A salaried job provides fear of punishment as a powerful motivator to work. A self-employed person lacks this top-down, fear-based motivator. In the absence of fear, a person can tap into pride, excitement and anger as alternative fuel sources for action.

Luck isn't entirely random. People who consistently get "lucky" have a mentality around putting themselves into situations where good things might happen to them, and being prepared to take advantage as those opportunities arise.

This note is about the emotions that underlie market manias. I wrote it as a companion note to yesterday’s piece on the stock market. Something about the human emotional experience changes when people gather into groups. Actions that people would never undertake alone (e.g., mob violence) suddenly become

I had a conversation recently with a performance coach named Chris Doherty. Chris works with junior golfers to help them improve their game, some of whom have gone on to be D-I athletes and PGA tour players. Chris said one thing to me that stood out to me in that

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed how the feeling of financial insecurity can be mapped to simple math—a person who feels financially insecure does not have much of a cushion. For many people, the best way to increase your cushion is to bring in more money, and

This note is split into two parts due to length. Part 2 will be published next week. -- I recently had two emotions & finance conversations with women who are hourly solopreneurs—one is a yoga teacher, and the other is a licensed therapist. Both came into the conversation feeling

Having a scarcity mindset prevents you from committing to specialization. Specialization leads to abundance, in ways that you can't predict or expect.

Most people who are stuck in a scarcity mindset are stuck because they have no practice thinking in abundance terms. This post describes a technique for practicing your abundance mindset.

I recently had a conversation with a more junior person in my field that went sideways. Over the course of the conversation (which related to our shared field) I felt myself becoming angry—with internal words like “this attitude is a mistake” and “he just doesn’t get it.” Later

Learning, teaching, and doing are all connected as part of the same process. This process produces the confidence that, over time, dissolves guilt and fear.