{"id":235841,"date":"2018-04-17T05:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=235841"},"modified":"2024-03-05T21:42:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T04:42:06","slug":"building-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/building-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"How to build confidence and destroy fear"},"content":{"rendered":"
My mission at Get Rich Slowly is to help readers achieve personal and financial freedom. I want to help you master your money and<\/em> your life.<\/strong><\/p>\n Generally speaking, we focus almost exclusively on the financial side of the things. This week, I’m going to shift gears and share some of the things I’ve learned about overcoming fear, finding happiness, and achieving personal freedom. (Don’t worry. We’ll get back to the hard-core financial talk very soon.)<\/p>\n In December’s discussion of wealth habits<\/a>, I talked about what T. Harv Eker calls “financial blueprints”. Actually, I talk about them all of the time. Understanding your money blueprint<\/a> is a vital part of changing your relationship with money.<\/p>\n Our blueprints are created through lifelong exposure to money messages received from people around us, especially our family and friends, and from our country\u2019s culture and mass media. Eker says the unfortunate truth is that most of us have faulty blueprints that prevent us from building wealth.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the subconscious mind must choose between deeply rooted emotions and logic, emotions will almost always win,\u201d writes Eker.<\/p>\n He says that most of us are motivated by fear, especially when it comes to money. We don\u2019t call it fear, though. We say we\u2019re motivated by security. Eker notes \u2014 correctly \u2014 that fear and security are essentially two sides of the same coin. The tough truth is that money doesn\u2019t dissolve fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Eker writes:<\/p>\n Fear is not just a problem, it\u2019s a habit. Therefore, making more money will only change the kind of fear we have. When we were broke, we were most likely afraid we\u2019d never make it or never have enough. Once we make it, however, our fear usually changes to “What if I lose what I\u2019ve made?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like Eker, I’ve found that fear motivates a lot<\/em> of people. Instead of making decisions based on goals and desired outcomes, most folks make fear-based decisions. As a result, they get less out of life than they’d hoped, less out of life then they might if they knew how to overcome their fears. (For more about this, see last week’s article about scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset<\/a>.)<\/p>\n I’m not judging. I’ve been there. For years, I let fear rule my life. But over the past decade, I’ve learned how to quell many of my fears. Better still, I’ve learned how to act in spite of my fear. As a result, my life (financial and otherwise) has drastically improved.<\/p>\n Today, I want to teach you<\/em> how to destroy fear and build confidence. To begin, let’s talk about death.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong><\/em> Long-time readers have seen some of this material in other forms. This is my attempt to gather all<\/em> of it into one place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Australian singer-songwriter Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years, spending time with men and women near death. As she worked with her patients, she listened to them describe their fear, anger, and remorse. She noticed recurring themes.<\/p>\n In 2009, Ware wrote about her experience in a blog post that went viral<\/a>. She turned that article into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying<\/em><\/a>. When people die, she says, they often express one or more of the following sentiments:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These regrets share a common theme. In each case, the dying lament having spent too much time seeking outside approval instead of focusing on their own feelings, values, and relationships. This is true regardless of wealth and social status.<\/p>\n Ware isn’t a nurse and she\u2019s not a scientist \u2013 her observations are based on experience, not empirical data \u2013 but from my reading over the past decade, her conclusions match the research into happiness and human development.<\/p>\n Money can\u2019t buy happiness \u2013 at least not directly. Money is a powerful tool, it\u2019s true. Abused, it brings sorrow and suffering. Used wisely, it opens doors, delivers dreams, and fosters joy. Although wealth is no guarantee of well-being, the more money you have, the easier it is to flourish.<\/p>\n But here’s the truth: You don\u2019t want to be rich \u2013 you want to be happy.<\/strong><\/p>\n On your deathbed, you want to have lived a life without regret. To do that, you need to face and defeat your fears. You need to find joy in day-to-day activities, and use that happiness as a platform to procure passion and purpose. You need to forge freedom, both personal and financial.<\/p>\n Our lives are filled with fear.<\/p>\n Some of our fears are physical. We\u2019re afraid of spiders, snakes, and dogs. We\u2019re afraid of heights, crowds, and enclosed spaces. We\u2019re scared to jump out of airplanes (or even to fly in them), to go swimming, or to touch a drop of blood. We\u2019re afraid we might be mugged.<\/p>\n Some of our fears are psychological. We\u2019re afraid of failure, darkness, and being alone. We\u2019re afraid of the future. We\u2019re afraid of death. We\u2019re frightened of being judged by others, and scared to ask someone for a date.<\/p>\n Some fears are rational. I, for instance, am scared of bears. This is a healthy, rational fear. Bears will eat you. When you ignore your fear of bears, you can up like Timothy Treadwell, the man profiled in the film Grizzly Man<\/em><\/a>. (Sorry if that\u2019s a spoiler for anyone.)<\/p>\n If you\u2019re walking alone at night and a thug demands your money while holding a gun to your head, you\u2019ll feel afraid and rightly so. This is a natural, rational fear.<\/p>\n These healthy fears have a biological basis, and are the product of millions of years of evolution. A fear of snakes (or bears) has helped the human race to survive. A fear of heights keeps you from spending too much time in places where you might fall to your death.<\/p>\n But sometimes rational fears can become irrational or excessive. It\u2019s one thing to be nervous while walking on the edge of a crumbling cliff high above a river; it\u2019s another to suffer a panic attack on the seventeenth floor of a well-constructed, glass-enclosed office building. (Or to worry about a bear attack in Paris!)<\/p>\n Still other fears are mostly (or completely) irrational, yet they\u2019re very common. An estimated 75% of all people experience some degree of anxiety when speaking in public. I\u2019m one of them. I\u2019m aware of no biological basis to be afraid of giving a speech in front of 500 strangers, yet doing so makes most of us sweat and stammer.<\/p>\n Healthy, rational fears keep you alert and alive. Irrational fears and anxieties prevent you from enjoying everything life has to offer.<\/p>\n If our lives are filled with fear, that may be due in part to the prevalence of internet, television, and radio. Our fears are fueled by the modern mass media, which makes money highlighting extreme and unusual events.<\/p>\n Here, for instance, is the front page from the 18 January 2014 on-line edition of USA Today<\/em>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Human trafficking! Attacks on Americans! Identity thieves! Remains of dead boy! Elsewhere on the front page, there are stories about extreme weather, a new truck that burst into flames, the background of a high-school gunman, a gay teacher forced to resign, and so on. And this is a normal, uneventful day.<\/p>\n If you pay attention to the news, you might think terrorist attacks are common, bicycles unsafe, and that it’s dangerous to let children play unattended in the yard. Yet statistically, terrorist attacks are exceedingly rare<\/a>, riding a bike increases<\/em> your life expectancy<\/a>, and your children are safer outdoors<\/a> than you<\/em> were when you roamed the streets twenty or thirty years ago.<\/p>\n The events in the news are newsworthy only because they’re the exception<\/em>, not the rule<\/a>. They’re statistical outliers. Yet because we’re fed these stories daily, we think these things happen all of the time. As a result, we’re afraid to live normal lives.<\/p>\n I have a friend who’s reluctant to leave her home. Because she’s been assaulted in the past \u2014 an unfortunate event, but a statistically unlikely one \u2014 she lives in fear of being assaulted in the future. It’s true that by appearing in public, my friend runs the risk of being assaulted again. It’s far more likely, however, that doing things outside the house would bring her pleasure and fulfillment.<\/p>\n To some degree, each of us is like my friend \u2014 but not as extreme. We are all<\/em> filled with fears, and these fears hold us back.<\/p>\n To live a richer, more fulfilling life \u2014 a life without regret \u2014 you must first overcome your fears. You can start by exposing yourself to new experiences, by interacting with your environment and allowing it to change you.<\/p>\n It all begins with the power of “yes”.<\/p>\n <\/a>For a long time, I was afraid to try new things, to meet new people, to do anything that might lead to failure. These fears confined me to a narrow comfort zone. I spent most of my time at home, reading books or playing videogames. When opportunities came to try new things, I usually ignored them. I made excuses. I wasn\u2019t happy, but I was complacent. I was safe.<\/p>\n Then I read a book called Impro<\/em><\/a> by Keith Johnstone. It changed my life. (Fun trivia: Here’s where I learned about the book.<\/a>)<\/p>\n Impro<\/em> is a book about stage-acting, about improvisational theater, the kind of stuff you used to see on the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?<\/em> I\u2019m not an actor, nor do I want to become one, but several of the techniques described in the book were applicable to my everyday life.<\/p>\n<\/span>The Regrets of the Dying<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>The Source of Fear<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>If It Bleeds, It Leads<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>The Power of Yes<\/span><\/h2>\n