The Inability To Sit Alone
My wife is in Mysore on 3 weeks of yoga retreat. This has become an annual ritual for her since 2019. She loves it. The program is structured in a way where the participants are allowed to use their phones only for an hour every day. So that’s the only window I get to talk to her. I was on a phone call with her earlier today where she mentioned that the program is somewhat different from the previous ones. There is a lot of idle time during the day when the participants are supposed to sit with themselves. She said “I like being busy. It was nice last time. I am struggling with spending time alone”.
Sitting alone with ourselves is not easy. Mr. Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. This does not mean that we always create problems because we can’t spend time alone. However, actively doing something could lead to bad outcomes.
After she left for the retreat, it was hard for me to sleep on time. I ended up watching Netflix one night till 530 AM (she has no idea about this). After a couple of days of binging on “Manifest”, I had to delete Netflix from my phone. Thankfully, I was successful in holding myself to watch the entire series in one go. This is a common problem with most of us. We find it hard to build productive routines and have this uncanny urge to do something at all times.
It takes a lifetime to build good habits but a small change in behaviour ruins it. After all, a beautiful garden does not emerge in the first attempt.
We work with more than 100 families at Holistic Wealth helping them achieve their financial goals. When we first speak to a potential client, almost half of the time is spent teaching them about the volatility in equity investing and the fact that there is a possibility of seeing no returns in the first few years. Our focus remains on telling them multiple times that you have to stay invested for at least a decade and continue to invest at all times to see positive and mostly double-digit returns in their portfolio.
As an investor wanting to create long-term wealth, it is essential to buy and sit tight. In the journey of wealth creation or achieving life-changing results in any area of interest, one has to suffer a lot. As Russo has remarkably said “sacrifice something today to gain something tomorrow”. Suffering does not mean that you must skip your meals. It just means that instead of living a maximizer’s life, you live a satisficer’s life. While a maximizer only wants the best for himself, satisficers learn to settle for something other than the best. Being a satisficer is good because it helps us to limit our expectations and live a well rounded life.
What does all of this have to do with my wife? Nothing really. She has remarkable patience. Though I manage most of her money, she has never redeemed a penny from her equity investments. Even in those years when we were not married. I have seen this phenomenon among our female clients too. Once they understand what they are doing, they do not constantly check their portfolios. A Forbes article mentioned that “Men trade 45% more often than women do, and although men are more confident investors, they tend to be overconfident”. Women are less impulsive investors. I am sure all the women who are our clients or are related to us will end up with higher returns and higher net-worth only because of one simple reason - Inactivity.
