Stilling the Waves

Yoga is stilling the waves of the mind. You could consider Financial Yoga, stilling the waves of the connection between what we earn and how we finance our lives. Ideally you pay yourself a sustainable dividend. This dividend is financed by a combination of (1) your earning ability, (2) your cash buffer, and (3) capital working on your behalf. The cash buffer reduces the noise of (1) and (3). Your earning ability can be interrupted by business cycles, changing consumer preferences, new competitors, changing regulations, redundancy, job loss, reskilling, family commitment, unpaid work, disability, illness, or a dysfunctional economy that doesn’t have enough jobs on offer. Your capital can be interrupted by times of panic when the price people are offering for your engine reflects their fear that bad times will last forever. The cash buffer recognises that “This too will pass”. Yoga is partly a practice in not identifying with the temporary. Finding a more solid point of focus, so that you can let the temporary float in, sit, and float out. We need money. We don’t have to be, the way we earn money.