CASHFLOW Quadrant For many S’s, the real issue is their need to be in control. They hate making mistakes, but what they hate even more is someone else making mistakes and making them look bad. This makes them excellent S’s and is why you hire them to do certain tasks. You want your dentist to be a perfectionist. You want your attorney to be a perfectionist. You want your brain surgeon to be a perfectionist. That is what you pay them for. That is their strength, but it’s also their weakness.
Emotional Intelligence A big part of being a human being is being human. And being human means having emotions. We all feel fear, sadness, anger, love, hate, disappointment, joy, happiness, and other emotions. What makes us individuals is how we handle those emotions. When it comes to risking money, we all experience fear, even the rich. The difference is how we handle that fear. For many people, that emotion of fear generates the thought: “Play it safe. Don’t take risks.” For others, especially those on the right side, the fear of losing money makes them think: “Play it smart. Learn to manage risk.” Same emotion, different thought: different being—different doing— different having.
The Fear of Losing Money In my opinion, the greatest cause of human financial struggle is the fear of losing money. Because of this fear, people often operate too safely, or with too much personal control, or they just give their money to someone they think is an expert and hope and pray that the money will be there when they need it. If fear keeps you prisoner in one of the financial quadrants, I recommend reading Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. In his book, Goleman explains the age-old puzzle of why people who do well in school do not always do well in the real world. His answer is that your emotional IQ is more powerful than your academic IQ. That is why people who take risks, make mistakes, and recover often do better than people who learned not to make mistakes and are afraid 171