Worry: The Unnecessary Interest
Imagine that you have just made your final payment on your home mortgage after 30 years of paying it faithfully every month. Imagine that the original purchase price of your home was $200,000.00 and now that you have paid your home off, with interest, you have paid $480,000.00, or in other words you have paid 280,000.00 in interest alone. I want you to further imagine that you then receive a letter from your mortgage company which reads something like this:
Dear Faithful-Mortgage-Payer,
The purpose of this letter is to thank you for paying your mortgage in full. In particular we would like to thank you for paying 280,000.00 in interest, which you are no doubt aware was completely OPTIONAL according to the fine print of your original mortgage contract. We here at Big Bucks Home Loans are indeed grateful for this great sum of EXTRA money and appreciate immensely your willingness to pay us such a substantial sum out of the goodness of your heart.
Sincerely,
Gill T. Money
Customer “Care” Director
How would you feel, if after 30 years of faithfully making your mortgage you received such a letter? How would you feel if you pulled out your original mortgage contract and, sure enough, you locate the fine print that states that your payment of interest was completely optional? Everyone loves to earn interest, but no one likes to pay it. Anyone would be mortified to find out they had paid a substantial sum of interest when it wasn’t necessary.
Now, of course there is no such mortgage, but I wanted to plant clearly in your heart and mind what it would feel like to pay so much interest unnecessarily. With that said, I will share with you one of my favorite quotes that I heard from a wonderful lady by the name of Belva Ashton years ago in England:
Worry is the interest you pay on trouble before it ever comes.
Think about it. When you worry you experience all the emotions and stress related to a future negative event as if that event has already occured. If the event never occurs, then in effect you have paid “interest” unnecessarily. On the other hand, if the event does in fact occur then having paid the interest in advance (worrying) did you no good, as you experience all the same emotions and stress again at the time of the event, in effect paying double the “interest”.
My advice to you is to simply take care of those things you have influence over and leave the worry out of it. That is the essence of true Proactivity.
To Your Success!
Kip Kint
Success Coach & President
Mission Ignition, Inc.