Balancing the accountability

I was reading an article the other day where a full third of Australians believe they will always be in debt, which is probably a good call since over a quarter also said they regularly spend more than they earn. When will people learn? Well, probably when they are in such a bad financial position that they can no longer get access to any funds whatsoever and living off handouts, digital food stamps. It really is a sad state of affairs, but we each largely make our own decisions, but we are of course affected by how we were raised and the culture and society in which we live.

I think one of the benefits of getting into crypto and especially on Hive, is the ability to surround ourselves with different financial cultures, where there is still a range of people, but there is a high rate of diversity. Where else can the average person or the poorest people on earth, surround themselves with the richest and discuss all kinds of things. How often is it that a person struggling to make ends meet in a third-world country, be able to interact directly with millionaire investors?

I take the position that "we are what we eat" and this comes in many forms. What we put into our body matters and even if we do have access to the best quality of food, we also have access to poor quality too, but it tastes good, is easy to swallow and is cheap - until you factor in the cost of ill-heath.

Our body is not just physical in the sense it is affected by food alone, it is also influenced by our mental diet and our emotional diet also. We can feed it what improves our health, or we can degrade it through the same mechanisms. I know quite a lot of people who do not have the time to explore the "healthier" content, yet no limit on how much time they can spend on the "junk food" content.

Read about DeFi yet?

"No, I haven't had the time, I was watching that new show on Netflix - it is great, it really makes you think."

Obviously - not enough.

When it comes to what we consume with the resources we have, we are our own worst enemies. We are conditioned to look for the convenient and easy option, the low-value, quickly-digested, pre-chewed, microwave content. We do not want to think, we do not want to learn and while we do want to get the benefits of having good health, we do not want to perform the exercises necessary to get there. Our hard-wired default is to pick the low-hanging fruit, if it is available.

This means that in order to break the cycle, we have to override our internal systems and this has to be done consistently enough to be able to create new defaults. However, our natural process is not set up to do this and instead is to keep comfortably doing what it has always done, even if it leads to where we don't want to go.

A lot of the information we gather that affects our behavior is implicit, lessons learned without having a formal lesson for it. When we keep repeating what we have always done, there is a reinforcement of the processes we keep repeating, meaning that the longer we progress, the less we change. Changing the environment to introduce new information gives us a chance of surrounding ourselves with a better potential diet - in the same way that living on the proverbial "deserted island" where there is only fresh foods and work to do available, will likely lead to better physical condition.

The problem when it comes to content in our world today is that we are not on an island, we are highly connected and near all sources of information are available to anyone, where we can pick and choose what we eat or, allow algorithms to pick and choose for us. Do you think that the algorithms of centralized social media that makes 95% of its income from advertising revenue is looking to feed the user base information that improves and encourages the understanding of financial responsibility, saving and investing for ownership and generative return?

If we really want to get different financial results in our life, we have to do differently than we are doing now and while part of it is changing the ways we spend, the information we consume is just as or even more important. Redesigning our informational environment can support us to not only surround ourselves with better information, but can also directly facilitate our change in activity by encouraging usage.

I have always been an advocate for having skin in the game in regards to investing, as it means being able to build understanding at a greater level than just conceptual, as it introduces activity, as well as the risk and reward elements that are so important to developing mindset. Hive is one of the best places to learn about investment and build better habits for economic empowerment there currently is, because it ties a lot of the considerations together into a nice, "easy to consume" package, meaning that there is a collection of resources, tools and most importantly, experienced people, bundled together.

Some people were born with the proverbial "silver spoon" in their mouth, yet with access to the internet, we have all being given the potential for informational change handed to us on a silver platter. Most people use it for entertainment, a few use it for empowerment. It doesn't matter if your family were rich or poor, it doesn't matter if your government is corrupt, it doesn't matter what conditions you face today - there is always the potential for personal improvement in a vast range of directions - but if we aren't willing to change our process or environment, it will only ever be, potential.

It is you who decides which webpage you consume from, you who decides which articles you read, shows you watch and how and with whom you spend your free time. If you aren't willing to do the work to improve yourself, to invest into yourself, why would anyone risk investing into trying to help you?

Part of ownership is understanding the responsibility of holding ourselves accountable.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]