Archive for January, 2009

The financial garden

Monday, January 5th, 2009

The trouble with fears is that when we keep them inside and refuse to deal with them, they grow, like weeds left alone in a garden. Take the fear of not having enough to cover the bills this month and let it wander around by itself, unchecked. Where will it go? It will become the fear of not having enough in general. Stretch that fear out, and what do you have? The fear of having nothing, of somehow losing everything. Take that fear one step furthei and there’s the fear of being worthless, being nothing. That’s a long way from not quite being able to pay all the bills this one month. Even so, that’s a fear too many of us live with, whether we really realize it or not—and we don’t have to.
When you hold things in this way, you give them power. The way to control the fear instead is to voice it. Once you say it, you can see it: There’s no crocodile under the bed. So some bills will be late this month, it can’t be helped, things happen. That’s one reason we say time is money. The less time your fear allows you to devote to your money, the less money you will have. Weed out your fears, so you can give your financial garden what it needs to grow.