Too much of a good thing – even a virtue – can be a problem. This point came to the fore at a Chamber of Commerce lunchtime talk presented in Geelong last week by Mark Bouris, the entrepreneur presenter of Celebrity Apprentice fame. That makes him Australia’s version of Donald Trump. So just as you call the Donald “Mr Trump”, you call Mark “Mr Bouris”.

I did not expect to hear Mr Bouris talk about virtues, but it was a welcome change, albeit less rare now, for a business event. These days there is more and more talk of psychological and philosophical issues in the business field. That is a good thing. Ultimately everything comes down to how we choose to live our lives. Money is secondary. It can help, but it's secondary. And when we get on to the subject of how we choose to live our lives – that's psychology!

All of us are unique and have individual differences in personality functioning. Most patterns of personality can have positive and negative aspects. When people have obsessional personality characteristics they may commonly aim to draw on a sense of order, rules or standards to exercise a greater sense of control in various areas of their lives. They may tend to be perfectionistic. The positive side of this is that people tend to be conscientious and reliable in many ways and to adopt high standards in various roles in their lives. However, the disadvantage of such tendencies is that they can lead to rigidity, inflexibility, inefficiency and heightened anxiety, especially in circumstances of heightened stress. When such patterns occur it can help to learn to be more flexible. Paradoxically, "letting go" of control in various situations can lead to more effectiveness, efficiency and greater relative control in the long run.