Emotional Diversification — Devin Martin Lifestyle Integrity

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Emotional Diversification

Aug 15

Written By Devin Martin

Why do success and anxiety seem to go hand in hand?<br>What do these three, real people have in common (besides panic attacks):<br>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.<br>DIVERSITY = STABILITY<br>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.<br>This is how I started using this term, emotional diversification.<br>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.<br>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.<br>Everyone gets this in finances. Few seem to see the correlation to their emotional life.<br>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.<br>The opposite of being ‘all-in’ is being diversified and it’s not just what you do, but why you do it that matters.<br>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.<br>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<br>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.<br>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.<br>More importantly, if you are waiting for retirement you are actively squandering your best years...