It’s been a crazy past week in the stock market. If you weren’t following all of the madness, I’ll summarize in a few bullets:

• Hedge funds were selling shares of GameStop they had borrowed against. About 40% in excess of what was available to transact. (“short”)
• Retail investors discovered this egregious margin and bought up the available shares to be soon recalled, forcing hedge funds to pay a premium to buy back shares as bleed out interest each day. (“squeeze”)

As financial institutions started to lose billions, the dirty tactics followed. Robinhood, one of the investment platforms backed by the…

2021 has come upon us.

During this time, I typically set my goals and resolutions for the upcoming year. As I get older, I’ve been leaning more into life principles and ways of thinking versus milestones and quantitative goals. It’s too easy to obsess about numerical values (money to make, hours to spend at the gym, things to accomplish at work) and lose sight of what we wanted to accomplish in the first place — being happy.

Our interpretation of happiness changes over time as we age and gain more experience. It might be more expensive one year or completely…

We’ve filled our pot with lukewarm water, placed it on the stove with the temperature on high, and wait patiently for it to warm up. As the water comes to a boil, we notice tiny bubbles beginning to percolate. These pockets of air had been in the water all along — it just took a bit of heat to show up.

This is what is happening in our country right now.

White supremacy, the struggle to wear a face mask, and even cancel culture are just a few of the things that the heat of the election, this presidency, and…

This past week has been a flurry of highs and lows.

Starting with the highs:

• Protests have catalyzed the beginning of much-needed police accountability and restricting use of force, police presence has reduced and defunded, and confederate statues are being removed.
• Cheap steroid cuts death rates significantly for severely ill COVID-19 patients.
• The Supreme Court ruled in favor of LGBT protections against job discrimination.

And the lows:

• Trump to restart his rallies in Tula, Oklahoma on the date African Americans celebrate the end of slavery. Tulsa is where one of the worst massacres of Black people occurred in US history.
• …

In just a week, our world has transformed once again. This time, it was catalyzed by another senseless death of a Black man. George Floyd’s neck was pinned to the ground for almost nine minutes and he died suffocating at the hands of a police officer. Protests erupted in every state, bringing a light of justice. By Thursday, all four officers involved were finally arrested for the death of George Floyd.

Why must we rally to demand our system to be fair and just?

But in this past week, an uglier truth emerged. Peaceful protests have turned violent, not at…

Last week, I shared a video of a South Korean woman, Eun Chan, who filmed a goodbye video to her Youtube fans before passing away from cancer. She was diagnosed in April 2019 and her battle ended on May 6 this month. Even through the pain and struggles with the disease, she mustered the energy and courage to leave her Youtube fans smiling. Even in the face of death, she was upbeat, smiling, and compassionate for others.

If she can still smile and get through the day, knowing what’s coming, we can surely be happy, even with what we are…

To be honest, getting through this pandemic is difficult. Really, really difficult. We have observed an entire spectrum of folks who have been responding to home quarantines with ease, but also many folks with a lot of difficulties. The crisis text line has seen an uptick of 30% in text conversations last month. Not only has COVID-19 ravaged our nation, mental health will never be the same.

As part of getting through these hard times, we can use various coping strategies to help mitigate and even offset many of the mental chatter that puts our sanity at risk. …

Times are tough, and it’s going to get much harder as economic conditions worsen in the coming months. Folks are losing jobs and reducing discretionary spending, leading to business impact and more jobs lost. Quite the not-so-positive feedback loop. Industries that rely on foot traffic have been devastated overnight, and many of my friends in the service industry and performing arts have been jobless for weeks. As of last week, 26 million Americans have become unemployed in the past five weeks.

Job security and I have had a rocky relationship. I’ve been let go from multiple jobs throughout my lifetime…