Good morning, money nerds. It’s good to see you again. Today, we have five great stories related to the psychology of money.
Five mindsets that get in the way of creating wealth. [Psychology Today] — “Undoubtedly, the reasons for people’s money worries are complex and issues like income inequality and racism play a role. However, mindset plays a role, too. Your thinking style can make it either more or less likely you’ll accumulate significant wealth. Let’s look at five cognitive factors that get in the way of creating wealth, even amongst people who earn a good salary at their jobs.”
Most accomplishments are invisible. [Raptitude] — “[My] achievements are completely unimpressive in any conventional sense. I achieved the ability to do certain everyday things most people do with ease. But they took an enormous amount of work, and I wouldn’t trade a single one for a million bucks. So if you feel inadequate whenever some form of the ‘achievement Olympics’ comes up, don’t. We live in a society that assesses people by what their lives produce, not what it takes to live them. Inner work is ignored unless it explains some outer work.”
How we think about forgiveness at different ages. [Greater Good Magazine] — “At its highest developmental level, forgiveness means to unconditionally offer mercy to someone who acted unfairly…The highest form of forgiving is to offer love and kindness for the good of others — and not for some self-serving reason, like hoping for compensation or approval by our peer group after we forgive.”
The soul-expanding value of difficulty. [Brain Pickings] — “If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful…Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” [This is related, in a way, to the article Jim shared here last week exploring whether we’re happier when we’re uncomfortable.]
The evolution of human cooperation. [The Weekend University] — “How did we go from small insignificant primates on the savannas of Africa, to building large cooperative societies with hundreds of millions of members? It’s tempting to think technological innovations were the driving forces…However, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers an alternative explanation. In his book, The Righteous Mind, and various lectures available online, he argues that it was psychological innovations, rather than technological, that ultimately got us to where we are.” [Also available in video format!]
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