It is difficult to get the right solution when you start out with the wrong premise. If we center ourselves in a false belief system, we become what we believe. An example of that false belief system existed until 1954. It was common belief that no human could run a mile in less than four minutes and live to tell about it. Medically, it was believed at that time that to attempt to run a mile in less than four minutes would bring about certain disaster to the human body. No one in the history of mankind was ever timed running a sub-four minute mile… no one, that is, until Roger Banister. On a sunny Saturday morning, the young Englishman defeated a belief system and certain death by running one mile in 3:59:40. Now recently, record performances in the mile have been run in 3:47:48, and 6 to 10 times daily someone runs a sub-four minute mile.
The real lesson here is that our lives are shaped by this simple fact: We become what we believe. Financially, we assume things to be true that are not, simply because others told us they were true.
Go home, walk into your kitchen, what do you see? You have probably been in that room thousands of times. Now do something different, stand on your kitchen table. Look around. You will see the room from a different perspective. You will notice things you have never seen before even though physically, nothing has changed. I want to challenge you to stand on your table of knowledge about your finances. Take a new look around. Now do you see things differently? Without more knowledge and different perspectives about what you are doing financially, possibly not. But by learning new ideas and concepts about money, your view will change. If something you thought to be true wasn’t true, when would you want to know about it? Right away? It still amazes me that some people continue down the same path, knowing it was wrong for them but refuse to change be cau8se they would have to confront their mistakes. But the decisions to follow these losing financial strategies were based on limited knowledge. Had they been given more knowledge, their lives would have changed. In order to change, we must study how, when, and where we received all of our financial knowledge.