Recently, a colleague in Italy raised an important concern: many advisers are well-trained in offering financial solutions, yet not sufficiently equipped to help clients truly discover their goals and purpose. Without clarity at this stage, even the most technically sound financial plan risks being “a good solution to the wrong problem.”
This challenge is not new. George Kinder has made a profound contribution to our field by emphasising deep listening and by offering the now-famous “three questions” that invite clients to explore what matters most in life. His training remains a powerful and practical experience that has inspired thousands of professionals worldwide to take life planning seriously.
Yet it’s worth noting that the roots of these questions reach back further than any single practitioner. Versions of them can be found in earlier professional circles such as the Millionaire’s Round Table, and if we look further still, we find that the essence of life planning is timeless. From Eastern traditions to the European Renaissance—through thinkers like Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola—humanity has long sought to integrate financial stewardship with purpose, values, and the soul’s journey.
Modern visionaries such as Stephen R. Covey, Richard Barrett, and Ken Wilber each developed their own comprehensive frameworks, drawing from this deep well of wisdom. In the same spirit, the Academy of Life Planning has created the GAME Plan™, a holistic model designed to fill the gaps where many current approaches stop short.
What makes the GAME Plan different?
Unlike processes that focus only on questions or financial capital, the GAME Plan offers a whole-person, whole-cycle framework, integrating ten crucial features:
- Personal Values Assessment – clarity on who you are
- Talents & Human Capital Audit – clarity on why you are here
- Whole Person Paradigm – integration of mind, body, heart, and spirit
- Psychology of Human Development – seven levels from cradle to grave
- Mindset & Affirmations – shifting from fear to possibility
- Life Scripts & Stories – reprogramming the subconscious
- Cash Flow Planning – aligning daily finances with long-term goals
- Human Capital Development Strategies – building resilience and opportunity
- Comprehensive Wealth Equation – combining life, financial, and human capital planning
- Cyclical Planning – following the ancient natural rhythm from creation to manifestation
Accessible, Open, and Affordable
Where some programmes are restricted by intellectual property rules or high subscription fees, the GAME Plan is deliberately open source, affordable, and accessible. With around 100 hours of video training, monthly live discussions, and global community support, it is designed not only for individual practitioners but also for cohorts and communities seeking empowerment at scale.
Towards a Shared Legacy
Rather than attributing ownership of life planning to any one person, we see ourselves as custodians of an ancient, universal tradition—a tradition that honours both secular and spiritual dimensions of life. The GAME Plan simply carries that torch forward, integrating the wisdom of the past with the tools of today, so that life planning can be genuinely comprehensive, inclusive, and sustainable.
As life planners, we all share a responsibility: to ensure that planning is not just a fashionable word, but a lived reality that empowers clients to align their money with their meaning, their work with their values, and their future with their true purpose.
What Is The GAME Plan?
For further details, join our tribe for free at the Academy of Life Planning.
Academy of Life Planning 
Here’s the link between Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) and Life Goal Planning / Life Planning:
1. Human Potential as a Core Idea
In his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), Pico argued that unlike other creatures, humans have no fixed place in the universe. Instead, we are free to shape our own destiny. God, he said, placed man “in the middle of the world” with the ability to choose whether to descend to the level of beasts or rise to the divine.
👉 This is the philosophical root of goal-directed living: humans can decide what to become.
2. Self-Determination and Free Will
Pico highlighted human freedom and self-determination as our greatest gifts. That’s essentially the foundation of life planning—setting intentional goals and aligning actions with chosen values, rather than being bound by circumstance.
3. Integration of Knowledge & Wholeness
He tried to synthesise philosophy, theology, science, and mysticism into a unified worldview. Similarly, holistic life planning draws from multiple aspects of human existence (financial, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) to create a balanced path.
4. The “Ancestors of Life Planning”
When people today claim to have “invented” life planning, Pico shows us that the idea is centuries old. He gave us a vision of humans as active architects of their own lives—exactly the essence of life goal planning.
💡 In short: Pico’s philosophy is one of the earliest, clearest statements that we are not prisoners of fate. We have the power—and the responsibility—to set goals for our lives and to pursue growth in line with our higher nature.