The Importance of Courage

This week I want to explore the importance of courage in your wealth creation journey. In an earlier post, I wrote about the impact of fear, and how an action is key to overcoming fear.

But how do you take action in these circumstances?

This past week I have had the opportunity to reflect on what it takes to overcome fear and take action…

I was recalling the time I was overseas attending a conference and was required to present a keynote to an expected audience of over 1,200 people. The largest audience I would have ever presented.

Due to the early morning start of the presentation numbers were down, but still the largest audience I’ve presented to and an event that brought some fear leading up to the presentation.

Being overseas I always take a few books to read or re-read. And it was one of these books, The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J Stanley, which provided an excellent reminder of the importance of courage.

Courage – Overcoming Fear

As noted previously, fear is something that prevents you from taking action….

And by extension, courage is what is required to overcome the fear.

You will be familiar with sporting icons being labelled courageous for their sporting achievements but probably haven’t thought that to achieve financial freedom you to need to show courage.

Thomas Stanley points out in his book that the profile of self-made millionaires consistently includes courage, particularly because of the need to take or manage financial risk.

He suggests that to achieve the top level of income would require overcoming life’s obstacles and taking brave actions along the way, as well as the ability to conquer your fears.

This is obviously a trait that needs to be learned. You are not born with these characteristics. They take developing from experiences…

Stanley studied many millionaires and determined that there were consistent themes in their responses as to how they developed courage. He categorised the responses into 8 domains, which are listed below:

– Elbow grease
– Planning
– Decisiveness
– The Power of Positive Thinking
– Mind Control
– Mentoree
– Athlete’s heart
– Religion

As you can see from this list, there is nothing that is particularly revolutionary or for that matter difficult.

The simple truth about courage and how to develop it for your wealth creation strategies, that is summarised by these domains, is that it comes down to the same main characteristics that you admire in your sporting heroes.

Elbow Grease

The fact that it takes a bit of elbow grease, or hard work, is not a surprise. Nothing comes to those that wait. You need to get out there and do the work required to learn what you need to know to grow your wealth.

It requires taking action, followed by more action, followed by more action. Each incremental step adding to the previous one to lead you to success.

You will have heard the cliché responses of sporting icons when it comes to hard work, you know the quote, “the harder you work the luckier you become”.

Wealth creation requires some luck, but what comes first, the luck or the hard work?

Planning

Planning your action and the steps that you want to take also seems an obvious step.

However, the problem is that most people don’t plan their financial goals…

Have you taken the time to plan how you are going to achieve financial freedom.

Do you have a money plan? A system to manage your money. Have you identified the asset categories you are going to use? Will you be a stock investor, a property investor or both, or will you start your own business.

Decisiveness

Once you have the plan, to be successful you need to implement the plan, which will require decisiveness.

If you sit back and wait for the perfect investment you could be waiting a long time, and more than likely it will be snapped up by someone before you pull the trigger.

Stanley’s studies showed a clear and very significant correlation between willingness to take financial risk and net worth.

It is important to note that this doesn’t mean being foolish with your investments…

It is a case of understanding the market that you are intending to invest in, understanding your risks and making informed decisions about where to invest your money.

Being decisive means balancing the financial risks and rewards…

The Power of Positive Thinking

The power of positive thinking has been written about extensively. You will have heard about ‘The Secret’ and ‘The Law of Attraction’, two of the more popular works on the art of positive thinking.

To have courage in the financial world requires you to think positively, there is no doubt about that.

You need to be enthusiastic in your pursuit, and positive energy and thoughts are far more likely to lead to positive outcomes then negative thoughts and energy.

So you don’t need to necessarily delve too deeply into the theory of positive thinking, it kind of just makes sense.

Mind Control

Mind control is a difficult one, and is the area that I have spent the most time exploring in this blog.

Your ability to manage your mind and how it reacts to certain circumstances, outcomes and events is significant in determining your success.

Most people fear how they will react if they lose a large sum of money when investing.

Yet the ability to manage a large win is also just as significant. Many examples exist of people that have had a large win, gotten carried away with success and led themselves on a path of destruction.

The mindset of a millionaire is a crucial factor in their success, and I will continue to explore ways to help you manage your mindset.

Mentorees

Having someone, or more than one person, that you can refer to assist you is also important. Too often in my past 20 years of investing, I have thought I could do it on my own.

The moment that I realised the benefit of having a mentor, and actually started using them, listening to them and learning from them, was the moment that my results improved.

Simple as that…

Athlete’s Heart

An athlete’s heart refers to the mental toughness required to keep applying your strategies, especially when they aren’t working as you would like.

It is foolhardy to think that there won’t be times when your results will be less than optimal.

Develop the mental toughness to keep going, keep applying yourself.

It doesn’t hurt also to be physically healthy. A healthy body equals a healthy mind…

Religion

I’m not going to get all deep into religion here, but the simple point to make is that you have to have faith of some sort.

Faith that you can achieve what you want.

I will leave it to you to determine where that faith comes from.

Conclusion – The Importance of Courage

In short, it takes courage to learn to be a good investor, it takes courage to manage the risks of stock investing, or property investing or starting your own business.

But without courage, your likelihood of success is next to zero, history is proof enough of that!

If you haven’t already read my report, click the link below to get my free report that includes the formula for wealth. Action is one of the 4 components of the formula.