Courage: How it impacts your wealth dreams

You may be asking what courage has to do with your wealth and dreams…

It doesn’t take much in modern society to complain, be frustrated and despair at your current life and the state of the world. There are plenty of things happening to cause these reactions, I get it!

If you choose, you can blame, and even worse, accept the way things are… no courage required.

However, let’s have a look at the alternative.

The Importance of Courage

It takes courage to dream, courage to believe in those dreams and even more courage to act on your dreams to make them a reality.

Courage is about taking steps to act and exist outside your comfort zone.

Your current reality is your comfort zone. It doesn’t matter if it is good, bad or indifferent…

And if you don’t have something that you want, if it isn’t part of your current reality, then this just means it is outside your current comfort zone.

To get what you want you are going to need to engage your courage gene and step outside your comfort zone to get it.

For you that might seem scary… I totally get that concept of fear.

It took me a long time to be comfortable to share my thoughts and lessons regarding wealth and money.

When you first start out you are filled with fear that people won’t listen to you or that what you have to say won’t be valuable to them. But as I have progressed and understood that this work is not about me, this fear has dissolved.

I now know that sharing my knowledge with you is what I am supposed to do, and now it is completely fun to do, because I know I am helping you and others like you, and even better, your kids through you.

Courage is not an easy thing. We are constantly bombarded with messages of how to make life easy, because unfortunately that is what most people want, the easy way out…

How to get the most or as much as possible with the least amount of input and preferably with no pain.

So what can you do differently to overcome this ‘easy’ approach?

Courage can be Learned

Research shows that there is good news when it comes to courage…

We all have a section of our brain that triggers courage…

And even better, we can learn how to activate it.

When it comes to your money I have learned that courage is not just about facing fear, it’s also about coping with risk and uncertainty.

You and I know that the financial markets are full of risk and uncertainty, right?

I’m sure you have asked yourself the question, what if the markets collapse the day after I invest, or what if this doesn’t work?

What I have found over the years is that the more times I do things that take me out of my comfort zone the more comfortable I become being courageous.

The more people I speak to who are being courageous, doing amazing things to change their circumstances and those around them, the more I realise that courage can be learned and developed with practice.

It reminds me of one of my favourite sayings related to courage and action, it’s as simple as ‘correct and continue’.

To help you develop courage and break the shackles of fear, here are 7 things you can do to become stronger than you believed possible.

Use them straight away and enjoy the boost to your comfort zone.

1. Know Your Why

It is a natural human condition that we tend to have a lot of courage when it comes to helping others, or doing something for others.

If we have a cause that we are passionate about, like in my case raising money for cancer research, we tend to do whatever it takes to make it happen…

If we are passionate about something we have all the courage we need.

So when it comes to your financial dreams, to make the progress you desire, you have to identify your WHY…

WHY do you want these goals?

When you have a why that is big enough, and that is the kicker here, it needs to be a big why, you will be focussed to do what it takes to achieve your why.

A big why that you are passionate about will focus you on the scary things that need to be done to achieve your goals…

And most of these scary things will be outside your comfort zone, and that’s a good thing.

2. Be Vulnerable

I’m going to put it out there up front, this is the step that I had and have the most difficulty with.

The good news is that I’m not alone…

In the book “Daring Greatly” Brene Brown suggests that we hold a belief that we are unworthy which leads us to live fear-based lives.

We are afraid to show people who we really are, to expose ourselves, so we avoid the one thing that can give us more courage: vulnerability.

Brene suggests that we can overcome our fear by simply ‘daring greatly’. Get in the game and risk failure or loss…

And to get in the game of investing you need to understand what it is that you are using to stop playing.

Is it a control thing, is it perfectionism, or over thinking?

Once you can allow yourself the feeling of vulnerability, your ability to be courageous expands dramatically.

3. Accept your fears

In order to beat anything in life, first we have to acknowledge it exists.

Any form of addiction, like mine for chocolate, requires an admission that it exists before you can overcome it. I’m still working on my chocolate addiction by the way.

By denying that a fear exists you deny yourself the courage to overcome it…

Denial does not support courageous action and it certainly doesn’t help the fear go away.

A simple technique you can use to manage fear is to run a worst case scenario.

Be as honest as you can and identify exactly what is the worst that can happen if you were to do the thing that you fear.

Could it be that you lose all your money and won’t be able to afford food and essential living expenses?

Write them down and acknowledge them…

Accepting the worst case scenario often has the powerful effect of dissolving your fears.

4. Expose Yourself to What you Fear

Now that you have accepted your fears, the next step is to face what you fear.

It is a well-researched fact that an effective way to overcome our fears is to repeatedly face what you are afraid of… it lowers the psychological fear response until it becomes something that you are more comfortable managing.

And sometimes you will notice that a fear in one part of your life is actually holding you back in another area.

So if you are afraid to invest for your financial future, you are in the right place.

Spend time becoming familiar with investing terminology, read books and investing articles, get assistance from someone who makes you comfortable and will help you through your fear.

When you are ready start with small amounts of money and practice in different markets. Small steps will build your courage and quickly you will discover that investing is not the scary beast you thought it was.

5. Focus on What you Want

T Harv Eker taught me the affirmation that ‘what you focus on expands’.

It’s a simple thought, but one full of power.

Earlier you identified your WHY. This step requires that you train yourself to remain focused on what you want and why.

Your mind is a powerful tool and the more you use it to focus on the good of what you want the more it will assist you to achieve it.

This is a lesson that I constantly come back to. Choosing to dream and visualise the outcomes I seek is a lot more fun than worrying about what might go wrong.

Fill you mind with positivity…

6. Courage takes Practice

Like anything worth having or being good at, courage takes practice.

If you are working to tone your body, it is accepted that it takes time and constant practice.

As you accumulate workouts your results start to show…

But you also know that to maintain the results you need to keep working and doing the workouts that got you the results.

Courage is the same. You have to keep practicing the act of courage.

The more you do it, the stronger you become and the greater your comfort zone becomes.

7. Seek Inspiration

This is the fun part.

Look around and find people that inspire you, that are doing extraordinary things or doing what it is that you want to do.

Learn their story and be inspired by how they achieved the goals that you want for yourself.

Identify the courage that they demonstrated…

And apply the lessons to your circumstances.

Conclusion

To succeed in money and create the financial future that you want, you will need to have courage.

You will need to expand your comfort zone…

I know you can do it and would love to hear how you are doing it. Leave me a comment below or just give me a thumbs up to indicate you are ready to build the courage required to achieve your goals.