Courtesy of pixaby.com
Last week I laughed when my broker called with a stock suggestion. Believe me, that’s no way to treat a person who has helped me survive my senior years with a modicum of security. I apologized and told him I’d been thinking about selling the stock he’d suggested. The company is restructuring and with good reason. They are losing share value. According to my broker, that’s the time to buy a blue-chip company. We remained friends after we rang off, but I didn’t take his stock suggestion. I prefer to sleep at night.
Men tend to be more aggressive than women. Certainly, that’s true when they are angry. Angry men gamble more than angry women, for example. (“Don’t Play It (Too) Safe,” by James Thornton, Bloomberg Businessweek, April 1, 2019, pg. 41.) Nonetheless, emotions weigh heavily on both men and women in decision-making. We want what we want when we want it is a human failing. That’s why, before an important decision, we should give ourselves a cooling off period.
Surprisingly, not everyone admires reasonable behavior. Narcissistic personalities tend to be moved less by facts and more by a desire for adulation. (Ibid, pg. 41.) Donald Trump’s passion to build a wall at our border with Mexico is an example. He seeks the roar of approval from his fans and probably gives little thought to the asylum seekers, families with children. Still, even he must be aware that over the last few years immigration has decreased.
The country would be better served if our President understood his personal thought processes and took them into account. The same is true for all of us, of course. When we know what makes us tick, we make better decisions and are less apt to be manipulated. Manipulation. Now there’s a talent Trump holds in abundance. But that’s a subject for a future blog.
