting, read the letter and spend time talking about the event and your relationship to the person.

In multigenerational family, family business, and non‐family business contexts, the gratitude exercise could be adapted by changing the first step, Reflect on a person who made a positive contribution to your life, and by removing the fourth step and having the family members read their letters aloud to each other in the meeting. In the fourth use case example, one or more gratitude‐related questions can be incorporated into client questionnaires and/or interviews by simply asking: “With regard to your financial life, who has had the most positive impact on your development?”

Exercise 32: Three Good Things

In the Three Good Things Exercise, clients are asked to spend a week where each night, before they go to sleep, they write down three things that went well for them during the day while reflecting on why they went well.⁸ The Three Good Things Exercise instructions are as follows:

1. For the next week, at the end of each day, write down three things that went well and why they went well.
2. At the end of the week, look for patterns in your observations and how they relate to your values and/or goals.