{"id":2352,"date":"2008-10-27T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifewithhappiness.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2018-10-02T13:36:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T17:36:58","slug":"happiness-and-the-stock-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2008\/10\/happiness-and-the-stock-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness and the Stock Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been very little happiness in the financial world.\u00a0 In order to keep from slipping into the black hole of depression about our financial situation, I&#8217;ve withdrawn a bit.\u00a0 Do I really need to know what is happening in the market on an hour to hour basis?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Day to day?\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 One day it&#8217;s down 700 points (sadness) and the next day it is up 600 (yay!). Up, down; up, down. So much drama!<br \/>\nI&#8217;m only reading news about the market once a week.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t control anything, so I&#8217;ve stopped pretending that I can.\u00a0 I&#8217;m observing the activity from a distance.\u00a0 And I focus on what Good News I can create:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m happy that last year our broker convinced us to diversify our retirement savings, reducing our mix of domestic stocks.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve still lost value, but a lot less than we might have otherwise.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m happy that we converted half my 401(k) into a life insurance annuity.\u00a0 We were nervous at the time about locking in the money for ten years, but were convinced to make the shift because the tradeoff was a guaranteed minimum balance.\u00a0 With the market tanking we are now grateful for the lower floor on our dollars &#8212; we may not be making any money on that part, but we aren&#8217;t losing any, either.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m happy that we are more than ten years away from retirement.\u00a0 Ten years is a long time for things to recover.\u00a0 And if they don&#8217;t recover, ten years is a long time to come up with a Plan B.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m actually happy that the turmoil is causing everyone to look at &#8220;how the system works.&#8221;\u00a0 We are pretty creative as a society, but we tend not to change things that aren&#8217;t broken.\u00a0 The beauty of this crisis is that all the best creative minds are rising to the occasion and asking, &#8220;how can we change the system so that this never happens again?!&#8221;\u00a0 Even if they don&#8217;t create the perfect solution, what shakes out of this crisis is likely to be better than what was.<\/li>\n<li>On that note, it&#8217;s actually kind of cool to be present at the birth\/rebirth of something this big.\u00a0 (and yes, I am an incurable optimist who believes that crisis can be a good thing)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s your take on the financial crisis?\u00a0 Are you focusing only on the worst possible news?\u00a0 Are you monitoring the market more than you ever did before?\u00a0 STOP!\u00a0 You ignored things before, and they went up and down, and you were fine.\u00a0 Unless you are planning to retire this year, you&#8217;re probably going to be in better shape by then, so who cares what the value of your retirement plan is today?<br \/>\nPut down the statement.\u00a0 Back away from your computer.\u00a0 Take a deep breath.\u00a0 Pay attention to the basics you should have been practicing all along:\u00a0 live your life with joy, don&#8217;t buy what you can&#8217;t afford, save something out of every paycheck, eat healthy food, exercise your body, breathe deeply when you find yourself stressed.<br \/>\nOh &#8212; did you notice that I mentioned breathing two times in the same paragraph?\u00a0 Intentional.\u00a0 Breathing always helps.\u00a0 The financial crisis will not kill anyone &#8212; but the stress of it might.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t make yourself a victim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been very little happiness in the financial world.\u00a0 In order to keep from slipping into the black hole of depression about our financial situation, I&#8217;ve withdrawn a bit.\u00a0 Do I really need to know what is happening in the market on an hour to hour basis?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Day to day?\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 One day it&#8217;s &#8230; <a title=\"Happiness and the Stock Market\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2008\/10\/happiness-and-the-stock-market\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Happiness and the Stock Market\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,40],"tags":[75,49,41],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happiness and the Stock Market - The Executive Happiness Coach\u00ae<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theexecutivehappinesscoach.com\/2008\/10\/happiness-and-the-stock-market\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happiness and the Stock Market - The Executive Happiness Coach\u00ae\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There&#8217;s been very little happiness in the financial world.\u00a0 In order to keep from slipping into the black hole of depression about our financial situation, I&#8217;ve withdrawn a bit.\u00a0 Do I really need to know what is happening in the market on an hour to hour basis?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Day to day?\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 One day it&#8217;s ... 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