How Emotions Shape Financial Decisions and Readiness

Many financial decisions feel logical in the moment.

Yet emotions often shape the choices we make about money.

Understanding that connection can help us make better decisions and build stronger financial readiness.

On this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens, I spoke with Mark Crowley, author and advocate for heart-based leadership, about how emotions shape the way we make decisions, build relationships, and respond to life’s uncertainties.

📝 Key Takeaways

🔹 Financial decisions are often driven by emotions .
🔹 Awareness of emotional signals leads to more thoughtful choices.
🔹 Connection and belonging strengthen resilience.
🔹 Small moments of appreciation and trust build stronger relationships.
🔹 Collaboration and support systems help people navigate uncertainty.
🔹 Self-awareness helps us recognize emotional influences on decisions.

💭 Tony’s Take: Financial readiness involves understanding how emotions influence our decisions, relationships, and responses to uncertainty.

When we build self-awareness, strengthen our connections, and approach decisions with intention, we create a stronger foundation for navigating life’s unexpected moments.

Connect with Mark Crowley:

• Website: https://markccrowley.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markccrowley/
• Twitter: @MarkCCrowley

Books:

• The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams (Amazon)
• Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century (Amazon)

Podcast:

Lead From the Heart: https://blubrry.com/leadfromtheheartpodcast/

Bio: 

Mark C. Crowley is the author of “Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century,” and “The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement To Build Flourishing Teams.” His mission is to fundamentally change how we lead people in workplaces around the globe. 

Mark is a regular columnist for Fast Company Magazine and has been published in Psychology Today, Inc. USA Today, Reuters, Forbes, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Huffington Post, Gallup, The Financial Times, and the Seattle Times.   

☕ Support the Get Ready Movement.

If these conversations help you think differently about money or prepare for life’s what-ifs, your support helps expand financial readiness education and keep this work accessible.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

The future of financial readiness starts with how people feel. Welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens. Today I'm joined by Mark Crowley. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Thank you, Tony. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yeah, it's exciting to have you on. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story and how did it lead you to focusing on heart-based leadership?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Okay, well, that's a very big question to start off with, actually. Um, so I I hope you'll indulge me. I've gotten to the point where I can tell the story and tell it pretty quickly. But it really, it's, you know, people don't yawn here when I say that it starts at the very beginning of my life because it truly did. Uh, when I was nine years old, my mom died and it came as a shock. Nobody had prepared me for it. And from that point forward, I was raised by my father, and he was a very successful person, but he was also uh a very dark human being and psychologically and emotionally abused me my entire childhood to you know to the point of wanting to make sure that I felt, you know, crippled and you know, had no self-esteem, no self-belief, told me I would be an abject failure in my life repeatedly, and nothing could ever please him. So no matter what successes I had as a kid, he was never happy with. And no financial support, no going back for holidays or birthdays, that was it. And so he kind of put me into a very difficult situation, which was that not only was I not prepared to live on my own at that point, I was actually thinking I was going off to college and he had the financial wherewithal to pay for it. And so he, because he had told me so often that I was never going to amount to anything, I I was smart enough to realize that if I didn't graduate from college, there's this binary experience that he would have been right and I would have had to live with that for the rest of my life. And I just couldn't believe that I was gonna be this horrible person with no success in my life. And so by hook or by crook, I graduated from college and I ended up going to one of the top public schools, and by the time it was over, it didn't start off this way. By the time it was over, I actually did very well, and so what happened was I started asking the people that I was, you know, graduating with what they were going off to do. And I realized that they were all going off to great graduate schools and law schools, and I didn't have any confidence in myself, even though we're graduating from the same universities. I had the same grades, and my challenge to get through was much more significant. And so I, you know, I started to think about well, what's the difference between these people? Why do I feel unworthy of going on to a great graduate school? And it came down to what was obvious, which is that I didn't get a lot of support from my upbringing, no empathy, no love, no care, no encouragement, no safety. And so when I started managing people, I unconsciously managed people in the way that almost as if it was an experiment to see what would happen if I gave people all the things that I didn't get and see how that would affect their performance. And I did all this unconsciously until I was 43 years old and somebody who'd worked for me for 20 years just came in my office one day and blurted out, you realize you manage people very differently, don't you? And I said, Well, what do you mean? And so she started pointing out the comparison to the people that I was working with who were managing with fear and intimidation and you know uh oppression. And she's she said, you know, you started describing the behaviors, and it was an instant epiphany that I had been blind to, that I've been leading people all based on my upbringing. But I realized that it was also very successful and started, I started to refine it and experiment it even more. And by the time I decided to write Lead from the Heart, which was 15 years ago, I had really refined these practices to say that we've been misaligning our leadership practices in a way that if we would change how we lead, according to what I had learned from my own experience, that people would be infinitely happier at work and infinitely more productive. And so the long and short of it is that I was challenged by my publisher to figure out what was happening inside of people that made them perform for me so exquisitely, consistently through my entire career and a projection into two national-level senior level positions at one of the largest financial institutions in the United States. And it all came down to that I believed that I was affecting the hearts in people. And from that point forward, I just reached out to cardiology and met a word-class cardio surgeon and said to her, Is there any chance that I was affecting the hearts in people? And she said, You're on to something we're just figuring out in medicine. And the bottom line is that she said, Yeah, you're we always believed that the heart was just a pump and that the brain is where all of our intelligence comes from, but we now know that the heart and the mind are connected. The heart sends more signals to the mind than the other way around. We're not rational beings. Most of our behavior is driven by feelings and emotions. It was just this massive confirmation of everything that I learned and knew intuitively through my life experience. And so 15 years ago, I published the book Lead from the Heart, basically saying we need to be managing how people feel and not how they think. Correct. I mean, and there's massive truth in that, right? I mean, there's somebody else said it before she did, by the way. I forget who it was, but uh, but it's it's famously known by Maya Angelou. But I think, you know, for people listening to this, if they just remember that that is truth, because it it feels good to say something like that, right? And we all go, oh, that's such a lovely quote. But if if you just get to the nuts and bolts of it, it's absolutely true. So if you want to have influence with people, don't worry about what they think. Worry about how they feel. How do they feel about you? How do they feel about how you display presence and interest and are you caring and thoughtful and kind, all of these kinds of things impact us in our bodies and our minds and our hearts together. And so, if that's the case, it's a much more intelligent way, ironically, to influence people by thinking about how can I make them feel something that I want them to feel? How can I make them feel positive? How can I make them feel enthusiastic? How can I make them feel supported and you know that they have an advocate? And we we just we just don't think about this very often, and that's what backfires. People have these these impressions of us, and we're like, I wonder what it was that made them think that. And it's the feeling that made them think that, not the thought that made them think that.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, and you know, uh, one of the things we've talked about on the show is our money stories and how those impact us our experiences and everything, and how that has much more of a dramatic effect. And of course, how emotions drive our financial decisions. Very few of our financial decisions are driven by the numbers. You know, we may get the numbers conceptually, but I I know in my own personal experience, I was often puzzled by the decisions clients would make when I'd think something was a black and white recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Completely, right? I mean, that but it it it you know, the I guess the point that I want to make to that is that we're humans. And if if you know if if human behavior is driven by feelings and emotions, then we shouldn't be surprised when you tell them this is how you should be investing your money, this is the most solid plan based on your risk tolerance, and then they go off and they buy something, and you're like, how did that happen? Like that wasn't what we talked about at all, because they're like, I just have a feeling that that's gonna be a good thing, or you know, I I heard something and I thought this is gonna, this is gonna work out for me, and it just feels right to me. And you're like, okay, but that has nothing to do with the analysis that we did for you, and you know, so you have to be ready for that, and you have to caution people on it too, because there's a temptation to do things that will, you know, like buying and selling. You you buy when the market's up and you sell when the market's down, you know, like there's no logic in that, but people do it because emotionally they they they feel like the only time I want to get in is when the market is going up, and if it's going down, then I'm losing, so I need to get out. And those are two of the worst decisions you can make from a financial planning. This, you know, I mean I don't need to tell you that, but you know, that's an emotional decision, not a rational decision.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that's the hardest for people when it comes to, you know, managing their financial journey is overcoming those feelings because you know, when the market is going up, there is also that temptation that, you know, we're social beings that they want to participate in what everybody else is participating in. And so, you know, having that discipline, you know, I mean, Warren Buffett says, you know, be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy, which is probably the best market advice anybody could give, but it's probably the hardest to execute.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

It takes courage, yeah. I mean, absolutely. It takes will and it takes trust, you know. Um, I mean, we just had this experience this week with this, with this war. And, you know, all of a sudden oil goes from $85 to $120, and we're looking at $7 a gas gallon gas, and you know, it's gonna tank the markets, and we have no idea how long this war is gonna you know land. And so the temptation to bail and sell all your stocks because you know the market is gonna go down hasn't been rewarded. Um, you know, the market's been up actually since this happened. I can't explain why, but the point is that if you look at the history of the market, you kind of know ultimately long term it's gonna go up. So you just have to write out these difficult situations and not get emotionally charged by them. But there was massive selling that went on the Monday after this whole thing happened, and you know, they didn't need to.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, and that's that is the history of the market, is you know things happening after certain events and you know, either people buying or selling, and it's not always completely logical. And then it usually in most cases sort of irons out over the course of a week or two weeks anyway, uh, smooths it out. So that's yeah, I mean, we're not giving investment advice by any means, but you know, why buy and hold can be a powerful strategy. Um, again, not investment advice, but you know, uh I I think this the strategy hop makes a lot of sense. So, Mark, why do people excel when they feel valued, safe, trusted, and supported?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Uh another very big question, but it it's human nature. It it really comes down to that. You know, we're social beings, and the worst thing you can do, you know, when when we punish people and we want to punish them severely, we isolate them, we put them in a single cell, and the reason for that is that it's the most painful thing you can do to somebody separate from you know harming them physically. And so the the inverse of that is that we need each other, we rely on each other, and we look to each other for how whether or not we are a valued member of the community, whether we belong to that community. And it turns out that those elements happen to be the foundational elements of human well-being. So if we don't have belonging, mental our mental health, and this has been demonstrated in major research, that the the fewer opportunities that we have to experience positive emotions, which come from joy and awe, but it also comes from attention and interest and appreciation and connection with other people. When we have that, we thrive. And when we don't have that, we can see that people's mental health deteriorates. And so this is one of the reasons why loneliness is such a hard hardship on people, because when you're lonely, you're not around other people. And when you're not around other people, you're not getting connection, and when you're not getting connection, you're not getting belonging. And when you're not getting belonging, there's no way you can have healthy. I mean, there are hermits in this world, but most of us aren't wired that way. And if you've ever felt lonely, you know it's sort of like this call from your being to go out and be with other people. Like that's how you feel better about it. But there are a lot of people that are living and they just don't have enough connection with each other, and they also work in places where their leaders, leaders, and managers don't make them feel valued. They don't care about whether or not people feel that they belong to the team, that there's a cohesion to that. And so it's sort of every man for themselves, which is not what we like. We like to collaborate, we like to cooperate, we like to know that the people around us are people that we can go to to ask for help and support. But if you're working in an environment where it's like every man for himself, and by the way, you know, we don't really care if you leave because if you do, we'll just find somebody else. All that creates um really a great toxicity in our emotional systems. And so it basically harms us, is really the answer in a very profound way.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, that's uh you know, and we talk about the loneliness epidemic as more people are solo aging at home, and that that has uh a significant negative impact on their health and their physical health, that it is all connected.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

So that's the interesting thing, is we we don't like if you you ask people, you know, and they think they're doing okay. But we the we we know that I think it's it's basically rounded up to about 25% fewer human interactions than we had pre-COVID. And so what that means is so it's the micro connections, so it's running into the dry cleaner and have them go, hey Tony, I'll get this to you by Friday. Is that okay? You traveling again this week? Like you have this little interaction. You go to the grocery store and you check out, and they go, Oh, I'm glad you got the deal on chicken, Tony. Good deal. Good, you know, you're having these interactions. And we just think that they're, you know, what what difference does the dry cleaner and the grocery store person matter? They matter because it's a connection. It's like you're recognizing me, you're making me feel like I like you know me. And those are really positive feelings. And so then you go and you get on your phone and you order a Starbucks. So now you go in, and instead of hearing your name Tony, you know, and whatever you just ordered with, you know, seven ingredients and all this, you know, details, right? That instead it's just waiting for you. You don't even get to thank the person that made it for you anymore. You don't even know who made it for you anymore. Where you order food, and instead of having, you know, somebody come and deliver it, they ask for the tip up front and they just leave it on your door. So you're not even thanking the pizza guy anymore. Like all of these little, it seems so, who cares, right? It's so much more efficient. But we are doing great harm to ourselves by not slowing down and talking to the barista and and having a conversation with the dry cleaner and the the neighbors, you know. Ask people that you know when was the last time you had a conversation with anybody in your neighborhood? So many people just think, oh, we're all just so busy, we don't get together. All of this is um leading to a lack lost connection and it harms us.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, and with AI, it's only accelerating that. Right. It is. So it it is gonna take a change. Um, you know, one of the things some of my guests have come on and talked about the value of community when we age, which is exactly what you're talking about, is making sure that you do have that community to age well.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Well, I mean, there's a there's a it was originally called the Grant Harvard Grant Study, and it started in the late 1930s, and you're probably familiar with it. And it's an ongoing study of it, it originally was the graduates of Harvard in 1938. Interestingly, John F. Kennedy was one of them. And so in the years since, they've continued to track those people. Most of them obviously are getting close to being deceased if they're not already. But they moved into their families. So they've been tracking them and they send them a survey and they ask them questions every few years, but they're tracking them through the rest of their life. And the what they basically concluded, the if the one grand conclusion is that if you want a happy, happy, if you want to have a happy life, that it's not about career success, it's not about how much wealth you were able to create for yourself, it's how many friends that you have, close friends and connections with other people that can include your family, but basically people who love you. So it's love, you know, stop, and that's the way that they answered it. It's like if you don't have close relationships, if you don't have connections with people, there's no way you're gonna have a healthy life.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, and it is amazing because you know, we we talk about that as you know, when somebody's you know getting closer to the end of their life is you know, nobody said, Well, gee, I wish I'd worked more hours. You know, I mean, it's almost become a cliche at this point. However, it still remains very true is that we do wish we'd spent more time with our families or whatever, you know. I mean, that's what the song going way back, Cat in the Cats in the Cradle, is all about.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yep. I mean, completely. But you know, obviously, you know, when you have a career, it's tempting to want to invest in it. And I think we get joy in that. So, um, but it it's really in the non-work hours. What are you doing to develop relationships? You know, there's people are you know cocooning. We're we're spending much more time alone in our homes than we've ever done before. And that, by the way, you know, leads to a lack of empathy because you have no appreciation for what other people are doing because you're not with them. You don't know what they're experiencing, you don't know what challenges they have. And so it it it also makes us a little bit more selfish and a less tolerant, and you're seeing that play out in in our society today. Lack of connection is doing a lot of harm.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, it is amazing, you know, when we think about it, is that it does show up in all these different ways that you you know we don't even think about, uh, but that they have these ripple effects. So, you know, to bring it to the area of you know, getting ready before life happens is, you know, do you have any advice for people to sort of change their rhythm um to get out there and to be able to connect with more people?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Well, you know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is sort of like perplexing to some people. Um, but what I'm saying is that if we're having fewer opportunities for connection, then we should lean in heavily to, from a leadership standpoint, building teams where people feel connected. So actually giving people time at work to socialize, not to go drink beers in the back room. I'm really just talking about opportunities to get together, maybe work on a project together where they get to know each other, they get to know their work style, and creating a culture where people are expected to have each other's backs. So, and you know, it is opposed to you and I working in the same company, and at the end of the quarter, our boss calls them in and goes, uh, Tony, I'm speaking the vernacular here, you just kicked Mark's ass this month, you know, this quarter. I mean, your your performance is just so much better than his, and you can see it in the numbers. And you know, great job. And now, you know, I leave that meeting defeated, but I'm also looking at you like, okay, Tony's now my competitor. I'm like, I need to beat Tony in order to get a promotion or a raise or even keep my job. That's the worst thing you could possibly do. So we shouldn't be comparing my performance to your performance and vice versa. We should have standards of performance and compare them to that. So that people feel like, okay, this is what's expected, and if I'm doing well, then I know it. But I'm not feeling like I'm opposed to Tony competing with Tony. Tony's my enemy, a threat, all those kinds of things. So that if I'm struggling, I can come to you and say, hey, Tony, I, you know, it's obvious for the results here, you're really doing well. Could you help me? You know, could you give me some advice on how I might improve? Now that's a much better situation because you're like, yeah, I'm totally willing to do that because you're not looking at me like a threat. You're not saying, well, I beat him this quarter, but next quarter, you know, if he gets better, then I'm gonna look bad. So why should I help him? But this is what happens in our workplaces all the time. So creating cultures where people feel that they can belong to each other and be accepted for who they are and that they're expected to work on collaboration and cooperation as opposed to competition is one way because we spend, you know, I don't know how many hours a day you work, but if it's eight, ten hours, you know, a day, most days the people that we have the greatest opportunity to build relationships with are right in front of us. So I think it's a leadership responsibility to do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah, I I love that. And you know, that translates to so many other things, but you know, collaboration is such a key, and it's reframing it from a zero-sum game uh, you know, to to where everybody can quote unquote win. And so I think, you know, as you're saying, is we need to redefine what winning really is.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

That's so well said, and and it really is. It's this idea that, you know, I I've spent most of my career working in in financial institution corporations, and it's astonishing how many of the how many of the review disciplines, like how we evaluate performance is win-lose. It's it's win-lose. So there's only a certain amount of money for raises, so some people aren't gonna get them. So you start there and immediately people are in a lack mode, and they're like, okay, well, uh I'm gonna I'm gonna have to beat Tony in order to get the money because and I need the raise. So I'm you know, I'm on my every man for themselves kind of mentality is bred from day one. It's just so counterproductive. So if if if you want to compete, compete against somebody that's outside of your company, like like a literal competitor. Let's do better than what they're doing over there in XYZ company, as opposed to creating internal competition. And managers create internal competition almost by instinct, and it's just so patently uh misinformed. It's just it's like the right out of the gate, you're just leading in a way that's counterproductive.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yeah, I mean, I I my first job was in sales, and that was, you know, I mean, you are competing against each other, you know, in sales jobs, and it leads to some very, as you point out, toxic environments.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

But why would you do that? Why wouldn't you say, hey, you get your commissions on your sales, and that guy gets his commissions on his sales, but um a certain percentage of your compensation is tied to how you all do together. So, okay, so now all of a sudden, that guy's not a threat, even if he's beating you, even if he's doing better. So, Tony, you know, you guys have the same territory and he's doing a lot better, and what's up? Okay, you get that. But if you can go to that guy and say, hey, you know, 25% of our compensation is time to the team and I'm underperforming and I want to succeed, help me. That guy's got a motivation as opposed to, you know, any lead that comes in, how did he get that? You know, that guy's a great, I mean, the the arguments that startup, the distrust, it's it's it's just patently stupid.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah. So, you know, I mean, for leaders, this is something, you know, to take away. Uh, you know, for people, you know, there I I know a significant number of the audience runs around firms uh or companies. And, you know, so these are simple takeaways that you can integrate. So, Mark, to wrap up, I have what's called the get ready hot take trio. These are three quick questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is what's one leadership myth you're trying to break?

SPEAKER_00 27:07

That we're rational beings. I think that you we have to, and and it's so interesting, Tony, because when I speak, and people will come up to me and they'll go, you know, that's probably true for most people, but you should see my Excel spreadsheets. I mean, I'm I am a data guy, I'm an analyst, I you wouldn't believe it. And so, you know, that's good for everybody else, but it's not for me. I am a rational guy. And what they don't understand is that the emotional component is happening under the hood, whether they realize it or not. That our feelings and our emotions are processing our experience in life all the time. And the mind is making sense of it all and deciding what to do. But as you said at the very beginning, about you know, you're giving people very logical, you know, analytical recommendations on how to invest, and then they go off and they buy something that's like that wasn't on the table that you don't even understand. Uh, we're all that way, whether you like it or not. So uh don't protest so much that you that you miss the point, which is that you should be aware of your emotions because they're affecting you all the time. Spending time figuring out what's is this a rational decision that I'm making? Is this the most rational decision, or are my emotions getting the best of me? That's a that's a healthy way to navigate something that most people aren't even aware of.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, I I love that. And the more that you're in touch with that, and I know some people say, hey, that's a little touchy-feely, but it's real. And you can think back to decisions you've made. And if you're saying, well, you know, this doesn't apply to me, and I I I know I've worked with people who feel that way, go back and think about some of the decisions you made and question yourself as to why you made them, and you'll be surprised as to what went into that decision.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Well, I mean it's interesting you should say that because when you think about the most important decisions in life, where to live, who to get married to, you know, where to go to college, what jobs to take, what career paths, if you ask most people, what decision in your life do you regret the most? You know, I married the wrong person or I got into the wrong, you know, job, family, whatever. I whatever major decision that that people regret, it's almost certain in my mind that the component that they didn't include in the decision was to listen to their heart. You have an intuition, and the intuition says, I know this job looks great on paper, but you shouldn't take it. And then they go take it anyway because their mind says, Oh no, I can make a lot of money and this is gonna be good. And then they get there and they're like, This was a disaster, and I knew it was a disaster, and I still took it. So it's the mind and heart. It's like literally going into your heart and saying, What's your decision? Tell me what, because the heart isn't gonna misguide you, the brain will misguide you because of the ego and everything that comes into it.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Yeah, I I like that. And you know, it it's something where those of us who've listened to that intuition, you know, where we're not quite sure where it's coming from or why it's coming, is it's often right. That's you know, the whole thing that that makes it, you know, a whole different way of thinking about your money and thinking about life. So, Mark, let's get out the time machine for a minute. If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about, you know, the heart and the mind and all this, what advice would you give your younger self?

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Uh so going back to the way that I was raised, you know, uh coming to a earlier conclusion that I was worthy and had value and was talented and would succeed in life, uh, would be uh it would have kept me from a lot of pain. You know, not not worrying about whether my what my father said to me was correct, but being able to refute it, I don't know if this is possible, but you know, in the time machine, you know, we're we're that's theoretical too. So if if there was a chance that I could have stopped the the the voice in my head that my father was telling me that you're not good enough, you're not capable enough, you know, I succeeded in my life despite them. But it was it could have been a lot easier and less put less uh less less less friction, let's just say, if if I could have stopped that voice a lot earlier.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah, no, that that's wonderful advice. And it's something that comes up on the show quite a bit, especially with women, is that you know, the fact, you know, the argument that women can't handle money or things like that. And so people have heard a lot of guests on the show talk about that, is that you are good enough and you can do these things. Uh, but stopping the negative story, as you say, is very difficult. It's easy to say, it's hard to do.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Correct. By the way, research shows that women make better leaders than men.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

So um and better investors as well. So there's a lot of research on that. So, Mark, to wrap up, what is your number one tip for helping people get ready before life happens?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

To get ready before life happens? What does that mean, Tony?

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Um, you know, you know, just to be prepared.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Well, life is happening all the time. So I just want a little more clarity before I give you my answer. Tell me a little bit more about what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Well, so, you know, it's just, you know, what is a good preparedness tool? Because, you know, we're we're all going to face, you know, disruptions in our life is what is one way that can we can be prepared for an unexpected event?

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Um, well, there's a bunch of stuff that pops into my head, but I guess the one that I would I would stress the most is that um the big reason that we are upset all the time and angry uh at things that happen to us that don't go the way we want them to is because we're under the illusion that we're actually in control. And so we plan and we, you know, we do our analysis and we're you know completely in our heads, and so you know, we plan our day or we plan a meeting, and you know, all of a sudden we get tied up in traffic, or you know, there's a car accident and we're gonna miss the meeting, and we just think the world is out to get us. And if you could reframe it and realize that the world isn't out to get us, this is the world, the world is unpredictable, and so it matter how well you plan for something, that it's a much healthier point of view to say something is likely to go wrong here, and what am I gonna do if it does? So, for example, I I have a podcast coming out next week, and I gave it to my uh producer, and he texted me at five o'clock this morning and said, His the your guest audio is completely garbled. I can't use it. And the person that I'm having on my podcast is a book coming out, and he's like massively busy. And so, of course, I could go, Knee Universe is you know, is out to get me here, and you know, what how do they do this to me and you know, why me and all that? And I just realistically looked at it and I said, okay, it's unusable. We're not gonna be able to use it, we're not gonna try to make it usable, and I'm gonna do my best to see if my guest could possibly find the time and I will make it work for him, whatever. Came back with like seven different times. Seven, I like he had more flexibility than I ever could have imagined. We've already scheduled it, it's gonna be on Thursday, it's gonna come out on time, it's gonna be great. And it is, I just didn't spend any emotional energy on why me. And you know, why is this happening? And because I've got to sync up with my producer and make sure he has time to do this. It's just, I just, I'm not surprised when things don't go badly. And so you're much more resilient and much more effective if you can say, okay, I didn't see this coming, but here it is, so let's deal with it, as opposed to spending three days marinating in anger over the fact that it did.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

I love that. That that is wonderful advice because that's the whole thing, things are going to happen, and you know, it's it's how you deal with it, you know, emotionally. And again, that gets back to what you've been talking about with the heart, is you know, or as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

So exactly, exactly. I mean, but but it it seems it's it's just I I I think I get more frustrated when I see people just like, you know, why is this happening? I can't believe it. And I'm like, because this is the way life goes. Like, this is just, you know, and if you just roll with the punches and just adapt. You know, the the thing, my father, when I was growing up, no surprise, but on the golf course, he was, he, you know, hit a good shot and he never, this is what I grew up with. He never would say, Oh, I'm happy with that. But if he hit a bad shot, he'd be cursing and angry. And I learned that a bad shot in golf is the worst thing you could possibly do. So you look at Tiger Woods, and what did his father do? His tiger, you know, Tiger would hit a drive, you know, he would hit his ball and it would land in the fairway. And his dad would say, Hey, that doesn't happen all the time. So I'm putting the ball behind the tree. Now figure out what you're gonna do. So he taught him that the chances are you're gonna end up behind the tree more often than you are gonna be in the middle of the fairway. So let's get good at managing that. That's why he's so exceptional. It's like we're not gonna work on the easy stuff. Let's work on the things that are more challenging. So when you get behind a tree, you go, I've hit that shot a million times, no big deal. Where most people are like, what am I gonna do? Now I'm behind a tree and it's gonna cost me shots and I'm gonna lose the whole tournament. And you know, we just go all the way down into the basement. The best people, the most effective people in this world are the ones that just go, all right, let's let's solve the problem, let's not worry about it. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, you know, I mean, I can think of so many examples in my own life where you know, where I've trained for something, and when you train for the worst possible scenarios, you know, if they happen, you're prepared. You know, it's easy to train for everything going well. It's not so easy to train for challenges.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

So, Mark. Uh Mark, where can people learn more about you, your work, your books, pick up a copy of your books and tune into your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Um, so thank you for that. Um, Amazon is where you can find Lead from the Heart and the power of employee well-being. And when I wrote Lead from the Heart, my publisher came back and said, There's another Mark Crowley out there. So you've got to meet something else. So I became Mark C. Crowley. So you can find me on my websites, marcccrowley.com, LinkedIn, Mark C. Crowley, Twitter, Mark C. Crowley. Um, and the the website is probably the best one because it has my email and anything that you know people want to reach out for.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Mark C City.com. Fantastic. And for everybody watching and listening, if you have access to the show notes, you can go to the show notes to find links uh to Mark's books website and to his podcast and social media profiles. Mark, thanks for joining us on Get Ready Before Life Happens.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Thank you very, very much. It was great.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Yeah, and thank you, everyone, as always, for tuning in to Get Ready Before Life Happens. If you learned something today to change the way you think about leadership and leading from the heart, please be sure to subscribe and to share with a friend. You can also go to my website at TonyStewar.com to join the Get Ready Movement and receive my newsletter and free resources. Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.