If you want to lose weight and you have an addiction to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, then you’ll have to admit your ice-cream problem and recognize the fact that eating ice cream is not an ideal way to lose weight. The same is true with getting your money in order and reaching financial peace. We must identify the beliefs that hold us back and the obstacles we have to overcome:

Denial. My dad used to say that 90 percent of solving a problem is realizing there is one. One of the major factors that keep people from winning with money is not realizing they have a problem. Some of the most dramatic financial turnarounds I’ve seen have been made by people facing major emergencies.

But even if life isn’t smacking you around at the moment, you’re still in danger of a financial crisis brought on by denial. If you are apathetic because everything — including, say, huge credit card debt — seems just fine, then you will be unwilling to make the huge changes needed to get huge results.

Fear of change. Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek it out. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change. We can be like the toddler in a soiled diaper: “I know it smells bad, but it’s warm and it’s mine.” You are where you are right now financially as a sum total of the decisions you’ve made up to this point. If you don’t like where you are, then acknowledge you have to change and go after your dream.

Debt and money myths. I’ve heard it said that if you tell a lie often enough, loud enough and long enough, it will become accepted as a fact. Repetition, volume and longevity will twist and turn a myth or a lie into a commonly accepted way of doing things.

Debt is so ingrained in our culture that most Americans can’t envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan or credit without a card. We have been sold debt with such repetition and such fervor that most folks cannot conceive of what it would be like to have no payments. We’ve bought into the myth that we can get rich quick.

But it will never happen. We’re living in a microwave society, but living right financially is a Crock-Pot concept. Don’t buy into the marketing and the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. You can reach financial peace, but it takes time and effort.

Ignorance. Ignorance doesn’t mean dumb; it means you have to learn. Admit that you are not a financial expert, read about money (I’ve written several books) and go on a lifetime quest to learn more about it. What you don’t know about money will make you broke and keep you broke.

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Dave Ramsey’s financial advice appears every week in Quick & Simple. He is the host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Dave Ramsey Show and best-selling author of The Total Money Makeover and Financial Peace Revisited.