Third Law: How You Accumulate Wealth Shapes Your Family's Lineage

Forbes

02-05-2025

What is the heart of your family that must remain intact well into future generations?
Our greatest asset is not real estate, equities, or intellectual property. Our lowest thinking is used to make money on money, but our highest is engaged when money is used to enable that which cannot be bought or sold. This becomes your family's index of purpose.
To be primitive is to preserve the character or the spirit of an early stage in the evolutionary development of something. It means to preserve the heart even as the body grows. What is the heart of your family that must remain intact well into future generations? This type of safeguarding, this type of moral retention, requires more than intent. It requires a system.
Thinking creates systems, systems create behaviors, and behaviors create sustainability. The method and means by which wealth is accumulated will shape our family's lineage. It would be a mistake to think this only refers to excess capital. In fact, monetary wealth is the smallest part of our discussion here. This begs the question: What other type of wealth is there? I answer this and other related questions in my book, The Spirit of Wealth Preservation, but for our discussion here, let's briefly expand a systematic approach to maintaining the heart culture of our families.
As discussed in previous articles, a life worth living is one that continues after we die. I also discussed how a collective purpose allows our family members to align into a mission bigger than anyone's personal goals. While we pursue and promote individual talents, the greatest talent is the collective ability of the family to continue thriving throughout life's losses and gains. This is the thinking; now for the systems.
Great systems are simple, repetitive, and resistant to antagonistic human touch. When we institute methods to remind our family who we are and where we intend to go, there will invariably be those who disagree. Those who would prefer a different objective altogether. A great system has taken this negative catalyst into account and operates in excellence regardless. The mechanical systems of our automobiles do not take into account our emotions. Whether we are happy or sad, when we turn the key, the engine starts. There must be a touch of this mechanical practicality in our family systems.
Systems that include the ideas of those using them have the greatest probability of avoiding entropy or expiration. Our family meets regularly to repeat our mission and values, but more importantly, we take inventory of the personal mountain and valley experiences of our children. We ask them to be candid about where they are emotionally in life, whether good or bad. We want to know their thoughts so we can place the same back into the systems and increase its value and relevance with each meeting.
We call our annual meetings Reflect, Assess, Prepare (RAP). The hip-hop reference gives us about an hour's worth of 'street cred' with the young ones in the group. Some of the questions asked are:
These questions validate individual needs, in addition to reviewing the family's collective mission, strengthening the unity of the whole. What questions do you believe would cultivate cohesion among your family? Are you willing to create quarterly or annual meetings to begin solidifying your unit? If you haven't done any of this before, be encouraged to start today.