By Christopher Cervantes, RFP

I recently conducted a coaching session with a guy who was in his 30s. He recently attended the monthly webinar that I conducted. I was surprised when I learned that he participated in the same seminar six years ago, back then when I was doing it in a training hall for a whole day.

I asked him about the changes that happened to his financial life from the first time he attended the seminar. He reluctantly replies, “not much!” And he further said, “the good thing, Sir is that, after attending your seminar, I studied lots of things about money, read tons of books, and invested the sum of money in all available paid seminars that I could attend. And now, I’m here with you because I think I’m ready to start investing and managing my money.”

Investing in your personal growth and knowledge is one of the critical aspects of personal growth and success. The greatest thing about collecting Knowledge is that we can then use all the information to become healthier, happier, and wealthier. Kofi Annan was right when he said that “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” But, to wait for six years before you put it to good use your education, is insane.

In my more than a decade as a financial coach, I have met many people who happened to be not that smart and not into much self-development, but you will notice that their lives are continually improving. Then how come some people who are so intelligent and investing so much in personal growth are stagnating?

Many people tend to procrastinate and think that they need to know all the nitty-gritty before running. They are always at the starting point, seemingly waiting for the gun to fire to tell them to run. But imagine how your life would change if you could put to good use at least 30 percent of what you already know.

So, why do some people choose to put things off? Most of them are not afraid to take action. They fear taking action because of their fear of failure.

When I asked that guy what he felt before he stopped himself from investing or signing for an account opening, he said, “I’m afraid.” So, I asked him, “What are you afraid of?” he answered: “That my decision is wrong.”

We all have this kind of fear in us. Having fear is healthy. It is part of our survival instinct and protection mechanism. Imagine if you didn’t fear at all, you would not mind touching live electrical wire with 10,000 volts running through it. Most of us are conditioned to feel fear when we fail or even think we might fail. It is the child in us that did not live up to our parents’ expectations. The danger is when you are too fearful, to the point that it is causing your life to get stacked.

One technique to move forward whenever we are in this situation is not to be attached to the result. What is essential is not the outcome’s success but that taking the first move will be a success. Instead of thinking about your endeavor’s potential impact, better think of the process you need to do to take your first step.

With that, we did a financial planning process with him, and I gave him all the recommended action steps he needed to do to achieve his goal. We agreed that he would not be attached to how the market will move or what will happen in the future for the moment. We need to focus on making sure he will be crossing out all the items in his checklist.

Focusing on what is happening in the market will only give you nothing but stress, demotivation and self-hatred. So, we agreed that we focused on the process instead.

After a week of our meeting, he was so proud of himself because he just started having his insurance coverage, opened his mutual fund account, and started investing in the stock market after six years. Yes, we need the courage to accomplish things, but courage will only come if we know we have the process to follow. Maybe it’s about time you put to practice all the things you learned in the past, and you can start that by creating your actionable process.