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A fraud alert in a foreign country almost became a permanent rule. The real fix was a backup card. Most bad experiences don't deserve a lifetime policy.
Show Notes
A fraud alert in a foreign country almost became a permanent rule. The real fix was a backup card. Most bad experiences don't deserve a lifetime policy.
Featuring: Toni Morrison
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"Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."
Toni Morrison
I flew in and pulled cash from an airport ATM. By morning, a fraud alert lit up my phone. Overnight someone tried a second withdrawal on my card. The bank caught it and froze the card. My money was safe. My only debit card was dead.
My first instinct was to make a rule. Avoid airport ATMs. I keep a short list of rules and rewrite them regularly, so this one would ride along for the rest of my life.
Then I stopped.
This happened once. Even if it happens a few more times this decade, is that rule worth carrying for good?
This is how trauma gets hard-coded. Something bad happens. The fear stays long after the threat is gone. You live by a rule no one wrote.
I've written about using pain as signal. Reflect on your losses. Pull the lesson. That part holds. This is the other side. The lesson hardens into a permanent rule whose cost outgrows the rare loss it guards against.
Fear-based rules are sticky. They feel necessary. You carry them because the memory is vivid, not because the risk is high.
The better fix was a second debit card. One dies, the other works. No rule required.
Some risks earn a permanent rule, the ones that could wipe you out. Most don't. Lock in a rule for each bad thing that happens and you become the person with 47 rules about restaurants because of one bad meal. Keep your rules lean.
What rule are you carrying that was written by a single bad experience?