Gratitude – Part 2

Fear, Financial Independence, Gratitude, Happiness, Human Brain, peak Performance

if you do a split of my posts, they can get equally split between Marketing, Financial independence, Human Mind & Performance, Charity / Karma / Gratitude.

I have mentioned multiple times that when I am feeling low, I decide to go and do charity. It gives me a high of a different kind. This is something which I seriously started doing when I heard Joe Polish on his podcast ilovemarketing.com. He had other ideas also about things which you can do when you are feeling low and don’t even have the money to do charity.

While continuing reading the book The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler, I realised that the human performance is very strongly linked to the human mind – nothing new here, but what was surprise was the scientific reason behind why gratitude or doing good for others helps improve performance.

As per the research which Steven talks about – gratitude trains the brain on looking at the positive things, for which you are thankful. The brain is otherwise seasoned to look for things which can ham us, so that it can protect us. When you are in the state of gratitude , the negative things which can harm us, get filtered out by the brain automatically. When the negative things are filtered out, there is reduced fear. Once that happens you automatically get into a good mood and you feel happy.

When we are in a good mood, we feel safe and secure. When we feel safe and secure, our mind is willing to wander and think. Due to this your creativity also gets enhanced. To get into the more technical details of how the neurobiology and neurochemistry work I would highly recommend reading his book.

Coming back to where I started this post, while I was splitting the Human Mind & Performance , from Charity / Gratitude / Karma, it seems from the research that Steven has done that actually these help improve the performance of the human mind.

So actually my blog posts then, have a skew towards the human mind and performance compared to other areas of marketing and finance. This is interesting.

While I have always had an inclination to continuously find ways to improve myself, I had never actually taken the rigorous analysis that Steven has done on improving myself.

Tell me what do you enjoy more – my posts on marketing, financial independence or human performance.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Buying confidence with insurance

confidence, Fear, Insurance, Leverage, Risks

FEAR is generally caused by the unknown. What you are not sure off causes you to be uncertain. When you are uncertain you get fearful about the outcome.

Earlier I always used to talk about how investments would lead you to have the confidence to take the risks of life without being fearful .

However I have recently started analysing different kinds of risks that I face – so as we grow older, medical costs is a big issue. Next I have only one house in which I presently live – so there’s always the risk of a catastrophe that can hit.

I actually listed at least 5 or 6 different things which are high risks, that can suddenly wipe out my savings and investments.

Based on the ideas given by Garrett Gunderson, in his book Killing Sacred Cows, I have gone about figuring out if there’s insurance available to me to cover each of those risks.

While I knew about health insurance, I didn’t know about the concept of top-up that can add a quantum leap in your coverage at a very small premium. The caveat is that you should have the base medical insurance in place. Since I identified the risk and put a value to it, I was able to identify a product which would give me coverage to that risk.

Once you can list out all your risks and start putting a monetary value to them, chances are that you may also get a company who will be willing to cover the risk for you at a price. Once you have covered the monetary value of the possible risk, then its no longer a risk.

Insurance is a different kind of leverage, you are covering a large monetary risk by paying a small premium.

Once there is no risk, the fear reduces. Once fear reduces, you get the confidence to look at bigger things and aim for them. Insurance helps you get that confidence.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Insurance to eliminate fear

Fear, Happiness, Health, Insurance, Leverage, Risks

I read an extremely interesting concept today. I have considerably got convinced about the idea, still digesting a few things, but thought of sharing to see what you think.

I have always been aware of insurance being necessary. As a matter of fact in my posts on advice to young women, I had layed great stress on both health and life insurance.

Quite frankly given the high inflation in healthcare costs, I would anyway recommend you to take the highest possible health insurance. On life insurance however I was generally of the view that you should take term insurance to cover the major risks that you envisage.

One of the key things in financial independence that I keep harping about is the ability to take decisions without the fear of having a job in the future.

One of the reasons that financial independence becomes a moving target is because as you grow in life, your finances improve, you get used to a better lifestyle. To be able to achieve that lifestyle if you leave your job, you need to have a much higher level of assets. So you again start saving and investing for the next higher level but by then your target amount has moved further.

This happens primarily because FEAR, the What if eventuality.

This is where if you have more than adequate insurance of different types, you transfer the risk to the insurance company and your fear can reduce. This is where I have to delve deeper on how you can leverage this ideato become more fearless.

I will keep you posted as I delve deeper into this subject.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!