As mentioned previously, I was recently leafing through a book at the library discussing Japanese martial arts (I believe it was Budo Secrets) when I came upon a sidebar that listed the ten evils that prevent people from improving themselves.

As I read through the list, I couldn’t help but see how each of these evils – or character flaws, as I would perhaps describe them – have held me back in my finances, my career, and my life in different ways.

While thinking about these ten terms, I consulted a dictionary and spent some time reflecting on how each of these has held me back – and can hold you back, too.

(I decided to highlight these evils with some wonderful Creative Commons photographs that illustrate each of these traps.)

Here are the final two evils from that list. You can check out the first pair of evils, the second pair of evils, the third pair of evils, and the fourth pair of evils as well.

Red Light Camera Fine $324: Welcome to the Police State, by Alex Proimos

Contempt
The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless.

An alarming portion of society today seems to run on a concept of contempt for anything that’s different than themselves. Politics is filled with Republicans full of contempt for Democrats and vice versa. Visit the comment section of any popular site and you see tons of contempt for the writer of the article, the subject at hand, and often other commenters in that particularly useless combination of contempt mixed with anonymity.

Of course, there’s a reason that these cultural elements known so much for their contempt-filled behavior are seen with disdain by so many. Contempt is a deep and negative character flaw that drives people away. It only attracts the small sliver of people who happen to agree with you.

Even worse, contempt tends to drive further contempt. Once you consider it acceptable to view one person or group or item with contempt, it becomes ever easier to view another person or group or item or idea with contempt. And so it continues.

Contempt blinds you to the worth in the people, things, places, and ideas you have contempt for. Nothing is perfect, but if a flaw in one trait brings along contempt for the entire package, then you are only limiting yourself by discarding something (or a set of things) that has great value.

In opposition to contempt is respect. Respect does not mean belief that something is perfect. It merely means that you believe that something has value, flaws and all. Respect means holding back your negativity when it serves no real purpose. Respect means building relationships where both people have value rather than one person having contempt for the other.

You can build a respectful nature by holding back on your negative statements, even when they’re protected by a cloud of anonymity. Every negative statement you make breaks down the wall between the emotions in your head and the words and actions you take in the presence of others, even if anonymous. It fuels further negative emotions and makes it even easier to view others as contemptible and treat them in that fashion.

Instead, look for the positive value in everything you see. Snarkiness has almost no value. Neither does disrespect. They both seek solely to de-value things. Take the opposite approach and look for the value in things. How can this thing make your life better? How can it improve the lives of others that I know – or even others that I don’t know?

Go even further and relate the positive value in the things that you see. When people are talking about something, point out the positives, not the negatives. There are plenty of people out there that relish in the negatives and delight in seeing them. Look at things differently and find value in them.

Someday I’ll have a named chair in the Humanities division,by Quinn Dombrowski

Conceit
Overly high self-esteem; vain pride.

Conceited people aren’t enjoyable to be around. Their high opinion of themselves makes it difficult to converse and to interact in any sort of equal way. They wear their achievements as a badge and often stretch those achievements to an incomprehensible level. You know how good they are because they tell you how good they are.

Not only that, conceited folk often have a miscalculated view of their own abilities. They’ll lead people into a situation while being underprepared for it, as their conceit tells them that they’re ready. They’ll turn down genuine offers of help that could put them in a better place because their vain pride makes them turn it away.

Conceit makes people who are without work not go to the food pantry. Conceit makes CEOs make incredibly poor decisions against the advice of the people around them. Conceit makes people in the office believe they can pretty much engage in whatever behavior they so choose.

In each case, conceit eventually makes those you rely on turn against you and can also make your overall life situation far worse. Being proud beyond reason eventually results in a crash – and it’s one that is often painful and difficult to recover from.

The opposite of conceit is humility. Humility means that, regardless of your internal sense of self-worth, you interact with the world with a sense of modesty and respect for the value of others. When others tell you things, you listen to what they say and try to incorporate it into what you know rather than finding ways to blow them off and prove them wrong. When you interact with others, they come first, not you.

Humility can be practiced quite easily. If you achieve something, don’t bring it up to everyone you know. If it’s worthwhile enough, they’ll hear about it from other sources. It’s fine to discuss your achievements if others bring them up, but if they don’t, keep quiet. Eventually, your reputation will precede you, which is far better than your mouth preceding your reputation.

Along those same lines, minimize your achievements when you discuss them. Don’t try to make them seem large. Instead, try to make them seem small with your words. Other people will draw their own conclusions about the merit of your achievements without you having to tell them about it.

Never forget that people are far more impressed by your actions than by your words describing those actions. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Let your actions define who you are, not your re-telling or bragging about those actions.

The post The Ten Evils (Part Five) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

As mentioned previously, I was recently leafing through a book at the library discussing Japanese martial arts (I believe it was Budo Secrets) when I came upon a sidebar that listed the ten evils that prevent people from improving themselves.

As I read through the list, I couldn’t help but see how each of these evils – or character flaws, as I would perhaps describe them – have held me back in my finances, my career, and my life in different ways.

While thinking about these ten terms, I consulted a dictionary and spent some time reflecting on how each of these has held me back – and can hold you back, too.

(I decided to highlight these evils with some wonderful Creative Commons photographs that illustrate each of these traps.)

Here are the seventh and eighth evils from that list. You can check out the first pair of evils, the second pair of evils, and the third pair of evils as well.

Distrust, by Ashiful Haque

Distrust
To have no assurance about the reliability of someone or something.

Distrust is poison.

Distrust is poison to one’s own skills. You doubt that you can accomplish things, so the set of things you can actually accomplish grows smaller. Your skill set shrinks and you become a less valuable part of your workplace and of society in general.

Distrust is poison to one’s ability to complete any sufficiently complex task. If you are filled with distrust for those around you, you doubt their ability to carry through with their part, thus you invest your own time and energy into shoring up the part of others, which reduces the quality of your performance and the project as a whole.

Distrust is poison to one’s ability to build relationships. If you continually doubt the reliability of your friends and partners, you make it impossible to build a truly close relationship with these people.

Distrust ruins everything.

In opposition to distrust, obviously, is trust. Trust in your own skills. Trust in the reliability of your coworkers and partners. Trust in your friends and loved ones.

Trust is not always a guarantee of success, as we’ve all had people around us that were unreliable. Trust doesn’t mean acting without care. It means believing in the reliability of those who have shown reliability to those in the past. It means focusing on your part in a project to make it the best it can be rather than making a mediocre mess of everyone’s parts.

Trusting is easy. Start by believing in the best of others. Believe that they’ll come through for you, and both tell them so and show them that you think so through your actions. Good people – and the vast majority of people are good people – thrive on the trust of others.

You should also trust in yourself. Take on the challenging tasks and don’t back down. Believe that you can pull off a great result in any area if you invest the time and effort. Don’t assume that you’re unreliable when you’re doing something challenging like defeating an addiction. Instead, move through life making wise choices and believing in your own willpower.

Trusting in yourself and trusting in others is the surest way to accomplish great things and bring about strong relationships.

Hesitant, by Mac (ammgramm)

Hesitation
A suspension of opinion or action.

One major part of saving for retirement is deciding which investments one is going to choose to put their retirement money into. Often, there’s a multitude of options just within one’s 401(k) plans, let alone when considering outside investments.

This abundance of investment often causes hesitation among potential investors. They want to start saving for retirement, but when they start seeing the multitude of investments, they stop. They put it off. They give up and don’t save.

This is a crucial mistate, one caused by hesitation. Once you’ve made the decision to save for retirement, you’re far better off starting now and choosing an investment completely at random (and then moving money around later if you so choose) than you are in hesitating. Decisiveness wins the day here, because the longer you save, the more you’ll save and the more time you’ll have for growth no matter what investment you choose.

In other words, the imperative to start retirement savings should trump hesitation about the actual investment type.

Hesitation always has costs, and often those costs are tremendous. Spending a day dithering about whether to help a friend can ruin a friendship. Whether the answer is yes or no, you’re far better off gathering the information you need and giving an answer quickly. The same phenomenon is immensely true in the workplace. Once you gather just a bit of information in the now, a quick decision is far more valuable than hesitation.

The opposite of hesitation is decisiveness. Decisiveness is not recklessness. Decisiveness means the ability to make a firm decision once there’s adequate information to make it. Recklessness is making the decision without adequate information.

Sometimes being decisive means not having perfect information. Yes, sometimes being decisive does mean making an imperfect choice. However, the rewards of decisiveness are great, as are the costs of hesitation.

One great tactic I’ve found to avoid unnecessary hesitation is to simply live by the rule that if I can’t state exactly why I’m not making a decision, I make a decision. It is fine to delay a decision if you have a clear reason for doing so, but if there is no clear reason, hesitation is eroding the current situation and making your options worse, not better.

Another key factor is asking yourself if the reason you’re hesitating really has any bearing on the situation at hand. The retirement issue is a great example of this. The decision as to what retirement investment you choose doesn’t have any bearing on the decision to save for retirement or not. You can put every dime of your retirement savings into your account as cash and then sit on the cash until you’re ready to decide. The key thing is that you’re saving, which is a separate decision than the precise investment choice.

Decisiveness singles you out as a doer, which means that you always have added value, whether it be to yourself or to others.

The post The Ten Evils (Part Four) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

As mentioned previously, I was recently leafing through a book at the library discussing Japanese martial arts (I believe it was Budo Secrets) when I came upon a sidebar that listed the ten evils that prevent people from improving themselves.

As I read through the list, I couldn’t help but see how each of these evils – or character flaws, as I would perhaps describe them – have held me back in my finances, my career, and my life in different ways.

While thinking about these ten terms, I consulted a dictionary and spent some time reflecting on how each of these has held me back – and can hold you back, too.

(I decided to highlight these evils with some wonderful Creative Commons photographs that illustrate each of these traps.)

Here are the fifth and sixth evils from that list. You can check out the first two evils and the second two evils as well.

Dangerous Risk Adrenaline Suicide by Fear of Falling, by epSos

Fear
A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.

All of us experience fear at some point. We’re afraid of illness. We’re afraid of losing our jobs. We’re afraid of losing the things we hold dear in our life. We experience phobias – one of mine is a fear of heights that’s almost paralyzing.

Fear drives us to make mistakes. We walk away from things we should be addressing. We become obsessed with things that should be trivial. We avoid situations that might provide great value to us.

It was my fear of the possible economic consequences of pursuing a degree in English lit that kept me away from writing for a decade and a half. It was my fear of losing my soon-to-be wife that caused me to turn down several job offers during my last year of college, more than one of which would have been quite intriguing. It was my fear of looking like a “loser” that kept me spending money and falling into debt during my early adulthood.

Fear drove me in every instance. Fear drove me away from my potential. It pushed me from what I could be into something much smaller.

In opposition to fear is bravery. This doesn’t mean the lack of fear, but merely control over it. It’s an understanding that great things are accomplished at times if fear is overcome and it’s also an understanding that some events in life simply cannot be controlled, so fearing them is a useless emotion.

Bravery means following your passions. It means not choosing your college major due to expected income, but due to what you’re most passionate about and excited about. It means choosing the lower-paying job because of the opportunities and the upside.

Bravery means not doing what everyone else is doing. It means living frugally. It means rejecting crass consumerism. It means not lusting after the same material objects that others lust after. It means defining your own goals and chasing them, even if they’re much different than everyone else. It means having your own hobbies and interests, regardless of what those around you think is “cool.”

Bravery means being your own person and taking on what you fear. Doing that brings happiness and a fuller life. Doing that consistently eventually brings respect from those around you.

Doubt, by Shahram Sharif

Doubt
To lack confidence in; to disbelieve, question, or suspect.

We don’t believe that we’re good enough to handle the task at hand, so we make an alternate choice that leads us down a sadder road. We hesitate – and in that moment of hesitation, our chance is lost.

Doubt leads us to second-guess our choices and to dwell on past mistakes instead of merely learning from our errors (and successes) and moving forward into a bright future. Doubt leads to a sense of failure, one that’s hard to escape from.

A hint of doubt is good, as it tells us that we can always sharpen our skills. More than a taste, however, and we convince ourselves that we’re not up to the task.

Opposing doubt is confidence. Not overconfidence, mind you. Overconfidence results in making impossible claims, acting arrogant, taking on unrealistic situations, and often failing to back up your statements. Overconfidence means looking like a buffoon and letting other people down.

Confidence, on the other hand, simply means that you’re certain of the truth of everything that you say and that, when you’ve chosen a course or path, you’re certain that it’s the best path. Hand in hand with having confidence is having reasons to back up your belief, while overconfidence means that you don’t have reasons to back up your belief and doubt means that you don’t take on a belief even in the face of reason.

I feel constant slight doubt about my writing, yet I keep writing. That’s confidence trumping doubt. That’s confidence using doubt as a push to keep improving, but not as enough of a hindrance to stop moving forward.

How can you build confidence? You build confidence by doing instead of avoiding. Try new things, particularly challenging ones. Tell youself that you can do this and do it.

If you fail, don’t dwell on the failure. Instead, look for what you did wrong (and the multitude of things you did right), pick yourself up, and try it again using what you learned. Keep the things you did right and try a different approach with the things you did wrong.

The more you try, the more you’ll succeed. The more you succeed, the more doubt will melt away from your heart.

The post The Ten Evils (Part Three) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

As mentioned previously, I was recently leafing through a book at the library discussing Japanese martial arts (I believe it was Budo Secrets) when I came upon a sidebar that listed the ten evils that prevent people from improving themselves.

As I read through the list, I couldn’t help but see how each of these evils – or character flaws, as I would perhaps describe them – have held me back in my finances, my career, and my life in different ways.

While thinking about these ten terms, I consulted a dictionary and spent some time reflecting on how each of these has held me back – and can hold you back, too.

(I decided to highlight these evils with some wonderful Creative Commons photographs that illustrate each of these traps.)

Here are the third and fourth evils from that list. You can check out the first two evils as well.

Greed, by Liz West

Greed
A selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved.

Whenever I think about greed, my mind turns to an idea I’ve talked about many times on The Simple Dollar, the balance between abundance and scarcity.

A mindset of scarcity is a breeding ground for greed. It believes that there is a certain limited amount of anything and that the only way to get ahead is by grabbing what you can and holding on tight. If someone else gets a raise, it doesn’t mean that the company is doing well, it means only that you’re getting less – at least in the mind of a person with the scarcity perspective.

A mindset of abundance, on the other hand, believes that there is an unlimited amount of most things and that grabbing and holding onto things is rarely the way to get the most out of your life and career. If someone else gets a raise, that’s reason to celebrate because it indicates that the company is doing well and that a valued co-worker is getting appreciated for their contributions. In the mindset of abundance, someone else getting something is only a net positive for you by association.

A mindset of scarcity makes it very hard to succeed in life. Your primary drive is to take resources and keep them from others. Alliances only serve to enhance how much you accumulate – and when an alliance doesn’t enhance your situation any more, it can be tossed aside. A mindset of scarcity is a long sequence of burnt bridges, financial difficulties, and dead ends.

A mindset of abundance is a source of success. It enables you to step back and see the broader picture. You’re able to make choices that don’t necessarily serve your needs, but improve the situation of those around you. A consistent habit of doing this creates a situation around you that’s full of lasting value and, often, lasting wealth.

The opposite of greed is generosity, and it’s a powerful virtue to have. When you aid others in a genuinely meaningful way, that aid lifts their life in a positive direction. By direct consequence of the things you share with that person, your life is lifted in a positive direction.

Listen to others. Don’t just wait for them to take a breath so you can interject your own thoughts.

Celebrate when others succeed. Their success is never a negative for you, even if they’re getting the exact promotion you hoped to get.

Share your knowledge, your skills, and your time, particularly when what you have to give comes easy for you and very hard to the recipient.

These are acts of generosity and abundance. These acts serve to build up those around you, and we as humans always strive to meet the best of those around us. Raise them up and you raise yourself up by association.

Don’t take pictures of me while I’m fighting!, by Tambako the Jaguar

Anger
A strong feeling of displeasure, hostility or antagonism towards someone or something.

Anger is an incredibly strong emotion, one that often clouds our ability to make good decisions in a situation. When we’re driven by anger, we lose touch with our own ability to read situations and respond appropriately. Even worse, an angry person often distorts how others react, as interacting with an angry person is much different than interacting with a calm person.

Anger drives people away. It alters our ability to understand those around us. It reduces their ability and desire to be fully honest with us out of fear of our anger. It creates relationships based not on mutual respect and trust, but on fear and careful manipulation.

Anger is the killer of strong relationships.

The opposite of anger is peacefulness and calmness, the ability to address a situation without your own emotions boiling over the top. Not only does it maintain your own ability to make good decisions in a situation, it also keeps the people around you from moving into an emotion-based state from which little good can come.

One of the most useful tactics for managing one’s anger and encouraging peacefulness is to simply reduce one’s stress level. When I am under stress, I am sometimes quick to anger. Whenever that happens, I always see later on that not only did I take actions that caused the situation to turn out worse, I also caused the people I interacted with to interact with me differently, both then and often afterwards. It’s yet another reason why it’s worthwile (for me) to focus on minimizing my stress whenever and wherever I can.

I tend to de-stress through exercise and meditation. Whenever I exercise and meditate daily, my stress level is naturally lower and I’m able to maintain a level of peacefulness in my life, which is the backbone of the strong relationships in my life.

I also de-stress by getting adequate sleep. When I am exhausted, I tend to respond emotionally to everything in both positive and negative ways. When I am fully rested, I am able to check my emotions, particularly my negative ones.

Anger is a natural feeling, but it should never drive you. It can be controlled and, for the sake of your relationships and your life, it should be controlled.

The post The Ten Evils (Part Two) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Recently, I was leafing through a book at the library discussing Japanese martial arts (I believe it was Budo Secrets) when I came upon a sidebar that listed the ten evils that prevent people from improving themselves.

As I read through the list, I couldn’t help but see how each of these evils – or character flaws, as I would perhaps describe them – have held me back in my finances, my career, and my life in different ways.

While thinking about these ten terms, I consulted a dictionary and spent some time reflecting on how each of these has held me back – and can hold you back, too.

(I decided to highlight these ten evils with some wonderful Creative Commons photographs that illustrate each of these traps.)

Insolence, by Todd van Goethem

Insolence
Arrogant conduct; insulting, bold behaviour or attitude.

Arrogance and insolence come from a sense that you can’t truly learn or obtain anything of value from this situation. Because of that, you believe the current situation has less value than you do.

If you treat others in a way that indicates to them that they have less value than you, then all you’re doing is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Believing that you’ll get little from this situation and acting that way ensures that you will get much less from this situation than you might have otherwise.

You’ll overlook things. You’ll convince others to not reveal things to you. You’ll walk away from the situation far poorer than you might have otherwise.

A far more useful attitude to have in any situation is an attitude of respectfulness. Every single situation we’re faced with in life has the opportunity to reveal something valuable to us, either directly or by putting pieces in place for future things. That value, in every situation and interaction, deserves respect.

You can achieve this in several ways. First, keep your internal critic in check. If you open up with criticism, the other person is likely to close up on you and you’ll not find much of value in the rest of the conversation (ideas, a job offer, ideas you can learn from and apply in your life, etc.).

Second, if you can’t think of anything to say that isn’t critical, ask a question that’s actually a question and not just a (not really) vieled criticism. Look for things that do have value to you by probing deeper.

Finally, pay attention. There are things of value in every situation if you give it your attention and look for it. Every article I read has some value in it for me, even if it’s something simple like showing me a cultural difference or a perspective difference between myself and someone else. It allows me to see the world through someone else’s eyes and that vision often reveals all kinds of things. That has great value, but an insolent attitude quickly tosses it aside.

Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, by Keith Allison

Overconfidence
An excessive degree of self-assurance.

Most people are familiar with the decision of the basketball player LeBron James to leave his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and play with a different team that already had two star players (Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh) that were friends of his.

I respected that decision. I can understand the appeal of wanting to associate closely with friends. I can understand the desire to want the highest quality team, because almost all work is on some level a team game. His method of announcing his decision might have been a bit schlocky, but even then, it was just one way of capitalizing on a flood of media interest.

What made me wary of this move was what he did the following night, when he appeared publicly with his new teammates and discussed how they were going to win eight championships. That type of statement, indicating that he believed his team would dominate the league for the next decade, encouraged a lot of people (including myself) to root for any team other than the Heat.

It’s one thing to be confident and say things like “I believe with this team we have assembled, we have an excellent chance of winning the title this year if we put together some hard work and come together as a team.” It’s an entirely different thing to claim you’re going to win eight titles.

The result of this is that this team spent the entire year receiving an extremely negative response almost everywhere they went and, when the season ended, it was not their team holding up the title.

It’s good to be internally confident and have a sense that we can take on life’s challenges. It’s sometimes good to even be somewhat externally confident and willing to step up to the plate in a challenging situation.

It’s never good to over-promise and under-deliver, particularly when your promise is beyond reason. You lose the respect of those around you and you turn potential friends and opportunities into enemies and lost chances.

The superior attitude here is modesty. Under-promise what you can achieve. Offer respect towards others. Play down your own contributions and play up the contributions of others. Invest your resources in a way that will allow you to cover what you promise with some potential upside if things go well.

Then, when you over-deliver, you look like a true winner, one that can hold the title and still have the respect of those around you.

Modesty and humility are always valuable tactics. They will help you build relationships that will help you in your professional career, your personal life, and your financial life, too.

The post The Ten Evils (Part One) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.