Asher's Blog

If you already don’t know, I am many things at once:
a startup founder, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, and in my local church, a man entrusted with life-shaping assignments.

Carrying all of these roles is not easy. What I’ve discovered, though, is something more unsettling: when one role is under pressure, it bleeds into all the others. A challenge in one area quietly distorts my presence everywhere else. And the most brutal battlefield where this happens is the mind.

I think of it like being on a virtual meeting, everything is flowing, ideas are connecting, and then suddenly a notification pops up. For a split second, you’re gone. It takes a moment to re-orient yourself and rejoin the conversation. That’s exactly what happens when stress intrudes on our lives. The conversation doesn’t end, but we are no longer fully present in it.

Most stressors attack the mind first. The mind is incredibly flexible and because of that, incredibly vulnerable. What enters it shapes our emotions, and our emotions determine our actions and reactions. If I feel heavy and put on music to lift my mood, we say I’m “changing the atmosphere.” That’s because our emotions are the atmosphere people experience when they encounter us.

Over time, I’ve learned that some situations distort the mind more than others. They don’t always reflect reality, but they feel absolute. Instead of confronting weaknesses or seeking solutions, we sometimes choose to play out doomsday scenarios in our heads, and then respond to those imagined outcomes as if they were facts.

Finances

Money, its lack or abundance, has an unusual power over the mind.

I remember a season when I was desperate to make money and I had carefully crafted a plan around scarcity. Months later, when money came in, I was still operating from the same constrained thinking because I never revised the plan. That moment taught me something profound.

It reminded me of the story of the horse that was once chained inside a small box drawn on the ground. After many failed attempts to leave, the horse stopped trying. Even when the chain was removed, it never stepped outside the box. The limitation had moved from the neck to the mind.

Financial pressure does that to us because when money is tight, it feels like the only thing happening in the world. You imagine people are judging you. You question your intelligence. You doubt your leadership. You wonder if you’re even cut out for this.

And yet, when there is abundance, the story flips. You feel invincible. You assume your decisions alone brought you there. You believe you’ll always replicate the same results under any circumstances.

I’m not arguing for or against either view. We are all free to interpret our lives as we choose. But I remember a line from the movie Lucy, paraphrased: when one part of the body is injured, it can feel like the whole body is in pain. The mind does the same thing, it amplifies a single wound or feeling until it feels all-consuming.

One way to confront financial pressure is to deliberately identify the things it does not control. A lack of money may not affect your health, your ability to think, speak, walk, learn, apply for opportunities, build relationships, or start again. And an abundance of money has little to do with your character, your friendships, your discipline, or your wisdom. Also, first, be thankful in all situations you find yourself. 

I also find this old wise saying very useful: when praised, remind yourself: “I am only a man.” When pressured, remind yourself of the same truth.

Guilt and Regret

Another powerful distortion of the mind is guilt. Guilt whispers that you could have done better, and often, it’s right. But the more important truth is this: you didn’t. That is the starting point, not the ending. The real question is not “Why didn’t I do better?” “What prevented me from doing better and can I build the capacity to overcome it next time?”

Guilt and regret are energy thieves because they drain creativity, courage, and the willingness to try again. Instead of learning, we relive. Instead of moving forward, we rehearse our failures. One thing I do now is write down the lessons from bad behaviors, or foolish steps. Because if the lesson you take from a failure is wrong, then you haven’t learned anything, even if you suffered. Failure without clarity is wasted pain.

If you have done something truly wrong and guilt lingers, repent fully. Then, remember the moment you repented. So that when guilt returns, you would remind yourself that it has already been addressed.

Through faith, I trust in God’s GREAT mercies, new every morning, through Jesus Christ, who bears our guilt so we don’t have to carry it forever. Shame, regret, and condemnation have no legal hold on us anymore. That matter is settled. Forever.

I’ll continue tomorrow.

I wish you well.