
When stress hormones rise, we overestimate threats, underestimate opportunity, and click faster while checking fewer facts. Brief downshifts—like sixty seconds of nasal breathing—can restore executive control, expanding option sets, improving risk calibration, and cutting regretful trades, hasty acceptances, and mispriced contracts that quietly drain lifetime earnings.

Attention is a scarce currency. Multitasking during negotiations or research fractures working memory, amplifies anchoring, and invites persuasive framing. Single-task sprints, distraction blockers, and deliberate pauses create cognitive surplus that translates into better questions, cleaner models, and choices with fewer hidden fees and avoidable downstream chaos.

Equanimity is not apathy; it is the capacity to feel fully without being pulled off course. Practiced consistently, it filters market gossip and office drama, letting signal surface. That steadiness preserves cash, energy, and relationships precisely when fear or greed would otherwise hijack them.