How fear and panic can be assets in your finances and career – Marketplace

There’s a lot to stress about these days and our finances, of course, are no exception. Maybe you’re worried about spending this holiday season or what market fluctuations could mean for your retirement savings. Well, instead of avoiding the panic, what if we used it to our advantage?

Farnoosh Torabi is a journalist, personal finance expert and the author of the new book “A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life.” She recently spoke with Marketplace’s Nova Safo about navigating panic when it hits our pocket books. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Nova Safo: Really, is there a healthy state of panic?

Farnoosh Torabi: I hope so. I have a whole book on it! It certainly is a truth in my life. When fear has shown up for me in the biggest crossroads in life — pertaining to my finances, my career, my relationships. When I feel fear, I’ve now learned to really honor this as a signal, my body’s way of telling me to think, reflect, be strategic and not do what I think we’ve been conditioned to do when that adrenaline arrives, which is to run, hide, fight, feel stuck. That is maybe our instinct. But my offer is, what if there is a world where you can be fearful and fulfilled at the same time?

Safo: That sounds like a great world. So how do we accomplish that? What is the kind of a healthy interrogation you can have with fear and best engage with it?

Torabi: Well, I’m a journalist by trade, and I’ve always been someone who is curious. And I think that relationship with fear is the one that you want to have. You want to question it. You want to ask fear some questions around its source: Where did you come from? What do you want me to protect? What do I need to learn so that I can lay down these fears and go still do the thing that seems terrifying, potentially — whether that’s changing jobs or getting married, growing my family starting a business — but do it in a self-aligned way, because I have given myself the opportunity to understand why my fears are showing up? What’s the story there? And what is it that they possibly want to teach me about how to live life in a more — again — self-aligned, self-aware way.

We all have fears, Nova. This is universal. It is what I call the “abundant resource” that we all have access to. And I think the missed opportunity for so long has been to say, “Hey, you know what fear is like all other emotions we experience, valid in many cases.” Now, I’m not talking about the fear of heights, or for me, the fear of cilantro is paralyzing.

Safo: [Chuckles]

Torabi: But I think when fear shows up in life’s really gargantuan crossroads and things are high stakes, — well of course we’re going to feel fear. And I don’t want anyone to feel bad about themselves or to see that as a weakness. I, for one, have been told that many years of my life that whenever I feel fear, “There goes Farnoosh being a coward.” I was called “tarsoo” growing up, which in Farsi means scaredy cat. I was the poster child for fear. And, you know, I want to rebrand this, because as my Persian mother says, “Everything work out.” And it did. I ended up accomplishing quite a bit and doing scary things, not by neglecting my fears, but learning to have a more intellectually emotionally intelligent relationship with my emotions.

Safo: You know, for me, personally, I think imposter syndrome is a big thing. That’s a fear. Also, you know, anything related with career advancement can trigger fears in me. So, if you were talking to someone and giving them advice for, you know, how to take that next step in their career, how to embrace the fear and use it, what would be some practical steps they could take?

Torabi: Well, first, I think it’s really important to understand what it is you’re actually afraid of in that next move. Get very specific. In the book, I talk about different kinds of fears. So it’s not the just, “I’m afraid,” but what? Are you afraid of failure? Are you afraid of rejection? Are you afraid of missing out, FOMO? And so once we can identify more clearly the specific type of fear that we’re experiencing in advance of making a big move in our careers, I think we’ll be able to learn more from that fear.

And so for example, if you’re afraid of, let’s say, switching jobs, there’s a lot of fear of potential failure there because maybe you’ll show up at that new job, and it’s not what you thought it would be or you’re feeling stuck again, I think it’s important to understand that sometimes before we go and do the thing, the fear wants you to remap your definition of success. The fear doesn’t want you to feel stuck or rush into something; it wants you to stop and go, “OK, I’m fearing failure. What would success look like for me? How can I protect my wins?” And that may mean making sure that you ask a lot of important questions before you take the job. It’s that you secure a little bit of a savings cushion before you transition, because maybe you don’t like the job and you do want to quit and you will need three, four months to get back on your feet. Maybe it means that you don’t quit your job right away that you spend another six months still exploring and instead investing in your network, investing in your own professional development and skills, so that you can be more ready for the next opportunity that will really be more exciting for you.

So, fear is just an opportunity sometimes to go, “OK, what is the gap that I need to fill?” Whether that’s an emotional gap, a professional gap, a financial gap, and then start to make those plans and do the thing, because I like I think a lot of us want to walk through life feeling secure — that’s not a bad thing. That’s not anything that we should feel shameful around. So, when fear shows up, just know that sometimes this can be your moment to go and still do the thing, but you maybe take a few beats and you fill those blanks. A lot of times in our financial life, when fear shows up, it’s a signal to get more educated. Fear loves to hang around when there is a lack of literacy. And understanding maybe even the root of your fear is the healthy exercise. When you’re afraid of a lot of these hairy, complex things, you have to question it like, “Is this my fear? Or did I inherit this from a family member? From life experiences?” Your fears tell very personal stories.

Safo: It’s interesting that you say personal there, because reading through some passages in your book, I thought, “This is a very personal book.”

Torabi: It started as a memoir. It definitely was meant to be, for me, an opportunity to share more about my life. As I’ve been working in personal finance, people have been very generous in giving me all have their stories and I’ve been inspired by so many other people’s journeys. And the question that I often get these days in my career is, “How did you become you?” And yeah, there’s an academic answer to that. And there’s a professional answer to that. But there’s a very emotional answer to that too, which is that I’ve been afraid a lot of the days of my life. The world is a scary place, but I have this sort of ironic and interesting relationship with fear that I want to share with people because I feel like it would give people finally the permission they didn’t know they needed to be respectful of how they’re feeling and know that when fear shows up, it’s maybe an opportunity, it’s not a sign of cowardice.

Safo: The last year and a half, two years has been a roller coaster in the financial markets and forecasts of what’s to come. And I can tell you, I’ve had several friends over the last year and a half or so come up to me and go, “Do I need to take all my money out of the stock market? What do I do?” They were panicking. What is a healthy way to sit with panic when you are in the type of volatile economic conditions that we are now?

Torabi: It’s really important to listen to your feelings, all of them. I think fear is one of the most underestimated emotions that we have. And I say panic, because it’s a word we can all relate to, but really what I’m talking about is overwhelming fear. And when fear shows up in your financial life, because let’s say you are looking at the stock market or the job market and feeling really concerned and panicky, I think that is completely legitimate. So, it’s important to first acknowledge that what you’re feeling is perhaps normal. But the real healthy move beyond that is to … a few things I would offer.

One is to examine what it is that you actually want to protect. What is it that is also specifically making you afraid? Is it the actual volatility? Is it that you don’t have maybe the knowledge to be able to really grasp the nature of the stock market? Because I think oftentimes when fear shows up in our financial lives, it’s really a nudge to get more educated. Fear loves to live where there is a gap in knowledge, in understanding. And so that might be the next healthy move. For me in 2020, when the stock market was taking a nosedive at the beginning of the announcement of COVID-19, I began to panic. I had just even bought a house in this timeframe and started to really worry about my financial safety. And I’m a journalist, I know that … I’m a financial journalist too, so I really know that it’s important to not make kne-jerk reactions to your portfolio when you’re starting to feel these feelings about the stock market. And yet I couldn’t sleep, Nova. And I think that’s always a good sign that maybe you should do something, nothing too hasty.

But at the minimum, you can look at your portfolio and examine how you’re investing. And what I realized was that I was really over-indexed in the stock market for someone who was in her 40s now, who was the financial breadwinner, who had just bought a home. My risk tolerance wasn’t where it was when I first opened the portfolio in my 20s. And so, I discovered that I could probably take that back a little bit, I could dial back my exposure to stocks. I wasn’t completely getting out of the stock market, but I think it merited a little bit of reallocating. So, for me this was an example of Farnoosh getting afraid about the stock market and wanting to do something that was constructive.

Safo: I love what you said about fear living in areas of gap in knowledge, right?

Torabi: Yeah.

Safo: So, if you were giving people tips for gaining more financial literacy, what would that look like? What are some concrete steps there?

Torabi: When I first started in personal finance over 20 years ago, there were limited resources on how to learn about money. There were a few books that had done very well, there were a couple magazines, one of which I worked at called Money. Now, I think what’s exciting is that there are so many different ways to learn. No matter how you like to learn, there’s a way to learn whether it’s listening, so there’s podcasts; there are books, of course; there are websites and blogs; and of course, social media, which I would caution a little bit. Make sure that if you’re following somebody that first and foremost, they’re educating you; they’re not biased, they’re not selling you, you know, crypto and other sorts of tricky and confusing assets but that they’re really there to bring you the education, the facts and the knowledge. And there are many people out there that do that. But it may require a little bit of researching. But that is where you can start for free, all of those resources.

And then of course, there are the experts that are professionals that charge fees. And even there, I would say, the landscape is vast and it’s important to go through your referral network. I mean, sometimes just talking to a friend or a colleague at work — “Who are you working with? Or, “who do you like to learn from?” — is, I think sometimes a great way to identify some of the people that you can bring into your ecosystem to help you learn about money. And sometimes I say each and every one of us, we’re all experts in finance. I know that may sound insane, considering we may not feel that way. I think everyday people, the experiences they had with their student loans, their careers, whether they got the raise or not. We’ve all navigated so many things in our financial lives, let’s start sharing that. And not because we want to mimic or copy paste, but because it can be inspirational or interesting or educational. And that’s free. I think that we have these resources, and they’re so underleveraged.

Safo: How do you know when you’ve arrived at a, you know, healthy relationship with money? What does that look like?

Torabi: Well, first of all, you’re sleeping at night and not getting up in sweats, like I do, sometimes. I’m not gonna say there’s this promised land where you’re going to wake up one day and you’ll never have any financial worries or fears. I think it’s an ongoing working relationship. But I think having these tools to know how to continue to feel in charge of your financial life. I mean I think that’s ultimately the goal: where you feel like you have options, you can use your money in ways that not just cover your basics but help to support your interests and provide you with options in life, whether that’s that you want to quit your job or buy a home, that you feel like your money is working for you.

And of course, along the way, you’re going to have doubts. There going to be times when things will backfire without it being your fault. There could be another recession, you could lose your job, but that ultimately, you have this sense of “can-do-it-ness” because you are in control of your feelings around money, which we know is the biggest obstacle when it comes to financial independence and financial freedom. It’s that emotional component. You can have a beautiful spreadsheet and all the numbers look great. You can have a well-paying job. But if you’re not feeling confident, or if you talked about, you know the imposter syndrome, if you’re dealing with false narratives around money because you grew up around that as a kid, this is a lot of the stuff that as adults we continue to deal with, and it shows up in our financial lives. And that’s why I wanted to write “A Healthy State of Panic.” I’ve written many other books about the technicals of personal finance but this one really was the one that I wanted to write because it was at the intersection of money and our mental health and our overall well-being. This is the stuff that sometimes takes the extra work but it’s the foundation, and once you can sort of solve for that, the math maths much better.