Mindful Money Matters - When the Game Changes
by: BTM - Sun, 12 Apr 2026
Business consultant Pria Masson writes about money, mindset and the habits that shape financial well-being. With a background in finance and a master’s degree in the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health from King’s College London, she offers practical insights to help readers make more intentional financial choices.
While we plan, life happens. Never has this been truer than in the current environment, where even the best-laid plans have been put to the test. Each of us will have felt the burden in some way. However, this month I have been thinking about those who bear the burden of so many decisions for us, mainly our financial decisions. I read the news and see how high oil prices are going, and I see how low stock prices are plunging. I know that blocking key routes means raw materials and chemicals may not reach where they need to, which could mean a further fall in markets. If your brain just cross-wired, this piece is for you because it is likely you are the person whose brain automatically connects macro news to personal and family financial exposure. Not from a place of anxiety, but from one of competence. You likely cannot read a headline without running the implications. I am also fairly certain you do it all on autopilot.
What is happening in the brain
Our brain is wired to work with predictions, and minimising prediction errors is how our nervous system maintains a sense of safety. But what does one do when the very idea of safety comes under threat? When predictions no longer hold, and the entire system we use to plan, track and adjust stops working as intended? The thinking, rational brain, the one usually in charge of life’s practicalities like money and planning, begins to hibernate. Here is the strange part: we do not always know it is hibernating. We still expect it to function as usual, so we keep pushing it to work. This is where it starts to feel like a tug of war. We find ourselves rationalising and catastrophising, sometimes at the same time. The result is decision-making that feels heavier than before, long-term planning for a very uncertain future and a level of decision fatigue that quietly builds.
What this looks like
For many, income feels under threat. I use the words ‘feels like’ deliberately, because the ability to step back and notice is likely impaired right now. If you have a job, you likely still have an income. If you have clients, your work is likely to continue. What we are living through is, in all probability, a short-term disruption that will tide over. But in uncertain times, the mind looks for absolute safety. Planning for the worst case can start to feel like the most responsible thing to do. And it is not entirely wrong. Nothing really is. All you need is to give yourself the grace to accept the scared humanity of your reality, and the reality of your family members, staff and co-workers.
The weight of the ‘capable one’
Here is what does not get said often enough. If you are the person whose brain cross-wired at the opening of this piece, you are likely not just managing your own financial anxiety right now. You are holding everyone else’s too. Quietly running the numbers for people who do not run them for themselves. Fielding the questions, absorbing the worry and projecting a steadiness you may not entirely feel. That is a specific and significant load, and it sits on top of everything else. Naming it is not a weakness. It is simply acknowledgement.
What can you do with all of this
If you want to make that will, go ahead. If reviewing your succession plan or taking those pending holiday days feels like the right move, do it. If being more prudent with spending gives you a sense of control, that is a reasonable response to uncertainty. If, however, you feel the pull to make large long-term decisions from this place, to liquidate, to quit, to restructure everything, pause. Long-term decisions made under short-term stress are the signature work of the feeling brain, and it does not need more fodder.
The framework of safety and certainty may have shifted, but remind yourself that you are the one who built those frameworks in the first place. The rules may feel different right now, but your ability to respond has not gone away. Take a breath, steady your thinking brain and give yourself the grace to be human without letting that humanity govern your financial decisions entirely.
Explore more of her work at www.priamasson.com
@coachingwithpria
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