Hello beautiful people,
Last week we covered the first step to building wealth. I'll link that newsletter below so you can check it out.
But today we’re going to talk about the last thing that Think and Grow Rich reveals, the thing that makes everything else futile.
The thing that will kill your success much faster than any amount of poor planning, lack of funds, social awkwardness, or lack of opportunity.
We’re going to talk about fear.
There are 6 fundamental types of fear, which we all have in varying proportion.
These are the 6 fears, in order of how common they are:
Every other fear can be boiled down to one on this list.
Because I know you're a busy bee, we’ll only talk about the most destructive one today: The Fear of Poverty.
Let’s be real, no one wants to be poor. And you would think that a fear of poverty would work as a motivator to improve your situation, like how the immediate fear of starvation would drive you to find food.
But unlike an immediate threat that trigger action, deep-seated fears work in the background to paralyse us.
So what impact does the fear of poverty have on you?
This passage captures it far better than I ever could:
“This fear paralyzes the faculty of reason, destroys the faculty of imagination, kills off self-reliance, undermines enthusiasm, discourages initiative, leads to uncertainty of purpose, encourages procrastination, wipes out enthusiasm and makes self-control an impossibility. 

It takes the charm from one’s personality, destroys the possibility of accurate thinking, diverts concentration of effort; it masters persistence, turns the will-power into nothingness, destroys ambition, beclouds the memory and invites failure in every conceivable form; it kills love and assassinates the finer emotions of the heart, discourages friendship and invites disaster in a hundred forms, leads to sleeplessness, misery and unhappiness…”
I’ll include the end of the quote later on because it’s a banger, but in simple terms:
It sucks the life out of you, stops you making objective decisions and puts you on a path of seeking the bare minimum in life of “security” and comfort, instead of the one that wakes you up every morning, excited about what the day will bring. Essentially, it turns you into shadow of your potential self.
It’s also the most difficult fear to master. Which is why so many people go through their whole lives burdened by it.
How much are you controlled by the fear of poverty? What does that look like in your life?
While the focus of Think and Grow Rich is on money, this applies to every aspect of your life.
This is how a fear of poverty manifests itself in your life, and what you can do about it:
"Indifference. Commonly expressed through lack of ambition; willingness to tolerate poverty; acceptance of whatever compensation life may offer without protest; mental and physical laziness; lack of initiative, imagination, enthusiasm and self-control. Indecision. The habit of permitting others to do one’s thinking. Staying “on the fence.”"
You cannot accept situations that you’re not happy with, out of fear of taking the risk and not finding something better. You cannot let other people decide what you should do with your life.
"Self-Doubt. Generally expressed through alibis and excuses designed to cover up, explain away, or apologize for one’s failures, sometimes expressed in the form of envy of those who are successful, or by criticizing them."
Envy is a waste of energy. Envy means you have work to do. You cannot make excuses for why your life isn’t the way you want it to be.
"Worry. Usually expressed by finding fault with others… intemperance in the use of alcoholic drink, sometimes through the use of narcotics; nervousness, lack of poise and self-consciousness."
Very closely linked to the next one...
"Over-caution. The habit of looking for the negative side of every circumstance, thinking and talking of possible failure instead of concentrating upon the means of succeeding. Knowing all the roads to disaster, but never searching for the plans to avoid failure. Waiting for “the right time” to begin putting ideas and plans into action, until the waiting becomes a permanent habit. Remembering those who have failed, and forgetting those who have succeeded. Seeing the hole in the doughnut, but overlooking the doughnut."
If someone told you, you had to have 30 failures failures under your belt before you achieved your goal, wouldn’t you want to get through those 30 failures as fast as possible? See the whole doughnut, not just the hole in the middle. That means asking, “how can it go right?” Instead of “how can it go wrong?”.
"Pessimism, leading to indigestion, poor elimination, auto-intoxication, bad breath and bad disposition. "
Don’t be pessimistic or your breath will be stinky, and you won’t be able to poo. Be a definite optimist (I could write a whole newsletter about this - actually, I will).
(This next one is long, so I tried to include only the most relevant ones)
"Procrastination. The habit of putting off until tomorrow that which should have been done last year. Spending enough time in creating alibis and excuses to have done the job…
….Compromising with difficulties instead of harnessing and using them as stepping stones to advancement…
…Bargaining with life for a penny, instead of demanding prosperity, opulence, riches, contentment and happiness.
…Planning what to do if and when overtaken by failure, instead of burning all bridges and making retreat impossible.
….Weakness of, and often total lack of self-confidence, definiteness of purpose, self-control, initiative, enthusiasm, ambition, thrift and sound reasoning ability.
…Expecting poverty instead of demanding riches.
…Association with those who accept poverty instead of seeking the company of those who demand and receive riches."
That last one is crucial, complacency is contagious. It's been said many times before, but choose your company wisely. Stop “bargaining with life for a penny”, meaning don’t just take what you can get. Demand better for yourself, and most importantly, from yourself. You will end up with the outcome that is acceptable to you. Start now, no later.
While the book specifically refers to money, this applies to a poverty in all aspects of your life (money’s just a social construct anyway).
Poverty in health, poverty in relationships, poverty in purpose. As an easy example, you’ll see these symptoms manifest themselves - almost word for word - in an obese person who feels unable to change their situation (except the part about the doughnut… they probably see the whole doughnut, not just the hole in the middle).
I was once infected with this fear, so much so, that I spent too much of my life half-heartedly pursuing “safe” careers that other people told me I should, just because I was afraid of being poor! Then I realised what I actually wanted… was freedom, so I moved into a van, and the rest is history.
Here’s the thing, the fear of poverty is the most common…
“…despite the obvious truth that we live in a world of over-abundance of everything the heart could desire, with nothing standing between us and our desires, excepting lack of a definite purpose.”
Nature has given us absolute control over only one thing in this short life: our thoughts. And at the fundamental level, this is all a fear is.
Free yourself from it.
That's all for today, so I’ll leave you with a question to think about:


What is the fear of poverty stopping you from doing today?
To your freedom and independence,
Rob
Wild Minds Community
PS. You may also like our previous newsletters:
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(Last weeks) The First Thing You Need to Build Wealth
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Who Controls What We Eat? And Why?
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The Hidden Prison of Conformity
