Warren Buffet’s longtime business partner Charlie Munger once said: “To the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail.” What he meant was this: we are often trained to view the world a certain way, even if that viewpoint doesn’t make any sense in a certain situation.
In other words, our actions and reactions often come down to how we have been trained to think.
A simple example of this would be the person who has been trained to always see themselves as the victim. No matter what happens to them (divorce, getting laid-off, chronic illness) it is never their fault – the world and everybody in it is simply out to get them. Because of this preconceived notion, a person like that never addresses any sort of underlying problems that might be negatively affecting their life.
Because they have a “hammer”, every problem looks like a “nail”.
I like this thought because it shows how we need to open ourselves up to new ways of looking at familiar problems. In his speech, Charlie Munger used the principles of psychology to explain the irrational behavior of consumers in the economy and how trying to understand that behavior through traditional economic thinking just doesn’t make any sense.
What about you? When you take an honest look at yourself and your life, can you identify any negative thinking patterns that might be holding you back and keeping you from reaching your full potential? What is the “hammer” that you carry around in your mental tool belt that defines how you approach problems?
Here at www.forevercash.com, I try to present you with the best of what’s out there. I scour the internet to see what the experts have done and what they are saying. I share my personal experiences (both the failures and the successes) so that you can learn from them. And if I learn a previously hidden way of making a buck or stumble across a new financial philosophy – then you are always the first to know.
But in order to benefit from the unconventional wisdom that I offer here, you have to be ready to use all of the tools available to you – not just the hammer!