Willing Wisdom
The key to living a purposeful life? Start with the end in mind.
Willing Wisdom is an entertaining and informative book that reminds you that your legacy isn’t something but rather someone who will take your wisdom far into the future for the benefit of humanity. That someone can be a family member, a friend or a charity.
How will you divide your estate and with whom will you share your wisdom?
Willing Wisdom helps you decide.
Great families and communities are built one conversation at a time.
Great families and communities pass on wisdom long before they pass on money and possessions.
Start the conversation that will pass your wisdom to those who matter most by using Willing Wisdom’s 7 Questions.
Writing a will in secret and revealing giving decisions at death is a lost opportunity for both the donor and beneficiaries.
Willing Wisdom introduces the concept of a collaborative Will that makes giving the deeply satisfying celebration it ought to be.
Inherited money can release potential or destroy it…
How much is too much money to leave to one person or organization?
The answer emerges by asking 7 Inspiring Questions. The conversations that follow will both broaden and deepen relationships and bring clarity to your decisions.
The average person works 78,000 hours over the course of their life. Willing Wisdom requires readers to spend just 2 hours to determine if their accumulated wealth will one day advance a beneficiary’s potential or accelerate their decline.
A collaborative approach to the most important document you will ever write: Your Will
More than 125 million US and Canadian citizens over the age of 18 have no Will.
This is a tragedy in the making that will transcend money and is guaranteed to affect relationships profoundly and irreversibly. The time for a new relationship-based approach to estate planning is upon us.
Willing Wisdom seeks to change the perception of what a Will is and what it can be. It aims to ignite the passion in the hearts and minds of everyday people – people rich and poor – to use their Will to invest in what ought to matter most – relationships. This can happen only through trust and collaboration, as well as trust in collaboration. By engaging in conversation with intended beneficiaries about death, the potential for living life more fully and purposefully is vastly improved.
This simple idea of making one of the most secretive documents in one’s life into a collective work of art will be challenging for many. This book will convince you that it’s a risk worth taking.
Money and control, which often bring comfort in the temporal world, can be lethal and toxic for a generation heading for the exit. As they approach that day, control over money – and health-care decisions – must often be relinquished. That more than half the population will die without a Will, die without any conversation with their family and friends about their end, is symptomatic of a culture entranced and immobilized by the fear of death.
An invitation like no other
This book invites you to invite your family, friends and community to receive your wisdom today, even though your last breath may be many, many years away. Extending that invitation will take both wisdom and courage and you will likely be the first in your lineage to do such a thing.
There can be no better way for us to unlearn our fear of death and dying than to do so in concert with those we love. It’s a gift we owe our family, our friends and ourselves. Knowing that we will live on, and that our work will continue, in the hearts of those we love and in our community – our wisdom served faithfully – is an extraordinary lead-up to death.
Willing Wisdom is as much about protecting and passing on possessions intelligently as it is about passing something more valuable to your beneficiaries – ideals and values. When you artfully build a life for others, it is you who harvests the dividend now and when you are dying. The relationships you leave behind are what shape humanity for all time.
Order Your Copy of Willing Wisdom today
What this book is not
This is not a technical book about the details of writing a Will. Wherever you read the word Will in the context of a legal document making provision for the distribution of your assets on death, you can substitute the word with Trust. The word Will is used to mean merely one legal arrangement for the distribution of assets at death. Similarly, Will is used in its broadest context to include Guardianship, Financial Power of Attorney, Power of Attorney for Personal Care, Advanced Healthcare Directives and Living Wills. Where it is important to specifically name one of these items to inform the reader more exactingly, an exception is made.
The laws governing Wills and estates vary greatly by jurisdiction and evolve constantly, so Willing Wisdom does not deal with specifics. It is written to be as relevant to readers in fifty years as it is today and as relevant in New York as it is in São Paolo, Sydney, London, Toronto or Beijing.
In the end, death is what we make it – so make it familiar by discussing it with the people who matter most in your life.
Also from Best-Selling Author Tom Deans
Every Family’s Business
If you’re a business owner, you know that leaving an operating business to family can present unique challenges.
Before you sign your will you must read Every Family’s Business. It’s the best-selling family business book of all-time.
This phenomenally successful book offers readers 12 common sense questions to protect their wealth.