Good morning! Today I have a guest post from Simon Cave. Simon is the founder of the Becomer which is a platform that gives you the information you need to become financially free. If you want to get out of the Rat Race that’s a damn good place to start. Like you he looks for reaching a situation in which he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants with whoever he wants without worrying about money. He’s ready to help every one to accomplish the same goal you can follow him @simooncave. Let me know if you would like to guest post on RFI.
When people try to reach financial independence they tend to overlook strategies.
Strategy only represents 20% of your outcome while mindset is 80% part of your success.
The typical case is the one of the dreamer. A dreamer think of becoming financially independent one day so he buys a book about wealth creation strategies. He believes that he might get rich reading it. He then reads the first 50 pages and jump into the first investment he thinks of. As you might expect, that person will probably fail doing it. Maybe he had read the good strategies but as he was too eager, his poor mindset ruined his success.
Before going any further I want to be clear on what’s exactly a mindset.
Mindset definition:
A mindset is a mental attitude. It’s a set of habits you have that determine your actions and your way of thinking. It’s also your responses to certain situations.
Any mindset is developed by the human experiences and interpretations. That may be things you read, listened, experienced or things you discussed about. The education from your parents or the one you had at school, play also a big part in creating your mindset.
Why having a good mindset is more important than strategies?
People who have big strategies but a poor mindset can’t reach their goal.
Let’s say that one day you managed to reach Bill Gates(you can maybe contact him using this technique) and get his mentorship. You’re lucky he accepted to teach you his best wealth strategies. You could think that learning strategies from one of the wealthiest people will lead you to success without any doubt. Well it’s true if you have a good mindset but if you are not committed, impatient, lazy, doubtful…you won’t get any benefits from his strategies.
If you are impatient you will want everything overnight and when it won’t work, you will give up thinking that those strategies doesn’t work.
The same goes if you’re not committed. If you want to be financially independent you haveto be disciplined, to align your vision with your actions and to follow strategies on the long term. If you do it only for 1 or 2 months you won’t get any result.
You see it’s certainly much more important to learn to be patient (mindset) before learning anything else. Every single successful people you have in mind are patient.
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
Napoleon Hill
For anything worth having one must pay the price, and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice (…)
John Burroughs
Having the right mindset is exactly like having the best car. If you have a Ferrari but have no fuel you won’t go anywhere. So if you have the best strategies but no mindset (having a bad mindset is like having no mindset at all when we want to reach success) you won’t go anywhere too.
How can you build a good mindset to become financially independent?
You need to have the appropriate attitude.
The right attitude consists of several points that you need to embrace:
Know what you really want in life
A lot of people think they want to be rich or famous but once they get there they feel depressed and unsatisfied. You see it everyday on the newspaper when stars are caught being on drugs. I think that deep down they didn’t want to be famous they wanted something else. As a result of their frustration they try to escape reality with drugs. You might say that they got what they wanted but I would answer they didn’t get what they truly wanted.
So you better want to know what you truly want in life. Ask yourself the good questions. What do you want? Are you willing to do what it takes to get there?
Be open-minded
It’s crucial to welcome new ideas but most of all, to reconsider the things you have learned over the years.
Be patient
To learn to do it I recommend you the following article on Wikihow
Be committed
You need to learn to discipline yourself and to make sacrifices. When you take a decision or make plan you want to stick to it no matter what. I recommend you an excellent article on Pick the Brain to do it.
Focus& drive
If you’re going to be financially independent you want to focus entirely on your objectives. You want everyday to take action toward your goal.
Another important point is to program your mind subconsciously by picturing the result you want to achieve. That’s really important. I know a lot of people who have good strategies and a good mindset but keep failing in life. The only reason is that they didn’t program their subconscious mind to achieve their goal. If you want to know more about how to program your subconscious mind and get massive result I recommend you the following article
1 ultimate trick that will turn your dreams into reality
So now you know what mindset you need to have to reach financial independence. If you combine it with the good strategies no doubt that you will get tremendous results
What is YOUR mindset when it comes to your finances?
This post was featured on the Carnival of MoneyPros, Carnival of Retirement, The Heavy Purse, Yakezie Carnival, The Wealth Gospel, Carnival of Financial Planning, thank you!
You make an excellent point that the best strategies in the world are useless if you are not committed and ready to manage the challenges that you will face. It takes more than knowledge to achieve big goals- it takes things like commitment and a burning desire too!
The combination of patience and focus is a killer team. So many endeavors like the pursuit of financial independence aren’t able to be sustained over the long haul due to the lack of one of these two elements.
I agree that a good mindset helps. Without it, it’s easy to get off track with your goals! I have to remind myself of that sometimes.
“People who have big strategies but a poor mindset can’t reach their goal.” This is spot on! A strategy or plan is great, I’m a firm believer in them, but you’ll get nowhere without that mindset. You have to truly want something and have the determination to do what you can to reach whatever goal it is you may have. I saw this when I was paying off debt years ago. I tried different strategies and they didn’t work. It wasn’t until I changed my mindset that I was able to truly attack it and have success.
Thank you all for your comment. Very interesting inputs from you guys! The example of John really illustrate the point.
Great points and I absolutely agree that mindset is the most important ingredient. A good corollary is going on a diet…while the diet strategy might work in the short term, often times people will gain back the weight when the diet is “over.” Much different if you change your lifestyle or mindset and eat healthy food and exercise. With finances, you can budget and make sacrifices but eventually many people will fall back into the buying and spending lifestyle they’re used to. If you change your mindset on money and what you truly want in life…then you won’t feel like you’re making a sacrifice by not spending as much.
Wow, this is definitely one of my favorite posts of the day. I have to agree with you, mindset is huge! Thanks for the great read!
Mindset is incredibly important, and is often overlooked. The right mindset propels you forward. You feel compelled to take action. Knowing what you want is important but it alone is not enough. Your mindset/confidence is a strong indicator whether you follow through and take the necessary actions to achieve what you want.
I really enjoyed this post and appreciate your consideration of one’s mindset when trying to reach a goal. I find that my mindset is hopeful. I tend to be a dreamer in thinking of what my husband and I’s future will look like. When I start thinking of what I would like our end goal to be that motivates me to stay “patient”, “focused” and “commited”.
Your mindset really does make all the difference! You can have all these facts and understand the principles in play and the math, but you won’t change your financial situation unless you change how you think. Great post!
Thank you all again for your comment and insights. I really appreciate it!
Great post! It is so true… all of the proper strategies in the world won’t mean anything if you don’t have the right mindset and determination. I think another key thing is just putting the habits and structures in place to make sure that you stay on the right track when your willpower goes a little bit. Everyone will have little bumps in the road where they don’t want to be as disciplined, but if the right systems are in place, they should be able to get past those blips without any type of setback!
I agree that it is more about mindset than about strategies. Personal finance is all about behaviors. You can take any method for getting out of debt or saving money and some people will succeed and others will fail. It’s not because the strategy isn’t sound, it’s because the person didn’t have the right mindset or behaviors to lead them to success.
I agree with everything, but have to stress the importance of patience. Nothing will happen immediately. Everything worth investing in takes time. Don’t be anxious or let your anxiousness impede your goals. A good remedy to impatience and anxiousness is meditation. With a good strategy and calm mind, you can achieve anything.