Numbers govern the modern world like no other and are of critical importance. But numbers are also quite new for humanity so we never had the time and possibilities to develop an intuition about numbers and abstraction. Life is full of situations when numbers are all around but the real challenge is not to count or do mathematical operations with them. It’s important to understand the abstraction, to understand what they represent and what the context is.
Numbers don’t bring sustainable long term happiness. Numbers can bring long term unhappiness. Numbers cause emotions of at least the same strength as similar non-number events. A big danger about numbers is that they are easy to compare. The more emotional you are, the more you load up your future with expectations. And those expectations will lower your happiness when you crash with reality. In the long term emotions about numbers load you with potential only for damage – expectations, lower self-love or envy. Avoid number related emotions, don’t give them space, don’t give them time, don’t give them reasons. Friends, love, freedom, creativity are all so much more important than numbers! If you fill your life with all those, you’ll stop caring about numbers naturally.
But in the modern world it’s hard to have the all-important freedom if you don’t have any money. And money is numbers. You have to understand money. And understanding requires interest and curiosity, which are forms of love. This is extremely counterintuitive. You’ll have to combine two golden rules. If the number represents another number(s), then it’s Game of Life stuff and you can dive in as your emotions are not in danger. If the number represents a non-number value like your performance evaluation or directly your self-worth, then emotions and happiness are in danger. This is the moment to avoid, ignore, not care. An inflection point between the two is pricing. Never be afraid to price high.
There is one case where numbers should be used a lot – Probabilities. Practice and your brain will develop a probability intuition that is extremely useful. A key characteristic of financially successful people and entrepreneurs is they love being specific and hate ambiguous numbers.
Numbers belong in the mind. Feelings belong in the heart. Don’t mix them, but also love your freedom. Let the heart help the mind earn the money to make it happen.
