Emotional Diversification
Why do success and anxiety seem to go hand in hand?
What do these three, real people have in common (besides panic attacks):
The CEO of a global brand walks into my office for a consultation and tells me he has suddenly started having panic attacks every time he has to speak in front of a group.
A partner at Goldman Sachs who hired me to come to his apartment in Tribecca to teach him breathing exercises because he is suddenly having panic attacks when he has to get into an elevator or on a plane.
The CEO of a very successful Real Estate investment firm with an established public image who suddenly starts having panic attacks before routine conference calls.
Before getting to know them I see an immediate pattern. It’s not their success, but what they sacrificed to get there. I can almost always guess what their life looks like outside of work. Without fail, when an executive comes to me with extreme success and extreme anxiety I see a lack of diversification. It is not how they are investing their money, but their emotions.
DIVERSITY = STABILITY
For quite a few years I was the top ranked coach in NYC on directories like Yelp and Google. Because of this I have worked with a lot of very successful people from Wall street. Investment professionals, especially those at hedge funds, are often ahead of the curve when it comes to personal development as it relates to performance. Type-A people LOVE biohacking and are often willing to try almost anything if it gets results. The challenge is communicating in a way they can connect to. I often find myself trying to explain philosophical, spiritual, and psychological concepts in their language, the language of investing.
This is how I started using this term, emotional diversification.
Most people understand that they need to diversify their investment portfolios. It has become common knowledge that committing too large a percentage of your resources to one investment exposes you to great risk. It makes you fragile and overly vulnerable to volatility. Only cavalier cowboys invest in just a few stocks. When they do they inevitably end up obsessing over minor fluctuations in said stocks performance. They fixate on the market all day. They create a high anxiety situation.
Consider on the other hand your average index fund holder. She is free to ignore the vast majority of the ups and downs that the day offers. She feels secure in long term trends and unbothered by day to day fluctuations because her capital is spread out over hundreds of investments. If one stock performs poorly it isn’t like her whole outlook becomes bleak.
Everyone gets this in finances. Few seem to see the correlation to their emotional life.
When we get obsessed we feel unstable. If all one cares about is a single relationship or a single job they become incredibly fragile and incapable of weathering minor fluctuations, setbacks or criticisms. Your entire well being can become wrapped up in how one email or one project turns out. Suddenly perfection becomes the only option.
The opposite of being ‘all-in’ is being diversified and it’s not just what you do, but why you do it that matters.
We all need some things that we do just for the intrinsic value they provide and some things that are capable of generating states of FLOW or radical present moment awareness. We need to invest our emotions into all kinds of things and shift our focus multiple times per day.
When we are emotionally diversified we are anti-fragile. This helps us take on risk without the feeling that it is all vulnerable to collapse at any moment.
DELAYED LIFE PLAN
This is what I am calling the “I will be happy when…” or “I will be relaxed when…” or “I will be able to slow down when….” syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by being a workaholic. It is characterized by a narrowing of focus and an inability to stop working. This leads to an atrophying of hobbies, introspection, spirituality, physical health, personality, creativity, social connections and love. Essentially, one gives up on their life outside of work to focus on making money or gaining respect. The initial belief is that making money is meant to fuel life outside of work, but the more one works the less they know the other aspects of themselves, the less they engage their broader life, and the harder it becomes to switch gears and get back to balance.
Eventually, in the absence of a life outside of work, there is no content to fill the “freedom” one seeks and the pursuit of success/money becomes an end unto itself. If you are working to retire but have no vision of what you will do with retirement then you are stockpiling resources you may never need while actively diminishing your capacity to enjoy life.
More importantly, if you are waiting for retirement you are actively squandering your best years and, tragically, you may never get to do the things you are dreaming of. I suspect that one reason mortality spikes just after retirement is because of the loss of purpose.
If you aren’t struggling to pay the bills, why can’t you afford to invest your time and energy into things you enjoy doing now?
“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” — Tim O’Reilly
I remember vividly the day an investment banker in his 50’s, sitting across from me in my office, realized that he “used to be a singer”.
This was a guy who could not sit still. He always showed up late and tried to leave early. His phone was attached to his hand. He had deals to do. For weeks he had stared blankly at me when I asked him what he likes, what his hobbies were, or what he might like to do with his time outside of work. He worked, ate, traveled and drank. He checked all of the boxes of things workaholics claim to enjoy, but everyone eats and even travel can be a way to avoid feeling your own emotions. Women kept leaving him. He had money, but no purpose and no time for intimacy or creativity or spirituality or fun.
A question about his childhood interests triggered a deep stare into the space behind me. I let him marinate in it. Suddenly, he remembered that in high school his primary passion had been music. He said that if you met him, singer would have been his entire identity. For the past 20 years, he had totally forgotten that he could sing!
I asked him about his relationship with his young son.
“Has he ever heard you sing?”
“No…..” he replied, his voice trailing off into silence as he got incredibly still for the first time since I met him. He seemed to be staring into an abyss. Surely he would have cried If he still knew how. I felt an immense sadness with him. For a moment, he allowed himself to consider everything that had been sacrificed, all the parts of himself that he had disconnected from to be able to work 80–100 hour weeks for decades straight.
The rest of our conversation was quiet and slow. I felt a tenderness in him I had never been allowed to witness before.
Is it any wonder that he was financially powerful, but emotionally bereft?
TWO SOLUTIONS
I always offer many potential solutions, but we can group them into two buckets. The first is short term.
I teach clients how to manage their central nervous system. This is about state control, about working with the energy in their body. A few simple techniques like breathwork, body scans, CBT, postural awareness, and other lifestyle tweaks can often get them back up in front of a crowd, on the plane, or leading their team with more poise. Unfortunately, this often works too well. It deals with the symptoms. Some use this to temporarily ignore the underlying issues.
The second solution is more systemic. This is about their life as a whole.
How can extreme success be a primary reason for extreme anxiety?
These are people who work their assess off to feel accomplished, respected, and secure. The underlying assumption is that more success should equal more security. For a while it does…but then, often suddenly, everything shifts; if not before they get to the top, then when they arrive. How can the two suddenly become inversely correlated? What is it about reaching the top that leaves people feeling like their life is a house of cards?
Why does financial success lead to emotional instability?
Many of these people come from little. On the way up they had nothing to lose. They took risks and they sacrificed immense amounts to get where they are. Most are brilliant, all are incredibly hard working. Suddenly, they have everything to lose. When the hedonic treadmill has made luxury feel like necessity any amount of wealth can feel like golden handcuffs.
They have become so single minded, so focused, that their life has become narrow. Suddenly they are 1,000 feet in the air on a tiny little ladder. Even the smallest little breeze can whip them around.
I first noticed this pattern when hedge fund managers and investment bankers would come to me looking for an edge. We would get into biohacking and shoring up their intellectual frameworks. Before long the cracks would start to emerge. The problems are rarely where we want to focus. They wanted to talk about their physical performance and their intellect. Physical performance matters. Intellectual frameworks matter, but what really throws most people off is not their plan, but the times they deviate from it.
Investors, just like the rest of us, make mistakes because our emotions sabotage our intellect, our actions undermine our plans. It’s not knowing when to go to bed, when to buy a stock, how much to eat, when to sell, or that alcohol disrupts sleep that matters, but the moments when we are impulsive or subject to any of the hundreds of bias’ and cognitive distortions that we make rash decisions, panic in the face of uncertainty, and apply illogical mental models. Everyone in a seat like theirs is smart. Everyone has access to reams of data. The differentiating factor is how they operate under pressure. Your emotional game has to be strong.
What do most executives do when things feel out of control at work? They double down on work. They work longer hours. They miss the gym. They skip dinner with the family. They stay up late. They stop meditating. If they ever had hobbies they get put on pause. Work gets every resource available.
Longer hours and more intensity does produce results at the beginning of a career, but these exact strategies fail when we end up in leadership positions.
What got you here, won't get you there.
Try telling a portfolio manager in charge of investing over $2 billion that the way to make better investments is to work less. Tell the CEO of a unicorn startup that they need to slow down or else they are going to hit a ceiling, that their value is no longer quanity of output, but quality of decision making.
Early in my career I struggled to get the point across. I finally realized that I needed to use their language. Now every executive I speak to gets this in the first 5 minutes of discussion. They all have a strong grasp of financial terms. Financial diversification requires no explanation or argument. To diversify financially we don’t just put money into multiple US stocks, we invest in foreign stocks, in emerging markets, in real estate, bonds, and if we are to be prepared for all events, we must hold something in reserve, in cash.
What is the asset allocation of the emotionally diversified? What matters to someone deeply interested in a life well lived?
Hobbies matter.
Friendships matter.
Spirituality matters.
Physical activity matters.
Learning matters.
Teaching matters.
Volunteering matters.
Spirituality matters.
Sex matters.
Laughing matters.
Stillness matters.
Contribution matters.
Having a mission, and/or a deep sense of purpose matters.
We must remember how to PLAY
and Unstructured, unproductive time is our cash on hand, our reserves in the bank.
If your life is all about work then even the smallest setback can rock your entire world.
If you invest yourself in many things then when one thing falters or fails it is not the end of your world.
The prospect of losing the one thing that has become everything, can send a seasoned executive down a rabbit hole of stress, anxiety, despair, and eventually, panic.
It doesn’t have to be so hard.
If you are someone who can’t sit still, struggles to get great sleep, has less friends than you wish, less joy, less fun, less creativity, adventure, sex, and laughter, then what exactly are you working for?
Be honest with yourself. Do you live to work, or work to live? Is your entire self worth wrapped up in your job? If not,
Who would your friends say you are besides your work?
I know the arguments that follow. This isn’t about whether or not you like work. This isn’t about whether you want to retire, or not. This is about whether or not you allow your identity to be expansive. We all contain multitudes. Those many parts all yearn to be expressed.
There is a reason the top 5 regrets of the dying lists go viral, but you don’t need to wait until your deathbed to get real with yourself. Somewhere deep down you already know that working too much is living the life that others expect of you and that allowing yourself to be happier is about spending more time with loved ones and expressing your unique voice in many ways. The list above describes a lifestyle switch from being single minded, to being emotionally diversified.
There’s another point, which shouldn’t be required, but often is.
LEADERSHIP DEMANDS PERSPECTIVE
Emotional diversification is good for work too. This is what I call Orthogonal Leadership or Orthogonal Insights.
Mediocre leaders solve problems. Great leaders innovate, they are visionaries. They don’t just motivate with fear. They inspire.
If you want to be innovative in your field, if you want to be a leader that others want to follow, then you must be able to see your company, your industry, and the entire marketplace from an outside perspective. Thinking outside of the box only happens if you actually leave it.
Success isn’t just predicated on hours. In todays world, as you rise up through the ranks, it is the quality of a small number of very important decisions that determines most of your impact. In the age of AI this is only becoming more true.
The quality of your thinking goes down when you focus on one thing for too long. The greatest leaders of our time often have many interests. Even uber workaholic Elon Musk has many companies and is a world class gamer. Cross-training should be applied to all of life, not just the gym. Lifting weights appears to improve your effectiveness at meditation. Playing a musical instrument appears to make one better at math. Einstein’s musicality was quite likely one element of his genius in physics.
In the end performance isn’t the point. In case you have lost track, a life well lived is about more than just earning money and respect. A life well lived is full of slow moments with loved ones, getting lost in a creative pursuit, connecting with, and contributing to, something greater than yourself and leaving room for spontaneity and laughter.
How are your emotional resources allocated?
How diversified is your emotional portfolio?