Welcome to Wise & Wealthy: A weekly newsletter full of proven ideas to become smarter and wealthier. I send this every Monday and every other Thursday.
#11 – June 13, 2022
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Wise
Too often, ambitious and hard-working people have an urge to pretend that everything is fine.
The house might be burning down, and they’ll say, “It’s fine!” Your house is on fire! How can it be fine?!
Sometimes, we need to admit things are not fine. In his book, Get Out of Your Own Way, the psychiatrist Mark Goulston writes:
“Admitting to yourself that you are upset or in pain can make you feel exposed. You fear that acknowledging a bad feeling gives it more power. The pain might get worse. You might not be able to tolerate it.”
For the past two years, we’ve been dealing with one challenge after the other. Now, it’s inflation. I’m sure something else will come after that. Sometimes it can get a bit too much.
And that’s fine. No one can live like a superhuman every day. We must always be aware of the signals our mind and body give us.
The key is to acknowledge that you don’t have to be doing well all the time. Sometimes we need to take a step back. And sometimes we need to put our feet on the gas.
What matters is that you always stay connected to body and mind. And never give up.
↳ The Dark Art of Pretending You Are Fine
Wealthy
Whether you’re a seasoned trader or a retail investor who’s just starting out, investing comes with pain.
Stocks and other asset prices fluctuate. Growth isn’t linearly. It’s more like a pendulum. It goes up and down.
If you’re afraid of the downturns, you won’t be able to keep investing.
During these moments, it’s essential to manage your emotions as a long-term investor. If you get scared and sell your stocks during a bear market, you will only set yourself up for failure.
When you sell at the bottom, you will probably not come back anytime soon. You don’t want to admit you were wrong, which is also painful.
You see? Investing is always painful if you give into your emotions.
If you’re curious about how Stoicism can help you to become a more consistent investor, check out my article.
↳ Stoic Investing: Why managing your emotions is the key to building wealth
One interesting thing
I recently had Jimmy Soni on my podcast. He’s the author of The Founders, a book about the origin story of PayPal. He worked on that book for several years and talked to dozens of people who were involved with founding the company.
People like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, but also lesser-known people who were early employees. For many years, it seemed like PayPal was destined to fail because it constantly had financial problems.
In the book, Jimmy writes:
“PayPal came within a hair’s breadth of a crash landing as well—in 2000, the company’s burn rate left it with mere months of funding left. But those challenges inspired powerful outcomes: the team instituted fees and fought fraud, iterating rapidly on both fronts. Without outside financial pressure, many on the team suggest, those innovations may not have happened. “The best teams deal with meteors,” Malloy observed. “Meteors that don’t hit you create opportunity.”
We talked about that, and other topics like starting a business, consistency, vision, leadership, and Jimmy’s writing process.
↳ Jimmy Soni on Elon Musk, The PayPal Maffia, and his writing process
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this edition of Wise & Wealthy useful.
All the best,
Darius
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