anti-fragile.............

 

The Harvard Grant Study followed subjects for 80 years and found that participants who chose comfort over challenge aged faster, died sooner, and reported less life satisfaction.

We are anti-fragile systems.  We require stress to maintain basic functions.  Remove all challenge and we literally decompose.

-Stan Taylor

stress.....................

 

You've been so focused on the loss of external things that you failed to account for the ongoing loss of internal things.  And unlike money or jobs, time and integrity don't regenerate once spent.  Every day you live disingenuously is a day of your life burnt.  How many more are you willing to torch? . . .

In health terms, chronic stress is deadly when it wrecks your immune system, heart, and brain.  So, keeping the peace externally might be killing you slowly, whereas a short burst of conflict, followed by a freer life, could literally improve your health.  Your contract could be cutting years off your life by keeping you under constant stress.  Loss aversion made you avoid short-term pain as the cost of long-term well-being.  A bad trade.

-Stan Taylor, The Black Book of Power

anti-fragileness as a goal.............

 

The goal for both your body and finances is to make them anti-fragile systems. Growing stronger through controlled stress to avoid collapse under reckless intensity is the North Star for amplifying wealth and optimal health.

-Tony Isola, from here

On earning and spending...................

 

Earning more money increases freedom.

Spending less than you earn reduces stress.

-James Clear, from this edition

Morgan Housel........................

 

.............tries to make sense of our world:

But let me put it this way: As the world improves, our threshold for complaining drops.

In the absence of big problems, people shift their worries to smaller ones. In the absence of small problems, they focus on petty or even imaginary ones.

On stress................................

 

...........................................relief.

The upside of stress..................

      Stress focuses your attention in ways good times can't.  It kills procrastination and indecision, taking what you need to get done and shoving it so close to your face that you have no choice but to pursue it, right now and to the best of your ability.

-Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

Hugs are pretty important....................

 But, trust me, money is no substitute for mental health. I would rather be poor and happy, than subject myself to constant stress in a work environment. You will not starve if you opt for a solo practice. You probably won't have luxuries that others have; but, in the end, spend your time developing a happy relationship with another human being. Your money can't hug you in the middle of the night.

-Rick Georges

Talking about money............

 So the goal here is to have a healthy relationship with money. You don’t want the porridge to be too hot or too cold, but just right. How do you know when you have a healthy relationship with money? When you no longer stress about money. People who spend too much experience stress—they’re always worried about how to make the next credit card payment. People who spend too little experience stress—they’re agonizing over every penny. The goal is not only not to experience stress about money, but to not even think about it at all. I have an assignment for you: try to go a week without even thinking about money. I bet you can’t do it. It’s a lot harder than you think. Everywhere we go we are bombarded by financial decisions. Shit, the price of gas is high these days. Shit, Chipotle is $20 nowadays. Shit, my HOA dues went up this month. Do any of these things cause you stress? If so, that provides an insight into your psychology.

-Jared Dillian, from this post

No me..............................

via

There are very few things better than.......

……………………………………………...forest bathing.

On the virtue of stress...................

To live, for him, has no meaning other than to drive oneself, to act with all one's strength.  An existence without stress, without struggle, without growth has always struck him as mindless.  Those who remain on the sidelines he sees as coward, and consequently his personal enemies.

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex, quoting Leon Bazalgette

In praise of stress...................

But teaching kids that failures, insults, and painful experiences will do lasting danger is harmful in and of itself.  Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate.

-Lukianoff and Haidt,  The Coddling Of The American Mind:  How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure

De-stress: Part 2.............................

...............................Here is another typically wonderful list of surprises from Nicholas Bate.    A few samples:

2.   How less stressful it is when you realise some stuff is simply not under your control and you accept that.

8.    How much more wealthy you feel when you finally release the need for more stuff simply because everybody else seems to need more stuff.

11.   Whatever your chronological age, you can still be young at heart

De-stress.................................

.......................Here is a pretty good story and a very good list to help you on your way:

3.  Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

17.  We could learn a lot from crayons.  Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull.  Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all live in the same box.

Nope............................

...........................and not being able to has caused us some stress over the past 35 years.

Or you could just follow this blog...........

a blog to follow

Counter-intuitive.............

On the benefits of stress.............................

The higher a nation’s stress index, the greater its GDP and life expectancy, the more satisfied people are with their lives, their work, their communities, their own health, the happier they are. Basically, the more people you have who thought yesterday was very stressful, that’s better for public health, it’s better for the economy, it’s better any way you look at it. It kind of blew the researchers minds. It was not what we were expecting.

-Kelly McGonigal, as quoted in this Morgan Housel post