I have been on the road the past week+ and I apologize for
the lack of new posts and relatively few tweets (for those that
follow the twitter feed). In my July return I thought I'd share a recent
post (23 June 2012) of the soon to be unemployed Dr. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan
Sacks and his article Looking
Closely at the Road Less Traveled. Fascinating that
he emphasizes a 'go against the grain' mentality and I
humbly agree and believe that prayer is one of the best methodologies to
"seek and celebrate the spirit".
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The wisest rule in investment is: when others are selling,
buy. When others are buying, sell. Usually, of course, we do the opposite. When
everyone else is buying, we assume they know something we don’t, so we buy.
Then people start selling, panic sets in, and we sell too. That is how booms
and crashes happen. Charles Mackay called it “the madness of crowds,” William
Trotter “the herd instinct,” and psychologist Solomon Asch showed how
vulnerable we are to the urge to conform.
So when everyone is going in one direction, it’s worth
taking the opposite route, the contrarian option, the “road less travelled.”
Here is my recommendation for the next few years. While everyone else is
thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the
Euro, do the opposite, even if it’s hard. Invest in the spirit. Focus on the
mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a
member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of
wisdom. Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the
admirable deed. Live by ideals.
For the next few years European economies are unlikely to
grow. Government spending will continue to be tight. Standards of living for
most of us will either fall or at least not rise by much. National governments
will discover that their power of action is ever more circumscribed by the
mobility of capital and people and the interdependence of Europe’s economies
and banks. Try setting out on a new economic policy of your own when you are
linked by heavy chains to twenty or more other nations each trying to go
somewhere else, and you will end up angry and frustrated.
That is when we need to switch to another dimension. When
one road is blocked, it’s time to take another. When material conditions are
tough, the best investment we can make is spiritual: in the happiness we don’t
buy but make. Join a religious congregation and you will find people who care
about ideals and are willing to make sacrifices for them. You will make friends
on whom you can rely and become part of a community on which you can depend.
Study sacred texts and you will find yourself transported to a palace of the
mind, the ancient but still compelling wisdom of the past. These are powerful
sources of inner strength.
Stop worrying about wealth and success, and think instead of
the blessings that surround you and you will find your life flooded with
meaning. You will sleep easier at night and wake full of hope the next morning.
You will look out on the world and see God’s glory. You will smile at strangers
and they will smile back. You will worry less and find your fears subside as
you entrust yourself to God’s everlasting arms.
You will realise that your life is filled with blessings you
had until now taken for granted. You will discover – or perhaps you secretly
knew it all along – that happiness has little to do with what we get and
everything to do with what we give. You will rush less and savour more. You
will stop wasting time doing the things you should never have done in the first
place.
Eat only when you are hungry, and stop as soon as you are
sated, and you will lose weight. Buy only what you need, and travel light
through life, and you will save much of what you now spend. See the good in
people and you will, without intending to, make them a little better than they
were. Praise others and do not seek their praise, give to others and do not
seek their thanks, and you will grow in spiritual health. At least once every
day take time to thank God for the privilege of life itself. Don’t judge people
by what they wear or drive or earn. In fact, don’t judge people at all. Leave
that to God. He is better at it than we are, and more forgiving too.
Your return on investment – not in monetary terms perhaps,
but in terms of happiness, fulfilment, flourishing, joie de vivre, and a sense
of blessedness – will, I promise you, be better than any alternative on offer
today. While others are pursuing material happiness, do the opposite: seek and
celebrate the spirit. The price is low. The value could not be higher.
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