My husband likes to listen to the radio, he can’t tell me the attribution of this (approximate) statement he brought home this weekend, but it’s along the lines of “You cannot look at a worksheet or spreadsheet and change the amount of cortisol in your brain.”

I disagree. Looking at a spreadsheet of a financial scenario that is well on track to meet the needs to be placed on it, doesn’t change my cortisol level.

But cortisol, a stress hormone, floods my body when I look at a spreadsheet that reflects a scenario that won’t meet the goals it will be asked to sustain. I realize that’s not true of everyone. One has to know what the spreadsheet is designed to capture, be able to assess how well it captures that, and have an emotional connection to the future self whose goals will or will not be met.

How about you? Are you very much a math person, where looking at a spreadsheet you built is enough to create an emotional response?

If you aren’t, it’s time to translate what’s in the spreadsheets into something that does spur you on, and make it visual. That might be a picture of what you want to accomplish, such as you and your extended family on a safari, and one of those color-as-you-go thermometers with dollar amounts indicated for your savings along the side,. Let me give you an additional pro tip – try giving yourself dates along with those dollar amounts, to encourage you not to get behind on funding your goal. That’s in addition to reducing your friction and decision fatigue, by automating the savings as much as possible.

As we head into winter, and a little extra mercury in the thermometer seems like a good thing, what do you need to do to visualize your goals and make the risk of not meeting those goals cortisol-inducing? Will you make a spreadsheet, or a vision board and success thermometer?