Stay Grounded

There’s a big difference between embodied knowledge and surface-level learning. 

Think about how we used to find our way home. You’d either know the route or use a physical map. That’s embodied. Now, with GPS, it does the work for you—you follow the instructions without really learning the route. This is one of the core fears people have about artificial intelligence: Will we be replaced? If something else is making the decisions, what value do you add? 

But I’m not scared of that. Just like I’m not scared of investing. 

I don’t panic that there are a thousand PhDs trading in the markets—because I’m not trying to out-trade them. I’m not a trader. I invest because I believe value is created by companies doing real things: building products, serving customers, solving problems. When I invest, I own a slice of that. I’m not gambling on price movements—I’m backing something real. 

It’s the same with decision-making and Artificial Intelligence. Own a slice of yourself. Be the person in the room. 

When something becomes embodied, it’s because you’ve done it so often it becomes part of you. You don’t have to think about it—it’s second nature. That’s mastery. That’s magic. It lets you move fast, connect dots, and act with intuition. 

It’s like language. Words only have meaning when they’re shared. You and a close friend can say a single word that carries a whole story. That’s relational depth. That’s how embodied learning works—you repeat, you refine, and it sinks in. 

Eventually, it changes how you respond. Your reactions are no longer deliberate—they’re instinctive. That’s the gift of repetition, of depth, of care. 

But here’s the key: Stay embodied. Be aware of the habits you’re forming. Watch what you repeat—because what you repeat becomes who you are. 

Learning something deeply is hard. But now, with the tools we have, it’s more possible than ever. The opportunity is there—if you’re intentional. 

That’s why I don’t panic—about money, or Artificial Intelligence, or being replaced. I get my money a job. I let it work. I stay grounded in relationships. And I focus on what I value. That’s the difference.

Willing the Body

Ken Robinson was a phenomenal communicator. He talked about the disconnect between the world of practice and the world of theories. Lamenting how academics can sit in universities, detach themselves and look at how the world should work from an ethical perspective, or values perspective, or a meta “how are we thinking about thinking” perspective. They can go really deep to the edge of human understanding. They don’t always have a lifeline back to where people are actually living. 

We have a wealth of knowledge that is hidden because we are not good at communicating with each other. When we are living separately from the world. We have people who are so busy, they don’t have time to think deeply. They are trying to be constructive, and so don’t have time to deconstruct. There is no time for finding holes, dangers, and unintended consequences. 

He talks of academics being disembodied, and seeing their body as a device that gets their head from meeting to meeting. The East has a more healthy relationship with the body. Yoga, for me, has also been about exploring embodied learning. At a later stage, I also started doing Five Rhythms dancing, which is part of a growing movement culture. An exploration of where knowledge sits at the subconscious level. 

In “The Happiness Hypothesis”, Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The real strength sits in the habits, scripts, loops, and behaviours that go on without thinking. Our rider may pull the strings, but the elephant must be willing. That requires a mind and body that talk.

Relax into Discomfort

The process of learning and engaging with the craziness of the world creates trials where it is okay to make errors. When you are in an environment where you have confident control over the risk of ruin. 

It is not a big deal if things go wrong. You want to be surprised. Like a child who delights in things not going in the way they expected. You can incorporate that learning and curiously see what is going to happen when you again poke the unknown. Confident in the ability to relax into discomfort to create powerful questions. 

This is something I have to work on. I find that when you care, and like caring, it can create tension. Those I care about the most sometimes don’t get the best version of me because I care so much. When something becomes so important that nothing else matters, humour can disappear. You can lose the things you care about most because you are trying too hard. 

One of the ideas I have wrestled with is “unconditional love”. The lack of boundaries can ironically mean it is impossible to relax. I don’t like the idea of escape hatches. I think you need to do the work when things go wrong. You can’t build if you are constantly restarting. 

Returning to some basic self-care, and holding onto the ability to repair, recover, and regenerate, can increase the capacity for commitment. Awareness of the limits of temporary learning, and when retreat is necessary. 

You don’t need to learn through pain. Controlled stress is sufficient. Playing within limits, and having a good sense of what limits you are comfortable with. Part of investing is taking risks, but you are not rewarded for taking risks. You are rewarded for adding value. 

The key to a powerful timeframe is self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-love, and returning to a foundation of basics.

Regeneration

Mother Tongues

Our understanding grows from the base of our mother tongues, and the context that provides as a foundation. Memory works by having somewhere to put things. Meaning hooks which place, and interpret what we take in. 

Imagine being a baby again where you have no context. Your wide eyes stare, looking for patterns and repetition. Everything is fascinating. Everything you get wrong is a learning experience, if you even know enough to know you got it wrong. Which must be traumatic. 

This is why kids go from emotional extremes of frustratedly losing their temper, to rapturous joy. Living in a world where everything is unexpected and chaotic. We talk about kids learning fast. That is not really my experience. We are just nicer to kids. They take ages to learn. When you speak to a 6- or 10-year-old, we are amazed partly because we want to be amazed. 

Would you be amazed by an adult with that proficiency after a decade of study? We allow children space and time to carry on learning. 

Once we are adults, we start judging more harshly the slightest mistake. Someone who speaks four or five languages might struggle to get promotions because of their English grammar, or ability to paint a vivid picture in their fifth language. 

To develop a habit of lifelong learning, you need to maintain childlike curiosity, but also parentlike kindness. You have to be a good parent to yourself, and hold space for discomfort and celebration.

Somewhere to place Memories

The Why of Learning

Ged from the Earthsea Quartet, is one of my favourite fictional characters. In that world, you gain magical powers over objects and lifeforms by knowing their true names. His training is an extended period of study in a tower away from the noise. Then embodying that knowledge, so he doesn’t just know the names superficially. He sees them, recognises them, remembers them, and can use them as automatically as breathing properly. 

In David Copperfield, Charles Dicken’s character also finds a key to financial security through wrestling hard with something deeply complex and confusing until it comes naturally. In this case – Shorthand. This is a symbolic writing method that lets you take verbatim notes but write quickly enough to keep up (before there were keyboards and recordings). 

I have been plugging away at languages and the Rubik’s cube, as a tool for memory work. You can learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube in a few minutes (to solve) in an hour (to learn). To get faster, you need to put time and practice in. 

For a Rubik’s cube... why? You are not going to make money out of it. You would need to have another reason. With Languages, there is a payback as an entry ticket to other cultures and world views. To be able to connect to people in the way they are most relaxed. 

Yet... normally it would require a real push for motivation to get through the obstacles. Perhaps moving to a place where that language dominates. Perhaps a loved one. 

The why of learning is the key to deep soaking. I know why I spent time learning the Rubik’s cube. It is hard to explain or justify to others. You don't need to explain your why to yourself, but it needs to soak deep enough to overcome attempts to shift your attention away.

Every Day

One of the GMB Fitness trainers, João, often trains in his jeans and slippers. This is because he likes wearing jeans and slippers, and his intention in training is to be able to move easily. So he wears what he wants to move in. 

Another technique he talks about is simple repetition, until the movement comes naturally. Which seems like stating the obvious, but sometimes we repeat till first success rather than till smooth and dependable rewiring has taken hold. We scratch the surface and move on before knowledge is embodied. 

Which is why failure and difficulty can be powerful learning techniques, because they force you to slow down. 

Spaced Repetition is an idea Gabriel Wyner (of Fluent Forever) pushes for language learning, and memory work more generally. You stretch out the periods of repetition till you are just about to forget. You gradually increase those periods. Until it becomes a part of what you deeply know. 

When we change behaviours, the key element is sustainability. Particularly for things like long term wealth creation and compounding. 

For upside, it is the behaviours that you do every day, rather than what you do on any given day, that matter. For downside, yes... you can do a lot of damage in a short time. Creation needs time. Sustainable is possible forever.

Chew On

Cooking is a great example of “sources of joy” where some very simple processes are things people “can’t do”. Have you made mashed potatoes? Fried an egg? Made a pancake? 

Until you have done something, it can be intimidating. We all find very different things intimidating, because every living human is incompetent in some way. 

There are amazing meals that are not difficult to make. Even World Class chefs will do the same. If the ingredients are plentiful, then the price will be low. Price is not value. A high price simply indicates scarcity. 

Often we are monotongue in the same way as we are monolingual. We eat a constrained diet because we haven’t built up our food vocabulary. 

Soups are really easy. Stock and one vegetable will even do it, and let you build up your vocabulary with gentle pairings and exploration. 

I have a funny relationship with fruit for some reason. Something about the texture, but pop it in a (smooth) jam or a smoothy and I am good to go. 

You can gently unwind embedded behaviours with time and coaxing. Learning is about deep soaking. At school, we write the test and forget. Real learning is embodied through repetition. Where it becomes part of your taste buds and habits. 

Narrative Therapy is the idea of understanding your cornerstone events, drivers, and scripts that you repeat. Then being your own detached editor. Tweaking the words and stories the voices in your head chew on.

Worth doing Badly

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly”. 

This is true because you start by doing something badly until you know how to do it. If bad is measured compared to people who are already doing it. If learning is not recognised as a necessary part of the process. 

We are better at that when we are kids, because most kids don’t receive a salary. Our judging system is different. Marks are a communication tool, just like money... except they usually aren’t constrained by supply and demand. 

With a functional education system, there is capacity for lots of students to do well. If well is judged by knowledge. 

As soon as education is judged by money and jobs, then nice disappears. 

Not enough jobs that require the skills you have? Not enough jobs paying more than you spend? Not enough jobs in the type of work you want to be doing? Cold, hard, reality. 

As a child, someone (normally your parents) holds space for you to be bad. Gradually, we stop holding space for each other. As an adult with responsibility, you need to get the balance between focusing on things supply/demand tell you to do, and holding space for yourself to be bad. 

One of the things that sucks about being an adult is we stop doing a lot of things we love, because we filter what we do, not only by what we are good at, but what we are best (relatively) at. We cut off parallel sources of joy.

Little Rugby Players

Big Man Holding Space

Looking Inside

I will be the first to admit that I mostly live in my head. In the year and a half before my attempt at the Comrades, I wanted to look inside myself and answer the question, “Am I a runner?”. I did love sport growing up, and I threw myself into various things. Even though I wasn’t great, each year my body changed enough to ask the question, “maybe I am now?”. 

When I started working, I did neglect my body more than I should have for a few years. Getting swallowed by the time at my desk. In 2009 I moved near to a Yoga Centre, and gradually stopped treating my body as a “transport device for my head”. I was attempting a few “100 hour projects”... like piano and capoeira (8-week course). Seeing how fluidly some people’s bodies or fingers move... with rhythm that is inspirational. Planting a seed for my later interest in “Five Rhythms” (a form of moving meditation) and movement culture more generally. 

When you are not on a specific path (e.g. when you are a child), you can be more flexible and playful. Trying things. Holding back your “self-definition” in those first hundred hours. Less about whether or not I was a runner, and more just about running. 

The best advice I have been given on how to become a writer, is “write”.

Digging Deep

Hour by Hour

I approached my professional exams in a very structured way. I was told they took 100 hours, and that resonated with my experience as a ticked them off one by one. Hour by hour. Going from not understanding to sinking in. 

100 hours is fairly chunky. Two hours a week? Then it would take a year. Two hours seems reasonable for a valuable skill. 

The problem is the first 100 hours are often tough because you feel completely lost. We often think that people who are good in the first 100 hours, are going to be the ones who are chosen/good for the 10,000 hours. I don’t buy that. Quite often the generic learning skill set that is needed in the first 100 hours is very different. You need to get through the hard to find the joy. 

My first idea for a book/project was “First Hundred Hours”. To write about my experiences of constantly learning. Get used to, and good at, being bad in the first 100 hours. That was how I got into running. I asked some university friends for ideas. One said babysitting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many takers – parents are often very territorial despite being overwhelmed. 

Another suggested a marathon. I had never run more than 10km. I wasn’t a runner. In other words, I had never seen if I was a runner. Another friend handed me the book, “Born to Run” which argues we are all runners. About 18 months later, I was standing on the starting line of the Comrade Marathon in Pietermaritzburg belting out a nervous pre-dawn Shosholoza and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

Good at being bad - 300m from the finish when the gun went

Forests of Connection

Constant learning allows you to release your identity from a specific problem. To solve problems, and move on. It requires mapping your ignorance. Developing the capacity to change your skills and knowledge as the problems demanding focus change. Developing the capacity to step back and have a broad picture of how your skills and knowledge fit into the wider environment. 

Understanding that they aren’t who you are, but are part of a bigger, complex, organism. Your own learning needs to connect to others, and requires communication, to convey your ideas, to listen, and to take on new knowledge. Letting knowledge that is no longer serving you disappear. Rather than being defined by the specific thing you are learning, building the tools to take information in, process it, and make decisions. 

Not purely in a rational way, also developing the emotional capacity for environments that change. Being a decision maker requires real interaction with the world, practically and pragmatically. 

Active Career Management, means looking beyond your line manager or company for performance reviews. Mapping out your own path. How are you connected to your broader profession? 

You could end up working for the company that is now your competitor. You could become the client of your current company. Your employer could become your client. 

I enjoy going to Actuarial Conventions even though most of the presentations are painful, mostly because of the people and seeing their movement around the underlying companies. Even though I may be lost in talks about paths I haven’t followed, only partially recognising some of the symbols from university, I still connect to the names and faces. 

Being attached to that wider community releases some of the pressure of performing within a specific box. Your specific job in a specific company can wind you up. Perspective is helpful.

Forests of Connection 

Detached Learning

We constantly need to be learning. It is only in a world that is reliably and predictably the same the next day that you can limit the set of skills you have. 

We need to have curiosity and pay attention to a world wider than ourselves. You can’t assume what you are doing, even if it is working, is going to be the same. If you have studied something for seven years, it is not relevant if those skills become redundant. Especially in a world of artificial intelligence and creative destruction. First in line for automation are things that are repetitive and make money. 

When the rules of the game change, you need to be able to adapt to whatever the new rules are. This makes it important to detach from identifying with what it is you do for money, or are going to do for money. 

We can’t rely on jobs for life. Either for meaning or for sufficient financial reward to finance the rest of our activities. Even when you are in a great team you like and are well rewarded in, teams change. Like the analogy of a boat that gets regularly repaired until every part has been replaced. Is it the same boat? We end up being loyal to companies or countries that like George Orwell’s Big Brother don’t actually exist other than as a perpetuated story. 

Ken Robinson said the three keys to happiness were where you live, who you are married to, and what work you do. It used to be where you were born, someone from the neighbourhood, and what your parent of the same gender did. 

Now our choices have exploded, and the choices evolve.

Income and Spending

Plan for things not going according to plan. Start with space. In monetary terms, that boils down to what your income is and what your spending is. In London Underground terms, mind the gap! There needs to be a gap between the two. 

A decent goal is building up to three to six months of what you normally spend in a month. Then you will be able to absord months that are not normal. You can expect unexpected expenses. 

You don’t know when, if, and how much they will be... but that doesn’t mean they need to be the boss of you. If something really big happens, it also buys you some time to adjust the plan. This creates the capacity for life-long learning rather than picking a path and sticking to it doggedly. 

Money is made through the supply and demand of skills and knowledge in containers. Supply and demand change. Once you have picked a path, something might happen that changes everything. You study IT and graduate as the Internet Bubble bursts. You study medicine in Holland, and so do all the smart kids, and then there are too many Dutch Doctors. The world is dynamic. 

You don’t get paid because of what you can do. You get paid because of what people need done, and how many options they have to get it done. 

Price is not value. Change price INTO value. Your value. By listening and responding to price, so that eventually you have the capital not to have to. A gap between your income and spending buys some time to do things at your pace.

Moving Underground

Working Out

It is tempting to judge decisions based on what did happen. If you accept that the world isn’t on a set path that just has to reveal itself, then what could have happened is just as important. 

A bad decision that worked out, is still a bad decision. Especially if that decision-making process gets used repeatedly. Act with what Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Seth Klarman, and other decision-makers call a margin of safety. An acknowledgment that being wrong is a part of engaging with the world meaningfully. 

Don’t just assume what you think is going to happen will happen. What if something else happens? Get out of the mindset of thinking you are rewarded for prediction rather than tangible value creation. A track record of building rather than of being right or wrong. 

Uncertainty is a part of decision-making. Of course you want to plan, but in a way that realises you have limits and constraints. 

A margin of safety is like a buffer when you are streaming a show with slow download speeds. Enough of a buffer means it can be slow, but it doesn’t stop you from watching, because you started with patience. 

A margin of safety means your plans don’t get disrupted by whether you are right or wrong, because they allow for change. Where wrong is something you embrace as a part of the learning process, rather than something that ends your creativity.

Learning to Sit

In Yoga classes you can see students who are incredibly stiff, partly because they are fit and strong. Forget the forward bend, a lot of athletic people will struggle to simply sit at 90 degrees with their legs out straight. Releasing that tension requires unlearning. Kids are very flexible, and over time because of a lack of holistic movement, adults gradually become stiff in very specific ways. When we specialise our use-it-or-lose-it bodies. To learn, you must support your capacity to deal with change. Creating space for honest feedback cycles and reflection. Understanding yourself well enough to know how you best receive feedback. 

When I wasn’t working (for money), I was part of a Men’s Group (surrogate colleagues?) where we provided support to each other. It was difficult because we saw the world very differently, and discussion could descend into unproductive debate. One way we attempted to overcome this was developing “Cards” or tools, where you could say explicitly what you are asking for. Sometimes you want advice (what would you do?). Sometimes you just want to talk (just listen and ask exploratory questions)… we called that the “Vulnerability Card”. When you expose yourself, but you don’t want to be punched. 

There are other times when you want very direct solicited challenge. The scariest card was “Invisible Man”, when you invite others to talk about you behind-your-back in front of you, while remaining silent (and NOT defending yourself).

Unlearning and Embodying

Josh Waitzkin talks about different stages of taking on what we know in “The Art of Learning”. The Tim Ferris approach, as described in "the 4-Hour Workweek", focuses on the initial stages where you can pick up skills incredibly fast with a set of hacks. You don’t need to know everything to get pretty good. You don’t need to understand the why, just the how. To get to the top 100 in the world is completely different from the journey from 10th in the world to being the best there is. 

For the mastery Waitzkin focuses on, you get to the point where what nudges you forward is unlearning and embodying. In the fast initial stages, you pick up bad habits. Useful rules of thumb that mix in what works with things that don’t. Our sense of cause and effect reinforces hows that seem to work better than what we did before. Success stops us from learning. We only unpack failure. Then hubris and projected confidence kick in where people who are relatively good start defending themselves and their approach. Behaviours are deeply embedded, and letting go feels like stepping back from the success that has been hard-won. 

How do you tweak without destroying everything? How do you work out the niggles in a system that works in ways you value, while being stuck in ways that hold you back?

The Art of Learning

Meaningful Creation

You can meet conspicuously successful people, who have got a lot to say about their ideas, with not much space for conversation and exploration. They hold court. That is not impressive because their (and all of our) ideas are limited. Everyone we engage with presents an opportunity to learn, unless what you are really doing is promoting your own ideas. Evangelising. Civilising. Imposing. 

David Attenborough asks us to take more seriously the power of the wild and biodiversity. Rather than scaling up our ideas and creating vast mono-cultures. The goal is not knowing the solution. It is about trying different things and having capacity to adapt, adjust, and accommodate a dynamic environment that is chaotic, nuanced, and deeply complex. An environment we know we do not have capacity to understand. If we let go of the attempt to scale control, while still engaging with an active feedback loop, the goal shifts to building a practice. 

Risk tolerance is not simply a trade-off. Return is not a reward for taking extra risk. Snap that idea. Risk tolerance is the capacity to listen, unlearn, learn, and create. It is meaningful creation you are rewarded for.

Holding Court

Explorative Questions

Find someone who is capable of deep listening and has the skill to hold a mirror up for you in a compassionate way. Genuine listening is hard. 

I clearly speak a lot. Sometimes too much. I like expressing ideas and listening requires work. I am deeply curious and want to hear what others say, but also end up testing my ideas out loud. Getting the balance right by being quiet, asking explorative rather than critical questions, and being truly interested in what others are saying, is a form of fitness that requires exercises to build into your habits. 

Often in “conversation”, people are not listening, but are waiting for their turn to speak. Waiting or interrupting. Showcasing established opinions. When I realise I am in one of those one-way exchanges (especially if I have the self-awareness to realise it is me who is the problem), I try switch gears to limit my speaking and use more pauses. “Speaking in tweets”. 

I met Allan Gray (the man, not the company) at the tail end of his career. At the risk of name dropping, he did not know me well. He knew who I was, and we had conversations, but we did not often work closely. What was fascinating about him though, is that in almost all of my (and others) interactions with him, he was the one getting information. He had an insatiable appetite for other peoples' opinions, even if he was a famous contrarian, who put others' views aside when he finally made his own decisions.

Explorative Questions

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

Chapter 2 - Acceptance

Financial Yoga - Stilling the Waves of Money Anxiety

Chapter 2 - Acceptance

Acceptance is difficult. I have always been a bit of a “try hard”. That was what we called people at school who were constantly doing something. The implication being that you are trying to impress the teachers. Like the idea of a “Teachers Pet” or “Brown Nosing”. 

The world is structured towards encouraging activity, and the conspicuous things that we can see. We look for cause and effect, so that we can control our environment. The assumption being that we are the reason for things, and knowledge will allow us to act with dependable outcomes. By acting, we further our goals. Which seems logical, and Cartesian. We think, therefore we are. Think then do. Try.  

Through Josh Waitzkin, and his book “The Art of Learning”, I was introduced to the idea of Wu Wei, which means action through inaction. You start by seeing things as they are, rather than living in our minds. Rather than living in how we want things to be. See then nudge. A less anxious way of engaging with the chaos.  

To really gain an understanding of the world, you need a pinch of salt for the way you think things work. Understanding that can be quite frustrating when things do not respond the way you thought they would. When we are children, we are much more willing to let things play out. We enjoy being surprised. It delights us when things are interesting. Rather than the joy of a fascinated two-year old, we can be enraged.

  

Ken Robinson pointed out that almost all children believe they can draw when they are 5 years old. You learn your way out of creativity. By the age of 15, someone has convinced most of us we cannot draw. Our creativity is bounded by the belief that we need to be sorted by conspicuous, immediate, competency. We stop learning as we create a story about who we are, and how we control the world. We specialize to get recognition for how we are special. We tell stories so that we can categorise and create boxes in which we can find comfort. A safe space we understand. That allows us to ignore the world that is not the way we want. 

These worlds we understand are less confusing. We prefer doing things where there is a script. The stories we tell ourselves become stories we recognise. When somebody clashes with that, it is difficult. Accepting this confusion, accepting that the world is to complex, ambiguous, and random is a challenge. But from a point of acceptance, you can start to see how things work. Without trying hard.  

We can start to get an understanding by looking at how our story connects to the story of others. As people, we can pay attention to the past and to others. We can look at case studies and see how other people operate. We can learn through the people we meet. This is why a lot of privilege comes from from the bubble that you're born into. The conversations you are exposed to. The mentors. The questions that you are asked. The possibilities that seem possible because you have seen them in someone who seems vaguely like you, becomes the set of options you recognize. And that can feel unfair.  

A lot of what we are doing is unpacking things like pass prejudice, and pre-determined roles. In the past, maybe people born into roles. There was someone who could tell them what their path was. The options are opening up, there are fewer people who can tell us what that path is. There are fewer people to walk with us. There are lots of options. Lots of places to go. We start going off on our own. We live more isolated lives where people don't necessarily know our story anymore. Don’t want to know. When you are growing up, your parents are there to guide you. They are interested in your story. But once you leave home, you start making your own way in the world. And because we have so many paths, even the people who knew us well when we were younger massively diverged from where we are now. We might not make time or space for each other in the new lives.   

When we are at school, we see the same people every day by default. If you get to go to university, you can make great friends with more of your own discretion, but we start dividing up as we specialize. The people that we spend time with are other people that we work with. We end up living very different lives.  

Genghis Khan was controversial “successful” historical figure, but his life was not that different from his warriors’ lives. He still lived in a Gur and spent most of his life as a nomad moving with his with his own forces. Now the people in control lead very different lives from other people in institutions, particularly the bigger the organisation gets. As we get more specialised, we stop having a common vocabulary of things we can talk about.  

To parse what you hear, you need to find someone whose life resonates with yours. Whose choices resonate with yours. We can give each other some generic guidance, but most advices advice is to a younger version of yourself. Austin Kleon says all advice is autobiographical. A chance to revise your story. I enjoy revising my story. Going back in the past and reviewing the decisions that I've made. 

 

It helps me understand the decisions that I am making now. To understand the work that I need to do to change the way that I make decisions. Like everyone, I am not always way of all the decisions that I am making. Some of them are made automatically. I believe in Free Will. I just think it is hard. For the most part it is easier to let the random, complex, ambiguous world make decisions for us. That way we don’t have to take responsibility if things go wrong. Planning comes with the price tag that there is no one to blame. That can be a scary or lonely place.   

Once you have case studies, you have people who are one page ahead of you. A lot of the studying we did at school was through peers. We taught each other. That is often a better way to learn. ”The curse of Knowledge” is that people forget what it feels like not to know. As something becomes natural and embodied, our consciousness shifts elsewhere. We forget that it was hard to learn to walk.   

Professor Dorrington was frustratedly trying to teach my class the concept of “Exposed to Risk” to my class. There was a room full of 40 or so maths-loving try-hards and none of us could get it. He could not explain this concept to us. We were all absolutely confused. In hindsight, it seems like a simple concept to me now. And for him, it was a simple concept then. We are exposed to various risks and Actuaries try figure out the probability of that happening by looking at what has happened. It is two numbers. The one is how many times the thing happened. The other is how people it could have happened to. But as the thing happens, the people it could have happened to shrinks. Or maybe new people join. So every time the thing happens, you need to know how many people were “exposed to risk”. You then work out a weighted average, counting each time something happens more (or less) if there were more (or less) people exposed.  

It is often easier to find someone who has just grasped the concept. They didn't understand it a short time ago, and now they understand it. They remember the path. Those are the people who can help you.   

To make money, you need things that you can count. Price acts like traffic lights. It is a signal that indicates if there are enough people providing a solution. If not, we need to shift some resources there. A high price shows what we pay a lot of money to people to do. If we have a lot of people willing to do this, then the price goes down.  

In order to solve problems, you need skills and knowledge. Those tend to be specialized. We don’t have the capacity to do everything, which creates a barrier to us solving any problem that needs solving. The world is more complicated, and we are not all farmers anymore.  

We need a process to develop the necessary skills and knowledge. That is getting easier. There are a lot of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). You can get the information online. There is Wikipedia, Udemy, Coursera, and a world of online resources for you to gain skills and knowledge. But you need to know what you need to know. A list of skills and resources that are required and remunerated. The process of learning becomes lifelong and iterative. Changing as needs, supply, and demand change.   

We need to constantly set aside time for development. In professional terms, this is called Continued Professional Development (CPD) and you are required to evidence your annual learning. Effectively keeping a Journal. Whether it is through a book, an experience, or an actual course where you need a certification.  

You need a map. To understand what the problem is that you want to solve, and then you need to figure out how you can solve it. You need is a container for problem. Containers created by barriers to entry or exit. Barriers to entry are things like formal qualifications, evidence and proof that you can do a specific type of job. It might be a very well-defined job. It's an old profession like law, accounting or medicine. Something that a group of people have created a formal framework for around a specific set of problems.  

There are also generic skills. Any job is going to need you to have excellent communication skills. The ability to understand problems and explain them to others. To gather and process information to make decisions based on the story that emerges. Skills like time management, being reliable, being able to do administration are essential. Simple tasks like paperwork, being able to read information, process it, and keep it in an orderly fashion so that you're able to find it again quickly. Without being a specialist, you will need an understanding of project and diary management, and the ability to write clearly. Writing well, so that information is carried across clearly. Networking is incredibly important. The human skills of social, emotional, and cultural intelligence. Understanding people and understanding how they make their decisions.     

To make money, you need to find decision-makers with money and help them. Understand their world and what it is they are concerned about. What it is they want. To do that, be curious. Genuinely interested in what is going on.  

Different jobs take these skills and attitudes to different levels, but they are generic skills that will make you better placed to be able to solve problems.  

Being curious and reading and learning about the world will put you in a position to note the different options that are available. To find case studies and best practices, by reading what other people have done and what options are open. People that are on similar paths can act as mentors. You can then map the path of skills development for yourself. Gain an understanding of the various barriers that stop you from being able to solve something. Solve the problem of overcoming them. You can look at job adverts, and see the skills and knowledge required. On LinkedIn, you can look at the public profile of people doing the type of work you want to do. Do you really need to go to university, or can you pick the skills up elsewhere?   

Can you just start a business and solve the problem? How do you find clients? There is a lot of done in the open if you pay attention. You want to be very aware of the environment that you are in. Who are the suppliers that you are going to have to work with? We live in a much more connected world. The information is out there on social media. Paying attention and understand what it is that stops you from solving the problems you identify. That might be regulation. It might be expensive to pay for the insurance (e.g. professional indemnity insurance). You might need software. There might be capital that you need in order to solve specific problems. What are the challenges to get around?   

Not everyone has Capital. Not everyone has access to the containers in which the problems can be solved. You need to create a map of how to go about being in the right position. You also need to be able to distinguish between good ideas and good business ideas. To develop a filter to choose which problems to focus on.   

Normally those are the ones that focus on things that you can count. If you can count something, it is easier to control. STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), all revolve around things that you can count. Science also provides a framework for experimentation and research. There is a process of trial and error. Physics, chemistry, biology, biology, technology, computer engineering, tend to make it easier to find jobs because it is easier to specify problems.   

In product development, you have a “Product Specification” which identifies what the problem is and maps out the intended solution. If it is easy to put something into words and numbers, it is easier to communicate. It is easier to get funding for problems where you can communicate how you can make a profit. As soon as something is qualitative, it is much harder to explain what the benefits are. Because it is not necessarily tangible. It may be something we feel, and we may feel differently about what is valuable.   

Not every good idea is a good business idea.   

If an idea is a good idea, but it very difficult (and not desirable) to create barriers around it to monetize, then it becomes a passion project. It can still be something that gives your life meaning and gives others meaning. But in order to make it happen, the problem requires resources. You need to find funding.   

It might be government funding. It might be grants. There might be someone willing to give you money, but that's a whole different world. That's a world where you learn to do fundraising. To convince people that art/ service/ change is good. That ceases to be about some key numbers. It becomes storytelling. You need to be able to convey information in a way that grabs someone.   

You need a decision-maker who is willing to give you money.   

Part of acceptance is why you are doing what you are doing. Coming down to the nitty-gritty of what drives you. What are your incentives? What's the bigger plan? What's driving your daily practice? What are you going towards?   

Quite often we don't choose that, because we are just on a set path that is given to us by others. That path comes through comparison and relativity. You start looking at friends and family and building towards what is expected. Maybe it's a bigger house. Maybe it is expenses related to children’s education. It might even be that your chosen job has a natural progression. The better you are at your job, you get promotions and raises. We don't necessarily find something that works for us and build mastery around it. We want to see conspicuous evidence of progress.   

We need to unpack what we mean by progress. In its historical context. Is it a cultural thing? Is it controlling nature? Is it controlling our environment? Is it something we have to rethink? Given challenges like climate change and sustainability. Do we need to come up with different measures that aren't so focused on the numbers and social mobility?  

The world is getting progressively (but bumpily) less racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist. We are breaking down barriers, but we still have hierarchy. The concept of people being better and lifting groups of people. The directionality of that is interesting because living a simple life can be a choice. There is a story of Alexander the Great out empire building and he comes across a sage sitting on a rock. The one doing external work. The other doing internal work. The Gini Coefficient measures inequality. A Gini of Zero (0) in a two-person world would mean Alexander and the Yogi had the same. One (1) would mean Alexander had it all. If we shared everything, there would be no incentive to get more because it would immediately be watered down (particularly if it was among the 7.8 billion people on the planet). We want to have a sense of reward for what we do. Conspicuous reward. Well done, here’s a gold star. Here’s some money. That’s how we do incentivization. You do something. You get measured against other people. You do something more. Understanding what we do, starts with understanding what incentivizes us. If we are going to plot *how* we do what we do, we need to understand *why* we do what we do.   

With Yoga, you are no less advanced than someone who's been doing it for 30 years. I came across one guy who told me he had finished yoga. If you can utter the sentence, “I have finished Yoga”, then you haven’t because you still have the concept of I. It is a different type of journey from what we are used to in the sense of progress. It is hard for us to wrap our heads around because with Wu Wei, action through in-action, acceptance, and the yogic kind of path of “you are already enough”. It feels like giving up.    

There is visceral pushback on that. One of the challenges I faced when I stopped work was that you lose the conspicuous signs of respect. People don’t necessarily respect your time. They think because you have time available, you can just do all the rubbish jobs because you are not too busy. Busyness becomes a signal of, “I am a very important person, so I don’t have time to do that.” As soon as you have space, people incur into that space.   

If you are time-rich, rather than money-rich, you need to learn to create boundaries. It's very similar to the rich-rich when people start asking for money. People start using your time more conspicuously if they feel entitled to it because they are busy. When you create space and someone else doesn’t. It's a little bit like being punctual. The people who aren't punctual arrive late and make people who are punctual, wait for them. Which even though it is perhaps not intentional, is a way of saying their time is more important. Tim Urban writes about chronically, late, insane people (Clips). He calls it time optimism. They (and he includes himself) always try fit too much in. I am typically on time, and part of the reason for that is I stop doing whatever I'm doing early. People like me are time pessimists because we leave gaps for the next thing. I do a lot of waiting. We need to build a whole new way of looking at respect and how we recognise people, if we're going to change the way we make our decisions around money. Allowing for gaps. Allowing for the things we can’t see.  

Meritocracy came in as a response to hereditary wealth. Hereditary entitlement. You had a position or role in your caste or class, and that came from your parents or the money you inherited. Meritocracy was the wild idea that you should hire the best person for the job. Which is the most skillful or the most knowledgeable. You should push resources to where they will have the biggest impact. That provides a path for social mobility, and it allows people to move “up”. If you use that directionality. The problem with meritocracy is that the idea is handicapped by the impact of privilege. Part of our set of incentives is money, but another part is we naturally want to invest in the skills and knowledge of our children. We quite reasonably want to give them a competitive advantage. One of the barriers to entry is education. If you give someone education, you implicitly strengthen their barriers, and that compounds. There is a lot of thinking to do about conspicuous meritocracy and the barriers that people have to overcome. If we really want to get resources to where the true merit is.   

There is a perception that if you are earning lots of money, you must have lots of natural talent. So you get respect. This is dangerous. In yoga, they speak of the seven stages of the development of wisdom. Wisdom isn’t about skills and knowledge. Even though skills and knowledge, properly contained, is how we create wealth. Wealth itself is what the skills and knowledge get applied to. The problem with directionality in seeing progress and meritocracy as “more” is privilege. The first of the yogic stages is longing for truth. You understand that you are connected to everything, but you still have work to do. Before you can get all philosophical, there is the stuff you have to do, and there is the stuff you want to do. The stuff of life. The experience of life. There are still actions required, but you have to want to get free from the waves of anxiety. That desire is the directionality worth valuing.  

Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts small. Like building relief from a storm when you have no shelter. The goal is simply to get dry and warm. If you can build a buffer of three to six months of what you normally spend, you start to create the capacity to make some path-altering decisions. You build a capacity to cope. You increase your control and focus. “You” increase it, but really it is the power of the buffer/capital. It is the same you. Just empowered. Similarly, yogis talk about Siddhis. Siddhis are seemingly supernatural, paranormal, or magical powers obtained through regular practice. In other words, mastery. But they are dangerous. Other people might elevate you and you might start believing that elevation. It is nice getting recognition. And that sets you up for the waves of anxiety to return. Real meritocracy is a call to see the value of people and their connection to each other through the waves. Building buffers and capital to power us without building barriers to divide us.  

It feels good to receive acknowledgement and recognition. To be seen and respected. To move onto the next stage of detachment and really deep knowledge of what is going on, you must 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.  

Once you have the capacity to pause, you can form a picture of where you are. You can get an understanding of what is noise, and what is worth focusing on. What really matters to you, and what meaning do you want to create? You can still the waves of anxiety to the point that you feel some sort of sense of control. Space allows you to step back from your immediate needs and glimpse the bigger picture. From that point, you can get deep knowledge. You can do the deep work. You first need to build the capacity to reflect on what is important to you. That is the path to liberty. That is the path to letting go of the anxiety that wraps you up and gnaws at you. That path starts with acceptance. With the question of where you are, and what do you notice?

Financial Yoga - Stilling the Waves of Money Anxiety

Chapter 1 - Relationship with Money

Chapter 3 - Choosing a Path

Chapter 4 - Risk