💰Money & Success
The Psychology of Money
Why chasing money pushes it away, and what to chase instead
📖 12 min readRead
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Preparing your mental wellness content
Preparing your mental wellness content
Discover how your mind works with money, relationships, work, technology, and everything in between. Research-backed insights explained simply.
Why chasing money pushes it away, and what to chase instead
Why intense attraction fades, and what actually makes love last
Why believing you're "not smart" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Why your brain treats Instagram likes like cocaine hits
Why your brain treats public speaking like a lion attack
Why moving the goalpost keeps you perpetually unsatisfied
Why suppressing anger hurts you, but expressing it wrong hurts others
Why you become your parents even when you swore you wouldn't
Why your "productivity" is actually burning you out
Why 50% of marriages fail despite everyone starting out in love
You spend a third of your life asleep, yet most people treat it as waste time. Science shows sleep isn't downtime—it's when your brain does its most important work. Skimp on it, and you're not just tired; you're cognitively impaired, emotionally unstable, and slowly damaging your health.
You eat multiple times every day, making thousands of food decisions yearly. Yet most of these aren't about nutrition or hunger—they're driven by emotions, habits, social contexts, and psychology you're barely aware of. Understanding the psychology of eating is key to a healthier relationship with food.
Your body isn't just a vehicle for your mind—your physical health and mental health are deeply interconnected. Chronic stress causes physical illness. Physical illness causes mental distress. Understanding this bidirectional relationship is key to holistic wellness.
"Who am I?" seems like a simple question, but your sense of identity is complex, fluid, and constructed from narratives, social roles, cultural context, and experiences. Understanding how identity forms—and how it can change—is key to authentic living and navigating life transitions.
You've spent years in schools designed around outdated theories of learning. The science of how humans actually learn—through curiosity, challenge, mistakes, and meaning-making—often contradicts how education systems operate. Understanding real learning unlocks potential far beyond traditional schooling.
Culture isn't just food and festivals—it's the invisible framework shaping how you think, feel, and see the world. You're not aware of your cultural programming until you encounter a different one.
You can accumulate vast knowledge yet make terrible decisions. Wisdom isn't about knowing facts—it's about understanding context, embracing uncertainty, learning from experience, and recognizing the limits of what you know.
Creativity isn't a rare gift possessed by artists—it's a fundamental human capacity. Every time you solve a problem in a new way, you're being creative. The question isn't whether you're creative, but how you express and develop it.
You don't just have different political opinions from your opponents—you have different moral foundations, seeing different aspects of situations as morally relevant. Understanding moral psychology doesn't resolve disagreements, but it explains why they're so intractable.
Music has no survival value—it doesn't feed you, shelter you, or help you reproduce. Yet every human culture creates music, and it moves us profoundly. Why? Music is a window into how your brain processes emotion, memory, social connection, and meaning.
You know you should start that project, but "I'll do it tomorrow" feels so much easier. Procrastination isn't laziness or poor time management—it's your brain choosing immediate mood repair over long-term goals.
Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets. It's the most valuable thing in relationships, yet we often don't notice it until it's broken. Understanding the psychology of trust helps you build it wisely and repair it when damaged.
Every January, millions promise "This year will be different." By February, most are back to old patterns. Change isn't about willpower—it's about understanding how your brain resists change to protect you, and working with that biology, not against it.
You think you're being clear. They think you're being confusing. Most relationship problems aren't about what's said—they're about what's heard, assumed, and left unsaid. Understanding the psychology of communication transforms your connections.
Family is who you're given. Romance is who you fall for. But friends? Friends are the relationships you intentionally build and maintain. They shape your happiness more than most people realize, yet friendship is the first relationship we neglect when life gets busy.
You can be surrounded by people and feel desperately lonely. You can be completely alone and feel deeply content. The difference isn't about how many people are around—it's about the quality of connection you feel, including connection with yourself.
Power isn't just about authority or control—it's woven into every relationship and interaction. Understanding power dynamics helps you recognize when you're being influenced, when you're wielding influence, and how to use power responsibly.
Whether through organized religion, personal spirituality, or secular meaning-making, humans universally seek answers to life's biggest questions. Understanding the psychology behind this helps you navigate your own path without judgment.
Death is the only guarantee in life, yet most people live as if they're immortal. Understanding how death awareness shapes your psychology—from your daily anxieties to your deepest values—can paradoxically make life more meaningful.
Home isn't just a location—it's a feeling. Understanding why some places feel like home while others don't, and why belonging matters so deeply, reveals fundamental truths about human psychology.
Every day you make thousands of decisions—from trivial (what to eat) to life-changing (career, relationships). Yet modern life makes deciding harder: endless options, information overload, fear of regret. Understanding how your brain makes choices reveals why decisions feel overwhelming and how to choose better.
Stress is everywhere—work deadlines, family demands, money worries, constant notifications. A little stress helps you perform, but too much damages your health, relationships, and sanity. Burnout is what happens when stress goes on too long: you feel completely exhausted and nothing seems to help. Understanding stress and burnout is essential for surviving modern life.
Your mind is constantly elsewhere—replaying past conversations, planning future tasks, scrolling through digital feeds. You eat without tasting, talk without listening, live without being present. Mindfulness is radical act of being here now. Understanding what presence is, why it matters, and how to cultivate it transforms everyday experience.
Your memory is not a recording—it is a reconstruction. Every time you remember, you recreate the past, and in doing so, you change it. Nostalgia colors memories with sweetness, longing, and sometimes pain. Understanding how memory works and why we feel nostalgic reveals both the power and the fallibility of remembering.
Climate change is not just environmental crisis—it is psychological crisis. Eco-anxiety, climate grief, and existential dread about the planet are increasingly common. Yet many people feel paralyzed, denying the problem or overwhelmed into inaction. Understanding the psychology of climate change—why we struggle to act, how to cope with eco-distress, and finding agency in crisis—is essential for both personal wellbeing and collective action.
Gaming is no longer niche hobby—billions play worldwide. Games provide escape, achievement, community, and flow. Yet concerns about addiction, violence, social isolation persist. Understanding gaming psychology—why games are so compelling, when play becomes problem, how virtual experiences affect real life—matters for anyone living in increasingly digital world.
You spend most of your waking life working. Yet work can be source of meaning and fulfillment or chronic stress and dissatisfaction. Understanding work psychology—what creates satisfaction, why burnout happens, how to navigate career transitions, and finding purpose in professional life—is essential for wellbeing in modern world.
Who am I? This question seems simple but reveals profound complexity. Your personality—consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving—feels fixed yet changes across life. Understanding personality helps you know yourself, accept your nature, and grow intentionally rather than fighting who you are.
Every night you enter strange alternate reality—vivid experiences, impossible events, intense emotions, and usually remember little upon waking. Dreams have fascinated humans for millennia. Understanding what dreams are, why we have them, and what they might mean reveals hidden processes of your sleeping mind.
Your habits shape your life—40-50% of daily actions are habitual, not consciously decided. Want to exercise regularly? Quit smoking? Build better relationships? Understanding how habits form and change reveals why willpower alone fails and what actually works for lasting behavior change.
Your brain is built to learn, yet it fights you every step of the way. Learning feels uncomfortable because your brain prefers familiar patterns over new ones, values looking smart over being confused, and fears the vulnerability of being a beginner. Understanding why learning feels hard makes it easier.
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