Gabriel.LIVE

Author: Gabriel

  • Embrace Failure To Achieve Victory

    Embrace Failure To Achieve Victory

    As I watched my son take his first unsteady steps, I couldn’t help but be aware of the potential pitfalls and dangers around him.

    It was in these moments, observing my son growing up, that I began to truly understand why failing is the most normal thing in the world and starting to ask myself the question why we as grown-ups have such a hard time when it happens to us.

    What you’ll find inside:

    About trial and error while growing up

    Childhood is a continuous journey of trial and error. Every new skill, every milestone, we achieve through a series of attempts and failures. Even though my son figured out to e.g. open the door, he continued to experiment and explore different ways to achieve what he had in mind.  While researching on this topic, I learned is totally a normal thing for kids. They take the risk of failure just to explore whether there is an alternative to get things done.

    Continuous retry and failure of Patrick Star

    When we grow older our capability of handling failures changes the same way as experience success. There is a correlation when I think about it. 

    Latest in Kindergarden, kids start comparing themselves with others and potentially get the feeling that winning or being successful increases their acceptance amongst their peers and hence increases their social worth. This follows through in several aspects of today’s society. Being the smartest and getting the confirmation with excellent grades. Being the best by getting the confirmation of winning a tournament. Even team sports like soccer have their individual champions. Or what about social proof on social media by comparing who has the most followers? 

    Failure is a universal experience

    But everyone fails at some point, in some way. It’s the common thread that binds us all, from the toddler learning to walk to the CEO launching a new venture. Some of us are in a state of constant failure due to how they set goals. Yet, despite its universality, we often stigmatise failure.

    When I failed in my early days I remember that I was told to know better, since I was old enough to do better. In the majority of cases there is no „well done for trying“. We fear failure and avoid it because we feel ashamed when it happens.

    Avoiding to do something new because of fear of failure is a missed learning opportunity.

    Sometimes, our fear of failing is so intense that it stops us exploring new opportunities. The purpose of the emotion fear is to make us alert. But this emotion can actually hold us back in our comfort zone when we have the chance to grow and broaden our horizons.

    Stop the fear roller coaster and start fresh

    I reflected on all my main failures in the past and there were many from what I can tell. And since I tend to be hard on myself, I also asked a friend to share his point-of-view on my failures.

    Once I acknowledged, that my failures are not a reflection of my worth, but were an opportunity to improve, things got a lot easier. And with things I mean my approach to try our new stuff and experiment with my existing behaviour and habits. But getting to accept failures being part of the game is the hard part. How to get to this state is very individual. I will share with you what worked for me, as someone who was thought that failure are bad and to be avoided. 

    It all started with reflecting on my son’s behaviour of incautious learning. Be it learning riding a bike, swimming or building lego robots at some point, he got so frustrated that what he did was not according to what he had in mind, that got very angry and eg. Threw his half way built robot across the room. The robot was broken, he started crying because he was angry about the it and about himself on what he just did.

    It was a personal failure for him. He had a clear expectation in his mind, how the robot would look like and it didn’t match reality. Once we talked about that it is not OK to throw things around and all the emotions that overwhelmed him, he again started calmly to build the robot again – with a better version, as he stated. 

    From that I derived three actions to myself when it comes to personal failing: 

    1. Every time I fail emotions like frustration or anger are necessary vents to steam off. I let it happen. If possible, I try to direct these emotions into some kind of constructive activity. I figured that journaling it out of my head or any kind of immediate physical activity releases the initial spike of stress. 
    2. I reflect on why it is a failure and why I see it as such. Is it because of my own expectation towards the outcome or are there expectations by someone else. Especially if it me setting the bar high I ask someone who I trust for help to reflect. Depending on the topic this is my wife, friend or even good old internet.
    3. I accept failure by asking myself, if I tried with all I have. Sometime this is not case, then I need to understand why in order to improve the next time. But if I honestly answer this with a yes, I come to peace with the myself and my failure. 

    Don’t just “try again” or “try harder”

    If you are missing the standard phrases of „stand up, dust yourself off and try again“, it is because I believe they are too generic to be shared with anyone as actionable advice. Even for things you really want, it is too naive to blindly follow this advice. Some times it is better to quit, than wasting energy on a something with low probability of achievement and the early you know, the faster you can focus on something else. 

    For me, the main factor in deciding whether to try again is if it boosts my energy level. Consider my love for making music and playing the guitar. It feels so exciting and powerful to be the one creating the sound, melody, and rhythm.

    However, learning to play “Nothing Else Matters” has been a frustrating journey. I often fall short of my own expectations during practice because it just doesn’t sound like the original. Still my energy level increases with every try. That is why I see it as an important reflection point before trying again.

    If I give it my all, maybe even multiple times, and it leaves me feeling drained, I’m perfectly fine with accepting that this as a failure and moving on to something else. But stepping back and don’t trying again, doesn’t mean that you lost for ever. Just this time it didnt work out.

    From this failure, I learned something valuable. I was brave enough to try, and that courage will make it easier for me to attempt new things in the future.

    Summary: on failing and why it is the path to go for winners

    • Accept that failing is part of the game in everything you and also others do in life. 
    • As long as trying makes you feel engaged and brings positive energy you are on track.
    • Once trying is just a sucker of your energy change the approach or try something else.

    Further readings:

  • Get Rich Quick With Millionaire Fastlane

    Get Rich Quick With Millionaire Fastlane

    The author of “the Millionaire FASTLANE” MJ DeMarco sheds some light on how he got wealthy and how you can do the same. It sounds like a “get rich quick” scheme but I was surprised to find many timeless lessons about responsibility, market value and customer centricity.

    What you’ll find inside:

    I got this book as a present and it turned out to be an interesting read on entrepreneurship and how to accommodate wealth over a couple of years instead of decades.

    Millionaires mindset

    In contrast to the past books I shared in the past, DeMarco postulates, that becoming a millionaire will not work out for the most of us via compounding and patience.

    Don’t just chase money; create value—wealth follows those who solve problems for others. #successhabits

    In his view there are three types of paths when it comes to money:

    • sidewalks: Is about poorness, both in time and money. Most people on the sidewalks life for the moment and don’t consider their impact on tomorrow. They life beyond their means.
    • slowlane: The slow lane is an employment. You basically exchange your time and skills for money to work for someone else. As employee you make someone else rich. There is limited growth potential because increases on wages are more or less linear. Also any day has just 24h, so nothing to scale on this side as well.
    • fastlane: The fast lane is a business system allowing exponential growth by definition. Not every business falls into the category of a fast lane. If you are a self-employed electrician you can’t scale your time same as with the slow lane. The important factor is the business system that allows you to generate wealth independent of your time. I see parallels to goals vs. systems post shared earlier.

    3 Timeless lessons learned from this book

    #1 – You are responsible for your life situation. This also includes your financials. If desire to be wealthy but you are not, you should consider changing your behaviour.

    “If you want to keep getting what you’re getting, keep doing what you’re doing” – DeMarco

    With this you don’t have to resign your employment. But first acknowledge the fact that you are in the driver seat of your life. Reflect on your spending habits as a starting point.

    #2 – Be aware of your behaviour as a consumer and experience the creator point-of-view. Because we are all targets to the marketing machinery exposed 24/7 on all channels. Even this blog is an example of me selling you my thought process and you paying with your time and attention. Your mindset about money will change, once you understand that for the most cases, someone is constantly trying to sell something to you. The best way to grasp what this means is becoming a creator, a maker or producer to others. It will sharpen your senses about multiple means around you to address you as a consumer.

    #3 – riding the fastlane is hard work as nothing comes for free. “Rich people got lucky” is something attributed to the wealthy. What most of us neglect is the fact that being wealthy is not an event. It is the aftereffect of a process by which you improving your probabilities to deliver yourself to true wealth. This is to identify a business need, deliver a scaling solution and improve it by talking to your customers until you found the right formula.

    The dark side of the Millionaire FASTLANE

    DeMarco states, that the risk profile of a fast lane strategy isn’t much different from the slow lane but the rewards are far greater. While I agree on the later, I don’t agree with the risk part. It is oversimplified and does not count the individual life situation. This unfortunately leads to the impression that entrepreneurship is glorified without point out enough on the actual risk that is part of the game.

    There is still a lot of opportunities out there to “collect money on the streets”, but still the majority of startups fail. And if you decide to follow that path, you have to accept failure culture as part of you daily life. “Fail early, fail often” they say.

    Summary and takeaways

    • Getting rich quick not only about self employment, but a business system that generates wealth independent of your time contribution.
    • The fast lane strategy is not for everyone, because it requires a high tolerance for coping with failure.
    • Think of habits that fuel your maker mindset to become a producer first and consumer second.

    My next read is “Expert Secrets” by Russel Brunson on how to make profit out of your knowledge.

  • Goals are for losers! How to win with habits

    Goals are for losers! How to win with habits

    If you consistently failed achieving goals, this is for you. For all the professional goal chasers, hear me out and judge later.

    What you’ll find inside:

    Goals are a fundamental part of our lives. When I ask my son what he wants to make for a living as grown-up, his answer is: I want to be an explorer digging for dinosaurs bones and lost treasures. This is one type of goal called „approach motivation“  to pursue positive outcomes or experiences. Then there is another side of the goals medal, which most likely all of us already experienced: I have to study hard this weekend so I don’t fail this time at my exam. In this example, the primary motivation is not to achieve a high grade or excel in the subject (which would be approach-motivated), but rather to avoid the negative consequence of failing the exam. This is called „avoidance motivation“, where the focus is on steering clear of an undesirable outcome. 

    Demotivating facts about goals

    At the end it does not matter which team you belong to. What matters is, that we tend to set ourselves goals in order to reach a dedicated state of approaching or avoiding something we have in mind. 

    What both motivations ultimately boil down to is the question: is the goal accomplished? And to me, there is only a binary answer to that – yes or no. Of course you could say „I am half way there“ or „almost accomplished“. But if you look a the to-do list of yours that says „[ ] – laundry“, the answer is either check marked or not. 

    So until your goal is reached, you are in a constant state of continuous failure. This might become uncomfortable over time depending on how you designed your goal. The incompleteness of the goal could manifest in an constant reminder of you not being good enough. And exactly this is the problem I have with goal orientation. 

    SMART goals ain’t silver bullets either

    A this point the more advanced users of goal setting might chime in and state that „[ ] – laundry“ is not a good goal. The golden standard for goals is to define them as SMART. A SMART definition of my previous example „[ ] – laundry“ could be „I will wash, dry, and put away all my clothes that are currently in the laundry basket by 5 PM this Sunday“. The abbreviation SMART goals stand for is the following:

    • Specific: Wash, dry, and put away all the clothes in the laundry basket.
    • Measurable: All clothes in the laundry basket will be clean and stowed away.
    • Achievable: If the washing machine and dryer are working it is a realistic task given.
    • Relevant: Keeping clothes clean and organised is important for personal hygiene and maintaining a tidy living space.
    • Time-bound: Complete by 5 PM this Sunday.

    But even the SMARTest goal won’t make you „immune“ to the following: Once you achieve your goal it is time to celebrate. You feel terrific and enjoy the well earned fruits of accomplishing something – until, inevitably, the novelty wears off. You might start to realise you just lost the one thing that gave you direction. And your gut feeling is telling you that you need to fill this void with another goal. Perhaps a bigger one this time. So you settle for new goals and start a new cycle. This is until you reach a state of your own highest incompetence and get aware of that by missing one goal after the other you set to accomplish. 

    And don’t get me started with midlife crisis – if you are not in that position (yet) let me share what it felt for me. I was biased that a fulfilled life is when you have a family, an own house, a career with no financial worries what so ever. This is what I accomplished and I am grateful for everything that brought me here. But the emptiness of not knowing what to settle next was more of a topic for the past few years as I would like to admit and it drew a lot of my energy and attitude. It made me bitter and jealous of friends who had something to pursue.

    Systems as alternatives to goals

    The underlying principle of setting goals is to have guiding principles to align our behaviour and actions on a day-to-day basis in order to reach a desired state. Goal setting is not the only way to influence our behaviour in a positive streamlined manner. 

    „You don’t have the be the most intelligent, but have a plan“ used to be a saying of my grandpa. It took me some time to figure out what exactly he meant with it. 

    In short my plan instead of entering the hamster wheel of goal setting is the following: 

    1. Have a rough idea about the desired state in a broad context, 
    2. Ask yourself daily what to do next, to get closer to this state
    3. Plan for it making sure the activation energy is as low as possible 
    4. Just do what you planned – no excuses! celebrate every iteration.
    5. Reflect if the desired state is still what you want. Proceed with step 2.

    Let us take an example of a common new years eave goal: Loose some weight. With a goal oriented approach you would most likely try some diet plans and / or subscribe and go to the gym. 

    1. Have a rough idea: In a system based approach you start with a rough idea about the desired state. My rough idea in the context is: be a healthy person. How is the weights of someone who is considered as healthy? It depends! It depends on your age, your medical condition, your environment, latest studies about BMI etc. But health is only one factor. Strength, stamina – there are many factors you could come up with that characterise a healthy person. This may even include your sleep and you might want to consider to stop doom scrolling your social media apps.

    2. Reflect what can I do to become a healthy person? You will end up with a long list of ideas. But what is of importance here is what can you do almost immediately. 

    • Walk instead of driving
    • Skip the sweets
    • Subscribe to gym online

    In step 3. just do it according to you plan you take it to the next level, so your next best action does not take dust. It is a trick to overcome your weaker self and prepare the task well so you eliminate all room for potential excuses to get started:  

    • If you want to walk instead of driving then block your time in your calendar for the next day.
    • Skip the sweets and add healthy snacks to your shopping list
    • Subscribe to gym online and prep your sports bag and put it in your car already. Or wear your sports shirt under your clothes the next day.

    I like to compare this approach with navigation on sight. Think of yourself as a captain that has to navigate ship in unknown seas without any deterministic tools. Because in most of the cases it is similar to any new situation we are in. We know that we want to get somewhere, our desired state, but don’t exactly how. Such a system based approach comes with the benefit, that it puts your actions into a broader context with a real intent. Allowing you to take advantage of any measure that helps to reach the desired state.

    Now if you think, that this is only applicable for personal aspirations. I have another comparison for you in the area of Projectmanagement which is the waterfall model and agile methodologies. You will figure out what is goal based and system based once you research it. 

    In short: It is about establishing a system of incremental progress – baby steps if you will – towards a rough idea of where or what you want to be. Introducing a level of flexibility towards how to achieve it. It lifts the burden of knowing that you have something unaccomplished yet.

    How to transition from traditional goal based approach to a system based approach is a post by itself – I am happy to follow-up on this if you are interested. With this I conclude my last blogpost for 2024. I would love to hear from you. Subscribe to stay with me on these topics. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. 

    Conclusion

    • Goals in all forms are an orientation of the direction we strive
    • Good goals are SMART, but most people are not smart setting their goals.
    • Once you acchieved all your goals you might feel a void, that needs to be filled.
    • If not achieved, most of us feel miserable – the same is true in the phase until achieve. 
  • Interesting viewpoint on money and psychology

    Interesting viewpoint on money and psychology

    The Psycholog of Money by Morgan Housel grounded me on my current belief about money and investment. To some extend it was a relieve to learn that it is not about how smart you are but has a lot to do with how you behave. While on the other hand this seems to be the hard part when it comes to investing.

    What you’ll find inside:

    I was always under the impression that I don’t know enough about how investing works in detail. Because I am not familiar enough with KPIs and what to keep an eye on etc. But what the author aims to teach us here is that the psychology of money is not a hard science. It is a soft skill first, where how you behave is more important than what you actually know about it.

    Emotions Guide Your Financial Actions

    I can relate to that since a lot of people are in the game of investing and who not aware of how much their emotions influence their behaviour. How I behave might make sense to me, because of my past experiences and conclusion I derive from, but I might look crazy to you. And this characteristic makes it hard to predict a system with a lot of emotional decisions using hard facts alone. And also explains, why simply asking a friend for an investment advice might not work out for you the same way as it does for your friend.

    The emotions are on both sides of the investment outcomes. There is FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) when your investment is in the red where you are tempted to sell to avoid further loss. Or FOMO (fear of missing out) when greed may guide you to invest in raising and trending assets like we have seen with crypto recently.

    About luck and risk

    There is sometime you get everything right, but still loose the game. These failure situation can be a lousy teacher, because it seduces us to think we made the wrong choices. Because the accidental impact of actions outside of your control have a bigger impact than the ones you consciously take. See also “happy money” by Ken Honda.

    The book made me acknowledge the role of luck in investment success but also the role of risk. And especially for the later to arrange my financial life in a way that the bad investments won’t wipe me out of the game, so I can keep playing until the odds fall in my favour.

    Gordon Gekko from Wolf of Wallstreet about greed

    I still recall this phrase from Wolf of Wall Street about greed and how it leads to exceptional results. Greed lets you take more risks and push your luck. This might be OK when you are young, because you have enough time left to learn and experiment. But keep in mind: once greed is fueled by envy, you will sabotage your sense of enough risk to loose it all and being pushed out of the game.

    The million dollar advise about money and investment

    The profound advice on money I understood from this book is taking calculated risks, being optimistic and patient.

    In order to make calculated risks, you have to have a plan about your investments. A plan with enough room for failures, because with most often likely not everything will be going according to plan.

    Being optimistic and having fate when investing into the future is true beyond the relevance for investment. If you don’t believe that the future is going to be better than today, even if your life situation dropped compared to yesterday, you will not have enough mental strength to stay committed.

    Last but not least it is about being patient with your investments. Over time, compound will do the heavy lifting of your financial gains. But this is nothing our brains understand naturally. We are more used to linear growth. Exponential growth like compound is therefore hard to grasp since also the results take some to materialise.

    And if there is a habit you’d want to think of when it comes to patience and investment, then to stop looking at your brokers app every minute. Set a notification instead and be aware of what your emotions are telling you when things don’t work out as planned.

    Conclusion

    • Focus more on broad patterns and less on specific individuals.
    • Keep calm and diversify your investment.
    • Be patent and establish an anti habit to stop checking your brokers app for the most current balance. Set a notification instead.

    Next on my reading list is “fast lane millionaire” by MJ DeMarco, who shares a different path to wealth.

  • Social Media is Evil Fast Food For your Brain

    Social Media is Evil Fast Food For your Brain

    Bluesky is becoming more popular than X. Users say Bluesky feels like real social media again. This makes me want to speak out about how social media affects our performance. I will summarise how this influence impacts our success in important areas of life.

    What you’ll find inside:

    Observing my own Social Media consumption, I find myself regularly doomscrolling Insta, TikTok or Reddit especially before bedtime. „Just only ten more posts“ I say to myself. This is just to break this promise to myself with scrolling „just a few more“. It gets late and I fall asleep way too late and regret it afterwards – just to mention one similarity to junk food? But why do I doomscroll at all even though I am not searching for anything special.

    Our Brains prioritise novelty

    The part of our brain that responds to new stimuli is called the nigra/ventral segmental area. This area is closely connected to the hippocampus and the amygdala, which both help us learn and remember. The hippocampus compares stimuli against existing memories, while the amygdala responds to emotional stimuli and strengthens associated long-term memories.

    Let me explain why our brains work like that with an example of our early ancestors where survival was predominant. One day a young neanderthal women, let us call her Lizzy, discovered a hidden cave while searching for food in the forest. She thought, “This could be a cozy place to sleep!” Once she stepped into the cave, she heard a loud growl of a bear that was already living there. With a little luck Lizzy managed to escape. 

    But what happened in her brain during that experience? At first, her hippocampus compared the stimuli of seeing a new cave against existing memories. Initial reaction was „exciting, maybe a new shelter“ and lead her to explore the cave. The shock of discovering a bear inside, an intense emotion paired with rush of adrenaline, strengthened her long-term memory that a) this cave is not save and b) caves in general can be dangerous. 

    The reason she started exploring the cave in the first place is an important mechanism that encourages us to try new things. It was the anticipation of dopamine – sitting at a fire, have it warm, dry, save etc. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that plays a key role in reward, motivation, and pleasure. Exactly this anticipation of dopamine leads us to open up the social media apps and start scrolling – in most cases without a dedicated need other than pleasure.

    How sleep affects brain function and mental health

    But every brain can only process and store a limited amount of new information in long-term memory. Think of an all-you-can-eat buffet but for information. You open up TikTok and start scrolling to discover new and exciting topics like how to use a drill to clean your toilet, after that a sneezing panda and so on. Depending on your stomach or self discipline, you might stop to put new things on your plate at a buffet and give your stomach a chance to digest.

    Our brains equivalent to this is sleep. While we sleep all of the „plates we filled with information“ over the day are being „digested“. Repeating information will stick. Our brain transfers new information to long-term memory by considering emotional factors, but it discards the majority of information.

    Social Media fills your brain with information, you don’t need

    In contrast to an all-you-can-eat buffets most Social Media Apps are designed for mass consumption. Being it notifications about new posts or reactions, gamification aspects like badges or karma and followers count – all this has the sole purpose of this app becoming the dominant player in the market. You as user are the worker to achieve this goal. It is a system with a reinforcement loop to contribute and consume. Which means either you contribute with the 10th video of toilet scrubbing with a drill or you consume it. 

    At the end of the day, your „brains plate“ is filled with various kinds of these unspecific information. Potentially leaving no space left for information that matter to be successful in personal or professional part of your life. As with fast food, your basically bloated your brain with fun but irrelevant information. Incautious consumption of social media spreads our focus. But focus is what drives our energy towards goals, visions and purpose in life.

    My formula to avoid overconsumption of social media

    Did I bashed a bit too hard on Social Media and the bad schema the companies are up to. But like money, Social media is not bad or good. It depends on how conscious we use it. It is okey to get yourself distracted by all the fun stuff, since it is also a substitute to release stress.

    To reduce my screen time for social media apps I tried the built in features of my iPhone. At least in iOS it is too tempting to click on „15 more minutes“ once the time limitation screen pops up.

    Instead what worked for me is to hire an app guard. This sounds fancy but is just a deal with myself: Every time I crave to open any of my social media apps, I have to justify to myself, if I completed two other items already that I set for my personal growth. For me it is completing my daily streak of learning Spanish and tracking my calories and water consumption.

    I do this via apps on my mobile that are on the same screen as my social media apps. Every time I grab my mobile and want to chill on social media, I see these two other apps first which triggers me to ask: did I completed these two items? For the most cases it works for me to jump into the other apps and work towards my visions instead of incautiously „do social media“.

    Conclusion 

    • Each social media app designs its system for ease of use and consumption, relying on you to contribute to their success.
    • Our brain carves for new and exciting information which makes you doom scroll social media.
    • While we sleep, our brain processes all new information into long-term memory, making repeated information stick.
    • Our brains can store a limited amount of information in long-term memory. 
    • If you consume a lot of social media content unrelated to all the things you want to your aspriations, you sabotage your personal growth.
    • Limit your social media consumption by installing a social media guard, a habit that priorities topics of you personal growth first and makes social media second priority. 

    Further reading:

  • Challenge Your Relationship with “Happy Money” by Ken Honda

    Challenge Your Relationship with “Happy Money” by Ken Honda

    I chose this book to broaden my money and investing views beyond “buy and hold.”

    What you’ll find inside:

    What I liked about the book is that it raised my awareness about the importance of how I earn and spent my money. While I already was cautious about what my spendings, I neglected the earning side.

    There is only scarcity of money, if you choose to believe it.

    As with life itself, it is the attitude we have towards financials that drives our beliefs. If we had bad experiences on how to pay our bills, we perceive money as a scarce resource – it needs to be protected. This may make us blind towards the fact that in today’s world there is more than enough. Federal Reserve is not printing it, but effectively adding funds to the money supply – we just have to somehow get on hold of it.

    Be appreciative for your financial income

    This brings me to the topic of earning money. For most of my life I believed that I did not deserve it. Be it my monthly salary, my earnings from all the side hustles I enjoy or gains and dividends from my investments on the stock and crypto market. I simply didn’t think much of getting paid for my time and skills.

    But this is something the author aims to educate us on. To observe whether the money you receive is based on an activity that you enjoy, and understand that you and your productivity are the money’s worth. If you are not happy with what you do to get paid for, then instead of suffering daily find something you enjoy or a reason to enjoy your daily work beyond the financial aspect. Maybe by reframing your purpose in what you do for living.

    Think of Norman Lawson who figured out 39 ways of not working lubricant formulas, but with WD40 found a rust preventive, penetrant and moisture displacer most of use already used.

    Say “arigato” to the money that leaves your wallet

    The author encourages us to apply the same mindful exercise while spending money. Also being thoughtful, about if the money spent is for something that really makes you happy on the long run. This implies, that you are aware of what makes you truly happy.

    Take for example a new shirt that you always wanted, think of the all the necessary steps that are required to produce it. Starting from someone who had an idea to design the shirt, compose the materials and colours, create the fabric, sew everything together, transport it to the shops or distributors and finally reaching you after you bought it.

    So when you say arigato (thank you in Japanese) while spending your money on that shirt, it is acknowledging that there are several people involved in producing this shirt and to be thankful for their work. But this is also acknowledging that you are also part of some value creation you deserve to get paid for.

    As addition to that book, I recommend the following TED talk, that wraps the topic up.

    What I derive from “Happy Money” by Ken Honda:

    • Get mindful about money and try the habit of saying arigato while spending and receiving it.
    • Occasionally, we overspend and lose money, but sometimes it’s due to changing financial rules, so avoid being too hard on yourself for the latter.
    • Before buying, consider if your happiness comes from spending or the product/service itself.

    Next book on my list is “the Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel. Stay tuned.