Reflections for the day:
True wealth was never about the accumulation of money but a way of life. There is no point in comparing yourself with those who work 7-day work weeks, or clock 18-hour days earning heaps of money. This applies also to those working regular hours with relatively more ‘free time’ on their hand, and who are earning a fraction of the income.
“There is no universal truth in terms of what makes up a good life, only what works for you and allows you to sleep peacefully at night” - Morgan Housel
Once the rain is over, an umbrella becomes a burden to everyone. That’s how quickly loyalty ends when the benefits stop. Don’t take everything too personally. A lot of what we misconstrue as friendships and good relationships tend to be mostly transactional.
Don’t overshare. Not everyone wants the best for you. Privacy is power, and people can’t ruin what they don’t know.
Give yourself space. Sometimes all you need is a little more space to think through things and solve your problems - space to breathe, space to take a step back and more importantly, to look at the bigger picture. Nature often provides a good setting for this.
You bear ultimate responsibility for everything that happens to you.
They say don't be too hard on yourself. That's only because most people don't want to face up to the fact that they are responsible for everything good or bad that happens to them.
Once you recognise this, you stop assigning blame and focus on just getting to the root of fixing any issues.
If something doesn’t work for you, change it, or eliminate it.
Run your life for gross profit, spend within your means, and don't buy more than you can afford. Manage your finances based on gross profit, not revenue. Never chase or compare yourself with the high-income earners or those who own a lot of stuff. You don’t know what kind of liabilities come attached with it.
Buy experiences, not objects.
If the volatility of tens of thousands of dollars per day keeps you up at night, maybe you shouldn’t be managing money.
You either get the job done, or not. In the early days of school, we were brought up believing that you get credited partially by showing your calculations and workings next to the answers in some exams, particularly for math and especially when it is the wrong answer. This was done mostly to encourage students who did not get the right answers, but showed effort in trying.
In the working world, right answers are everything. Results drive everything. Steve Scharzman illustrates this aptly during his guest address at Yale where he shared his experience working at Lehman Brothers [start watching from 48:20]:
"In the real world, there is only one grade for every project... which is an equivalent of an 'A' grade. And the definition of an 'A' isn't the same as in academics. In academics you can get an 'A' sometimes with a 90, sometimes with a 92, a 93... and that's sort of pretty good. In our world, an 'A' is a 100. This was shocking to me, because I wasn't an 'A' kind of person..."
Don't justify how hard you are trying to your clients or bosses. Stop complaining about how much work you have put in. No one is coming to pat you on the back or give you a gold star for your effort.
No one cares, get over it. You either get it done, or not. That's it.
You matter only to the people who genuinely care about you. If you drop dead tomorrow, your line manager will posthumously say a few words of thanks and condolences, and then proceed to hire your replacement the very next day. You only matter to your company and your colleagues as far as economics go. Be that as it may, so easy to say, harder in practice.
So much depends on reputation, guard it with your life. Law number 5, from the book “48 Laws of Power”. One of the most important things to a man is his reputation.
When negotiating, remember that Nassim Taleb says:
"What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have, but what he or she is afraid of losing."
Trust your gut. If you do something and find yourself awake and unable to sleep at night, with a nagging feeling in your chest or gut, it probably means that whatever you are doing is posing a threat to something of great importance to you, or is conflicting with your core values deep inside. Whatever that is, stop doing what you are doing. And the next time you do anything, remember that nagging feeling. At the end of the day, you are only accountable to yourself when you wake up in the morning.
Be less judgmental. Don’t impose your moral high ground and standards on others in terms of what you think it means to be rich, what kind of work they are engaged in or what they say and do.
You don’t know what they have gone through or have to put up with.
“Some people were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people - dance.” - Eric Roth (from the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button")
Fat accumulates in organizations because most people work on the basis that it is better to follow instructions, even when it is wrong and get paid, rather than to be right and lose your only source of income. To paraphrase a Chinese colloquial saying: Stakeholders are the ones who foot the bill eventually. (Also, see number 40 here.)
Money buys a lot of things, but the most important thing it buys is the option to walk away from everything.