This month I have been crazy busy with work, which has been great, so thank you to all of you lovely clients for keeping me busy. Therefore when I saw this great blog from Carl Richards, (behaviorgap.com) I thought that I would share it with you as he puts it so well, so why change it?!
“Today, I want to ask you why.
That is, I want you to ask yourself why.
Why do I invest a certain way? Why do I spend what I spend? Why do I save as much (or as little) as I do?
The reason I want you to ask yourself these questions is because the big “Why” is a question we tend to avoid.
That may be because “Why” is scary. It may be scary because we often don’t know the answer. And honestly, we may not know the answer because we don’t want to know the answer.
After all, the answer may not be very good. It might not even give us someone or something else to blame!
But if we’re going to improve our financial decision-making, we need to give ourselves permission to think about our motivations without judgment. The moment we start questioning our true motivations, we’re likely to discover that some of what we do doesn’t line up with what we say we believe. If I say that time with my children is the most important thing in my life, but I work long hours to manage a big car payment, then I’ll be forced to deal with that conflict. These conversations often involve someone else, like a spouse or children, so it’s important to give one another the space to talk about money without fear of judgment.
Questioning your motivations will also lead you to discover things about your decisions simply because you’ve never thought about them before. It’s common for adults to warn children about the dangers of peer pressure, yet adults often forget they are subject to the same pressures.
This type of introspection isn’t easy. I suspect it’s one of the key reasons we do dumb things with money; we’re afraid to know why we do what we do, so we don’t take the time to question our behavior. Knowing might mean needing to change something we’ve grown comfortable with.
But here’s the thing: Asking ourselves why we make certain money decisions is integral to our financial success, even if it takes a bit of time and effort to reach an answer.
So go ahead… ask yourself why!
Why not?”
If Carl has made you rethink something then please let me know – I’m nosy!!
