Welcome to Your Emotions, Your Guide Today

Hey, you wanna do something weird? Yeah?? Me too. Let’s take a tour of our emotions.

Come on, trust me, man, it will be cool. It’s not like that.

I think doing this is going to be fun…

Emotions: Limitations and Power of the Mind

In my short tenure hosting this site, along with my general (and rare) personal finance discussions with friends and family, I see one very common limiting factor.

Is it a lack of income? No.

Too many “essentials” on the budget? Nah, man.

Not enough time to develop an investing strategy? Not even close.

The number one issue I see, by far, is an attitude that says…

“I can’t do this. I’m a mess.”

“I suck with money.”

And these beliefs can permeate far beyond personal finance. Negative emotions infiltrate through the cracks of our being, potentially arising in one or more other arenas in life, like bizarre little meerkats on the savannah of our psyche: relationships, fitness, diet, career, etc. And when things go south in those arenas, a negative outlook can turn quickly to self-preservation. For instance we may feel like someone else let us down, or some system failed us. The cycle continues, and as a result we may avoid what caused us pain and failure all together.

The Effects of Pastry Chefs on Emotions: A Memoir

I am working one morning in a nice restaurant in Portland, OR. The restaurant is empty, save for me and a crabby, gray-haired career pastry chef who always works in an alarmingly-stained white undershirt. I’ve recently switched to the morning prep shift shared only with the pastry chef. We are starting to get to know each other a little better, and consequently he can tell I am burnt out on life.

Abruptly, listening to me whine about my god-knows-what 23-year-old problems, he drops his whisk loudly against the side of his metal mixing bowl. A bit of off-yellow batter flings on to the table. He then looks up at me with a father-like disappointment and says simply…

“Hey man, if you can’t be happy now, you never will be.”

He slowly lowers his head, returning to his batter without another word said. The silence is excruciating; he has me pinned. I know I’ll never be happy without making a change.

Using the Lessons From a Crabby Old Man

I’ll never forget that moment, and those words have followed me for 13 years. I had been bottling it for months, just going through the essential motions of life. But that cranky son-of-a-B lit a fire under my ass, turning my emotions into a force of dedication I never knew I harbored.

After reaching out to an old college acquaintance, I landed a job back in my chosen academic path of geology. I was low on the totem pole and didn’t see a good path with only a bachelor’s degree, so I studied and took the GRE. I went to graduate school with a renewed sense of hope and feverish drive to succeed and stand out.

The staggering 2008 financial crisis largely destroyed my ambitions of being an academic, but I played the hand I was dealt and landed a job in the oil and gas industry, very much against my will. There are more details, but that should do it for now.

I credit my now much-improved life to a crabby old man who told me to shut up. Although he was hardly a convincing therapist, he forced me to accept my emotions and make a change. Otherwise, my unprocessed emotions would have made for a really crappy tour guide.

Emotions Tell Us Something

Anger (or worry, or paranoia) is an acceptable emotion, now and always. What matters is what we do with that emotion. I for one can’t stomach the “Tyranny of Positivity” as described by researcher Susan David in this must-listen podcast on Emotions, Learning, and Resilience by Learner Lab (and what wonderful timing for this podcast).

The “it’s all good” and “just be positive” quips are ineffective and make me want to hurl. In the end, it’s a denial of what someone is feeling and their experience.

Do you have dead people’s goals? Check out this video and see for yourself. Daaammmn Susan! Tell it like it is!

Susan David tells us how our emotions are signaling what’s important to us. If we are angered by the news feed, it might suggest that we value justice or fairness. If we are bored at work, that restlessness may be a blaring fog horn that learning and growth are important to us, and we are not finding enough of it at our jobs.

Emotions: Feeling versus Being

Take note of how you are feeling, but most importantly take note of how you are reacting to those feelings. Let’s look at anger, an emotion probably experienced to some degree by each of the world’s inhabitants by now.

How does anger manifest itself?

Do you feel angry, or are you angry?

Someone who feels angry might rage on a pull-up bar for five minutes and feel better. Alternatively, someone who is angry is far more likely to troll someone on a forum, smoke two cigarettes at once (I’ve seen it!), or bottle it up and toss a raging molotov cocktail at someone else for no fault of their own. You’ll find no saint here; I toss the occasional hand grenade.

See the difference? It might seem like just words or phrasing, but the identity matters. And the good folks at Learner Lab do a great job of reminding us what something like anger really means. Anger is usually a huge category, masking other fundamental issues: insecurity, vulnerability, etc. An angry person is hurting.

“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”

Susan David

Make It Feel Weird

I now try and do something every day that feels hard. I am someone who does something hard every day. (The difference is important).

Smiling to a neighbor you despise may do the trick. Putting on running shoes and running five minutes might be all it takes. Writing down a schedule for the day could make this the best day of the month. You aren’t defined by your emotions, but you can certainly make lemonade from lemons. Or limoncello, which is even better.

Little actions are so powerful, and they are ultimately what matter. I can type until my fingers seize in an arthritic lock about key steps to build financial resiliency, but those words will fall and burst into meaningless digital shards for those who remain strapped in a straight jacket of self-defeat.

So instead of…

“I can’t do this. I’m a mess.”

We can now say…

“I have a long way to go, but I’m quite positively jazzed on the challenge.”

Instead of…

“I suck at money.”

Let’s rephrase it:

“Wow, there’s a lot of potential here. Improvements here can change the course of my life. How neat?!”

Yeah, high five!

A Few Actions, for Today

This is a website about building financial strength, so I’ll give you some key actions to take, starting today. And today is the day, for tomorrow’s motivation will surely wane.

These aren’t new secrets.

This is the same stuff I’ve been writing about all along. I have great news: the methods used to provide financial strength in a raging bull market are the exact same steps to building resiliency during a recession. Below is a simple list of ideas and actions. Where I or others have written posts, you can follow the link for more details. The nuts and bolts aren’t so difficult. Harnessing the necessary activation energy, however, is difficult.

1. Track your spending and net worth
2. Identify waste
3. Categorize debts and pay them off
4. Save three to six months’ living expenses
5. Keep Investing
6. Double down on skill acquisition

Summary

I’m sometimes asked to write more “nuts and bolts” articles about investing or savings strategies, etc. While those are important, I don’t see a lack of information as the problem. A few well-crafted Google searches and you could be on the way to becoming a millionaire. Or a terrorist. Or a totally amateur carpenter. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet.

Nine times out of ten, I see a set of beliefs, routines, and habits as the number one issue⏤by far⏤limiting our potential. To use a bad metaphor, I’m down in the trenches with you.

Just about anyone can improve their situation: improve finances, be a better climber, a better husband, a better worker, etc. Once we learn to recognize how we feel (versus how we are), our emotions no longer define us.

I am tired of writing. No, I feel tired of writing. Either way, see you next week.

---

Remember, the best laid plans mean nothing if you can’t take action today. Have questions? Need some feedback? Hit us up on the Contact page.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe below for much, much more.

Thanks guys, see you next week.