The fear of losing money

Basic emotions are common to all people. We all feel love, anger, sadness, joy, fear, frustration and many more emotions. What makes us stand out from each other is the way we deal with these emotions.

When it comes to finances, the same is true. When risking money, we all experience the feeling of fear. Even the rich... The difference here is how we deal with this fear. Due to limiting beliefs, in most people this fear leads to a "don't risk it, play it safe" thought.

For a few people this fear of losing money leads to the thought "move smart and learn to manage risk".

Same feeling > different thoughts > different action > different financial situation.

The main cause of people's financial problems is fear of losing money. Losing money activates the same structures in the brain as pain and fear.

To better understand what happens in people's brains when they lose money, scientists from University College London examined the brains of 24 volunteers while they took part in a game of chance in which they could win or lose money.

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine what was happening, which functional neural structures were activated in situations of winning or losing money, and finally how they learned from their experiences.

The findings showed that the volunteers learned to accurately predict when they were likely to lose or win money.

This learning took place in an area located deep in the brain called the striatum. It is a striated mass of white and gray matter located in front of the thalamus in each hemisphere of the brain.

The reaction of this brain structure was recorded differently when the prediction led to financial loss or, on the contrary, to financial gain. It was also found that there were amazing similarities between brain reactions due to financial losses and those recorded when people experience pain. Brain neural structures activated by pain have been recorded and identified in previous studies with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The activation of pain-related structures when, according to the brain's predictions, financial loss is about to occur, acts as a defense mechanism that forces us to take immediate defensive measures.

Certainly no one wants to lose money just as they also don't want to experience pain. So it seems to make sense, as the findings in the brain show, that in the same way that we learn and avoid situations that cause pain, so we learn through anticipation to minimize the chances of losing money or property, thereby avoiding pain.

So it's because of the fear of losing money that people act so cautiously, or with terrible self-control, or they just hand their money over to someone else because they think they're an expert and just pray and hope that they'll have it when they need it. When it comes to money, there are many emotional phobias. And they exist because, like it or not, money is an emotional thing. And because it's emotional, most people can't think rationally about it. It is enough to watch the stock market or the coin market and you will understand that money is an emotion... In most markets logic does not prevail but only the emotions of greed and fear.

Those people they live their entire lives in fear of losing money, or do they do something different from most people, it is almost impossible to get rich, even if financial opportunities constantly appear in front of them.

Learning to we play the right money game, we gradually gain knowledge and experience and in this way the fear of losing money decreases, until it turns into our best business guide!

Bibliography

• Differential Encoding of Losses and Gains in the Human Striatum, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2007,27(18):4826-4831, May 2, 2007
• Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant, 2001