I just read an interesting post at FrugalDad.com, regarding how people allow fear to guide their financial decisions. It didn’t take me long to see the connection not just with finances, but with every area of life.
Why do people allow fear to guide their lives?
1. They feel powerless. They feel that many decisions have already been made for them re: where they’re going to work, there they will live, how much money they’ll earn, etc. “This is how it’s always been…and this is how it’s always going to be…” Fear of failure keeps them from taking a step forward.
2. They feel like they’re not worthy of success. No matter how much they try to change, they believe it won’t make a difference. Success if for others, not for them.
3. The cost of change seems higher than the cost of staying the same. People often deceive themselves into thinking that it costs less (in terms of time, money, emotional energy, relationships, etc) to stay in the situation they don’t want, rather than take a risk and make some change. But if they really calculated the cost in terms of just emotional energy alone, they’d discover that taking bold action and making purposeful change will build up, not drain, their emotional bank account.
4. There will never be a good time to… No matter what kind of change they want to make in their lives, there is never a “right” time to do it, because of their health, the economy, the kids, their spouse, their job, their parent, their finances. The list goes on.
How can we stop allowing fear to guide our lives?
We’ll cover that in the next post.
You might also like:
[…] Stop Allowing Fear To Guide Your Life Pt. 1. […]