Fear and Greed - Biggest obstacles to financial freedom

Thanks to liberalization policies and Information Technology boom, you will find ever growing middle class population in India. They are the individuals who are earning pretty decent salaries and are able to lead a respectable life. Same has been the trend with many other countries also.

But at the same time, you will find that most of these salaried class people are so ignorant on managing personal finances. The reason is these people may be experts in their domain, but when it comes to understanding personal financial management, they fail miserably.

Most of you would have watched T.V shows where more and more working Professionals are seeking advice from financial planners to manage their finances. These working professionals may be earning monthly salary in lacs, but they are so over burdened with debt that they are unable to manage their finances. All this is not exaggeration. If you look around in your circles, you will find a similar pattern.

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How to overcome stress and live a life full of happiness

Stress has become an integral part of our day to day life. And the worst thing is that if we don’t take corrective measures, we start remaining under stress for longer duration which causes lot of health issues later on in life. So let’s try and understand what stress is and how can we overcome stress in life?

Understanding Stress

Stress is a reaction by an organism to a disturbing or dangerous situation.

Robert M Sapolsky, a Stanford University neurobiologist has penned down his research on stress in a great book “Why Zebras don’t get ulcers”. Sapolsky explains that in humans and other animals, body’s response to stress is the same. When Zebras runs for their life from chasing lion, basics are all that matter. Lungs work overtime to pump mammoth quantities of oxygen into the blood streams. The heart braces to pump that oxygen to throughout the body. So muscles respond instantly. You need your blood pressure to deliver that energy. You run for your life. Body turns off anything that is not essential, be it growth, reproduction, tissue repair or any other repair to a later time if the zebra survives. But as soon as Zebra escapes his death, its stress response shuts down.

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