The Path to
Financial Freedom
Listen carefully. Do you hear a voice?
It keeps whispering… “You can’t do that”.
You start to believe it. I am not good enough. I am not smart enough. I can’t do it.
Your path to financial freedom could be blocked by something very simple… yourself. If you feel that the light at the end of the tunnel is blocked by crippling self-doubt, guess what? You are completely normal and you are not alone. Everybody has personal barriers that stand in the way of their dreams. You are about to find out three changes that you can make to overcome those barriers and begin to move along that path to achieve your goals.
Know your path to financial freedom
Start with the end in mind, is one of the 7 habits in Steven Covey’s book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. To know your goal you first need to know what it looks and feels like. This will be your first step along your path to financial freedom. How would it feel to have time, money and freedom? Visualise what you would be doing with your time on a day-to-day basis. Imagine the emotions and sensations of that experience. But that’s not all.
Consider your core values, those convictions that you hold dear and shape the person you want to be. Perhaps you value helping others. Perhaps you value being appreciated by your family. Perhaps you value being heard and understood. How do these connect with your reasons for seeking financial freedom? Being clear about the drivers behind your dreams will help you to understand your ‘why’.
Now that you understand your ‘why’ you can begin to connect with your dreams. You can feel it on a deeper level. Your task now is to grow those feelings and make them bigger than your fears. Make them so big that the sounds of self-doubt become quieter and quieter. You start to believe that you can have more time, you can have more money and you can have more choices. To get to this place however will involve putting on some clothes that may feel uncomfortable at first.
Embrace discomfort
Here’s the truth, change is awkward and uncomfortable at first. Learn to embrace those feelings as a gift because through discomfort you can grow and improve. If you always take the comfortable option you will make the same choices over and over again. That voice of self-doubt will become louder to preserve comfort and avoid your fears. Here is an example.
Nobody likes to feel rejected. It’s natural to avoid the feelings associated with being refused, dismissed or declined. This has led to an avoidance of the word ‘no’ altogether. People have become ‘yes’ worshippers to the point that if they feel the answer will be no, they will probably avoid asking the question in the first place. Here’s how to flip that around and seek rejection rather than avoid it.
Let’s assume that your path to financial freedom is the path of a property investor. You want to buy properties and transform them into income. You will want to make the cheapest offers which will involve a certain amount of rejection. How many offers will you have rejected before giving up… 20, 40, 60, 100? Let’s say for arguments sake it takes making 40 offers before a single one is accepted. Great, you now know that to get one successful deal you need to accumulate 40 rejected offers. It will be possible to see each rejection not as a negative, but as a positive step in getting closer to a ‘yes’. If you have made it this far, keep going because the next part is important.
Surround yourself with optimism
Along your path to financial freedom, the ‘no’ answers will come in many forms. Sometimes from strangers and sometimes from those you know, love and trust. It has become a mainstay of society to cast doubt and scepticism onto the dreams of others.
Being surrounded by supportive and encouraging people should not be underestimated. A community that believes in you and motivates you to keep going is gold. Having this type of community helps to stop making excuses, quieten down the voices of self-doubt and little-by-little, move closer to your goals.
The consumer mindset is one with a short-term and negatively-focussed view that is concerned with costs, resistance and the fear of failure. Seeking out a community of like-minded people will surround you with long-term views that look at the returns on investment rather the costs. People who were once in similar shoes to yourself, who invested in themselves and took the necessary actions to create change.
Take action
Everything here is just a starting point. The tip of the iceberg along your own path to financial freedom. This is the time to invest in yourself and your education, to discover how much information, help and support is available to get you to where you want to be. It’s not all about you though, helping yourself will also help the people you know and love.
Embracing an investor mindset that is focussed on creating wealth, as a long-term plan, is a big step towards enriching the lives of those that are close to you. Wealth is not just measured by assets and bank balances, wealth is also the quality of time we spend with others. Your goals however, will never be anything more than dreams unless you do one thing.
Conquering your self-doubts to move towards financial independence, choices and freedom will not happen unless you take action. Taking action to understand your goals and why they are important to you. Taking action to embrace discomfort and make changes. Taking action to educate yourself within a supportive and understanding community.
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