I Am Not

Detachment isn’t finding a cave and not participating in society. It is partly about the conversation you have with yourself in your head. I have a friend who said to me, “You talk about yoga and are a yoga teacher, but I have seen you more wound up and angry than anyone else I know.” My inner conversation is often full of righteous indignation. 

The struggle over wanting to care, but both not having the capacity to care about everything, and not having the skill, knowledge, ability, network, influence, or resources to do anything about a lot of what I think should be different. 

Like many others, and definitely many other South Africans, I intentionally carry personal, historical, and global problems with me. If someone is stressed at the table next to me, I will soak that up. Like if you are sitting next to people breaking up in a public place. For most of us, the last few years of news and politics have been really difficult to process. 

Do you stay involved? Do you detach by turning off your connection to the internet? Do you detach by not having conversations with other people? Do you detach by creating an alternative reality bubble? 

I am okay with getting angry. Living with the full range of emotions we were given. Anger can be useful if applied in the right settings with the appropriate delivery. It’s a part of caring. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. When someone has absolutely no interest in you whatsoever, that can cut straight to the soul. Hate normally comes from a place where there is emotion and connection. 

Part of financial resilience is emotional resilience. We aren’t Spock-like detached rational human beings. We are connected to the world in an emotional way, which we need to acknowledge and learn from.

Investing Time

As soon as you have the capacity to detach, and not be a productive asset, you are playing a completely different game. 

If YOU are “not required”. You have the ability to invest time. This may, or may not, be for something that will turn you back into a productive asset. 

Some areas require years of education before there is any sign of output. Sometimes, you even need to put in years of education just to be able to understand the signs! 

Money is a blunt cross-discipline tool to demonstrate output in areas others don’t understand. Someone pays you to do that? Someone pays you a lot to do that? Ok, it must be valuable. 

Not needing to demonstrate value in the short term allows you to go through long stretches of not knowing what you are doing. Asking embarrassing questions. Feeling annoying. Connecting dots. Mapping your ignorance. Not being respected. 

We sort people based on how quickly they pick things up. Sometimes, deep understanding requires admitting ignorance AND YET persisting. 

We have a bias to monitoring and action. For some things to do their work, they need to be left alone. For some things to do their work, they can’t also have to do the communication work of keeping others regularly informed.

"Show me the Money"

Beautiful Chaos

Even if you are micro-ambitious, you want to be able to keep momentum in the stuff you do. To be building on what you have done before. Constantly taking iterative steps. Trial and error. Learning, unlearning, relearning. 

We don’t know how the world and our path is going to play out. The information is not there. It is not that there is stuff you don’t know or that someone else knows and they need to tell you. You get to the point where you realise we are all experiencing the world in a different way. That is great. That is something to celebrate. It is okay. 

To empower others, we don’t have to go out and convince everyone to see the world in the way that we do. We do not have the capacity to understand the world. It is too complex. We don’t even experience the whole world. 

We experience a sliver of it. We get different information through touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. It is fun to imagine yourself as tiny or huge, and how the laws of physics would change. Not in their essence, but in how they relate to you... and how you experience and interpret the beautiful chaos.

Turbulence

 

Lightly Held

With lightly held detachment, you still care deeply and are involved, but you carry the sense that “this too will pass”. A single event/ project/ outcome does not define you. You are making a contribution to something that exists outside you. 

There can come a point where you can detach completely. A form of “earned selfishness”. Handing over when your individual part of the story is over and you are able to extract yourself. That is a very yogic approach. 

The yogis talk of life stages called ashramas. The four ashramas are: Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciate). At the end, you are connecting more deeply with the permanent part of who we are, when your temporary role has run its course. 

Detachment still allows you to be ambitious, in a micro-ambitious way. Small achieveable goals that add up. Capacity for small projects that you can wrap your head around. That is why we break things down into stories and categories that connect to how we understand. Little problems we can fix and move on to the next little problem. 

The more nimble you are, the more able you are. To adapt and adjust and accommodate the new problems and information that come in. 

Negative Niggles

Public Speaking is a great opportunity to practice detachment. Where people become confident is when they are no longer thinking of the audience as judging them. When they are passionate about the subject matter and that passion shows. The listener is thinking about the ideas and the person delivering the sparks almost fades away. Their thoughts are being triggered about things they care about. Seth Godin points out that the audience may even be shooting off at tangents where they are being fired up about their own ideas. You don’t live in their heads but what you are sharing helps them connect dots that light up their creativity. Where your words spread in ways beyond your control. It ceases to be about you. They walk away from the talk excited about what they are going to do. A lot of anxiety comes from judging ourselves and others. Weighing and measuring. Separating people into good enough and not good enough. Are they going to choose me? Are they going to kick me out? Am I going to fail? These negative niggles are what prevent us from honest reflection because they lack fundamental commitment. Feedback cycles only work with deep underlying security. Deep knowledge that not only is it okay to make mistakes, but that that is the way we learn. You are okay. You are enough.

Deep Commitment - speaking at my wedding

 

Little Finger

It is important to practice the ability to detach. Not all the time. We also have to relax into and accept the way we are, but then build capacity for periods of reflection. Where you can look back and see, “This is a game. I am an avatar. What did I do?”. It can be quite useful, for example, in work situations where you might have a boss that has treated you really badly. I can remember watching Game of Thrones during one of my periods of work that was really frustrating. I remember walking on my commute with one of those ear-worms of something that is bothering me. One of those ones where it just seems like there is no way out. But if you are able to step back and see yourself as a character in the story, you can see that it is not you. It is a situation that the character in the story is in. This provides a sliver of separation. That can offer a tiny gap of calm. Perhaps even some humour. This bit of the story will pass. Pages turn. Chapters end. Characters evolve. 

Who Are You?

The thing you are (currently) doing does not define you. Knowing who you are, is the heart of choosing a path. The practice of Neti Neti (Not this, Not that), is realising that you can’t be something temporary. Problems should not be valued in and of themselves, or you are not really trying to solve them. You are making yourself a permanent part of the problem and extracting rent. You only genuinely try solve a problem if you feel a sense of ownership. Then it is worth your while to make your role in the problem redundant. Redundancy becomes something worth celebrating. If you make yourself redundant and there is no commitment to you as a person, then you are let go. They’ll say, “I paid you. It’s fair”, and lose no sleep. But that is not the point. Value is created over very long periods of time. Real meritocracy starts with the grunt work of building foundations. If you are building something long-term, there needs to be a deeper commitment. Participation, while you are involved, becomes all about ego and identity. Real wealth is created when you have a significantly more stable self-definition to reinvest in. When you have a path that learns, builds, and creates in a way that is connected to what really matters to you. 

Self-Definition

All Animals Are Equal

When the supply of candidates massively outweighs the number of jobs available, work givers have the option of being picky. There is a lot of wiggle room to impose their preferences. In “Thinking Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman talks of how hard it is to convince people that interview processes regularly don’t add value. One tool in the Hubris Factory is to be very selective in hires, and regularly fire people. This gives the illusion of meritocracy. It is very difficult to evaluate this process objectively because you have no long-term, definitive, information on the people you didn’t pick, or the people you let go. The people doing the selecting/letting go are also often not subjected to their own criteria. One of my favourite German words is Geschmacksfrage – a question of taste. You need to detach from job interviews/opportunities. It is hard, because you know you. The interviewer does not (cannot), but will superficially form an opinion to think they do, and to reinforce their belief in their process. You are not your job. You are also not the jobs you did not get. 

 

Rippling Consequences

Westworld explores how others might have a better understanding of you than yourself. The chance, if we aren’t paying attention, that other people can see what we can’t see if they are detached and observant. In “Sapiens” & “Homo Deus”, Yuval Harari questions how willing we will be to work with artificial intelligence and things that watch us. Virginia Postrel talks about tacit knowledge in “The Future and Its Enemies”. Stuff we understand without knowing we understand. The driving force behind Adam Smith’s invisible hand. You don't need central decision-makers making complex decisions. You want to drive choice down to where the knowledge lies. We don't necessarily understand ourselves, but we are still the best place to make our decisions. Attention doesn’t scale. Someone understanding us better than we understand ourselves relies on deep listening and care. Local markets with ultra-local decision-making empowers people to make decisions. Information feeds up through the paths that people choose. Through the impact of their actions. Rippling consequences of meaning creation. It doesn't matter if we don't understand this in watered-down averages and stereotypes. It does matter to the intimate relationships that wrestle with understanding. 

Ripple Marks in Ancient Sandstone

Good Enough

It feels good to receive acknowledgement and recognition. To be seen and respected. To move onto the next stage of detachment and a really deep knowledge of what is going on, you have to let go of the idea that it is all about you. The constant internal battles about whether you, personally, are good enough. Whether others are good enough. You have to let go of the idea that we work to fund our lifestyle and consumption and respect. We think of liberty as about the individual, but ironically, the ultimate liberty is the freedom to realise it is not about you. The privilege to be working on issues that are bigger and connected to everything. The capacity to fully accept the world for what it is, because you are no longer being battered by waves that separate you from it. When you are able to genuinely see the world, want to understand it, and start asking the right questions rather than enforcing your own view of what the world should be like. To get there, you do need to deal with the rubbish getting in the way. Building space to breathe. 

Waste Generation per Capita

 

Messy Decisions

One huge advantage of being an Investment Analyst is yogic sage level detachment. You pass judgement on the value of a business, but active investors are still not activist investors. They stand apart. Management, customers, suppliers, competitors etc. need not even be aware of the investor’s existence. I remember one young (at the time) analyst moaning about what he was supposed to do with the next five years. The time it would take to get a sense if 50-60% of his decisions were “correct”. Like a dentist can fix a tooth in a couple of minutes, or take hours just for the sake of it, the main “job” of active investors isn’t the investment, it is the business of raising capital to invest. One huge disadvantage of being an Investment Analyst, is thinking you can make the same detached decisions in the real world. The real world has momentum and morale. Decisions do impact other people. Changing track has a real cost. There is no such thing as an independent decision. We must engage in the messy interplay of coordinating with other real people who see differently, want differently, and do differently.

Muddied Decisions

Forced Decisions

Never be a forced buyer. Never be a forced seller.

Price is supply and demand. If you must buy something, no matter what the price, that is dangerous. That is no longer a consensual exchange. Consider walking away if a sliver of that possibility exists. If you can find a way to create breathing space. Detachment at that level can feel impossible. You might, correctly, feel that it is your most important decision. It is a difficult thing to sit with, but nothing is so important, that it is more important than everything else. Certainly, nothing with a price.

The reason to build buffers, the ability to endure, and practice detachment, is so that you do not get yourself into that corner. Poverty puts people in a corner. Poverty is a form of scarcity that reduces the available options, smothering empowered decision making.

"Unequal Marriage" Pukirev

A young girl forced to marry against her will

Not Two

Yoga means everything is connected. Advaita Vedanta is the name given to the philosophical school and means “Not Two”. Yoga has stories to use as tools for understanding very abstract ideas. We think through contrast and comparison, so it is hard to understand if we only see one thing. The Seven Bhumikas are a way to understand this idea of a “seedless state” through a path of developing knowledge. (1) Longing for truth, (2) right enquiry, (3) stilling of the waves, (4) control of the waves. At that point control can seem magical, and the risk is someone backs themselves as particularly important. It is not about you. The last three stages are about you moving on. (5) Detachment, (6) Knowledge, and (7) Liberation. Your money waves will never still if it just about success and funding your hand-to-mouth consumption. Being more. Being better. If you make money to spend money. If you visualise what you are going to buy with everything you earn. If everything you do is for an expected return. How does your daily practice change if instead of a 1-year or 5-year plan, you are thinking of the 1,000-year plan? 

“virama pratyaya bhyasa purvah samskara seso nyah” Yoga Sutras

“Seedless state is reached when all mental activity ceases and only unmanifested impressions remain in the mind”

Advaita - Not Two

Things that are temporary aren't real

Seen and Unseen

“Drsta nusravika visaya vitrsnasya vasikara samjna vairagyam” Yoga Sutras

"Vairagya, or non-attachment, is that state of consciousness in which the cravings for objects both seen and unseen are controlled by the mastery of will."

Our waves of anxiety don’t deal just with what is in front of us. Worries come from within, from our dreams, and from conscious ideas about what we want, should want, what can happen, what might happen, what we expect, what we expected that didn’t arise, and all the flavours in between. Yogis explain the types of waves through the three Gunas. Tamasic thoughts are the ones that bring us down. Like periods of being unemployed or struggling to find clients. Rajasic thoughts are like periods of being too busy, with no space for self-care or focusing on what is important in the long term, because you are putting out short term fires. Sattvic thoughts are the ones in between. The ones we want to pay attention to. Even though they are also temporary. Thought waves and problems (should) come and go. With changes in the supply of and demand for solutions.

The Eye of a Red-tailed Hawk

Over Muddy Waters

“Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah” Yoga Sutras

Control of thought waves is brought about by practice and non-attachment.

Abhyasa means practice. You can develop a practice to gradually separate your financial decision making from the constraints of supply and demand. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Money anxiety is all about barriers to entry and barriers to exit. About containers that can control the solving of problems. Developing a practice recognising “I am not this. I am not that”, gets closer to what is worth identifying with. You are not your job. Vairagya is non-attachment. We can get caught in the web of being what we do. Being attached to how we earn money. It is possible to gradually reduce our reliance on our earning ability. To move beyond being a productive asset. To move beyond hand-to-mouth living where the action of our hands becomes our complete focus. To still the power of waves of money anxiety.

The Lotus soaring above the water

Real Owner

Robert Vinall (www.rvcapital.ch) describes his approach as “investing like an owner in businesses run by an engaged and rational owner with the capital of investors who think like an owner”. I like that definition. Despite how difficult it is to count, ownership connects us to the future. It isn’t a participation in profits (or losses). It is custodianship. Beyond individual contribution. Beyond ego. Beyond benchmarks, competition, and relative performance. Not a sport, but a purpose. It is about taking capital and putting it to work productively. Creativity is noisy. We look for outputs. The three key ones in businesses are cash, earnings, and dividends. The cash a business generates is the easiest to count in the short term, but hides how well the long term is being cared for. Earnings add scope for the view of management and standardise numbers for an attempt at comparison. Dividends are declared. Meaning management’s goal can be to pay a steadily increasing stream, in spite of the noise. To detach the natural ups and downs from the point of the business (long term wealth creation). The longer your time frame, the more likely you are to add real value. A real sense of ownership is the key.

"Potato Planting" Van Gogh

Deafened by Price

Price is not value. Salary is not worth. You are not your job. All markets do is shift things. Supply is the total amount of something that is available. Demand is the total amount of something that is wanted. A higher price attracts more people to make the thing, but also makes it less attractive. All price is, is a signal of what is being produced. Value is something else. Value is the reason we want to be here. The time we want to spend. The contribution we want to make. To do what we personally value, we need to dip into the supply and demand of resources. We need to learn to talk price. But not be defined by it. Building Capital allows you to do that. First, building a buffer means you have the resources for your value creation to not be distracted by the noise of changing prices (job loss, emergencies, lockdowns). Secondly, building an engine allows you to pay the costs of living without those costs making all your decisions for you. If you live hand-to-mouth in a pass-the-parcel economy, the volume of price can be deafening.

"Funeral of the Anarchist" Carlo Carrà

The Word "No"

“No one expects the dramatic Trevor John”, says my friend Stuart. I am generally a positive and optimistic person, but I have had to work very hard at the skill of Detachment. Detachment doesn’t mean not caring, it just means not caring too much. Not allowing any single thing to be more important than everything else. Allocating appropriate attention, but not more. I wear my heart on my sleeve a little too much for the Corporate Environment sometimes. Another friend's favourite trick was to “Poke Trev” before I went into my Annual Reviews. To touch me on my Righteous Indignation. I could easily take work too seriously, and insist on too much consistency. Sometimes you need to play the game. I wasn’t good at that. I don’t like that companies can treat people as disposable. As simple transactional inputs where there isn’t balanced negotiating power between ordinary people and the powerful “legal people” we create. The only real way to detach is to have an independent source of power. The word “no”.

Kool-Aid

As a wet-behind-the-ears Marketing Actuary, I can remember one of my first workshops standing in front of a room of independent financial advisers to explain the risk and investment products the company I was working for had launched. A few clearly had a bone to pick. Any bone. And I was fresh meat. As a newby, I was attempting to be very polite. It took a senior marketing person to step in and answer back with skilful banter. As a youngster, it is easy to take all “the adults” seriously. Not as the bunch of adultchildren you realise we all are. It’s easy to drink the Kool-Aid and see the company you work for as a cult, rather than part of something bigger. Gradually you will see people move companies, and get treated by companies they bought into the rhetoric of as gangrenous limbs. Gradually, you can learn to detach. Public Speaking (and work in general) can be frightening because you feel like you are being judged. Until you realise that even the Emperor is wearing no clothes. And giggle at the love handles.

Poker Money

“You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done.” One of the challenges with price not being value is the swings. Working for a salary is a little like buying/selling houses. The price changes very infrequently, so you don’t end up panicking about it. Partly because you are not looking. Salaries are relatively smooth, and pretty sticky. They don’t go down often, unless they go away (and you lose the job). When you break from that security to seek autonomy, the numbers can get big (or small), very quickly. They aren’t real. The problem with “Poker Money” is we treat gains and losses differently. Often it is tempting to go out and spend large windfalls to treat yourself in the Booms. But during the Busts, there isn’t the option to top things up. A challenge in Personal Finance is to develop detachment from your income. To stop the hand-to-mouth cycle of boom and bust. To not spend everything in the good times, so that you can build endurance and resilience for the challenging times. “This to shall pass” is comforting when people are down. You sound like a wet blanket saying the same in good times.

Detach