How To Escape The Grip Of Financial Fear

Shawn: Are you overwhelmed by companies capitalizing on fear to sell overpriced solutions? Don’t fall for it. Instead, unplug, help others and seek God’s peace. Let’s get some perspective. Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. My name’s Shawn Peters. I’m joined as always by my co-host, Bob Barber, for those of you who haven’t met us yet. Today, we’re going to be covering selling financial fear and more specifically five ways that you can get away from it and hopefully avoid it. Bob: Yeah, deal with it. Shawn: Or deal with it. Yeah. Bob: Yeah. Today, companies are thriving by selling financial fear and they use every means available. And there’s so many means today, like the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, now X. Shawn: Formally Twitter. Kind of reminds me almost like with “Prince” or the “artist formally known as Prince”. Bob: Email, television, text messages. This is all to scare you into buying their high commission products like gold and silver, the newsletters, the food kits, annuities. When I was a kid, we didn’t have any of this. We had television. We only had three stations, and we were outside all the time. I mean, we would only watch television at night, and this stuff is just, it’s like hovering around us 24/7 it feels like today. And the business of selling financial fear has gotten really big. Shawn: Yeah, that’s right. They create a fear of something and just so happened to have the solution for it. Bob: And then they use the algorithms to just hit you over and over and over, and over. Shawn: The more you interact with it. Bob: So this summary of the Salesforce training and make sure this is not the Salesforce you said… Shawn: Right. Not Salesforce, the CRM, but it’s a different company, I guess. Salesforce Training. Bob: This was interesting as I researched this, that they actually train people to sell fear. Okay. So go ahead. Shawn: This is summary on “Fear Sells, So Sell Fear”, and there’s just a real short summary of it. We’ll have a link in the description if you want to take a look at the full article, but the summary of the Salesforce training article says that, “Fear is a more powerful motivator for selling than a desire for gain. An experiment found that people are more willing to take risk to avoid losses than to make gains.” So they’re more willing to take a risk to avoid a loss than they are to take a risk, to make gains. “Appealing to a potential customer’s fear of loss is often more effective than emphasizing the benefits they could gain. Sales pitches can be reframed to tap into fear of loss rather than just a desire for gain.” For example, again, this is coming from Salesforce training. “So for example, how many sales might you lose without training your team versus effectively the same thing, but versus your salespeople will close more sales with training. Fear tactics can be used along with emphasizing benefits. Both desire for gain and fear of loss can persuade potential clients into making buying decisions.” Now, we are not saying that we’re advocates of that, but this is out there. This is part of the training. The idea is that you will sell more units, you’ll sell more subscriptions, you’ll sell more of whatever it is if you tap into people’s fear purposely, their fear of loss, their fear of missing out, as opposed to talking about the benefits being positive. Bob: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like negativism sells more than positive. Shawn: So if companies are trying to sell things to you, using these tactics for you to make financial decisions, don’t listen. Don’t allow them to dictate this to you. Bob: It’s so embedded in scripture and of God that we are not to live in a spirit of fear. Shawn: That’s right. Which goes into our first scripture. Bob: Yeah. We’ve chosen four really strong scriptures that I think would be good for you to really take into your heart because we’re not supposed to walk around with the spirit of fear. And it says that in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind.” Shawn: That’s right. And Isaiah 41:10, “Do not fear for I am with you. Do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will also help you. I will also uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Bob: You picked Philippians 4:6-7. Oh, this is such a good one. “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Shawn: And finally, Proverbs 29:25, “The fear of man brings a snare, but one who trusts in the Lord will be protected.” Bob: Oh, that’s my favorite of these four, I think. The fear of man brings a snare, but the one who trusts in the Lord will be protected. Okay. Shawn: So how can you deal with all the financial fear selling today? Bob: So I’ve worked on this a lot. I came up with five ideas, I think, that will help you and me to deal with all the financial fear that’s hitting us on a daily basis. Shawn: So number one, turn off social media. Bob: Amen. Shawn: The first way to deal with financial fear is to turn off social media, at least temporarily, if not permanently, depending on the platform and how much you struggle with it. Bob: I promise you won’t die. You’re going to make it. Okay. We made it without social media for centuries and thousands of years in our world. If you turn it off, it’s not going to hurt you. Shawn: So platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter, they use algorithms to target you with fear-based messaging i you’ve ever clicked on any related content. Bob: And you know that because if you just click on one thing, now they’re going to come at you with that same thing, right? Shawn: Well, not only that, but they also, there’s an incentive because fearful and divisive content gets more interactions. Now they’re negative, but it does get more interactions than happier, positive content. And they want people to engage with content on their platform as much as possible. Companies in general have learned to capitalize on fear via social media to sell products like we mentioned earlier, the high commission precious metals, subscription-based newsletters, “survival kits”, annuities, and more. Once you’re in their algorithm, you’ll be bombarded constantly. Consider taking a social media break again, maybe even permanently, to avoid these financial fear tactics. Out of sight can mean out of mind. Bob: Shawn, I haven’t posted anything to Facebook or even gone on Facebook in probably three or four years and it hasn’t hurt me one bit. Shawn: I don’t have Facebook on my phone at all anymore. I have Facebook messenger, but that’s only because some people don’t have my phone number or they might want to reach out. But it’s nice because I don’t get sucked in to the algorithm and the newsfeed and all this other stuff because it’s just for messaging. Bob: I tell people, just turn it off. The second thing I think is important in dealing with all this is to truly study history. And we know since the beginning of time with Cain and Abel, I mean that was not a good relationship. And you have to ask yourself with all these things that are going on today, is it really new? I mean, there was the Roman Empire conquest to the current state of the world today. I was thinking about just the last 120 years, Shawn. We’ve had World War I and II, we’ve had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the 911 attacks, and now we’ve got this conflict between Israel and Palestine going on. Shawn: Yeah. Oh, the war in Ukraine is still continuing, the renewed conflict with Israel and Palestine, which again isn’t new. Bob: And I’ve had a lot of people call me, what about this? What about this? Well, look at the Old Testament. They’ve been fighting for 4,000 or 5,000 years, so nothing is really new under the sun, and it doesn’t help me to live in fear of this. Not at all. And it doesn’t help any of us. So focus on the good and the glass half full, not half empty. This is some good advice my wife gave me years ago, and ever since I’ve really taken that to heart, the focus on the glass half full, not half empty. Because negative thinking, Shawn, it just never gets us anywhere. Shawn: And it blocks out wisdom because that negative thinking and that fear, it doesn’t allow you to think clearly. So we have a scripture for this one. Bob: And it goes with this one too. Yeah. Shawn: Ecclesiastes 7:14, “When times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider this. God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.” I think it’s a good one. Bob: You know what? We forgot to put one in there in Matthew where Jesus says, “Do not worry. Look at the birds of the air.” Shawn: That’s right. Bob: And God feeds them. Fear can also push into worry. Which just doesn’t get you anywhere. Okay. So this one kind of goes with that first one about unplugging from media. Shawn: Social media. So this was a little different. But unplugging from screens in general. So take regular breaks from your cell phone, computers, tv, even just an hour or two a day at first. Find time to get away from it. Focus on limiting your fear-based news channels to maybe 15 to 30 minutes a day or cut them out entirely as part of just a daily consumption. You don’t need it. Bob: You can read a newspaper instead and it doesn’t have all the emotion. Now, some of it does. It’s written in there, but it doesn’t have all the emotion. I have a relative – that I’m not going to go any farther than saying it’s a relative – that keeps Fox News on 24/7. I mean, every time you walk into her house, it’s going, and she even falls asleep to it. And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, I can only watch 15 or 30 minutes of it a day and I start getting depressed, and I just have to turn it off and go watch the Andy Griffith show for a while. You know how I like that? Shawn: If you do need some screen time to decompress from the day, watch something positive, wholesome, or educational, something that’s not… Bob: Like the Andy Griffith show, right? Shawn: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Or again, educational, history, something like that where maybe you’ll learn a little bit about how history tries to repeat itself or rhymes with itself. So number four, do something constructive and kind. Bob: It’s hard to be fearful when you’re doing something constructive and kind. Shawn: That’s right. And this allows you to be active with doing something and not allow you to dwell on fear. Bob: Some ideas I came up with, write some handwritten letters to lift the friend’s spirits. Go out and paint something, make a painting or just paint the house or paint the guardrail. Build something. Take time to garden. Volunteer to help others. Go for a walk or go camping to decompress, but shift your focus from fear to spreading joy and things you cannot control. Shawn: That’s right. And so number five. Bob: Most important one. Shawn: The fifth way – seek God, immerse yourself in scripture, prayer, and living by faith over fear. Listen to praise and worship music instead of the voices selling you on fear, draw close to God who says, do not be afraid. 365 times in the Bible, one for each day of the year. Bob: Didn’t know that. Shawn: Yeah, so cool. You can look it up. There’s 365 times you see the phrase, “Do not be afraid.” Bob: So God’s not called us to live in a spirit of pure, like we said in the beginning. 2 Timothy 17, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind.” Shawn: Yeah. And Isaiah 41:10, “Do not fear for I’m with you. Do not be afraid for I’m your God. I will strengthen you. I will also help you. I will also uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And for those of you who aren’t convinced on at least taking temporary breaks or limiting your consumption of social media, youshould go check out “The Social Dilemma”. It’s on Netflix and it goes into psychology. There’s industry insiders. Bob: I watched that about three years ago, and I was shocked after watching it. So if you’re going to watch something… Shawn: That’s something educational Bob: After you see that, that is very educational, it will open your eyes to what all this social media is doing to us. Shawn: That’s right. Bob: I hope this has been informative for you today. Shawn and I do not want you living in fear. God doesn’t want you living in fear, and we just hope that this has been informative and these are some good ideas you can take to heart, and it will make 2024 a better year. Shawn: That’s right. We’d love to hear from you, too. If you have any other ideas to add to this, feel free to add them in the comments. [DISCLOSURES] * Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors®, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors® believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.