Emotions & Finance

Work is stressful for most people, but it doesn't have to be. We can move from associating work with stress to associating it with joy by understanding the sources of both, and adopting a mindset that reinforces the work attitude we want to have.

Even though bad things happen to everyone, we harm ourselves when we default to seeing ourselves as victims of circumstance. The victim mindset robs us of agency. When we recognize that we never can lose total agency, we transform ourselves from victims to powerful agents of change.

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.