Derek Hagen, CFA, CFP®, FBS®, CFT™

“It’s hard to see things when you are too close. Take a step back and look.”

-Bob Ross

The world can feel like a scary place, and that’s without the media’s if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality amplifying every crisis. Your clients see it all: stock market losses, looming divorce, job uncertainty, cuts to retirement income—you name it. Since money touches every area of life, it’s no surprise they come to you with money problems.

Combine that with our built-in negativity bias—a filter that often spots threats where there are none—and you have a recipe for anxious, fearful clients. When clients approach us in fear, having a game plan can help them (and us) navigate whatever’s troubling them.

The Divided Mind

In our Fundamentals of True Wealth Planning training, we often reference Jonathan Haidt’s analogy of the elephant and the rider, described in The Happiness Hypothesis. It’s a powerful way to understand the mind:

The elephant represents the subconscious—similar to Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 (the “fast” brain).
The rider represents the conscious mind—akin to System 2 (the “slow” brain).

drawing of elephant and rider, conscious and subconscious mind

The elephant drives most of our daily decisions automatically—spotting threats and acting quickly. The rider, meanwhile, is the part of our mind that plans and thinks about the future. The challenge? The elephant’s negativity bias can lead it to see problems everywhere—often blowing them out of proportion.

Adding to that, we have about 50,000 thoughts per day, and most people never fully articulate them. In a client conversation, here’s the communication process:

What the client means (unarticulated thoughts)
What the client says
What you hear
What you think the client means

If clients are stuck at step one—unable to voice their concerns—none of the rest matters.

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Helping Through Listening

Clients get bombarded daily by negative messages, which filter through the elephant’s fear-focused lens. No wonder it’s easy to assume the worst.

A great way to calm fears is to move the conversation from the elephant’s domain (emotional reaction) to the rider’s domain (rational thinking). Step one is helping clients articulate their concerns. This validates their feelings and clears the path for deeper understanding. Essentially, you’re guiding them through the first stages of the listening process, letting them externalize thoughts they haven’t fully formed yet.

drawing of helping clients artculate their point

You can then “reflect” what you heard in your own words. This reflection allows clients to hear and refine their thoughts—a critical power of good listening. It moves them from vague anxiety to clarity.

drawing of helping clients refine their point

Once they’ve fully expressed themselves, they’re more open to reason—engaging the rider’s perspective. At this stage, a helpful tool is the “If so—then what?” exercise, sometimes known as the Worst Case Scenario exercise. Invite clients to imagine the feared outcome, then ask: If this happens, then what? Repeating this question helps them see that even if the worst occurs, it’s often not as catastrophic as they imagined. And if it did happen, it’s a rebuilding point, not a dead end.

drawing of talking about worst case scenarios

Clients come to us with fears shaped by real-world challenges and intensified by their own negativity bias. By helping them articulate these worries—and guiding them from the elephant’s emotional realm to the rider’s logical domain—we can calm their fears and map out a path forward.

This approach isn’t just about resolving an immediate concern. It’s about building trust and helping clients experience their True Wealth—living in alignment with what really matters to them, free from debilitating fear.

Want to Learn More?

Money Quotient trains financial professionals in the True Wealth process and helps them implement the concepts into their practices. The first step is to learn about the Fundamentals of True Wealth Planning.