Be literate, patient and consistent.

This came up in a comment today from @russia-btc on my last post looking at some trading behaviors we tend to have. And I replied:

These are words to live by. I feel that culture today conditions us to not dive deep into the topics that impact us the most, while supporting instant gratification activities and jumping from one thing to the next. Current society is the anti-thesis of an investment mindset.

Also, a couple hours later, at least part of this came up in regards to my daughter, and we used it as a lesson for her to start thinking about for the future, I hope.

We were sitting at the dining table and my wife saw some swans fly over through the window and commented on it. Smallsteps wanted to see and ran to the window, but of course it was too late and she got upset, saying "I never get to see...", which is untrue. However, I brought up the concept of FOMO and how we are always going to miss out from time to time, so we have to get used to it.

My wife then told a story about how when she was young, she had a favorite show to watch and had been waiting for a long time to see it. However, when it was time to watch, the TV (which was old and black and white only), only had snow on it - the fuzzy black and white static. She missed the show and without the ability to record or stream, it was effectively gone forever, she would never see it.

Smallsteps is nearing seven years of age and we have been actively teaching her passively, if that makes sense. We don't give her lessons as lessons, but like all parents, we use the examples of life to highlight points. Since she is quite language adept and inquisitive, we have been able to dive in quite deeply from a young age.

Literacy

Being literate is more than just being able to read the newspaper, it is about being able to read the situation on a topic, which means being able to understand what is going on and hopefully, act appropriately. And the "act appropriately" requires knowing where one is and what the target for the future might be. Knowing stuff is only useful when that "stuff" is applied to meet a goal.

Financial literacy isn't taught well in schools, even when they try and teach it and probably, by the time they start teaching things that are important, the foundational skills aren't developed enough to be able to really understand them. I believe that some of the fundamental skills we require to navigate this world well, are learned when we are children and if we don't learn them, it is very hard to pick them up later, because it first requires breaking lifelong cultural patterns.

For instance, understanding financial products like credit cards and loans is one thing, but without the behaviors that enable solid budgeting, saving and investing, it is likely going to lead most of us further into trouble - into unmanageable debt. and "debt management" in and of itself is an area that requires literacy, because while debt on some things like a house might be unavoidable, having the skill to manage the debt profile and the personal process to keep it under control takes learning and practice. Theory means little if it can't be practically applied to circumstances.

In order for us to address the situations of our world and build ourselves toward where we might want to be, we need to understand our world and understand how we behave in it. We need to know what affects us and what we can affect, and while we can't control everything, be able to control what we can, how we can, to best meet the challenge of life, whether it be financially - or in any other aspect that is important to us.

Patience

As I mentioned in my reply, I believe we have been pushed into a world of instant gratification, while not understanding much below the surface of what affects us. It is an attention economy and as such, the incentive is there to compete for our attention, to draw us into a frame and hold us as consumers, spending our time, money and energy on something that drives a profit model.

However, none of this need actually befit us. Instead, our consumption is largely a net negative to us, because everything has an opportunity cost and takes our resources away from something else that might be more valuable, but less shiny. And, because of the way we are hardwired and conditioned to interact, we want to be the first with the "new", so we will naturally jump from one topic or process to the next, just to be first.

Remember when people would say "first" on new message board threads? That is because they thought it was valuable to be so. However, being first is useless if being there with no way to take advantage of the first position. Knowing about the best investment opportunity early has no value, if there is nothing to put into it.

And, this is affected by our patience too, because in order to have something to put in, we have to have saved some of our resources. But, in a world powered by instant gratification, the opportunity to save and generate are taken away in favor of spending to be first, even though when buying something, we are never actually first - we are just the early adopters at the consumer level.

Patience takes self-awareness in order to understand our behavior under various conditions so we can mitigate risks and exploit our strengths. It also requires some ability to take different perspectives, where we can think through alternative paths and possibilities to get to where we want to be. On top of this, we have to have flexibility when things don't go to plan and often, have to fight our emotional state where our fears arise, even though our logic knows better.

Many think patience is the ability to wait, but it isn't quite that. Patience is an active process and in order to be good at it, we have to have developed a cluster of other skills so that we are able to "wait". For illustration, it is like a sniper who has years of training and honed technical, physical and mental skills, just to wait for days in poor conditions, so they can align a shot on their target, pull the trigger and squeeze. Years of work, for a moment of action. That might not be the most beautiful example, but you can perhaps picture how active patience can be, and the impact it makes when it is time to move.

Consistency

A lot of people seem to struggle with the last one, because while they know what they should do and might even have the patience to build, they don't necessarily do what it takes often enough to make an impact on their longer term plans. It is like saving a dollar a month for a house deposit, it isn't enough. Instead, what needs to happen is that enough investment is made in order to get the returns and acting consistently is that investing capital. However, there is obvious caveats, because consistently acting poorly is unlikely to get us to where we need to be.

So, in order to have consistency, we likely need to build the skills and conditions that help us along the path. For instance, knowing what we want to accomplish and setting goals for something is a good direction to start with, but we also have to act toward the journey, we need to take the steps. Identifying the steps we need to take helps us, and these might not just be actions working toward, but also skill building and potentially dealing with our own emotional weaknesses.

It can be uncomfortable to do "the right thing" to achieve where we want to be, so more self-awareness is needed, as well as a willingness to be uncomfortable and possibly, experience various types of pain. In an instant gratification world, we avoid pain and maximize pleasure, even if it brings more suffering down the road and leaves us in a far worse of position. And, this is also why it is important to be flexible again, because while we can set our goals and even change our behaviors, the dynamics are also always changing, so we have to be able to read the situation (literacy) and take a step back (patience) to observe and redirect our course, possibly learning more along the way.

And through a practice of all of these things and the many failures we will have along the way, we will start to build our self-discipline, not to be a rigid robot, but like water, being able to shift into the forms we need to take that are appropriate for where we want to go. It doesn't happen instantly, but when we are literate and spending our attention in the right areas, we are likely to consistently be first movers too, because we are taking in the conditions and are better suited to predict the future trends.

Antithesis

Current society is the anti-thesis of an investment mindset.

The current culture, economic climate and social interaction, is not conducive to being well invested in our lives. Instead, it conditions us to be consumers, eternal renters, chasers - never settled, always suffering, constantly under pressure to act, but not knowing how or what to do so we are acting well. From a very young age, the consumer mindset is encouraged and the fundamentals barely have their surface scratched, let alone developed into strengths.

Most of us reading this have grown up understanding that we have had to learn a lot along the way that if we had learned as children, would have made our lives far easier. But, the younger generations are going to struggle even more, because they have not only grown up with a screen in their hand to stop them learning, but that same screen allows them to avoid the problems for longer. But inevitably, it will catch up with them, but will it be too late?

I believe that those who are willing to be uncomfortable and learn the fundamentals, will be the ones who are able to best take advantage of opportunity in the future, because they will read the situations better and have the resources built ready to use, when the time is right. They will do this many times in their lives failing sometimes but learning with each instance, to better inform themselves, hone their skills and always keep on advancing down the road. It will be even easier for them too, because looking at society today, there isn't going to be many who can compete at the top consistently.

Here we are.
But, which way are we headed?

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]