Emotions are the strangest thing.
Personally, I believe emotions are our Achilles’ heel as a species. Thinking in an emotionless manner allows for the most logical decisions to be made. However, without emotions, we lack empathy. It’s really a trade-off.
In terms of the financial world, lacking emotions offers a step up. Being able to distinguish personal issues from business issues allows for cut-throat decisions to be made that have your best financial interest in mind.
In a sense, emotions connect us to each other as fellow human beings. Without them, we’d be nothing but self-serving primates.
I’ve been disconnected from my emotions for some time now. Friends have speculated that this could be due to my getting between no hours and four hours of sleep each night, which is probably true.
The only two real feelings I’ve had for a while are (1) anger and (2) agony. I told three separate strangers to “go fu** themselves” before 10 o’clock this morning. Can you imagine? Not people that I know—total strangers. I lost count of how many people I’ve yelled at on the phone this week, followed by slamming down the phone on them.
I’ve had to force myself to calm down. I find that music is the most effective cure. Listening to happy music can entirely alter my mood.
One minute, I’m telling a stranger to “eat sh**,” and the next minute, I’m listening to the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack and thinking about world peace.
Today, something magical happened.
After a straight 12-hour work marathon interrupted by 2 classes, I drove to continue my work elsewhere for another 4-or-so hours. While driving and listening to music, my eyes began to fill with tears.
No, I didn’t cry.
But, my eyes did well up at no apparent stimuli than I can think of aside from the music.
I wish I could say that I learned some sentimental lesson from this experience, but I have none to speak of. I will say, however, that this explosion of emotions did feel surprisingly satisfying. Only after this happened did I realize that I was emotionally constipated. The music was essentially a fast-acting extra-strength emotional laxative.
Until next time,
Michael J. Erickson, CEO & Co-Founder
