Crystallising the Chaos

Finance, Yoga, and the Illusion of Control

One of the most rewarding intersections in my life has been the space between finance and yoga. Two disciplines that might seem worlds apart, but which I’ve found deeply connected. At the heart of both is the question: Does what I do matter?

In yoga, the answer begins with karma. Not in the simplistic, pop-psychology sense of “what goes around comes around,” but in the deeper, more deliberate idea that action matters. Karma is the acknowledgment that we live in a moral universe. One where our choices, however small, have consequences. That’s a powerful antidote to nihilism. It suggests that we’re not just being tossed around by random waves of circumstance. There is meaning. There is intent. What you do echoes.

And yet… we’re not in full control. We never were.

In the world of finance, this tension becomes especially real. Volatility. Noise. Exchange rates. Inflation. Market crashes. Investor sentiment. Black swans. You can act with the best of intentions and impeccable logic, and still see outcomes that seem arbitrary or even contradictory. This is where another Yogic idea comes in. Maya, the illusion.

Maya is the veil that filters how we see the world. It’s not just that others are mistaken; it’s that we all are, to some extent. Every one of us sees reality through our own lens, shaped by upbringing, culture, emotion, ideology, and the stories we tell ourselves. In finance, Maya shows up as the illusion of rational markets. We build models and strategies based on data and assumptions, but the map is never the territory. There’s always uncertainty. There’s always noise.

So how do you act in a world that seems too complex to understand, and still believe that your actions matter?

This is where I’ve found yoga’s framing of Dharma incredibly useful. Dharma is about duty, purpose, and alignment with your role in the world. One of the foundational texts of yoga, the Bhagavad Gita, is a text set on the brink of war. A conversation between a warrior, Arjuna, and his charioteer (and divine guide), Krishna. Arjuna is paralysed by doubt. He doesn’t want to act. He sees both sides. He feels the futility of the battle ahead. And yet Krishna urges him to step into his Dharma. To act anyway.

Not with attachment to outcomes, but with commitment to doing the right thing in the moment. To act because it is right. Not because it will guarantee a certain result.

That, to me, is where yoga and finance collide most meaningfully.

Financial planning, at its core, is about building structure in a chaotic world. It’s not about certainty. It’s about cultivating a posture. An attitude of resilience, of deliberate, grounded decision-making despite the noise. Like yoga, it’s a practice. You stretch, you breathe, you hold difficult positions, and you return to centre. Over time, you build strength. You create space. You develop a capacity to sit with discomfort and still act.

In my own practice (personal and professional) I’ve found it helpful to anchor to something. In Finance, that is "get your money a job". In yoga, there’s the idea of Ishvara. Your personal deity or symbol of ultimate meaning. It doesn’t need to be literal. It can be a principle, a metaphor, a story that helps you make sense of the world.

For me, I’ve chosen Saraswati, the goddess of learning, wisdom, and creativity. Not because I’m religious in the conventional sense, but because Saraswati represents the way I engage with life: through curiosity, through writing, through thinking things through. In a world I often find overwhelming, she’s my symbol of how I want to show up. My Ishvara.

Writing is my way of making sense of the chaos. I don’t always know what I think until I’ve written it down. And even then, it’s only ever provisional. A first draft of understanding. But the act of articulating thoughts is a kind of karma in itself. A way of doing the work, even if the outcome is never fully in my control.

And here’s another layer: not all karma is your own.

Some of it is inherited. We’re born into systems. Into privilege. Into intergenerational wealth, or the lack of it. Into the consequences of past decisions made by our families, our communities, our nations. In that sense, I often think of wealth and capital as crystallised karma, the compounded result of previous actions, sometimes going back generations.

That doesn’t mean we’re powerless. But it does mean that fairness isn’t the starting point. Some people are handed a ladder. Others are handed a shovel. Recognising this isn’t about guilt or shame. It’s about context. It’s about choosing to build responsibly on top of what came before, to contribute rather than just consume. To plant seeds, not just harvest fruit. To be a custodian.

This is where financial planning becomes more than just spreadsheets and forecasts. It becomes a form of karma yoga. The yoga of action. It’s about detaching from the illusion that you can control everything, while still taking full responsibility for your corner of the world. For your people. For your values.

You can’t fix everything. But you can do your work. You can build financial capacity, not as a flex, but as a foundation. As something that allows you to ride the waves with more ease. To provide stability in times of chaos. To extend a hand when someone else needs it. To create optionality, not just for yourself, but for others.

It might feel tone-deaf in a world that’s noisy, unjust, and full of struggle. But doing your Dharma (your work, your contribution) isn’t selfish. It’s essential. The noise doesn’t go away. But you can learn to hear through it. To move through it. To hold your position.

And maybe that’s the real yoga of finance.

Next Generation

The tragic thing about compound interest or capital compounding is that most people won't actually get to experience it. Even those of us who are good at delaying gratification (saving before we spend, rather than spending before we repay our loans) are still...

...saving or investing with the intent to spend.

Compounding only truly kicks in when you've got a lot of money, and when you're not constantly drawing from it.

Think in really simple terms: half a million Rand, 10% of that is R50,000; a million Rand, 10% of that is R100,000. It's *the same 10%*, the same merit, the same skill, the same performance—but it's twice as much money.

Why? Because you started with twice as much.

In reality, at the beginning, most of us have hardly anything to invest, so it's barely growing. Later, when we actually have money, we're often spending it, so we're continuously interrupting our capital's growth.

Very few people reach that point of soaring, where you're spending so little of your capital that it can compound properly.

That's when the magic kicks in.

Maybe the real answer is planting trees for the next generation.

Conversational Tools

I don’t think we’re ever really having the same conversation.

It’s like sitting in a theatre watching the same play but from different seats, distracted by different things. Maybe you’re focusing on one actor, while I’m captivated by the lighting.

Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of the rider and the elephant. The elephant (our emotions, intuitions, and embodied experience) is doing most of the habitual and automatic work. The rider (the conscious mind) tries to explain it afterward.

Inside my head, it feels like there’s a committee in constant debate. Each member has their own agenda, and their words float around, interrupting and overlapping. When I speak, it’s not a clean stream of thought—it’s fragments trying to make sense of each other. Dipping in and out of connection with my elephant.

I don’t have access, but I am as sure as I can be that the same thing is happening in your head.

So when we talk, it’s not just me talking to you, it’s my inner committee talking to yours. No wonder we miss each other.

That’s why we need better tools for conversation. Tools like Interpretive Charity, Transcription, Summarising, Questions, Reframing… and teasing out meaning rather than thinking we can just force it on each other.

To truly hear.
To truly listen.
Because sometimes… we’re not even in the same conversation.

Truth is conversational. 

Refining Conversation

Conversation is not the same as the written word. 

When you read a transcript of a lively discussion, it often looks as if we’ve forgotten how to speak. Sentences zig-zag, filler words appear, we change tack mid-thought, someone interrupts, and on paper we can seem semi-literate. We blame the voice-to-text software, but the truth is that real-time conversation is messy by design. 

Think about how we listen. We are not like a driverless car with hundreds of sensors. We have one brain that’s simultaneously attending, drifting, and free-associating. We catch enough to respond, yet our thoughts wander to whatever the moment triggers. Transcribe that dance and it’s chaos. 

Inside my own head (and, I suspect, yours) there’s a five-person committee chattering away. Jonathan Haidt’s “rider and elephant” analogy captures it well: the rider (conscious mind) believes it’s steering, but the elephant (subconscious) actually decides where we go, and only afterwards does the rider cook up a justification. Free will exists, but it’s more like gentle guidance than total control. 

That’s why stories matter. They take those bouncing ideas and smooth them into a clear arc: beginning, conflict, resolution. Even then, a short story or a two-hour film is a drastic simplification of real life, which is infinitely messier, full of randomness and ambiguity. Storytelling is how we compress complexity so we can think, and act. 

Writing is the workshop where this compression happens. Forcing thoughts onto the page helps us sequence them, trim the excess, and discover what we really believe. It’s also why I’m excited about large language models. They act like mirrors to our half-formed ideas—reflecting, rearranging, challenging. Modern AI isn’t rigidly rule-based; it learns the way children and, yes, elephants learn: through iteration, feedback, and embodied patterning. 

That’s not something to fear. Humans excel at adaptive learning too, especially in the context of relationships and collaboration. The task is to stay aware of what our inner elephant is absorbing, remain reflective and conversational, and keep refining the stories that steer us. 

Conversation is the raw material, writing is the refinery, and learning (human or artificial) is the fuel that keeps the whole system evolving.

Catalyst

 I use social media as a catalyst for real-world interaction.

I’ve been writing a blog since 2006 called Swart Donkey. That name came from my surname before I took my wife’s (Black) and because I’m stubborn, noisy, and ignorant… but loyal and willing to put in the work.

I enjoy sharing my thoughts openly and honestly. I write about things happening in my life and the observations I make, always aware that it's a public space. And I know people won’t read everything. You can’t stress too much about trying to be interesting to everyone all the time. Just be yourself. The right people will connect with the parts that matter to them.

What I love about this is that when I speak to someone in person, even if they didn’t read everything I’ve shared, something will have resonated. That’s where the conversation starts.

When I was posting regularly, I found that the people who were reading, or even just skimming, would pick up on the bits that mattered to them. And so we’d go straight into a meaningful, open conversation.

Because I was open, they felt safe to be open too. I’ve had some of my best conversations this way. Not because I was trying to sell something or manipulate anyone, just because I was being real.

And I think we can use artificial intelligence in a similar way. These language models are brilliant at connecting ideas through analogies.

Let’s say I’m trying to explain financial planning, and you’re into rocks, diamonds, star signs, or you’re a Star Wars fanatic, whatever it is. The model can help me use your language to explain my world. And that creates connection.

But for me, it still comes back to real-world interaction. These tools are like GPS, they’re useful to look things up, but they don’t replace the journey.

We become the things we repeat. And we become like the people we spend time with. That deep connection comes from ongoing, human conversation. From engaging, unpacking, repacking, learning, unlearning.

That’s what makes us human. That’s what excites me.

So I’m going to use AI as a catalyst for connection. To spark better relationships, not replace them. Because that’s where the magic is: around the fire, eye to eye, seeing and being seen.

 

Happy 31st Birthday South Africa

I was 31 in 2011. It was a watershed year for me in terms of assessing what was important. I dived into a “Project Mojo” to get myself back on track. I was living in London and started renting a lock and go studio at Wimbledon Art Studios. When I chose what to study, it had been a very pragmatic acceptance of the idea that, “Not all good ideas are good business ideas”. I loved art and maths, but it was more likely that I could monetize maths/business than art. I kept up at least one painting a year, but that was all I got round to. I had always prioritized later, but decided I need to bring some of that prioritizing into fruition. 

Every Saturday and Sunday, I would head to my studio for a couple of hours. I specifically chose to spend the year focusing on abstract expressionism. Trying to turn my mind off and focus on automatic, glutral painting, that came from somewhere else in me. Color and texture. Layers and energy. What makes you an artist? Renting a studio? Selling a painting? Believing you are one? Making a living from painting. I have always loved art. My mother was an art teacher, and I did take it as a Matric subject. Turning creativity, directly and conspicuously, into a career is something I considered… but always felt like a path with lots of resistance. These two or three hours, twice a weekend, had none of that baggage. It wasn’t for anyone else.

Wimbledon Art Studios has two open studios each year. Most of the artists clean up their studio and turn it into a gallery. There is a huge range and plenty of deals on offer. It was also very humbling for me, as you sit for hours with people poking their head in and making snap judgements of whether it is worth coming in. I did sell a few… but certainly nowhere in the range of convincing myself that this is a better career option than Asset Management. Art remained something “for me”. Not something that I would bend and twist into the mould required for paying the bills.

We all need to pay the bills. Even South Africa has to figure out a way towards economic prosperity if it wants to have these indulgent “finding yourself” years I was able to afford. Sometimes you do what you want to do. Sometimes you do what you have to.

Stay Grounded

There’s a big difference between embodied knowledge and surface-level learning. 

Think about how we used to find our way home. You’d either know the route or use a physical map. That’s embodied. Now, with GPS, it does the work for you—you follow the instructions without really learning the route. This is one of the core fears people have about artificial intelligence: Will we be replaced? If something else is making the decisions, what value do you add? 

But I’m not scared of that. Just like I’m not scared of investing. 

I don’t panic that there are a thousand PhDs trading in the markets—because I’m not trying to out-trade them. I’m not a trader. I invest because I believe value is created by companies doing real things: building products, serving customers, solving problems. When I invest, I own a slice of that. I’m not gambling on price movements—I’m backing something real. 

It’s the same with decision-making and Artificial Intelligence. Own a slice of yourself. Be the person in the room. 

When something becomes embodied, it’s because you’ve done it so often it becomes part of you. You don’t have to think about it—it’s second nature. That’s mastery. That’s magic. It lets you move fast, connect dots, and act with intuition. 

It’s like language. Words only have meaning when they’re shared. You and a close friend can say a single word that carries a whole story. That’s relational depth. That’s how embodied learning works—you repeat, you refine, and it sinks in. 

Eventually, it changes how you respond. Your reactions are no longer deliberate—they’re instinctive. That’s the gift of repetition, of depth, of care. 

But here’s the key: Stay embodied. Be aware of the habits you’re forming. Watch what you repeat—because what you repeat becomes who you are. 

Learning something deeply is hard. But now, with the tools we have, it’s more possible than ever. The opportunity is there—if you’re intentional. 

That’s why I don’t panic—about money, or Artificial Intelligence, or being replaced. I get my money a job. I let it work. I stay grounded in relationships. And I focus on what I value. That’s the difference.

Happy 30th Birthday South Africa

The more you can have a focus on something bigger than yourself, it allows you to stop the wrestle of "Am I good enough?". I had a difficult year both professionally and personally when I was 30. A year that forced me to look deep at what was permanent, and what mattered. A year that forced me to detach from some of the existential turmoil of my 20s.

I had a particularly difficult month that I still think of as "Red October". A three week roadshow around South Africa where I was explaining a challenging period of underperformance. Fundamental Investors track themselves against passive "just buy everything" benchmarks. This means that the facts can demonstrate that over a long period, you have unambiguously added no value. That can be hard to stomach when you are a stock/business picker and that is your primary point of motivation. There are all sorts of hoops you can jump through to wiggle out of that truth mirror, but hanging your identity and inner worth on "alpha" (a measure of outperformance of the alternative) is a recipe for a world of pain.

I made a commitment to myself to "detach". To find other sources of inner strength. I booked a Yoga Teacher Training Course for the following December/January (during which I turned 32), and I started renting a lock and go art studio, that I would go to on weekends.

I am someone who wears my heart on my sleeves. I like caring. That is likely a deeper source of my identity than outperformance. I still wanted to be motivated. Coming to understand that detachment doesn't mean apathy, and can release you to perform better was part of my 2010 lesson.

South Africa is also at an existential crossroads politically this year. A ruling party that looks like it will lose its majority, and a populace that has to soul search. To realise that all of us are trying to make a life, as we enter a period of consensus building... so that genuine building can proceed. Holding onto something better than the individual containers we fight so hard for. 

A 30th Birthday Treat