In life, there are questions we enjoy and questions we come to avoid. Finding faithful answers is one of life’s biggest challenges. Some people seem to be really good at finding answers that work, and others struggle.
Dispelling Myths Many Believe
Myth: People Who Prosper Are Charmed.
There may be some who appear that way because chance happens to everyone, and the natural odds are somebody somewhere will just hit the right time in the right place against predictable odds. If that is the case, those people are at greater risk because they also think they are charmed, and when random odds don’t work in their favor, they will not have a good foundation of thinking to correct their course.
We may look at their success as proof beyond the need to prove true. I have heard many people talk about people who are good at making money. The people some of them talk about often are also good at losing money. The net gain is missing. People who prosper are not always the ones who have the most. Prosperity is having more than you need.
Some of what we call prosperity is a distraction. When we think of riches, the most common signals are net worth, how many people work for them, and how big their home is. None of these things say these people are happy or fulfilled. This brings us to our next myth.
Myth: More Money Will Make Me Happy.
Money definitely solves problems people face. When people have more money than they need, it can impact their thinking the same way chance did to the person who was lucky. Money has power, and we start to use that power as an easy go-to because we can. In seasons we should sit back and think; we throw more money at it. That is what we talked about in our last article. (Credit, To Infinity And Beyond)
Money solves poverty. Money gives us the power to make choices. It frees us from the bondage of the choices of others who don’t love or respect us. Have you heard the phrase, necessity is the mother of invention? This wise old saying teaches us that too much money replaces creativity. We can fail to see what we can do looking to solve too much with the power of purchase. There is a hidden power in the margins between poverty and riches. This is where we have more than enough, but not too much to cause us to look to money for answers too often.
When we have an abundance of money, it can also release our inner acquisition monster. When what we acquire becomes part of our familiar sense of life flow, that is when money starts to blind us from reality. In this regard, politicians want to do good, but they don’t love us. Raising taxes makes them rich, and they also fall victim to the same monsters as the rich. They think having money shows the rich are evil, and they have more money they control than the rich they condemn.
Myth: Society Knows Best
There is great value in council. There is such a thing as common sense. Yet, there is also such a thing as common nonsense. Common beliefs are familiar beliefs, and familiarity gives us comfort when it is true and when it is not. This can be mingled with our need to connect and find acceptance, common human needs, to make us capitulate to the louder voices. Loud could be volume or quantity in this challenge.
Here is the question? When it comes to real answers, do all facts lead to truth? When is logic just a rationalization? Progress is always a good thing. In society, there are many foolish voices that call change progress. They cry out with condescending terms to people who resist change that they promise will bring progress.
Society comes in different packages. It runs the distance between what my friends think to political correctness.
Understanding the Quest for Answers
Lies are always our enemies, but facts are not always our friends. In our quest for truth, we need to understand that facts can be beacons to guide us to truth and blinders from the truths we need. There is a difference between facts and truths. Beware of those who present a fact as truth. Especially beware of presenting facts as truth.
So facts are like the bricks of a cobblestone road. They give us something solid and faithful for our journey to and beyond the discovery of truth. Facts also can be used to build roads that fork away from the truth. So always accept a fact as a fact. Then question if that fact collaborates to find truth and guide us or if the fact is a distraction to lead us off the right path.
Confirmation Bias
The myths above all love confirmation bias. Nobody likes to be wrong. And when we have done wrong, we look for someone else to blame to make ourselves feel better about a bad decision. This is where the power of meekness becomes essential to avoid the blinding power of confirmation bias. Meekness is not believing we are dumb but believing truth is approachable for us.
Meekness can help us understand someone else without feeling like understanding them means we have to agree with them. Our views are not made fragile by understanding the views of others. Please note there are boundaries on understanding. We don’t need to steal to understand thieves or any other evil. My point is that beyond evil, people can take different paths to winning. Our path is not the only winning path as long as people are doing good.
Easy or Hard
Answers, the truth doesn’t lay in the classification of easy or hard with any predictability. It doesn’t lay in the realm of fast or slow. When people promise us the fast and easy road, we should beware. If we are struggling from seeking shortcuts all the time, the goal is not to make things hard. The goal is to find the reality of the work required.
If we have dug ourselves into a hole, that is where we are now. Life will be better if we shift our thinking, and we may have losses we didn’t expect. The losses don’t prevent us from improving our situation. If things are lost, resisting that reality can also become a blinder. In a way, that is another form of confirmation bias preventing us from accepting our current reality and following the correct road. This doesn’t mean we are losers. It only means ignoring loss won’t correct our situation. Reality is the best footing to a better future.
Compound Intrest
Regular steady progress is compounding friends. As we walk through life, we see the numbers add up. Yet, like investing in good investments, when we check the balance, the total is more than we added. Another layer here is when we look at the compounding interest, we measure the value by what is just beyond the horizon.
Hear, near, and a long way off. Our investment in knowledge or financial freedom is always only within the reach of here. Our vision is here and near. To see far away or into the future takes time and proof beyond a few fancy facts.
Testimonies help influence us, but those are facts. Some people looking for our money compel us to act on the testimonies of others. Often these people don’t even know the typical result of their product or service. They just know they have something they want you to buy and testimonies of people where it seems to have worked. We need proof that it typically works. It would be even better to know where it didn’t work, the exceptions. Beware of vendors who cannot answer those questions.
That is key to making good investments that gather resources that compound. It is also good for not consuming the resources we have working in our favor. Haste is an unfaithful mindset. When a vendor has a special, is it benevolent or enticing? If the opportunity is a distraction from your long-term investing, beware. If the compound interest is a faithful road, don’t detour on what we should recognize as a gamble. The secret to staying on the solid path, in this case, is contentment and satisfaction.
Contentment teaches us happiness is available here. It doesn’t lead us to complacency. It prevents us from being distracted. Satisfaction teaches us to enjoy good and not miss the moment because a better moment could have been experienced. Satisfaction doesn’t prevent us from investing. It keeps us from wasting resources in the moment that can be collected for opportunities to invest in the future. Without satisfaction, our resources are spent on the wrong opportunities, or perhaps it may prevent us from having the resources to invest at all.
Today life is good. The journey is good. Challenges are like road bumps on the path, different challenges for each of us. The answers are not controlling the future. They are influencing it.
How will you influence your future today?
