BEATING MENTAL BLOCKS THAT KEEP YOU FROM BUYING A HOME

Are you financially qualified to achieve your goal of buying a first home, yet you postpone the project year after year? Perhaps you believe laziness has kept you from meeting the home-buying challenge. But procrastination experts say it's much more likely that hidden mental blocks are to blame. One common emotional barrier is perfectionism, says Lenora M.

Yuen, co-author of "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It." Yuen, a psychologist in Palo Alto, Calif., tells how a former client with a successful career in the field of technology sales had failed to achieve his home-buying goal for six years before turning to her for help. In therapy, the client realized he'd been searching in vain for a flawless house to buy. Why had he set a perfectionist's standard? He discovered that he'd mentally equated his self-worth to the quality of the home where he lived. Once the ...