Welcome back to Money Games, my monthly take on sports, business, and all things leadership. Thanks for reading and subscribing, and please share with your friends and colleagues.
— Joe
In this issue:
The AI race is on, and the competition will only get fiercer
How the best leaders develop their emotional intelligence with spiritual soundness practices
BAM leadership lesson from Steve Jobs

The AI Race Is On. DeepSeek Is A Major Advance, But It Doesn’t Mean China Will Win In the Long Run
All eyes are on Nvidia as it reports earnings later today. I recently wrote on Forbes about the seismic impact of DeepSeek on the AI industry. I believe it’s just the beginning of an intense race for AI dominance, and while it’s a significant advance, it’s not enough for China to declare victory. For one thing, this isn’t just a technology story; there are major geopolitical factors. It’s no mistake that the DeepSeek breakthrough came out just a few days after President Trump announced a massive investment in U.S. AI development. It could be years before we fully understand the direction of the global AI industry.

Why Spiritual Soundness Is a Leadership Superpower, and How You Can Develop Your Own Emotional Intelligence Skills
The stereotypical Hollywood image of a CEO is someone in a suit barking orders, giving speeches to employees, and firing off emails. But the truth is that the most successful executives—in business, sports, or any other field—tend to be people who, despite appearing outwardly powerful, have a high degree of emotional intelligence. There’s a reason 71 percent of organizations say they value emotional intelligence more than technical skills. The best leaders understand that how well they know themselves, how in touch they are with their feelings, and how they manage those feelings, shapes the way they interact with their team, deal with challenges and make decisions.
Take Red Lobster’s millennial CEO, Damola Adamolekun. He’s a young leader facing a serious challenge, turning around a struggling national restaurant chain after a high-profile bankruptcy. It’s a high stress position. But, rather than trying to just power through that, he’s developed specific techniques to make himself more emotionally empowered, so that he can lead his team more effectively.
One of the biggest things Adamolekun emphasizes, according to Fortune, is dealing with his stress appropriately. He never wants it to translate through to his team. He needs to create an island of calm in the storm for his people to maximize their potential. To do this, he practices what he calls “emotional control” to create “a stable environment where your team feels supported and motivated, even in the face of adversity. By modeling emotional resilience, you inspire your team to approach adversity with confidence and composure, which helps maintain a positive work environment.”
I couldn’t agree with this more. I’ve used my own technique for creating what I call “spiritual soundness.” Whether on Wall Street or on a football field, ownership of your emotional well being is one of the biggest differentiators of any leader.
When Adamolekun talks about “emotional control” he’s really describing a practice of spiritual soundness. This can take a lot of different forms, and there are many different methods for achieving it, but the result is the same: a clarity of self and mission, and an ability to put your emotions to work positively for you and your team, rather than letting them distort your decisions and behavior.
Adamolekun emphasizes pausing in moments of stress to assess a situation, rather than leaping immediately into action. “Whether it’s taking a run, stepping away from technology and social media, or simply taking a break, stepping back from your duties gives you the mental clarity and energy you need to lead with purpose.”
Exercise and physical fitness is a common technique. Any runner knows the feeling of total focus that occurs when you’re in the zone, allowing you to process your background stress while in motion. A lot of leaders have relied on some form of meditation. Therapy can be very effective for some people, especially when they have a good relationship with that person. The Harvard Business Review breaks down emotional intelligence into four key components: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management. It’s not a coincidence that spiritual soundness practices all work to enhance these qualities.
In my life, I’ve relied on a spiritual soundness practice I first started using when I was 22. We’re all composites of every other person and interaction in our life. There’s a version of us that relates to our mother. To our father. To our husband or wife. Our kids. Our boss. Our employees. Our friends. We get feedback from all of those people and then try to shape our actions to please them in some way. This can be the source of stress. When we’re looking for approval, it can distort our decisions. If you’re making a decision based on what you’re worried someone else may think, that probably means you’re not making the decision that’s right for you. And if you aren’t clear about who you are, what your values are, and what emotions shape your thinking, it’s hard to make the right decision for a team or organization during moments of stress.
Poker players face this dilemma a lot. Amateurs let their emotions get the better of them, even when they know they shouldn’t. If they’re on a winning streak, they may play riskier hands than they would have before. If they’ve just lost a big hand, they may feel angry or stressed by the loss and try to win it back by doubling down on a weaker hand, or trying to take out the player who beat them, rather than folding and walking away while they’re still ahead. Professional poker players understand their emotional responses and practice methods and strategies for responding in these circumstances.
In my practice, I believe it is incredibly important that we understand ourselves first, independently of anyone else, if we’re going to be able to regulate our emotions and make the right choices. To do this, I use a legal pad, and I just start writing. I’ll write about everything that’s on my mind, especially sources of stress, hard decisions I need to make, things I’m trying to figure out. I write about where I want to be in five years, both personally and professionally. I don’t talk about what I wrote with anyone else, and I never show it to anyone, because as soon as you’ve done that, you’ve put yourself back into the position of seeking someone else’s approval.
After I’ve taken some time to write, I put the legal pads away. (Find a good hiding place—the exercise is ruined if someone else reads it!) Then, a few days or weeks later, I take the legal pad back out and read what I wrote. In that moment, I may react to it. I may see places where I was lying to myself, or where I was more concerned about what someone else thought. I find insights into where I was onto something or where a moment of clarity came through. Then, I write again. I keep repeating the process.
Sometimes I look at what I wrote last week. Sometimes I look at what I wrote twenty years ago. I’ve been doing it for more than five decades, and the spiritual soundness I’ve gained through this process has continuously up-leveled my relationship to myself and therefore, the integrity I have within all my relationships. I have no doubt that this practice has been a big component in the successes I have earned in all of my endeavors.
Do you have your own spiritual soundness exercises? Share them with me in the comments!
CNBC FAST MONEY
I recently was a guest trader on CNBC’s Fast Money to talk about the slowdown in market momentum. It is always an honor to join the talented panel for the 5:00 PM hour.
Here’s one clip from this appearance:
BAM LEADERSHIP LESSON OF THE MONTH
Steve Jobs (via his biographer Walter Isaacson) discusses his own spiritual soundness practice in this month’s lesson.
“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”
Great advice Joe. Remember when we were in retreat at the Prep and were asked to write down our goals. Also in the Jesuit tradition the examination of conscience and the spiritual exercises had a major effect on all of our developing minds whether we admit or non. The word spiritual is often related to breathing. A Buddhist technique which can be a great anti anxiety treatment like exercise.I also think of spirituality creating team spirit. Also at 75 we really don't or care what anyone thinks of us. Steve Kelly