Holy and Holey

I work on a sense of union, so I can view everybody's worldview as a part of mine. Even just a part to understand. That means practicing constantly letting go, because the parts I didn’t understand are who I used to be. 

The goal being to build up resilience by unpacking my identity. Unpacking the things that I hold on too tightly to. Constantly coming back to working on the skill to adapt, adjust, and accommodate. “When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” said Paul Samuelson. 

You will have no choice. You will have to adapt. The world changes and there is nothing you can do about that. Sometimes the harder we hold on to things, the more likely we are to lose them. 

I am the worst version of myself when I am desperate. My sense of humour goes, and I become earnest and intense. Building a capacity to accommodate the views of others, and changing scenarios, is ironically an easier way to hold on to the things you really care about. A way to pick your battles. Building resilience is a way not to put at risk the things that really matter, for the things that ultimately don’t. 

Having a good sense of the few things that are important, which allow you flexibility with awareness of barriers, boundaries, and borders around your core. 

You can keep some things holy, as the base of your story. Allowing you a calm foundation. Keep the rest holey, to let the air in for breath. To feed the flames of creativity.

Building Capacity

Building the capacity for long-term thinking, is a form of exercise. Running a marathon is not a one-day event. It starts on the first training run. 

Developing a movement culture to gradually increase your strength. Putting yourself under controlled stress to learn about yourself. To build your skills and knowledge in a way that you believe you are capable in difficult situations. Reflecting on how you react. Seeing what kind of support you need. 

The body has a use it or lose it efficiency that comes standard. Once confident in similar situations, auto-pilot gets turned on, but where you don’t use something regularly it disappears. 

Which means you need to build up capacity to stay involved and stay conscious. Part of endurance is reserves. The ability to pull on extra when you need to go deep. Very physical requirements that come from eating properly, cooking properly, and recognising what your body needs beyond what it craves. 

A very sad legacy of Apartheid was promising sports stars coming through where despite “picked from nowhere” support, the gap of early childhood nutrition meant their body didn’t have the structural back-up for sustained performance without injury. Grounding matters. Consistency matters. Back-up and reserves, matter. 

When running a marathon, you need to take on nutrition and water regularly even before you need it. Otherwise, if you only respond when you do need it... it is already too late.

Willing to Learn

You can build your capacity. Often the people who start businesses and appear to take risks are not special in any way other than they have got capital and connections to do it. 

They have the space and support to invest in their conspicuous merit. They are strong because they have resources deeper than hand-to-mouth earning ability. They have a safety net. They know that if things go wrong, there are people they can go to. Rich kids with their parents to back them up. 

If you cannot afford to take a risk because you have dependents, you are in a different situation. The comparison is not a fair one. You cannot wave a magic wand to create capacity. It is only possible to start where you are, with a little stretching. 

Flexibility is your ability to adapt and adjust to accommodate different situations. Flexibility includes your openness, curiosity, willingness to learn, hunger to look constructively rather than comparatively at the stories of others, and the bravery to change the way you see things. 

Even though financial planning starts with how you see the world, that is not set in stone. You are alive. You change. Are you willing to learn? 

Bruce Lee suggests, “Take what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.”

Bruce Lee Learning

Two Marshmallows

I don’t like being the bad guy. I don’t think most people like that, but I don’t subscribe to the “it doesn’t matter what other people think” philosophy. You can only make purely independent decisions if you are a hermit. If relationships matter to you, then connections and consequences matter. Yet there is a balance. Your interests matter too. One behaviour that creates capital is delayed gratification. If you are living purely in the now, then every decision is about the now. You are not building space. You are not building time. You are not building capacity. Because everything is about now. There is a story (controversial in its scientific rigour) about putting Marshmallows in front of children. If they can wait for the researcher to return, they get two. The test was meant to evaluate the ability to take charge of your emotions. A powerful life skill. The controversy is over whether this an innate or learnable skill. Imposing delayed gratification on others isn’t fun, and building capital is a team sport. We make many of our financial decisions together. Our joint decisions are the key to whether we consume what is created or whether we act as custodians and reinvest. Building space, time, and capacity.

 

Building Capacity

A business is a legal person. It is a container which has legal rights and is subject to obligations. A share is a slice of ownership of this container. In deciding whether to buy or sell a share, you don’t just look at the product. You don’t just look at what the business does and “is”. Beyond the product they are selling and its profitability, you have to look at the solvency and liquidity of the container. At its strength and flexibility. Solvency is a measure of endurance. Unlike people with reasonably stable salaries, a business can have much more volatile profits. Years it makes no money or loses money. It needs to survive. It needs Capital in excess of the money it has borrowed, to get through difficult periods. It needs self-reliance. Self-sufficiency. To make adjustments. Research & Development. New leaders. New management. New hires. New products. Mergers and Acquisitions. Restructuring. Liquidity is a measure of short-term resilience. Even if you have Capital, you need cash to meet clear and present dangers. To make sure immediate needs don’t drown long-term purpose. When investing in yourself, don’t just focus on what you do. Build endurance and resilience to have the capacity to keep doing, whatever comes in your way.

1914 Volume Measurements

Strength Matches Gravity

“Always On” is fragile. The most important factors in meaning and wealth creation, are time and compounding. Building incrementally on what was created before, over the very long term. That requires seasonality, redundancy, and excess capacity. Running hot focuses on creativity at the expense of endurance and resilience. Creativity gets the credit, but endurance and resilience have to be the priority. Sustainable Growth beats headline makers because of the reduced risk of ruin. Sustainable Growth means building the capacity to pause. To reflect. To unlearn. To relearn. You see it in those beautiful moments with dancers. Where their strength matches gravity, and they pause. Seeming to defy the laws of physics. That is true control. Real autonomy. Where complete acceptance of the way things are allows you to see deep enough for time and space to slow down. To go still. Then to emerge from the stillness renewed.

Poncianinho - Mojuba Capoeira London