[Ep. 376] Better Financial Decision-Making Through Mastering Confidence with Peter Atwater

Jessica 

So you just came out with your second book, The confidence map charting a path from chaos to clarity, which I’m all this is my realm. I’m very excited because confidence is a big, big topic when it comes to personal finance and investing. But before we kind of dive into some of the topics that you wrote, In your book, you have very interesting background and I love in your bio, he really kind of gets the point you’re like you turned to 45 and you realized what am I kind of doing with my life, which I’m like, oh, gosh, I’m 30 7am I going to have that I’ve had a lot of those moments in my life already. I guess they’re just gonna keep on coming. That’s fine. But tell me a little bit about you. You worked on Wall Street, you were trained in economics, you know what made you want to make a big change to now now you know, you’re a teacher, your professor, you talk a lot, teach a lot of people about you know, things that you discussed in your book. What was you know, what was the deciding factor of making this big pivot in your life?

Peter 

Yeah, so the deciding factor was my son telling me as I was blowing out my candles, age 45 That I was halfway to 90.

Jessica 

It’s not a nice thing to say Like you’re halfway, you’re almost dead. That’d be birthday to me.

Peter 

And so it became this sort of quest for how did I want to spend the second half of my life. And the first half, as you mentioned, was very traditional your career in finance, started on Wall Street right out of college, help JPMorgan build its asset backed securities business. And so I had a very classic finance career. And that was very helpful in understanding how markets work, from the perspective of issuers and investors. But it really wasn’t until the financial crisis in 2008, that I began to think about, so why do we do these bad things over and over? You know, why did bubbles happen? Why does panic happen? And that’s really how I’ve been spending the second half of my life is looking at the relationship between how we feel and what we do, and trying to figure out, are there common elements that are useful for investors, for leaders for individuals. And that’s what I tried to put together for this for this book.

Jessica 

I’m curious, because you’ve been in the field for so long was some of your kind of curiosity about diving into that just seeing these repetitions, it’s kind of like every single, you know, 10 years, there’s something or I’m curious what your thoughts were, especially during the pandemic, when there was kind of the overall message this time is different, even though they say that every single time this time is different. But because it was a pandemic, and no one had experienced a global pandemic, since I guess the Spanish flu. Everyone really thought this time is different. This is the zombie apocalypse. I’m curious what you what your, you know, thought process when you saw all this, especially with all of your, your backgrounds. Now, what were you thinking?

Peter 

So this is what so interesting in my own life is during the 2008 crisis, as it got worse, I got more anxious, along with everyone else, I was feeling that same end of the world feeling in this one, with a pandemic, I actually got more and more excited about the opportunity, as more and more people panicked. And that’s because having spent the time between 2008 and 2020, looking at human behavior, I learned that panic is God’s way of telling us that the worst is behind us. Oh, I like that. And, and so rather than getting wrapped up in it, we should be preparing for it to culminate in some sort of a capitulation. And that is investors, you want to be thinking about, so what do I want to buy, because these are moments where your inclination is to sell everything, when in fact, the best thing you can do is load up the truck and to buy. And I’m not saying in this case you needed to buy in March of 2020. But if you had just said, I’m now going to buy every week, a little bit for the next several weeks, I know I’m not going to mark the bottom, but it didn’t matter. You know, because what happens after this, these capitulation points is market start to move substantially higher very quickly. And that’s what I didn’t understand in 2009 was everybody felt horrible. But the markets were going up dramatically.

Jessica 

Yeah, if you just kept on doing your regular contributions, or started investing in 2008 2009, you would have been great if you just continued that. But like you said, there’s even between, you know, 2008 and 2020, there were so many little ups and downs and you know, financial news being like this, another crash is happening every every five minutes, you know, it’s hard to just stay put and to be rational when everyone else is irrational. I’m curious also what your thoughts were then because I saw a lot of panic. I heard a lot of stories of people even that I knew in my personal life who, you know, oh, I cashed out my RSP or like, you know, like, I sold all my investments inside my retirement account. And I’m just going to wait for things to be safer. And like that is the opposite of what you should be doing. But then there was a really quick turnaround when then people saw things go up very quickly, and they’re like, oh, now I’m going to buy and then there was this crazy buying frenzy of it doesn’t matter what people really, should I buy crypto shit like I was getting DMS on Instagram, like, should I buy this crypto coin? Or should I buy this ETF for this stock? And I’m like, Whoa, what happened? This is the craziest turnaround. And also this is again, not what you should be doing. You shouldn’t just be buying whatever’s in the store. You should know what you’re going to buy and why. Right. Yeah. And

Peter 

and the fact that we were, you know stampeding into things that were incredibly futuristic, highly abstract, unexplainable. Those are elements that we always see near peaks in the market. And I would say we’ve seen a similar modest peak with all of the AI frenzy. In this past summer. It’s very similar characteristics. It’s all about possibility, the sense of unlimited possibility. And it’s easy to get swept up in it. Because it feels good. You see nothing but dollar signs ahead. And you need to realize that your imagination of the future is entirely a function of how you feel. It’s a it’s a mirror. And we don’t stop to say, Oh, I’m seeing nothing but unicorns and rainbows ahead. I’m the one who’s too confident. Because the picture I’ve painted is just too rosy.

Jessica 

Yeah. Now I know, obviously, a big focus of your book is confidence. And I liked at the beginning of the book you talk about there is a difference, because I feel like we don’t quite know what confidence is. I mean, that’s why we should read your book. But the difference between self esteem and confidence, because I do when I think about confidence, I do think inward like it’s a me problem. Do you want to kind of talk about what is the difference? And what exactly do you mean by confidence? Yeah, so

Peter 

there’s three ways we use confidence. One is sort of the appearance of being confident. And I think of that as confidence theater. It’s the act that we put on to look as if we have our act together. And that’s a very popular thing in social media today, and business leaders do it actors, athletes, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s a requirement to look like you have your act together before you get in front of an audience. And that, to me, is pure theater, there’s the self esteem piece, which is inward. And here that’s interesting, and may be relevant. But as COVID showed, all of the self esteem and self confidence in the world didn’t really help you in COVID hit. And so I’ve concluded that what confidence is about is our sense of certainty in terms of what’s ahead. So do we think things feel predictable to us? And do we feel like we’re prepared? Do we have a sense of control of the situation, have we practiced, rehearse trained for the moments that are ahead, and we need both of those to feel confident. And I think, particularly for investors, it’s important to recognize that the opposite of confidence is vulnerability. And so when you’re anxious, when you’re inclined to sell, it’s because you think things ahead are uncertain, or are dark view unknown, and you feel a sense of powerlessness. And just by monitoring that sense of certainty and control or confidence and vulnerability, you can avoid making your missteps and as investors we make our worst decisions at the extreme. We sell when we feel intensely vulnerable, and we buy when we feel invulnerable.

Jessica 

Yes, I think probably the hardest thing when it comes to confidence is even when you feel like you find that confidence. And a couple things. First, there’s the worry that you’ll become overconfident. And like you’ve mentioned, that is where a lot of big mistakes happen. But also how do you maintain that like, balanced kind of level of confidence, because it’s hard to have that all the time, like, you’re gonna be vulnerable, you’re gonna feel powerless, you’re gonna be overconfident. It’s kind of a constant kind of shift.

Peter 

Yeah, and I don’t think we should try to be to try to restrain our movement. I think we’re better off realizing that we move that real life moves us around. And that we can identify those feelings. And by understanding them and appreciating them, those feelings are telling us that we’re overconfident or under confident. And I think of things in terms of triangular relationship between how we feel, the stories we tell and what we do. Those are always in equilibrium, that if if you told me the stories, you’re telling yourself, Jessica, I could give you a pretty good sense of how confident you are, and in turn what you’re likely to do. And so if we would only listen to our stories and even more, the stories that are around us, those stories around us are telling us how the crowd feels.

Jessica 

And I guess to its being of the crowd, we are so influenced about with who we actually have in our personal real life circle and then also the online circles that were a part of, and that’s why it’s was interesting. still interesting. past few years, though, with everything that’s been going on in the market, and even the real estate market and everything, how certain circles were very low confidence. Some were overconfident, and is interesting to kind of hop between them, because I like seeing what other people are talking about to then figure out how do I feel? And what do I want to take? And what do I want to discard? It can be confusing, I think, to to figure out which path is right, because everyone thinks they’re the right like that. It’s the end of times or no, this is the best opportunity take advantage.

Peter 

Yeah. And I think that as an investor, the crowd feelings that matter, are those of other investors, your price is going to be a function of how others feel. And so here, watching the financial media, not to get involved in it and to to get sucked in. But just to say, what are the stories that they’re showing? You know, are they highlighting things that are futuristic? Or do we have some sort of markets and turmoil special, because the financial media’s business is to mirror back precisely how we feel. And I read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in the Financial Times every day, to see what is the news? What’s on the cover, because that’s telling me what they as editors think is most resonant and relevant to us. And when it’s very optimistic, it’s expressing how confident readers and watchers are. And when it’s terribly pessimistic, it’s telling us how dour investors moods are.

Jessica 

I’m curious, does the you know especially where you are at in your career and on your own journey? Does the financial news affect you when you see those headlines? Or are you you’ve got your strategy, you’ve got your kind of anchor, you know what to kind of dismiss and want to kind of take or or do you just view the financial news being like this is just a mirror, I’m going to you know, just take that information for what I take

Peter 

it for what it’s worth. And then I try to see how extreme is the message, because ultimately, the news becomes its own contrarian indicator. And here, it’s important to, to appreciate that, you know, the trend goes on long enough. And then there’s the belief that it’s unstoppable, that it has to keep going. And so very often we’ll see it major turning points, a sense that, you know, this this company, this trend is unstoppable, that it’s relentless. The adjectives just flow with a sense of power and momentum and no forward push. And those are warning signs that we’re getting very close to a turn. You know, I always ask, does everybody now believe that? Yeah,

Jessica 

and I guess Yeah, the other thing you mentioned being contrary No and behavioral finance, one of the things that I think humans have a hard time doing is going against their instincts, because their instincts are going to honestly make them some really terrible mistakes. It is so hard looking at financial news or the sentiment online where people are Yeah, very confident about what’s going on the stock market. And you know, this is actually probably a better indication that I should be doing the opposite of what everyone’s doing.

Peter 

Yeah. And if you can’t do the opposite, don’t do it. Yeah. So I always say to to investors, if you cannot imagine another alternative than the one you have painted, don’t do anything. Yeah. Because you’re either being overconfident or woefully under confident. a failure of imagination is always a classic sign that you’re, you’re too believing of your story. And the stories that are circulating around us that sense of I have to do this. I’d be an idiot not to do this. You know, those? Those are all expressions that are warning signs to just sit tight.

Jessica 

Yeah, I mean, that’s honestly usually the advice to give people it’s like if you don’t feel like because you know, everyone says, oh, you know, buy low, sell high, it is very difficult to actually do that in practice. And even for me, I you know, it was impossible to get away from just the anxiety that was going on in 2020. For me, I even hit pause on my investments just for a few weeks. And so it’s like, I wasn’t I didn’t catch up but I just just hit pause because I’m just like, I don’t know if I’m gonna like I’m self employed. What if I stopped making money maybe I need to preserve some cash. But then as things kind of regulated a little bit more like okay, we’re going to restart this and then I just continued doing you know, best basically did nothing in terms of like changing my habits, and sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you could do but also very difficult, especially when someone is doing everyone’s doing things you feel like you need to be doing something if you’re not doing something that’s bad. Like you said, sometimes doing nothing is the best thing that you can do for yourself. I want to kind of talk a little bit more specifically about building confidence. I know a lot of people, you know, that listen to the show that I talked to, they’re more in that low confidence kind of area in that, you know, maybe they’re just starting to invest, or they’ve been investing for a while, but you know, they we’ve used an advisor, and they just didn’t really know what they were doing. And now they’re trying to learn a bit more and be more involved. And there’s just a lack of confidence in their abilities, their knowledge, their skills, they think it’s impossible, how can you build a confidence to be a knowledgeable confidence because I tell people, like the best thing that you can do for yourself is to build your confidence. And some of that comes with experience, but it gets easier. But when you have no confidence, it feels like the biggest mountain to climb.

Peter 

Yeah. So I encourage people to think, if you’re going to begin investing, and you are going to take control. So you’re going to be the one behind the wheel. Think about how did you prepare to get behind the wheel of a car? Hmm. So you probably took a class, read a book, you know, you learned the basic skills, still not in the car. And then when you began, you drove slowly, you drove during the day, you drove with the radio off there, you may have driven with somebody else in the car. And so as you begin, do it realizing that you’re probably going to crash the car, you may get some dents. And so how, how big a risk should you be taking at the beginning, and I think many investors oversize, that initial strategy. They they’re like, I’m now in charge of my own destiny, and they, they get in the market today. And it’s like, no, no, learn, make some mistakes, learn how they feel, learn what kind of driver you are behind the wheel, realize that again, your car is going to be bounced around by others on the highway, that this isn’t just you on the road by yourself. This is you driving in a herd, and sometimes the traffic flows with you. And sometimes the traffic is flowing against you. And you need to appreciate that you’re not the only one on the road. And they’re gonna Sideswipe you some days. And and some days get over the highway, it’s gonna seem really straight and clear. But realize, too, that if you’re in control, and it goes poorly, you’re going to blame yourself and blame is something we do. Because it explains it provides an explanation. And we need to be less hard on ourselves when we take control of a situation and don’t succeed the first time and to not look at those setbacks as your debilitating but as learning experiences. And so, again, how do you size? You know, how much failure are you willing to experience in this learning process? And I don’t think investors tend to be willing to endure that learning process in a healthy way.

Jessica 

Now, I mean, I know for a fact just talking to so many people over the years that a lot of people it because I mean, as a society, and especially like going through the school system, we are taught that failure is bad. And we always strive for success. And even though it should be more framed, failure happens, it is natural. It is weird if you don’t fail, and but without failure, that could be a really great learning lesson. But like you said, I think it’s very difficult when it comes to investing because the investing world it is all about show your successes. No one talks about the money they lost when talks about the bad trade that they made it that’s all quite you just hear about people’s successes. And so you feel alone when you make a bad call, or you make a poor decision, instead of being like, Hmm, this happened. Let’s go through why it happened. What did I learn and how I can kind of prevent that in the future I want to kind of talk about because you talked about feelings and you know what is so funny that you mentioned that because especially in behavioral finance, it’s all about don’t feel you’re supposed to be a robot I mean that is the best place to be is an emotional but we are emotional creatures. And I love what you are kind of saying is that we need to actually feel those feelings because they are going to help us control those decisions. You want to kind of explain that like how we can embrace those feelings. Don’t let them drive like we don’t want to be emotionally dysregulated How can we feel those feelings and regulate those emotions so we can be better with our money.

Peter 

Yeah, I think rather than getting sucked into feelings, we should look at them objectively, almost like we do when I’m hot, I’m cold, it’s like, no, I’m anxious I’m vulnerable I’m, and that it’s useful. Because those feelings are accompanying those feelings. There are predictable behaviors. I know that if you’re feeling vulnerable, you’re likely to be investing in a way that is aimed at protecting you did is taking risk away. And to appreciate that those those feelings and actions go hand in hand. They’re very predictable. And if you can’t look at your own feelings objectively, look at the crowds feelings objectively. You know, what are they saying? What are they doing? What is that saying about the degree of vulnerability or confidence the crowd is feeling. And if you think the crowd is getting ahead, or you know, is is getting woefully overconfident? Well, then those are the moments you should be preparing for a return to risk avoidance, because that’s always the way the cycle works. We go from overconfidence, to panic, to under confidence to recovery. And this happens over and over and over, I think it’s powerful to look at the crowd, watch their behavior, almost like a scientist to say, Oh, the crowd is panicking today. I know that when the crowd panics, the markets are approaching a major low. Because that is always what happens. Because panic, people sell, they do what they can to avoid the vulnerability. Eventually, that behavior exhausts, everybody’s done it. And that’s the time to be preparing for a time of recovery.

Jessica 

So instead of trying to like move with the crowd, you want to be one step ahead. And it’s very easy, like you said, to actually do that, because these are patterns that have repeated over and over, I’m sure it would be helpful to have some sort of like, even just some sort of guide for yourself to be like, how am I feeling? Oh, anxious? Why am I feeling that way? Maybe it’s either something that happened to you personally, like it could be like, honestly, that the interest rates game with the mortgages, every time I see, oh, interest rates are up, oh, my mortgage is up, I get anxious. And then what do I feel like doing? It’s usually there’s an action that you want to do. And then you shouldn’t be like me? Is that a good action to do? Or should inaction be the action or a different action, like having some sort of mechanism where you can walk yourself through those, that’s what I do, whenever there’s a blip in the stock market is to be like, Okay, let’s just take a moment and feel and then think, and then decide on an action or there’s no, like, totally emotionally dysregulated let’s not do anything, we can revisit that in the future.

Peter 

Yeah, one of the reasons I wrote my book is that it enables readers to map that journey of vulnerability and confidence, and to actually put a point on a piece of paper to say, I feel like I’m here. And once you do that, then, you know, my book provides all sorts of stories and actions that will likely accompany that spot. And so you can almost look at your own behavior going, yep, I’m doing that I’m doing that I’m doing that. It’s like, yeah, you are, of course you are. And not being afraid of it. But just as, again, to look at your situation objectively. And to then say, to your point, if I’m M feeling vulnerable, what are ways that I can regain control, that I can regain certainty in my life, because both of those are very actionable. I can do specific things to reduce my level of vulnerability. And and I’m a big believer that if we take the time to move beyond, I don’t feel confident to I don’t feel in control. Well, then I can step back and say, Well, what are some small steps I could take to feel more in control? And here again, Jessica would say small steps. Because our inclination is to be an impulsive and highly emotional and to take really big steps to sell everything. And it’s like, no, no, just what’s what are some small steps you can take? I mean,

Jessica 

I think it’s, it’s hard like this makes sense. This is like clear as day of course. This makes sense. But I think it’s it’s, again, difficult to put into practice. Because what are the images of investing and investing success that we see out? We’re really in the financial news and movies and TV shows on social media. It is like quick action instinct, oh, I got this. It’s not about taking a minute to see how do I feel? Do I feel confident or vulnerable? And then should I take certain small steps? But unfortunately, that’s just, I mean, that’s why people make a lot of mistakes. And certain people are, you know, just tried and true and just, you know, take their time, I’m curious, what are some kind of actionable steps that you can share with people, some of those baby steps if they are in a place of vulnerability, to kind of get back to that place of feeling good and confident?

Peter 

Yeah, so often, when we aren’t feeling confident, it’s a series of stacked vulnerabilities. And it you could almost think of this as Maslow’s hierarchy of need, you know, where, what are the different ways that I feel vulnerable? Am I do I feel safe? Do I feel you know, financially able to, I have food on the table, and to think about these in terms of priorities, because I have to make sure that I have my basic needs met. In order before I should be worried about these more abstract needs. And and I always encourage people to step back into say, if you are feeling financially vulnerable, and that is jeopardizing other elements of your well being, then take risk off the table. You know, I work with an organization with their endowment in the healthcare space. And when COVID hit, they made a deliberate decision to reduce the risk exposure in their endowment. Because the risk of their business they felt was increasing. And they said, I want they we want one less thing to worry about. So if the market goes up or down, great, but I don’t care, I just want to know that that’s safe. Because all these other things are uncertain. And so I will often say to folks who have bought a house, reduce the risk in your investment portfolio for a little while, while you’re learning to navigate this financial situation with your house, so that if a pipe burst or the roof needs repairing, and the market goes down, you’re not like, Oh, my whole world is going to hell at once to think holistically about the ways that you are vulnerable in the ways that you might be vulnerable. And to appreciate that your investment portfolio can serve as a way to take more risk, and to take less risk. And if you miss six months in the market, so so be it. But during those six months, you may have had other experiences where you didn’t need to also be worrying about the markets.

Jessica 

I mean, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, that’s why I talk about having an emergency fund all day long, because that is something that, you know, when I am in that kind of crisis mode, I’m like, but we were okay, because we’ve got this rainy day fund if something happens, or even, just like, you know, having life insurance, like it’s, you know, maybe there was a big catastrophe that happened, you’re like, it’s okay, we’ve got a plan, we’ve got insurance, we’ve got some things in order. Having all of those other elements in your overall financial plan handled, like you said, can lessen the worry. And I think sometimes we’re just so focused on getting those returns, getting into the market, not missing out the FOMO, and all that kind of stuff. You know, one way to feel confident and build that confidence with your investments is taking care of the other areas of your financial life that usually get ignored because they’re boring. They’re not as exciting as you know, getting 20 30% gains. It’s like get life insurance not as exciting.

Peter 

But what matters when, when real life hits.

Jessica 

Yeah, no, absolutely. I absolutely. I’m curious, you know, what was I guess the driving force behind this book? Why did you really want to because there’s so many you know, books out there about you know, behavior? Why did you really want to hone in on the idea of confidence? Was it something that you just saw and saw that this was not being talked about? And it really should because for me, I’m like, this is just bringing so many bells like like this is? Yeah, really, really impactful. So I’m,

Peter 

I’ve been teaching a class on confidence in decision making for more than a decade. And in my class, we talk about the relationship between sort of broad levels of confidence and group decision making. So how’s the crowd likely to behave if confidence rises and falls and we look at financial decisions, economic decisions, we look at food choices fashion joining me we look at a lot of cultural and social trends. But what I learned in the years of two teaching this class was that my students were taking these concepts and applying them to their own lives, that what we were talking about on a group level, also applied at an individual level. And that the connections that they were making, I felt were connections that others could make and could be helpful to them. Particularly today, where there is the sense that the world is uncertain. And as I’ve said to my students, the world is always uncertain, and always will be uncertain. But what changes is our feelings of the world. And so when we talk about the world being uncertain, what we’re really saying is, I’m uncertain about the world. And so it’s, again, it’s a story that is reflecting how we feel more than it is the reality around us. And I think today, we have an epidemic of under confidence. Yeah, of people who are seeing more uncertainty and feeling more powerlessness, then the reality of the world suggests that maybe they should.

Jessica 

The other thing that I have been seeing in it as we’re talking about overconfidence is, especially when we’re in a place of low confidence, we seek out people in the public sphere, who seem to exude confidence. But usually it’s overconfidence. And then we try to I don’t know, by following them or ascribing to whatever they’re saying, or to men. That’s how they think that we should invest. We feel like that is how we’re going to build our confidence. And then usually what we discover is like, Oh, they were full of crap. You know, they were overconfident. Maybe I shouldn’t have put all of my eggs into that basket.

Peter 

Yeah. So when we feel especially vulnerable, there are five behaviors that we routinely exhibit, I call them the five F’s fight and flight, get all the attention, there’s freeze, where we just feel overwhelmed and are powerless. The fourth one is follow to your point. And follow is actually our easiest response to vulnerability, all we have to do is get in line, it doesn’t require skill, strength, tools, we don’t need anything other than to get in line and, and what we fail to appreciate is that predators, authoritarian leaders, cult figures, they love a vulnerable crowd. It’s their praying ground. And so we need to be much more careful about who we follow in these moments. Because what we’ll find is that over time, we enter into a very abusive relationship with many of these figures where we never regain the control in our lives that we want it, they will make us don’t make us feel like things are more certain. But the last thing they want is for us to take control. And so we really should be much more careful about those that we step behind when we’re feeling vulnerable. And then the last one, just to finish these up is is another F word that I probably can’t say. But, you know, fight, flight, freeze, follow in it, we’re not we’re naturally nihilistic. And we need to remember that when confidence is low, we’re, we often sabotage ourselves, we sabotage others, we’re not very well behaved, when we don’t think we’re going to be rid of that vulnerability.

Jessica 

So essentially, it’s the you know, what’s the point? Why even bother? You know, just Yeah, hands up in the air.

Peter 

Or we’re deliberately terroristic.

Jessica 

Mm hmm. And by that, you mean, not only sabotaging yourself, but sabotaging others potential here?

Peter 

Sure. Because, again, if I’m feeling vulnerable, I will often associate blame with why I feel vulnerable. And if I can attribute it to others, then they become natural scapegoats for me.

Jessica 

And yeah, I mean, I see that a lot, too, especially during those times where I mean even now there’s, there’s a lot of that with, you know, everything’s so expensive. The cost of living crisis, interest rates, what have you, a lot of people are like, what, who cares? You know, I’m just gonna blow all my money because none of this matters anyway. He’s like, Well, this is cyclical, there’s going to be a point where it will matter to you again, and it’s gonna be really hard to make up for all of that last time lost money for that time when you thought that the world is going to end and like you said, the world has always been uncertain but and one good you know thing about this world is like this is still the best time I think to be alive when you compare it like I would not survive the Middle Ages. You know, I would not survive lots of those times. This is still probably the best time to be alive. It’s not great. There’s lots of problems. But there’s there’s still more, you know, reasons to have hope. Yeah, yeah, well, I’m sure we can go on and on. And there’s so many great things in your book. And I think it’s a really important message to talk about confidence because we yeah, we’re definitely at a low point in confidence. And we need to build that up so we can we can take control of our finances. And that’s ultimately what the the whole purpose of this podcast is, is like, you can take control of your finances. You don’t have to. Yeah, just put your hands up be like, Ah, it’s out of my hands. It’s an unjust world. It is an unjust world, but you can still take control of lots of things.

Peter 

Yeah, we need to be as open to the potential that we’re under confident as we are to the potential that we’re overconfident.

Jessica 

Exactly, exactly. And you know, this is a muscle that we can, you know, get stronger, and it takes time and patience. And I think that’s really, really key. Where can people find more information about you or grab a copy of your book, The confidence map?

Peter 

So the confidence of map is out and available through major booksellers, or get your local bookseller. I’m a big fan of the independent bookstores. They can find out more about me at Peter atwater.com. I’m also on social media on Twitter for now x at

Jessica 

Peter. Conversations.

Peter 

Confidence theater. Yes,

Jessica 

yes, no kidding. No kidding. That’s sort of who was alluding to like, Wow, that’s some confidence theater, if I ever saw it. Oh, my goodness. Well, thanks again, for coming on the show and sharing all your wisdom. It was a pleasure having you and I can’t wait for people to grab a copy of your book.

Peter  Thank you so much, Jessica. Really appreciate the opportunity.