OODLs (Observations on Daily Life)

Many of us are now a full month into social distancing, and things are starting to get nasty on social media. As a financial professional, I've seen firsthand the fear of small business owners whose businesses have been deemed non-essential and ordered to temporarily close. I've helped some make the heartbreaking decision to furlough loyal, long-time employees in order to help ensure the survival of the company so those employees have a job to return to when this crisis has passed. And the business owners I work with are better off than most - most of them had a cash reserve going into this "intentional recession" - but even the ones with robust savings will feel the strain if their businesses remain closed for more than another month. The "help" promised by the government in the form of the PPPL and EIDL has fallen short. I'm concerned many small businesses that survive the initial crisis will ultimately close when they are unable to make their loan...

For several years now, I've made a conscious effort to be overwhelmingly positive and optimistic. As a once-proud pessimist, this is something I have to work at daily. It's also something I feel I've gotten pretty good at. Most of the time. And then, someone will give me negative feedback. This can be about something I've done, something I've created, or something I've only been marginally associated with. Suddenly, my positivity is down the drain. I'm obviously the worst person ever, unable to do anything right, and everything I've ever created is crap. I thought my tendency to hear the negative louder than the positive was just proof that I might never fully overcome my pessimistic tendencies. Today, I learned there's actually a scientific reason for this. All the way back in the 1970s, Dr. Robert Levenson and Dr. John Gottman studied the differences between happy and unhappy couples. They concluded happily married couples have a praise...