Alex Lu As stated in the 2006 Disney film, Meet the Robinsons, Yes, you failed.

But you failed spectacularly. A spectacular failure can often lead to a much more meaningful victory in the long run. Ones feelings can often play an influential role in ones decision making, which is not necessarily unfortunate in every situation. In my experience, decisions made from feelings may be impulsive, but they can also work in complement with decisions made by logic alone. People love to make money, and they love to make money-using money, which is essentially how the stock market works. But how do people choose what company to invest in? Often times it is not the company itself but what branch the company is a part of that people will instinctively choose from, but there are also more formulaic ways of selecting. Many professional investors and financial analysts, such as those situated in Wall Street, New York, use simple yet sophisticated algorithms to predict and secure their fortunes. These formulas often consist of various numerical inputs and outputs that deliver a probability of success, a projected net worth, and a margin of error. However, it is always up to the investor to decide whether or not they actually want to go through with the investment. The investor must think about the outside factors that the algorithm does not take into account such as their own experience with that company, the economic environment of the period, and especially the investors own self interest: what they want out of the company and what they see in its potential. It is in that sense that one can see how emotions and feelings can often sway the hand of an economist. In 1995, an aspiring British author submitted her manuscript to a twelve small publishing companies. She was financially destitute, recently divorced, and raising a daughter on her own. To top it all off, her manuscript was rejected by all of these publishers because she had no experience as an author and her story was viewed as clichd and unappealing. That continued to be the case until an editor took a chance on her and published her novel and advised her to get a day job, saying that she wouldnt make much money off of childrens books. In a span of five years, though, she went from living off of welfare to becoming a multi-millionaire. Her name was J.K Rowling and the childrens book, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, became the first of the best selling book series in history. While some may have seen her early life decisions as spectacular failures, none can argue that they did not lead her on the path to victory. Her decision to become a writer was not fueled by money as she could have made much more money during her struggling years had she gotten an ordinary job. In the end it was her perseverance and steady hold to her beliefs that led her to her success. In such examples of economics and young adult literature, decisions hold feelings and emotional influences to a higher degree than they hold logic or calculable probability. This does not apply to all walks of life, as it must be acknowledged that feelings may lead to bad decisions and failures. But it is the

recovery from failure, the emotional change, that leads us to our greatest achievements.