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.
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