There is a distinct feeling that comes from being out of control with your finances. It is a quiet, low-grade anxiety that hums in the background of your life. When your finances are unguided, you spend your time reacting. You react to the unexpected bill, you react to the late fee, and you react to the pressure to keep up with the spending behaviour of your peers. In this state, money feels like a heavy weight. It dictates your mood, limits your choices, and leaves you feeling like you are constantly playing catch-up, no matter how much you earn.

If you have ever carried a significant amount of debt, you know that it is rarely just a numbers problem. It is an emotional, social and physiological weight. Whether it is a heavy mortgage, a maxed-out credit card, or a spiralling personal loan, unmanageable debt dictates your mood, limits your choices, and introduces a low-grade panic into your daily life. It forces you to constantly look backwards, using today's hard-earned income to pay for yesterday's lifestyle. It infringes on relationships and restricts your rest.

Have you ever thought about how gratitude could be a key part of your financial strategy? Ken Honda calls it “arigato money”, which we could call “thank you” money. When we are children, the very first lessons we learn about social etiquette revolve around two simple phrases: “please” and “thank you.” We are taught that gratitude is the baseline for healthy relationships.

There’s a traditional approach to financial planning that relies heavily on the maths of your money. A legacy expectation of discussing asset allocation, historic yields, and projected growth. Success can be perceivably forecast with the building of beautiful spreadsheets that show exactly how a portfolio should perform over the next few decades. But a spreadsheet has a distinct advantage over a human being: a spreadsheet does not feel fear. And this is both its advantage and its failing.

We often look to our investment portfolios for ultimate security. We watch the markets, hoping the numbers will grow large enough to finally give us permission to exhale. This is so common; if you resonate with this, you’re not alone. But relying entirely on a bank balance, risk product or investment portfolio to provide your peace of mind can be a fragile strategy. They’re helpful, but need to remain balanced and in their proper place.

Have you ever started off your day with the intent to mark off everything in your email inbox as ‘Read’? Sometimes, we have this perception that our emails need to be all read and sorted before we can move on to our next task. We are often taught to manage our time with the same rigour we use to manage our investment portfolios. We track our hours, schedule our meetings, and try to extract the maximum yield from our day. But in doing so, we often ignore our most critical, finite asset: our cognitive energy.