Morgan Housel

And I never want to or think about pandering to you, to the audience.

And so there's part of me that is inherent in that where I'm just like, I really don't really care what other people think of these, good or bad.

I'm just kind of writing them for myself.

But it's true that, you know, my first book, Psychology of Money, first print runs 5,000 copies, ends up selling about 10 million and counting kind of thing.

great, amazing, but it also sets the expectations of myself and other people to a different degree.

And so when my second and now third book comes out, it's always judged relative to that.

And good problem to have, ultimate first world problem.

But you see what's the irony of it is I write about, including in Same As Ever and Psychology of Money and the new book, The Power of Expectations, and how anything amazing can feel terrible if your expectations are high enough.

And anything terrible can feel amazing if your expectations were low enough.

It is the ultimate arbiter of how you're going to feel about something.

And I knew this going into it, that even if Same As Ever –

was a book that I was very proud of, which it is, and sold well, which it did.

It was always gonna be by comparison to this thing, Psychology of Money, my first book, that would be graded against it.

And even if I knew going into it, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't hard.

It was hard.

I've talked to other authors who've been in similar situations.

And I think other kind of artists who have this thing, whether you're a musician or actors or whatnot,

If your early success was big, it's very difficult to live up to.

I will kind of name one example of this that I saw recently because I think they're big enough that I'm allowed to criticize them a little bit.

And everyone has a different taste in music.