Money Strategies with Debbie

Learning To Trust Yourself

 

Trusting yourself, whether it comes to your personal life or even your finances, is a process that takes a while to come completely into fruition. But training yourself to trust your instincts is something that you can achieve if your goals are clear-cut and you’re decisive. “The Dollar Diva” Debbie Bloyd discusses why trusting yourself is the most important foundational skill for securing your financial future. The trust you put into yourself and the things you do, the things you create, can ultimately decide your success in the future. Train yourself to trust yourself.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Learning To Trust Yourself

Making The Right Decisions

We talk on the show about money and finances and mortgage all the time. We’re going to talk about how we need to trust ourselves. This is a departure from what I normally talk about, but it goes hand in hand with our money and our finances and everything we do. We have to learn to trust ourselves and know that we’re making the right decision and move on. A lot of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this was that a lot of people couldn’t trust themselves. They second guess themselves. They are afraid to make a mistake, therefore they don’t move at all. They do nothing. That in itself is a decision, but it’s not the right decision that we need. We need to take an active role in our money and our finances and our future. If we’re full of decision and we don’t trust ourselves, we do our future selves a great disservice. It’s not normal times, and you can say that almost any time but before the virus, we had a normal life. Things will be different after we come out of this quarantine and our country will be a little bit different. The way we do business will be different. The way we think about our finances and our lives will be different as well. Not trying to be overdramatic but you can’t go through something like this and not have changed. Changes in the banking systems, change in the insurance world and changes with mortgages.

How are we going to qualify people if they’ve been unemployed? Do they get to buy a house or not? We’ve got mortgage forgiveness going on. You don’t make a few payments and you want to refinance. What’s going to happen? There are a lot of unknowns. Let’s talk about the unknowns. There is a time where we need to learn to trust ourselves and handle anything and this enables us to thrive through everything. Of course, if it were easy to trust ourselves and we say we trust ourselves and we’d be done with it, but there are a lot of stressed-out people and a lot of people still trying to pursue their dreams and uncertain about what’s going to happen.

I’m reading an article from a lady on Success.com, a great website that I go to all the time. She wrote a book called You’ve Got This: The Life-changing Power of Trusting Yourself. She said, “When the ground beneath feels shaky and much as uncertain, we have to look within ourselves for the security receipt.” That is, we have to trust within us, lie the resources we need to handle whatever unfolds ahead. We don’t do this all at one time. We are not brave once and for brave forevermore we have to do this constantly. Know rather we must do it again and again. One day, one hour and sometimes one minute at a time. I’ve gone through a lot of stuff that was stressful. Problems with my parent’s divorce, growing up with little kids, raising a family is stressful.

We need to take an active role in our money, our finances, and our future. Click To Tweet

My daughter had scoliosis and had a huge surgery. Scary for me, but I remained strong for her and helped her recover faster. I was concerned but I found the best doctors. I got educated, I got her educated and we got through it and she’s a powerful young lady. She’s in college, but again, she’s weathered that’s from college, isn’t there anymore. She’s doing classes online. This is not the college that she wanted, nor was the college she had. She got me thinking about this because she was talking to one of her teachers on a Zoom call and said that she feels a lot of things are out of control. She’s living a life that she does not want to live. She is not with her friends in the sorority house. My son is not with his friends at his college and his fraternity and it all stopped abruptly. This is the lesson for everyone that life can stop abruptly and we have to be able to pull ourselves up and get on with it. Without stressing out to live less emotionally and more goal-orientated that this is a bump in the road. COVID-19 has disrupted the lives across the globe and many feel fearful.

This lady had been writing this book about other reasons, but it seems timely to talk about what she’s found out. She said, “It’s natural to feel anxious or stressed. We’re dealing with much uncertainty and seismic levels of disruption we’d never felt before.” She was about to do a book tour of her book. Like many plans, everything has been canceled. She’s feeling anxious. Her job has been changed like our jobs have been changed. She said, “Trusting yourself is not about becoming invulnerable to fear or not having any self-doubt, but rather reclaiming the power that we surrender to our fears and choosing each day to show up from a place of faith rather than a fear. Self-trust rather than self-doubt.” You have to feel like you can get through anything and this is one little bump. It’s a huge bomb and it changes your finances. It changes the way you look at life. It changes the way you treat your family. We’re going to have a lot of babies and a lot of divorces. There will be a lot of families brought together by this and torn apart by this. Walking the path of faith over fear is not about religion. It’s about daring to lean into a deeper source of power that lies within us and around us. It’s about taking the unlimited risk and the ultimate risk, placing a bet on ourselves and from within us. That’s all required to meet the demands as it arises. There was another article that I’ve talked about, don’t borrow trouble. Don’t start thinking about the worst of things.

Don’t start thinking this is going to be you. If you are like me, washing your hands, staying out of lots of groups of people. I’m working on the phone, staying in my office. I am not putting myself out there in contact with people and contract the virus. I’m trying to stay away, but I’m still going about my life. It’s changed. I am FedExing documents and doing Zoom calls and doing conference calls like I’ve never done before. That doesn’t mean that I’m not doing my job and participating and doing all the things that need to be done. I’m not trying to be a hero, I’m trying to keep things going. Sometimes that’s what we have to settle for. Is it perfect? No, but things will change. This too will change.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Self-trust is the essence of heroism.” We are each walking our hero’s journey and each day we wake up and we have the opportunity to start a new and build self-trust. True heroism requires walking in our hero’s journey in our way, in our own time. For years I have done a lot of different things. I do radio, I do my businesses. None of it always seems to match up, people are like, “You’re scattered.” What I’ve found is that there are a lot of people that have various interests as I do. For me, I form it all into one. I talk about money and finances over your life and if that long-term care, mortgages, life insurance, health insurance, property and casualty insurance, I do them all, but they all play a role.

I happened to have a weird skillset that allowed me to learn and take classes, pass the test and become licensed and all these different things. Is it easy to explain what I do? It’s gotten easier because I’ve changed what I think I am. I said, “I help people with their money in all different ways.” I leave it at that because someone may come to me with a mortgage, somebody else needs me for life insurance. Some people want to buy a mortgage and get life insurance. We talk about long-term care law, planning for our investments. I have found my niche, but it’s a niche that I made. If I had listened to everybody along the way, they wanted me to stay vanilla. One thing, do mortgages and nothing else. Quit trying to do too many things. I like what I do. Day by day, choice by choice be your hero one step at a time. Here are some things that you can think about. If there was ever a time to be a hero in our lives, to ground ourselves in our intimate enoughness, to listen to the whispers of our inner sage, a time we needed to step up to the plate in our lives, it is now. If there was ever a time to search inside ourselves for the certainty, missing around us, grounding ourselves in self-certainty, it is now. We’ve got this, you’ve got this. I’ve got this.

Decide that you will ground yourself in faith and not fear, then ask yourself, “What will I do if I trust that whatever happens, I can handle it?” This will not only lie in your spirit, but it’s going to liberate you to do more of what strengths and things make you happy and entice you and help elevate others. I’m breathing in faith. I’ve not hovered with fear and it’s not going to weigh me down. Let’s talk about becoming that fearless person that we want to be. Own it. Bring your fears into the light and a lot of times we are in our minds and the worst case can happen. Let’s put this back to money, when we talk investments, “What if the stock market goes to zero?” The stock market has to do with companies, their earnings and their employment. Unemployment will affect the earnings but not everybody’s going to go down at once.

Whatever bad things happen, there's always someone out there that is rallying. Click To Tweet

The stock market’s not all going to go to zero. You’re going to have money in it. If you’ve got three stocks, those could go to zero. I had some oil stocks. Those all took a big dive. I grew up in the oil business and I know that they’re going to come back. If those mutual funds, are holding different stocks in different denominations through fund managers and they are buying and selling all the time. When the oil is down, gas is up. This is and down coals up. Something is always moving up and down. What do you see happening? We have plants that we’re making one thing, making ventilators.

We have people going a side hustle and they’re making masks. Whatever bad happens, there’s something that is rallying. The toilet paper business is doing well. Paper towels, food, restaurants are rallying because they’re doing takeout, they’re being innovative. We can do that too. Sometimes talking to a financial person about what your fears are can make a world of difference like talking to your friends. The problem is when you talk to your friends about, “I’m afraid. What’s going to happen to my 401(k)?” “Me too. I’m afraid.” Talk to a professional. Someone like me, the deals with this all the time where I can say, “It’s a down market. Let me show you the statistics and the hardcore evidence that this is going to come back.” Let me give you examples of that. You don’t talk with your friends into a frenzy and not get the right information. Sometimes if you bring your fear to the light, you are going to be able to sit there and go, “Is this real or is this the worst fears?” There was a Swiss psychologist who explained that fears why aren’t into our physical DNA and our psychological DNA to help us avoid situations that could cause us pain, injury, loss or death? The problem is why are fear exists to help keep you safe, it can also keep you too safe. That’s why if you have your fears, sometimes they own you, you don’t own them.

Talk About Your Fear

This Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, is noted for saying, “Whatever you resist will persist. Things that when we fail to own them and acknowledge them about ourselves, ultimately find ways of showing up and sabotaging our success. By denying our fear of pushing it away, it varies itself deeper and its shadows grow larger.” We need to regain and talk about your fear. You need to name it. You need to think of it differently. It’s called to flip it. Rethink the risk. Make your fear your ally. Embody it. Hold yourself into power. Tap your inner Braveheart. Risk it, lean into the discomfort and take the leap anyway or build it. Train the brave, grow capacity for daring and doing, “What do I do next?”

 

Sometimes people want to know everything, every single step of the way. That’s not how I found life unfolds. You do one step, life shows you another step. You do the next step, life shows you the next step. Things don’t always unfold all at once. Tame it. Regain your thoughts about putting this into the right order and making it the right sides. Our imagination is a wondrous thing. Without it, the most beautiful works of humankind would never have been brought into existence. When fueled by fear, our imagination can drive us to underestimate ourselves and overestimate the potential negative consequences of taking action.

This is what I find in a lot of people when they talk about their death, repair with insurance or long-term care, and I don’t want even to discuss it. They have imagined the worst case, but the worst case may not happen. Let’s plan for it and hope for better things. When you balk at the prospect of doing something outside your comfort zone, ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I’ve done this for years. You start a new business. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Let’s not make it that worse. What if you didn’t put this much money into it? What if you did it as a side hustle for a while?” Lean into it and see if it’s going to work. There are all kinds of ways that you can lean into your discomfort without jumping off the cliff with both feet, a little at a time. Maybe you can name it. Call out your critic. Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? What will everyone else think? You’ll make a fool of yourself. You don’t know what you’re doing. Stick to what you know. How many of this is going through your mind? “I’m not good enough. I’m not cute enough. I’m not smart enough, tall enough. What will my family say? What will my spouse say?” I do have to tell you that I had been divorced and what your spouse says is little compared to what you think you can do. Don’t let someone else’s small-mindedness limit what you can do and how you feel. We think of your risk. Playing it safe can be a high-risk approach.

A lot of people do not want to invest in the market. They’re never going to grow a lot of money. A lot of people don’t want to buy real estate because they’ve heard bad things about it. You have to put your money to work for you. You can’t store it up in your bedroom and let it sit there and spend it as you need it. You need compound interest. You need investments. Are they risky? Yes, but you can take a limited risk at these things. Not risk at all. Risk a little at a time. The capacity for greatness resides within every one of us without exception. It’s that some of us have been living inside a story about our inadequacy for so long that we become strangers to who we were Bravehearts. I have great friends that do not risk anything they would rather do without then venture outside their comfort zone and then it’s sad because life can be rich. There are many experiences. One time my daughter said, “I would do this, but what if?” I’m like, “What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t enjoy the person’s company or going with it. You make it a short trip you come home early.” She was like, “That doesn’t sound bad.” I’m like, “Quit taking a great idea and thinking the worst possible things are going to happen when it may be a wonderful time.” You control that. You can either say it’s going to be an adventure or we’re going to hope for the best or we’re going to try it or this is going to be horrible. We’re not even going to step outside the door.

Don't let someone else's small-mindedness limit what you can do and how you feel. Click To Tweet

Don’t give up on your dreams because of other people or because you’re scared and also don’t give up on your investments for the same reason. We talk about all of these things. Your money has everything to do with what you feel on the inside. I believe that. If you do not believe in yourself, you don’t think you’re smart enough to understand investments, 401(k)s and IRAs, you’re wrong. If I can understand them and explain them to clients, you can understand them. You have to do some work or come to someone like myself that can explain it to you in a way that you’d understand. These are not complicated concepts. Most of the money-making things that are out there. I tell my clients, “If you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it.” If you do understand it, I don’t have to know the inner workings of a microwave to know how to use a microwave. You don’t have to know the inner workings of all these investments. You have to utilize them and know where they’re going to get you without all the, “How does that work? What if the company’s out of business?” Invest in good companies. You don’t have to worry about that. Invest in big companies, large companies, companies that you’ve heard of before. I say if you’re going to own stock, own stock and things you understand.

Warren Buffett has made it huge. You’d say he’s super successful life out of investing in what he knows. He says, “I’m not the smartest guy, but I do know people are going to buy jewelry.” He buys a jewelry store. He does understand furniture production. He does understand gum and Coke. He understands toilet paper, deodorant. You can make a massive amount of money as Warren Buffett did by going with what you know. If you’re a scientist, go with the scientist. I’m not a pharmaceutical person. I don’t know the drugs. If I did know more of them, I’d probably invest in that more heavily. Do I want to take the time to learn about it? Maybe or maybe not. You invest in things that you know something about. Sometimes the risk is worth the leap.

A lot of people don’t want to risk anything and that’s going to be a hard life to have money, to get a job promotion, to find a spouse. I’ve known a lot of people got divorced and they never want to do it again. That could be a lifetime of enjoyment if you want to be by yourself or have extreme loneliness if you don’t want to be. They’re like, “I don’t want to risk it.” You are going to be by yourself out of default. A lot of our money situations are because of default. We use money. We didn’t understand how to run it. We took bad chances and that’s what we’re left without of default. We can change all that. Build-in being brave and it being brave to you means learning more about things you don’t know about then learn more.

We have never been inundated with information. You can Google things, you can investigate things. Every company’s got websites, everybody has webinars, YouTube videos. I could go home and fix my kitchen sink if it was broke by finding a YouTube video. I could figure out how to seal concrete if I watched a YouTube video. Almost everything you want to know has been done by somebody. It’s about time that we put ourselves in a better position by understanding what’s going on and how to fix ourselves. We cannot blame others for the way we feel, even though our parents might’ve contributed to it. Our spouses contributed to it. In the end, it’s what’s on you on the inside and it’s what you bring to the table. Take back your power in times like these, become your inner Braveheart and become brave. We’ll be back with more of the show.

Important Links:

• Success.com
• You’ve Got This: The Life-changing Power of Trusting Yourself