Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

A big thing to know about how people think is that progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist. They seem like conflicting mindsets, so it’s more common for people to prefer one or the other. But knowing how to balance the two has always been, and always will be, one of life’s most important skills. The best financial plan is to save like a

Nassim Taleb says, “Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.” That gets to the heart of it.

Back to the iceberg: What most of us see most of the time is a fraction of what has actually happened, or what’s going on inside people’s heads. And it’s stripped of all the hard parts. Most things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem.

The only way to know we’ve exhausted all potential opportunity from markets—the only way to identify the top—is to push them not only past the point where the numbers stop making sense, but beyond the stories people believe about those numbers.

You want to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened. And the expectation side of that equation is not only important, but it’s often more in your control than managing your circumstances.

Imagine a life where almost everything gets better but you never appreciate it because your expectations rise as fast as your circumstances. It’s terrifying, and almost as bad as a world where nothing gets better.

People tend to have short memories. Most of the time they can forget about bad experiences and fail to heed lessons previously learned. But hard-core stress leaves a scar.

Last is the power of stories over statistics. “Housing prices in relation to median incomes are now above their historic average and typically mean revert” is a statistic. “Jim just made $500,000 flipping homes and can now retire early and his wife thinks he’s amazing” is a story. And it’s way more persuasive in the moment. It’s hard to compute, bu

The next is accepting that what’s rational to one person can be crazy to another.