Are What You Eat

“You are what you eat” is mostly literal. Our bodies regenerate every seven to ten years. When I started yoga, my diet had mostly descended to what I called “the triumvirate of happiness”. If completely literal, I would have become the love child of a mango juice, white magnum ice-cream, and a microwave Tikka Chicken Masala curry from the local Little Sainsbury’s by the Lower Richmond Rd petrol station. I was living by myself and this was my default “because you are working hard” treat to myself. 

When I got into the habit of going straight from work to yoga, my diet also improved because I would have some yogi soup after the class. The magnum ice cream was replaced with an oat cookie, and the juice with some tea. Learning to cook is not unlike learning a language, and often needs someone to show you. You can get CEOs who don’t know how to fry an egg, because they have never prioritised being competent at life. Either because they were well supported, or they allowed their body to fall apart. It is not unusual for someone not to know how to make mash potatoes, or even have tried various vegetables. 

Our palates change over time. There are tricks to expand your repertoire. If you are trying to shift towards a more plant-based diet, you need to learn the vocabulary of eating more widely. As a South African, I come from a big meat-eating culture. I have also got a weird, quirky relationship with fruit. Particularly messy fruit. Something odd from my childhood (my excuse) gives me obstacles with regards to the textures, smells, and spray. You can get over that, I am told. I try with smoothies, which I enjoy and make occasional more direct attempts. 

I did discover soups as a similarly fantastic indirect middle-of-English-winter diet shifter. I got a Ninja Blender which both blends and cooks. You can put stock with any vegetable and have great soup half an hour later. The more you learn the components of cooking, the easier it is to solve both the health and the taste issues with joy, which boosts energy levels much more than the kick of my three yummies.

convenience

Financial Breath Work

You can, and many do, do a Yoga Teacher Training course not to become a teacher of others, but to improve how you teach yourself. One of the ways I cope with a lot of the waves of life is by seeing it all as a game. A thin slice of distance between what is going on, and who I am. Enough space between what is going on and me, to breathe. Detaching allows you to be your own teacher. 

With time to reflect. I did return to reality after my course, but I also started adjusting the direction I wanted to head in my career. I decided I wanted to focus more on investment analysis and pull back from client work. I like talking to clients. I like explaining things. At that stage, I wanted to be involved in the actual investments, so I started shifting in that direction. 

The Yoga course gave me a point to constantly return to. A focus on the basics. One of those points is proper breathing. Breathing is so key, but it is not something we think about even though it is the base of everything. Yoga describes prana as energy, and pranayama is breathing exercises. You are managing your energy flow. 

You can learn to breathe properly, in the same way as you can train to swim or run more efficiently. Most people when asked to take a deep breath will take a big suck of air in, rather than being able to control their breath and draw oxygen in slowly. Developing the ability to inhale, slowly, and exhale, slowly and with control, changes your levels of energy completely. Learning to breathe with your abdomen, so that your tummy comes out when you breathe in and that creates capacity to take in more oxygen. 

One approach to meditation is simply to regularly come back to focusing on your breathing every time your thoughts w(a/o)nder. When you feel yourself going, you come back. 

That is analogous to stilling the waves of money anxiety. Constantly returning to the ins and the outs. Relieving Financial Anxiety is not a question of more, it is about the ins and outs and the relationship between the two. The speed and control in both directions. The feeling that you have the waves covered. You can do this.

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Art for Energy

Working in investments involves periods of existential crises. Trying to explain underperformance can be really testing even if you are a hardcore believer. Beyond accepting that there are periods of stress and risk, actually going through persistent underperformance is emotionally draining. Which is why people don’t tend to invest in a contrarian way. 

It ends up being semi-religious. In the same way as I had to grapple with whether Yoga was religion, many investment companies feel very much like Churches with High Priests. Some people think of yogis as cults and some people think of investment schools of thought as cults. The type of language that gets used can seem culty, evangelical, or defensive. Maintaining some healthy space between “work as an evaluation of self” and things I was doing to rebuild my energy became very important to me. 

I started spending my weekends at the Wimbledon Art Studio doing expressionist painting that was non-intellectual and more of an embodied physical art. I was painting, but in a responsive way that focused on texture, colour, and layering. I can thank my school art teacher, Mr Lichkus, for pushing (and pushing and pushing) me to my limits in this space. In one class review, he stood there saying “no one bump me, no one bump me”... then a classmate tapped him on the shoulder and he went “OOOPS!!!” and put shoe polish across my painting... so that it “broke it” and stopped me being so precious. 

I managed to loosen up my very earnest, tight, approach... and I used my weekends to reconnect to releasing some of that wilder energy onto the canvas. Between art and yoga, I was trying to reconnect with who or what I was. That was not defined by under- or outperforming anybody's benchmarks or expectations.

Entry Ticket

You can think of risk as stress, and stress is not all bad. “Discomfort is the entry ticket to a meaningful life”. In exercise, you have High Impact Interval Training. Putting the body under stress in a controlled fashion can be a good thing. That is the way we learn. The body follows a use-it-or-lose-it strategy, and is ruthlessly efficient at redistributing its energy. If you start doing press-ups, your muscles will get bigger as your body responds. If you stop doing those press-ups, your muscles will get smaller. If you go for runs regularly, you will get faster and it will become more comfortable. If you stop running for a while, you start getting tired when you go for random, irregular runs. The body directs resources to where they are needed, and takes them away when they are not used. If you want to build up strength, you put your body under stress in a controlled fashion to build up your capacity for when you are in uncontrolled situations. Developing the strength and flexibility to maintain control when you are not in a planned environment. 

1930s Turnstile

 

Ongoing Source

Building wealth takes time. 15 years is an aggressively short period to build an Engine (Capital that can earn enough to cover your expenses). Unlike saving with a picture of what you are going to spend your money on, building an Engine aims to build an ongoing source. You can’t build wealth without a source. You can’t build wealth if you consume everything that comes from the source. You DEFINITELY can’t build wealth if you consume more than what comes from the source (and live off increasing debt). Most people live hand-to-mouth. A few manage to build capital to finance their retirement. This will never change if we consume everything we produce. Time and space is needed. Establishing sources of wealth. Then creating space between our hands and mouths. Then giving proper time to let capital work. Till we can live off the fruit rather than shrinking the number of trees.

An Ongoing Source of Energy

An Ongoing Source of Energy

Finding Clean Energy

From a standing start, a big enough Capital Engine to give you complete financial independence is an incredibly ambitious project. Even if you have plenty of non-explicit (inheritance that isn’t capital) hereditary privilege like wealthy friends, door-opening education, the right profile, and the right passport. Ideally, you would be spending less than the dividend yield of your money’s portfolio of jobs. Ideally, for that dividend yield to be sustainable and grow a bit each year, it would be lower than 3.5% (the rule of thumb sustainable drawdown rate). That means you would need more than 28 times your annual spending. If you are in the circles that can afford to build that kind of breathing space, your entry ticket to those circles (spending) is probably high, making the required Engine size bigger. Reality is probably closer to reducing the control of monetary constraints. A little stronger. A little more flexible. A little more control.

Solar Settlement at Schlierberg

Produces more Energy than they Consume

Destruction

Capital is a living organism, and Consumption is a form of killing. We need to consume to live, and so we need to ask how much of the Consumption is part of the cycle, shifting energy from one form to another, and how much is destructive. Sustainable Consumption reinvests. Meaning that not all that is produced is consumed. Reinvestment leads to Sustainable Growth. Consuming more than is produced gradually destroys what is there. Living hand-to-mouth with zero reinvestment is destructive. It is living in the present to the exclusion of all that will follow. Actuaries typically talk about a “Sustainable Rate of Return” of 3.5% for the average retiree aged 65 years old with a prudent base of Capital working for them. This means if you “see” a million dollars (ka-ching!), you should really “see” a sustainable stream of $35,000 a year if you are a custodian. See Capital as the trees, and sustainable income as the fruit. Ash doesn’t produce fruit.

Escape the Concertina

There are levels of relaxation. Usually we just touch the surface. Weekends and Holidays are often “Concertina Leave”, where the work squishes up on either side. A rush to finish. A pile to clear. If you have a worry work job, it comes home with you. It sleeps with you. It looks at you in the mirror. Yoga talks of three levels of relaxation: physical, emotional, and spiritual. There is a long-term nature involved that can’t simply respond to the often irritating and counter-productive request to, “Relax!”. Physical relaxation requires the stretching and strengthening of your body. Not just switching off. It is a lifestyle. A practice. Not an event. Emotional relaxation is hard when there are niggles and knots in your muscles. Emotional relaxation is stilling the mind. Having perspective, and the focus to channel your energy where it is creating the meaning you want. Spiritual relaxation is letting go of that constant measuring and angst of who we are. It is letting go of the rat race and focusing on something bigger. It is truly understanding what really matters to you.

Concertina Leave

Draw Breath

Ken Robinson points out that if you ask a classroom of five year olds who can draw, they will all put their hands up. It is only 10 years later that just one or two will, because the rest have been taught that they can’t. Rather than something to suck the juice out of, we turn life into a filter. A competition, both in our head and in the world, to sort things into good and bad. Sort is French for Fate. Our shared fate is specialisation that loses the special in favour of the competent. Enter meditation and breath work. This can be seen as a competition too. In reality it is like drawing. We all can do it. We just have to come back to it. Whatever you are doing, whenever, can be meditation if you simply pause and come back to the question “How am I breathing?”. Doesn’t even have to have an action attached. It can simply be developing an awareness of how you breathe. Breath is the source of our energy. It is the source of our calm. Taking a deep breath stills the madness and brings focus. Draw Breath.

Shifting Gears

Part of why I shifted gears in my career was a recognition of where my energy was being directed. Aside from the technical and business part of investing, I spent a lot of time building relationships. I enjoyed that. Understanding the context and psychology of how clients saw the world. Finding the frequently asked questions, and interesting new angles, and digging into clearer answers. Acting more as an “Investment Philosopher” than a salesmen. People trust people who are clearly on their side, rather than pimping a product. The problem for me was I was directing all this energy to clients, and significantly less to friends and family. Colleagues and Clients were my community. Friendships were becoming something I gave my leftover energy to. If there was any. The first step of any business is finding a community that needs to be served, and understanding their needs. I wanted to find a way of constructing that community consciously and with intent.

Using Energy

When I was at University I was probably at the peak of my powers of stubborn pig-headed focus. During study weeks, and exam periods, I could fit in 12-hours of studying in very regimented 50-min-on–10-min-break-repeat cycles. With scheduled time-tables for the hours allocated to each subject, for studying, for running (head-clearing), for match-fitness (past papers), and for pre-game head clearing (movies etc.) When I started working, and continued studying a full study day seldom managed to reach 8-hours. Instead I would take half study days because I could fit in 5 hours. Three before work & two after. These were always bursts of energy. Burst then bust. I don’t really buy the 60+ hours of work people claim to do regularly. I think you get 4-6 hours of quality time a day. If you use that all up for work, I think friends and family get the dregs. Work can be an anti-depressant. An excuse not to process emotional stuff. A priority that hides priorities.

Finding the Energy

Iraq

The idea of continents as separate land masses with different identities is very recent. The Fertile Crescent is a connected area that has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. The area between the Tigres and the Euphrates river, which became known as Mesopotamia, was one of the Cradles of Humankind - linked to the wheel, cursive scripts, mathematics, agriculture and astronomy. Iraq's modern borders had little to do with history and were the product of the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided up after World War I. Its primary function was to ensure the British Empire still had access to oil. The 'Kingdom of Iraq' gained independence in 1932, but was overthrown and abolished in 1958. The Ba'ath Party took control by force in 1968 - Ba'athism was a nationalist movement promoting the creation of a unified Arab state.

Pre-World War I Ottoman Empire

Fertile Crescent

Gas Mask

Airlines insist you put your own gas mask on before helping others. This isn't selfishness. Quite the opposite. Playing the martyr is one of the most selfish things anyone can do. You have to be fit, healthy, and clear headed to be able to give. One of the consequences of this is creating space as a priority. The temptation when we are busy is to scurry. Gandhi suggested the opposite, 'I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one'. You need to be a Half-hearted fanatic. When things get crazy, first take a moment to check that your own mask is secure.

Check your gas mask

Run Forrest Run

In 2011, I went on a month long Yoga Teacher Training Course. One week in, I felt completely relaxed. What's more, I knew that a week later, nothing would have changed. I would likely feel a little fitter, a little stronger and a little healthier, but no new stress would have entered. My return to work was sufficiently far away that I didn't have to do the emotional preparation needed to dive back in. The relaxation went deep into my bones. Since stopping full time work and shifting attention to more 'micro-ambitious' goals, that relaxation has become part of my life-style. 

Ten Pin Yoga

(me far left)

I am slowly re-entering the world of making money with the skills I have that people are willing to pay for. I feel a little like Forrest Gump running back into the forest to collect the wounded. The thing I am going to have to work hard at remembering is to be a 'half-hearted fanatic'. I am no hero. I don't want to set myself up for failure by pretending to be one. Each step forward is only worth while if it is a sustainable one. I don't believe the current working environment is sustainable. I think it creates time-impoverished specialists who don't allocate enough energy to the people they love, and the communities that support them.

Run Forrest Run

Fortunately I have wonderful friends and family, and lots of people who are willing (and eager) to tell me when I am wrong, and when I am losing my way (and to cheer when I am all good). I am stubborn, ignorant and noisy... but I promise to listen even when it is uncomfortable. Listening doesn't always mean changing direction, but I will do it deeply and honestly.

To help, we need help.

Maintaining Relationships

The time you make controls your world. We are very powerful at ignoring things that don't contribute to the things we have prioritised. If something isn't near the top of the list, it might as well not be on the list. This is why I take issue with human specialisation. Specialisation is for machines and production lines. I look forward to the day when machines are better specialists than us. We will smash them at empathy, and that is the heart of what gives the world meaning.

One of the catalysts for me walking away from full time work was that it did become full time. Weekends are barely enough to regather energy, let alone engage with other things that matter in a way that you are fully present. Perhaps the most important thing in business is the relationships you grow. Relationships don't happen by accident. Through emails, phone calls, coffee, dinners, writing and other means business people stay in the thoughts of their clients. There are very well developed software packages to help record meeting notes, remember important dates and consciously build an understanding of a client and their needs.

I realised that I was putting significantly more effort into clients than I was into the relationships that mattered to me. I might be very diligent about calling a client once a quarter, responding to emails, and seeing them once a year while going several years without speaking to a close friend. There is something very backward about that.

Given our increased specialisation, we can have less and less in common with the work our friends and family are doing. At the same time, that work takes up the majority of their head-space. Our ability to ignore things that don't matter then kicks in. If our knowledge of the stuff that matters to our key relationships isn't at the level we think we are making a strong contribution, we can disengage. We are trigger happy. We listen out for things we connect to amongst the noise. When something matters, it triggers action. If we don't maintain those connections, they weaken.

Shivani and I had a discussion on the benefits of going deep vs going wide. It is easy to get lost which ever you choose if you don't maintain the connections to those you care about who have gone another direction. Relationships don't happen naturally. They require work and engagement. Weeds are what happen naturally... when the invasive takes priority.

Weeding

Tim Urban tells us we are at 'The Tail End' of many of our most important relationships. It is a cliche to talk of great friendships being those you can just slip back into after large chunks of time apart. I don't like that. Why is it that we don't dedicate more of our time to the relationships that matter the most to us? Time gets dedicated to specialisation at the thing we are good at. We risk neglecting things that matter more because we run out of energy and attention. We assume the really good relationships are those that will last, and still be there when we need them. Good relationships require work, time and effort. Watering and weeding. Otherwise those irregular meetings are just the celebration of a memory.

Space Makes Time

I am not sympathetic to the response, 'I don't have time'. We all have time. 24 hours in a day. We choose between various options. 'I am choosing something else' is more accurate. Buddhists say that if you are twice as busy, you should meditate twice as long. What is very important is managing your energy and your perspective. Quite often, the thing that gets our time is the thing that shouts the loudest. Adding space to your day allows you to consciously make the choice of how to spend your time. Space makes time.

My grandfather's homemade language clocks

Making Time

The Cobwebs

I have had various stabs at playing the piano. Today is the start of another. When I purged most of what I owned and headed down under for a couple of months, I handed my piano over to a friend. This morning it has returned home. I can definitely not just sit down and play. I am still very much a beginner. When time and other things get in the way, you take a few steps back and cobwebs build.

What I am interested in as I jump back in is how long it will take to get close to where I was after a shorter gap. I bought the keyboard in about October last year. The gap then had been about 13 years. I had only been a beginner pre-gap, having done lessons while teaching at a school in Chichester, England. I tried to push on teaching myself, but put it aside when my studies got overwhelming. Priorities and all that jazz. I really enjoyed getting back into it. There is something quite magical when your fingers seem to detach with a life of their own and the sound starts to have feeling.

We often put aside things we love because of 'more important priorities'. Some call it the Protestant Work Ethic, but it is not just protestants who work hard. There are things that are seen as indulgent and things that are seen as realistic and contributing to the greater good. We can be seduced by success and sucked up into only the things we are good at. When you dive into the indulgence, the guilt soon kicks in. Should I be do something else? Often it isn't even indulgence. Simply sitting still for a bit can be seen as an unproductive use of time. Laziness. 

I don't see time spent on things that don't make anything explicit as indulgence. I am a big believer in looking after your energy levels. It is not about balance. It is about filling your self up with creativity and passion to be able to solve some of the more vexing problems in the world. The idea that we need to 'put aside our childish ways' in order to achieve more important things than play is just plain silly. 

If you brush aside the cobwebs, which of your childish ways would you breathe life back into? 

Managing Energy

While on Table Mountain with two friends recently, we sat to take a break. In truth, two mountain goats sat to wait for a donkey to catch up and regain control of his breath. But the views from the top are spectacular and they weren't moaning. Suddenly one of them broke out into a passionate rendition of a beautiful piece of writing he had heard. The words were spot on for what John and I needed in that moment. When you spend lots of time thinking about all the the problems in the world, you can feel overwhelmed. It is much easier to pick something and crack on. The truth is, you need to manage your energy. You can't always be fighting or you won't have anything left for the next day. Galeo taught us the idea of the 'Half-Hearted Fanatic'. Always keeping something back for the moments, activities, places and relationships that feed you.

What was wonderful, is that he had internalised these words. Socrates didn't write. He thought this 'modern invention' would make people lazy. Even once there were books, the literate would studiously memorise them because chances were they would only see them once. To 'read' them again would require being able to close their eyes and recite the words in their heads. To chew on the words. To savour their meaning. It isn't good enough to know where to find something. When you are on top of Table Mountain with two friends in need of a boost, it is a powerful thing to be able to take a deep breath, and say...

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotised by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

Edward Abbey

HT Galeo Saintz 

Sunshine on the Table Cloth with Galeo and John

Pinch Yourself

I always have to pinch myself when I am in Camps Bay on a beautiful day. It feels like you are trapped in a post card. There are lots of big challenges in the world, and sometimes it is overwhelming. But there are also moments, places, and friends which give you a burst of energy to push on. I met one of my favourite people yesterday. We 'knew' each other through social media, but meeting Brundle live and in the flesh was a tonic. He is one of those positive people who will take any given situation, add some humour, and move forward. One step at a time.