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How To Tackle Your Money Fears, with Tiwalola Ogunlesi

Vestpod

How To Tackle Your Money Fears, with Tiwalola Ogunlesi

💸Have you ever felt like fear has ever held you back from achieving what you want in life? In today’s episode, life coach, author and international speaker Tiwalola Ogunlesi gives you quick-fire tips on the best ways to overcome your financial fears and pursue the life that you deserve.

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Today, Tiwalola Ogunlesi is back on the Wallet to share with you her 6-steps technique to reframe fears, so they no longer have power over you. Fear is part of life, so let’s think about the steps we need to take to level up.


What is fear?


  • Fear is something you can master. There are practical techniques anyone can use to overcome it. 

  • First you have to understand what fear is. Tiwa describes fear as a negative thought of something in the future that hasn't happened yet.

  • Some of the most common fears that Tiwa comes across are: What if I run out of money? What if I ask for a promotion and they reject me? What if I have to ask my family for support and they can't give it to me? What if I don't know how to manage my money properly and I lose all my money from investments, etc.

  • It’s about overcoming the negativity bias where our brains jump to the worst possible outcome. Fear can be useful! It keeps you safe from jumping off a high building or moving too close to the edge or putting your hand in fire. It is a natural part of humanity, but when fear begins to get in the way of you going after what you truly want in life, or it begins to cripple you and make you live in a shell of yourself or live an unfulfilled life, then you know that's not the kind of fear you want to be living it with. 



How to Tackle Your Money Fears in 6 steps?



STEP ONE, NAME THE FEAR

  • What exactly are you afraid of? You cannot overcome or master what you don't even know, you cannot fight what you have no awareness of yet. 

  • You might have one key fear around running out of money for example but under that, there are so many other fears. What if my parents feel I've disappointed them? What if nobody buys my products when I launch my business? 

  • If you have an overarching fear, break it down into smaller fears. And then once you've done that, you can begin to see what you’re really tackling.



STEP TWO, LOOK FOR THE GRATITUDE

  • It's important to look for gratitude in every situation, even fear, because gratitude is a great way to reframe your situation. 

  • What can you be grateful for about the fear of running out of money? It means you're going to need to be resourceful. It means you're going to need to be more disciplined with your spending. 

  • It can bring out your creativity. Creativity thrives when your back is against the wall and you have nowhere to go. You've got to come up with an idea.



STEP THREE, WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I KEEP FOCUSING ON THIS NEGATIVE ENERGY?

  • What will happen if every single time you think about money, you think, what if I run out of money? 

  • If that begins to happen, you're going to either be very scared to check your bank account because you don't even want to see what's there, and then you won't be managing your money properly, or you might actually just start hoarding onto it and have a scarcity mindset, and that's going to begin to influence other areas in your life. 

  • When you have a scarcity mindset, you can't grow. That fear will just overcome everything. Chances are that eventually you will run out of money because the fear begins to stop you from managing your money properly. 

  • Inaction actually guarantees failure or the fear coming, because you never give yourself the chance to see whether that's going to happen or not.



STEP FOUR, WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  • When we focus on the negative we don’t create a vision of what we do want. 

  • What do you want for your life? It's so important to visualise that and have that too. 

  • What are the positive possibilities? Option A running out of money and feeling miserable. Or option B being intentional about creating the life you want and being financially stable and independent.

  • If running out of money is what you don't want, what do you want? Write it down and say it in the present tense.

STEP FIVE, STARTING TO TAKE ACTION 

  • What can you start doing today to get you closer to your goal? 

  • If you feel cringe talking about money, start by having a conversation around money with someone you know and you trust.

  • Do your research into how you can best manage your money and put a plan in place for that.

  • Become financially literate. Read books. Listen to podcasts! Speak to people who are money experts. Start savings or have an emergency fund. 


STEP 6, THE BOUNCE BACK

  • Creating a bounce back plan for your fear is really important. So if you find yourself in a situation where it does happen, you already know what you can do.

  • You lean into the positive possibility of instead of what you don't want, you lean into what you do want. 

  • You look at what you can be grateful for. 

  • If the fear becomes a reality, there's still something you can learn from the situation. 

  • By the time you do all of these things that fear won't have as much power over you. 

  • Fear is not the enemy. Fear is a natural part of life. But waiting to stop feeling afraid, that's where you really get hung up. 


Confidence is not an absence of fear. Confidence is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. When you're about to level up in life and go after your dreams, you will feel resistance.

Resources:


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