How to Get Rid of Financial Anxiety Forever: Just 2 Steps to Financial Freedom

DMDmitry Mugenov

What is this fear of losing money? Even when you have an income, have sorted it out and it's stable, or have earned a lot of money, the fear is still there for many people. I'm realizing now that I have something like that. What is it? What's the nature of this fear of losing money? What are its signs?

AVAlexander Volchek

When we start examining the nature of fear around money, the first thing a person needs to do is look at what caused their fear of losing it. What is the cause? It can be very different for different people, although the causes often overlap and share certain features. Why are they different? Because fear of losing money arises regardless of how much money a person has. Fear of losing money arises regardless of their position in society. Fear of losing money arises regardless of their family situation, how many children they have, whether they own a business or have a job, or what country they live in. Fear of losing money develops from different factors specific to that person. Why am I emphasizing this? It's very important to see and recognize it when you begin working with this fear, because the fear is remarkable. It's often very hard to tell whether it's gone. You think it's gone, and then it appears out of nowhere, just as you've described. The first thing to understand, again, is that someone with a great deal of money can still fear losing it.

I personally knew someone who had more than a billion dollars and was afraid of losing money. And of course I know people who have no money at all, or only a very small amount, and have no fear of losing it or not having it. By losing money, I don't mean losing savings. I mean losing the availability of money—for example, the ongoing ability to earn or receive it. Huge numbers of people live on a small pension of a hundred dollars and simply live. It's enough for them. Yet someone else doesn't have enough with a hundred thousand dollars and is endlessly afraid of losing it. This is very important to recognize before working with the causes. If you don't truly understand it, it will be very hard to get to the cause you're asking about. When we begin looking at why this cause is there and why the fear arises, there's a basic first layer. We'll get to the fundamentals, but first there's this layer: there's always some simple, immediate reason you're afraid of losing money. For example, you realize your business model is unstable.

For example, a law will change in six months and you'll lose your business. Or you see your company laying off a lot of people, and that generates the fear. Or your wife constantly wears everyone down emotionally at home, telling you that nothing will work out and threatening, “If it doesn't work out, I'll leave.” You start fearing you'll lose your money. Or someone has a lot of children and fears losing money because they don't know how they'll support the family. Someone who was single now has a family, or moved from one country to another and starts worrying because they don't know how they'll make a living. Everyone can probably find reasons like these and arrange them into some kind of range. But these are always indirect factors, not the root cause. That's the first thing to recognize: a reason like that isn't the root cause of the fear. Again, the person thinks they're afraid of losing money because everyone at work is being laid off.

But the source of that fear is only indirectly connected with that. It may indeed have been the trigger that stirred up the fear, but why was the fear stirred up in the first place? Separately, we could discuss how someone ended up in a situation where they had problems with money at all. Some people work their whole lives in companies or businesses and never encounter a loss of money. The companies earn more, their work brings in more, more employers want to hire them, their businesses do better. Life flows quite calmly. Some people have never experienced this in very stable systems. You might work steadily as a sales manager or a store associate at Walmart: one year, two, ten, twenty, thirty, forty years. You've been a Walmart associate for forty years. There's a well-known example at Walmart, too. How many people work there—a million? I don't know. Some received shares or stock options long ago and are dollar millionaires.

They still work at the checkout, just as they did before. They received those options long ago, but they keep working. That's an interesting circumstance, too. Why does one person want some kind of supposed development, excitement, an emotional high, interesting projects, and other things, while another doesn't? Let me emphasize this: the cause of fear does not lie on that rational level. You can work at a company that's laying everyone off and not fear losing money. You can understand that you might be fired without having that fear. You feel sure you'll find a job tomorrow. Other people have jobs they essentially can't be fired from, yet fear being fired and running out of money, even though no one is going to fire them. Someone else would definitely hire them the very next day. They still fear it. I know people like that—not just one. They keep feeling afraid even though they're in a situation where nothing is going to happen to them.

And there are people in very complicated situations and businesses where everything is extremely risky, yet this fear never arises. Its root causes lie much deeper than the basic experience of years or decades within a lifetime. In most cases, they're karmic or inherited. These causes are formed incredibly deeply. Put simply, for some people they may have developed in childhood. In more complex cases, they may have developed outside this life. Fear of losing money is a very deep structure. Knowing that, the important action isn't simply to get away from the fear. It's to develop a state in which you can calmly remain with it and observe it over a long period. At the same time, if you know you fear losing money, you need to approach money somewhat more rationally, including beginning to understand where it comes from.

What does approaching money more rationally mean? Suppose your money suddenly disappears: you buy an asset with some degree of risk and lose the money. Instead of putting it in a deposit account, you buy shares in a company, and the company goes bankrupt. You need to understand that this is risky for you because your fear could become so intense that you can't cope with it. I recommend that people with such a strong fear observe themselves very carefully when spending, managing, and planning their money. Why? On one hand, fear of losing money is fear. But when it supposedly disappears, a person can experience a kind of euphoria about money. Imagine someone who has no fear and earns money. They assess it from a place of, “Great, that's nice. It worked out; it didn't work out.” Now imagine someone with a huge fear about money who starts earning it. Imagine they try to resolve the fear with money. The fear hasn't gone anywhere—its source hasn't disappeared. They suddenly undergo a very significant emotional shift.

That strong emotional shift can lead them to act irrationally: making absurd purchases, opening strange businesses, investing in the wrong things, or doing strange things that have nothing to do with money.

Strange things. When you have fear around money, you need to pay attention not only when you spend it or have less of it, but also when you earn it. That's incredibly important. If you're earning too much while the fear seems to be disappearing—it is being dampened, in any case—very peculiar things can happen afterward. It's important to keep observing and to recognize that this observation can last for years. Rather than going into the possibility that it could last your whole life, let's say years. You need to learn to stay aware of and gauge this state. That's very important. Once you learn to assess it, you'll be able to respond a little earlier in bad moments and good ones. That will let you make better, more rational decisions about money. What's the great problem with fear around money? When you earn money while carrying that fear, you'll make a huge number of mistakes with money. In fact, this applies to any fear.

If you have fear about your relationship with your husband or wife, you'll make mistakes there. If you're afraid about raising your children, you'll make mistakes. If you're afraid in your interactions with your parents or in your professional work, you'll make mistakes there, too. Fear is a signal that this area needs work. It's a signal that you'll make mistakes.

DMDmitry Mugenov

All right, but what do you do about it? What are the solutions? Admit you have the fear—the first thing is to look at it, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes.

DMDmitry Mugenov

And what else? How do you work with these fears? What practical solutions or steps are there?

AVAlexander Volchek

I gave you a second, very powerful solution: understand that you'll need to observe this fear for a long time. It might not seem like a solution to you, but it's fundamental. You want to solve it. You're asking me, “Can you give me a solution?” because you don't like my solutions.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Oh, you're saying that—

AVAlexander Volchek

What's more, you say, “I've admitted it. Let's move on.” But I'm telling you that when you really acknowledge it, you'll frame the question completely differently. You won't need solutions. Most people don't acknowledge that it's active or recognize its presence. Besides, I didn't say in this discussion that you should admit it. Did I say that?

DMDmitry Mugenov

No, you said you need to see it, rather.

AVAlexander Volchek

I put it differently and gave a different sequence. Anyone watching can reconstruct it by watching this video again. You heard a slightly different sequence—the one you wanted to hear through your fear of money. You keep wanting to resolve fear through your own fear. Fear speaks for you: “I, Volodya, heard you. I'll process it all and take care of it.” That's exactly how your reaction reveals itself. I tell you the solution is long-term observation, and you say, “No, long-term observation doesn't work for me. I want to get rid of the fear.” Wanting to get rid of fear doesn't remove it.

DMDmitry Mugenov

I understand, yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's important to understand its nature. Why does understanding the nature of things like this matter? Because it allows you to make the right decision. Wanting to get rid of fear doesn't allow you to make the right decision at all. Wanting to escape it while you're intensely afraid only makes things worse and leads to wrong decisions. Why? Because that desire is shattered by the fear. It appears unachievable because the fear has grown even stronger. So you'll make the wrong decision. You've just demonstrated exactly that pattern.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Yes, you certainly hit the mark. That's exactly right. I feel the difference between seeing the fear, admitting it, and trying to get rid of it, versus observing it over a long period—

AVAlexander Volchek

And that's all.

DMDmitry Mugenov

While studying its nature.

AVAlexander Volchek

That's all. That's all. Just observe.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Observe.

AVAlexander Volchek

People don't want to do that. You see, it's the hardest thing. You simply need to observe it. Someone comes and asks, “How do I become a good person? How do I develop?” I say, “It's very simple. Every day, look at how you treated other people.” They say, “That's all?” I say, “Try doing it.” I know virtually no one who's managed to do it consistently. Why can't people keep doing it? Because it's a constant confrontation with an awareness of how you treat others. I'm not asking you to flog or beat yourself or mark crosses on the days when you treated people badly. I'm asking you simply to say, “Today I treated people badly. I tried to manipulate this person, take advantage of that one, get something out of another, and win that one over to my side.” Write it down for yourself, and that's it. “Okay, that's the kind of person I am.” Do it the next day, and the next, and the next. It leads to powerful development.