Doormats along your wealth highway

September 27, 2006 by MargaretCollins
Filed under: Wealth Coach Diaries 

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Margaret says:

I nearly did myself an injury the other day, driving along the motorway, minding my own business, listening to the pm programme on radio 4… and then there was the story about doormats.

Bristol City Council apparently sent a letter entitled "Health and Safety Issues - Hazardous Mats" to thousands of tenants living in flats and high-rise blocks.

The letter read: "During a routine Health and Safety inspection of the block, it was noted that loose mats were present in hallways/corridors outside of people’s flats."

Can you believe what they said next???

"These represent a ‘tripping hazard’ and should be removed immediately. By all means have your own mats inside your front door but please do not leave them outside, creating a risk to others.

Therefore, I am requesting that if you have a mat outside, it is removed by September 18th. Any mat remaining in the hallways/corridors after this date will be removed and subsequently disposed of."

Once I got over the shock and regained control of myself I realised this was another example of risk averseness gone mad… remember the story about children being required to wear safety gear when playing conkers in the playground? And I wondered whether we were becoming just too afraid of "risk" for our own good?!

This idea of the risk tolerance really fascinates me, particularly as a coach working with other clients on their journey to financial independence. We are all individuals and have our own personal levels of comfort when it comes to risk. The question is, how risk averse are you? Is your fear of risk getting in the way of your wealth?

As human beings we tend to assume that other people are basically like us and what we do/how we think about risk is "normal", without realising that there are huge differences in things like risk profile.

And of course, it’s highly context dependent. You might assume that the more money involved, the longer it takes to make the decision but that’s often not the case. I know someone who agonises far more about what to order for lunch than whether to buy a property!

But investing in your future usually involves going places you have never gone before - both literally and figuratively. When stepping outside of your comfort zone, it’s only right that you should be concerned, maybe even a little scared. This fear of the unknown, respect for "what might happen" is exactly what kept our ancestors alive long enough to bring us into this world so I guess being risk averse is a strategy that has some evolutionary successes to report!

The question I always ask is, "Is it helpful?".

Is being risk-averse actually helping you to secure your financial independence or is it holding you back? There’s a very appropriate level of caution we should always take when dealing with the important things in our lives but if caution turns into agonising paralysis – then personally I think it’s gone way past the stage of being helpful.

Stepping out to do something new will always be accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty for many of us – so what?! Get on and get used to it! If you had no fear you’d be a pathological menace to yourself. Accept that some level of fear is normal and get on and do what you know what you need to do.

I think we all recognise the difference between encouraging children to play in the middle of a busy street or making them wear safety specs while playing conkers in the playground, but which scenario more closely describes your attitude to risk???

Are you off looking for the safety specs and hard hat while your friends are having a great time, maybe collecting a few bruised knuckles along the way but learning some all important lessons about the length of the piece of string needed for a prize-winning conker?

How does it work for you?

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This

Share/Save/Bookmark

You Might Also Enjoy...

  • No Related Posts...

Tags:

Comments

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!