#31 March 13th, 2022

Question of the newsletter: Does shaming or talking down to yourself ever accomplish anything? You're not going to motivate yourself or get yourself to change by using shame and criticism. You wouldn't use that with someone else, right? So of course it's not going to work for yourself. This busy sometimes when I got review comments I would say to myself "wow that was so stupid, how did I miss that?" But I would NEVER say that to an associate that I had review comments for. So then why would I say it to myself? Self talk is funny like that. Let's extend the same patience and compassion to ourselves that we give to others!

The Truth About Investment “News” Channels - Don’t Fall For Them! — Our Rich Journey | Sharing Ways to Achieve Financial Independence & Retire Early (FIRE)

This article does a great job analyzing why television shows that discuss the stock market and investments are actually terrible sources for making your own personal finance decisions. I think the most important observation in the article is that by the time the shows are talking about stock it has probably already drastically outperformed the rest of the market. That means if anything it’s due for a drawback, not continued huge growth. They’re not actually making any sort of accurate prediction about the future, they’re reacting to what has already happened. Their purpose is to entertain. If they were really that great at investing, wouldn’t they be investing rather than being on television? They’re not actually teaching sound principles of personal finance and long-term investing for retirement. A lot of personal finance actually is pretty boring and does not make for good television.?

Owning Our Attention During Uncertainty - Break the Twitch

This article was written early on during COVID but it is still very applicable for how we can deal with times of great uncertainty. It is tempting to just consume as much information as possible in order to try to get rid of the uncertainty, but if we do that too often we will burn out from information overload. It’s crucial to take breaks and not have a fire hose of content aimed at your head all the time. Great disruption also offers the opportunity to reevaluate how we spend our time. When your normal routine is impossible or in disarray you’re forced to reevaluate and look at what things you do that actually don’t provide much value at all. Lastly, it can be great practice at finding the good out of a bad situation. It is possible to find opportunities during the worst of times while not diminishing the pain and suffering at all. They are not mutually exclusive. It is empowering to believe and look for lessons and growth in every difficult thing we go through. It’s better to grow through things than just go through things.?

Enriching Your Marriage by Creating Shared Meaning

You will not experience a completely fulfilling and fantastic relationship if you are just going through the motions of life together. You need to create a deeper sense of shared connection and meaning. You need to have goals and visions for your life both as an individual and as a couple, and you need to share them together on a regular basis. This article also talks about the importance of spending time together to really focus on each other and the relationship. It’s easy to let that kind of thing slide as you get older and the magic fizzles or as kids enter the picture. Many people forget that relationships take time and effort and work for their entire duration, not just beginning. You need to have goals and a future that you are working on together and trying to create together.?

Are You Positive About Positive Thinking? | by Greg Audino | Invisible Illness | Medium

It’s common to hear the advice “just be positive” get thrown around a lot. The term toxic positivity gets used more frequently these days, where people may discount and invalidate all negative feelings and forms of suffering and try to just focus on the positive. Sometimes I can actually stray close to that territory myself, but we do not make that things better by ignoring them. We don’t want to stick our heads in the sand refuse to see the difficulties that we face. This article argues that instead we should think about what the things going on can teach us, what lesson is there in this? This is a much more helpful exercise. You can find some value from what you’re learning while still acknowledging the pain, discomfort, or negative emotions.