Emotions & Finance

Rather than treating fear as a negative emotion, we can use fear as a guide. Fear denotes risk, which is usually accompanied by reward or the potential for gain. By attacking the scariest tasks, we also unlock the highest potential reward.

This post explores the fear of not being good enough as we rise in our careers or lives. It discusses how self-doubt can lead to procrastination and avoidance, and offers insights on accepting this fear to build courage and act.

Many people feel paralyzed by fear. Fear is often connected to the future, about what can go wrong. By connecting to the present, we can free ourselves to take action, which melts the fear.

Passion is a great emotion to follow in our careers--and passion is just transmuted anger. Connecting to that anger gives us an inexhaustible fuel source to become an agent of change in the world.

Anger, like all emotions, is a source of information. This piece explores what anger is telling us about what is happening around us--violation of boundaries, injustice, or unmet expectations.

Many people struggle to identify what their unique gifts and strengths are, but our childhood provides a clue. Use this exercise to reflect on your childhood, and bring the unusual aptitudes you had as a kid into your adult life.

Being satisfied in one's career requires alignment between our knowledge, our functional skills, and our interpersonal skills. The latter--interpersonal skills, or how we relate to others--is often ignored, and we suffer because of it.

Creative and artistic people often feel a tension between making what they want to make, and making money. We can resolve this tension by first asking ourselves, "who are we serving?"

Many of us seek a flow state in our work. However, we often also encounter an emotional state I call the “panic state,” where nothing we do seems to work. By relaxing into the sense of overwhelm, and introducing small successes, we can gradually overcome the panic state.

We all understand the importance of feedback but few of us stop to recognize our own emotional experience as we are in the process of receiving feedback. Moreover, the absence of feedback itself can be lonely and isolating.