Twin virtues of humility and gratitude in moving hearts towards impact

Values are often the key to inspiring moral ambition in a family’s journey towards impact. Our recent publication. The latest instalment of Centre for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth publication - Insights from the Journeys of Eight Asian Families: Ten Key Actions for Investing for Impact, co-written with The ImPact highlights how these families align values, navigate family dynamics, and develop intentional investment approaches across their businesses, family offices, and philanthropy to integrate financial goals with social and environmental outcomes.

Beyond understanding the how and what of investing for impact, the deployment of capital across the spectrum, using various family entities of business, investments, family office, and foundations, investing for impact is a deeply human activity - driven by values, asking tough questions and navigating family dynamics.

Two key twin virtues of humility and gratitude stand out in cultivating the desire in wealth holders, families, and investors to deploy their capital towards good and impact. Families talk about this as love in action, redefining love, and a constant joy within oneself, into serving the greater humanity.

Humility goes beyond a mindset. It is a virtue, and the mother of all virtues. Contrary to belief that being humble requires one to hold back, or even “discredit” oneself and not hog limelight, true humility is about showing up at your best, with what you have been given in talents, time, capital and using them to serve others for human flourishing and impact. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “Humility is truth.”

Humility and gratitude are often paired as twin virtues. Walking alongside each other: being grateful lifts praise and thanksgiving and inspires one to do good; whilst being humble grounds us to see the beauty, goodness, and truth around us in nature, our communities, and needs in the world. Together, this pair of dynamics open the hearts of families to give, to do more, to do better. And this pair of values and virtues cultivates the desires for impact and help shape intentions for deploying capital towards impact.

Values anchor a family’s purpose and goals across generations, giving meaning to wealth and guiding impact. What does this mean for designing a human impact architecture for wealthy families to build a better future and impact legacy, in how they design their business, investments, philanthropy, governance structures and process around human values and impact? What if we zoomed out beyond the 17 UN SDGs, to imagine a new UNSDG “18” or “0” - that would place human values, virtues, and inner transformation at the foundation; activating the rest of the goals through character, discernment, and a deep desire to live for others? True impact begins within, begins at home.

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Learn more about CSP Wealth holders' programs at: https://www.cspglobal.org/training/programs-wealth-holders