Compound Emotion
Weekly essays on wealth, decision making, and long-term compounding
Read time: 3 minutes
Over the last twenty years, I’ve noticed something interesting. Many of the decisions that had the biggest impact on my life looked difficult to justify at the time. Today, they seem obvious. Back then, they didn’t.
One of the biggest was deciding to come to the United States for graduate school. My family wasn’t wealthy, and money was actually tight. My parents borrowed money so I could pursue a master’s degree in finance. It was a significant commitment for our family, and there were no guarantees about what would happen afterward.
If I had approached the decision purely from a spreadsheet, there were plenty of reasons not to do it. The cost was high, the outcome was uncertain, and the downside was real. But I also believed in myself. I had done well in school, earned scholarships throughout college, and felt that if I was given an opportunity, I could make something of it.
So I made the decision, and despite the uncertainty, my parents trusted me and chose to support it.
Today, that decision looks obvious. At the time, it didn’t.
That’s often how life-changing decisions work. Once the outcome becomes visible, we forget how little we actually knew when the decision was made.
I’ve noticed the same pattern in smaller decisions. Starting a newsletter didn’t look particularly rational. Writing a book certainly wasn’t the highest-return use of my time if measured purely in dollars, especially while balancing a career and a young family. Yet both have introduced opportunities, conversations, and relationships that I never could have predicted.
That’s one reason I think many people get stuck. Reasonable decisions optimize for certainty. They reduce downside, minimize risk, and keep options open. Those are good things, but meaningful outcomes often require acting before all the evidence is available.
I’m not talking about recklessness or blind optimism. I’m talking about making occasional decisions that cannot be fully proven in advance. The older I get, the more I think life compounds through decisions like these. A single choice rarely changes everything, but a series of choices can completely alter the trajectory of a life.
Sometimes the most important question isn’t, “What’s the safest choice?” It’s, “What choice gives my future self the best chance to become who I want to be?”
I still believe in being analytical, thoughtful, and practical. But I’ve also learned that some of the best things in my life started as decisions that didn’t make much sense on paper.
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One of the ideas behind The 7 Pillars of Wealth is that wealth is not just about money. It’s also about creating opportunities, flexibility, and choices for your future self.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, you can find the book here: http://amzn.to/4tTl5gL
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See you next Tuesday.
Bill