Imagine how the world would be if "everyone" in the world was patient. Take a second, think about everything that is going on in the world, especially the bad stuff and then imagine how the world would be if "everyone" in the world was patient.
True, you got it right. Nothing bad would ever happen. Nothing wrong would ever happen. That is the power of this one quality. You can define patience in several ways as calm, humble, self-restraint, tolerant, gentle, controlled, quiet, but for me patience is about keeping equilibrium under any circumstance. On the other side, opposite of patience can be defined as agitated, frustrated, impatient, intolerant, unwilling, troubled, worried, etc etc and for me all of it is true.
In most jobs you can be impatient and still be successful. Many times it might also be regarded as a positive quality because most jobs work on deadlines, aggressiveness, and competition. However as an investor, you will NEVER succeed if you lack patience.
I am patient .. am i not ?
Most of us can claim to be patient under normal circumstances, but the real test of patience comes when everything around you is in complete chaos. Everyday I meet people who come to me and ask for investment ideas saying they are "long term" investors and they just need good investment ideas and they don't worry about short term ups & downs. Moment the market cracks a couple of hundred points comes a flood of .. oh market is down, what will happen, should i sell, should i buy, i am losing, will there be a recession, will this be like 2008, what do you think, is there a problem, is there something we don't know, what should i do and on and on and on ... My suggestion ... if you suffer so much because of your investments, you should just sell all of it and enjoy life instead. Stock market is not for you. You will NEVER succeed here. Unfortunately cannot say all that and hence have to do what i do best, be patient and stay in perfect equilibrium ... as much as i can ..well .. never mind ..
why impatient?
I did some introspection around this both for myself and for all the worried souls around me and I got atleast one correlation out of it. People who rely on tips from others instead of thorough research of their own tend to be the most impatient and people who do their own research tend to be more patient in volatile markets. Even for people who do their own research, patience lasts as long as things are only slightly out of their way but within what they had imagined as "worst case scenario". Once the market crosses their personal "worst case scenario" starts a panic phase and all patience is lost. For people who invest on tips everything is unknown, so they are happy only as long as they are making profit. They panic the moment things turn around. How can you be patient when you have absolutely no clue about where you have invested your money, why, and what is going to happen? and what is happening now does not feel good ...
How to be patient?
Fortunately within the problem lies the solution. To be patient you need to be knowledgeable about what you are doing. You need to have a broad vision about the possibilities and outcomes and you need to have a action plan for each possible outcome. Once you have this ready, no matter which possibility materializes you will always be busy executing your action plan because you have already thought of it and you are prepared with what you need to do next. Everything is known and everything is as per your plan so there is no need to panic. Always, you just need to work on your plan, patiently...
laziness
But that's a lot of work ! and here comes the bigger problem .. laziness .. and for that my friend I have no solution ... if you are lazy you will perish in the chain of evolution .. as explained by Herbert Spencer in "Survival of the fittest". If you are lazy, that's fine but please don't expect others to do your work for you. Just enjoy a lazy life and be happy. Be patiently lazy .. you see there is no other way ..
True, you got it right. Nothing bad would ever happen. Nothing wrong would ever happen. That is the power of this one quality. You can define patience in several ways as calm, humble, self-restraint, tolerant, gentle, controlled, quiet, but for me patience is about keeping equilibrium under any circumstance. On the other side, opposite of patience can be defined as agitated, frustrated, impatient, intolerant, unwilling, troubled, worried, etc etc and for me all of it is true.
In most jobs you can be impatient and still be successful. Many times it might also be regarded as a positive quality because most jobs work on deadlines, aggressiveness, and competition. However as an investor, you will NEVER succeed if you lack patience.
I am patient .. am i not ?
Most of us can claim to be patient under normal circumstances, but the real test of patience comes when everything around you is in complete chaos. Everyday I meet people who come to me and ask for investment ideas saying they are "long term" investors and they just need good investment ideas and they don't worry about short term ups & downs. Moment the market cracks a couple of hundred points comes a flood of .. oh market is down, what will happen, should i sell, should i buy, i am losing, will there be a recession, will this be like 2008, what do you think, is there a problem, is there something we don't know, what should i do and on and on and on ... My suggestion ... if you suffer so much because of your investments, you should just sell all of it and enjoy life instead. Stock market is not for you. You will NEVER succeed here. Unfortunately cannot say all that and hence have to do what i do best, be patient and stay in perfect equilibrium ... as much as i can ..well .. never mind ..
why impatient?
I did some introspection around this both for myself and for all the worried souls around me and I got atleast one correlation out of it. People who rely on tips from others instead of thorough research of their own tend to be the most impatient and people who do their own research tend to be more patient in volatile markets. Even for people who do their own research, patience lasts as long as things are only slightly out of their way but within what they had imagined as "worst case scenario". Once the market crosses their personal "worst case scenario" starts a panic phase and all patience is lost. For people who invest on tips everything is unknown, so they are happy only as long as they are making profit. They panic the moment things turn around. How can you be patient when you have absolutely no clue about where you have invested your money, why, and what is going to happen? and what is happening now does not feel good ...
How to be patient?
Fortunately within the problem lies the solution. To be patient you need to be knowledgeable about what you are doing. You need to have a broad vision about the possibilities and outcomes and you need to have a action plan for each possible outcome. Once you have this ready, no matter which possibility materializes you will always be busy executing your action plan because you have already thought of it and you are prepared with what you need to do next. Everything is known and everything is as per your plan so there is no need to panic. Always, you just need to work on your plan, patiently...
laziness
But that's a lot of work ! and here comes the bigger problem .. laziness .. and for that my friend I have no solution ... if you are lazy you will perish in the chain of evolution .. as explained by Herbert Spencer in "Survival of the fittest". If you are lazy, that's fine but please don't expect others to do your work for you. Just enjoy a lazy life and be happy. Be patiently lazy .. you see there is no other way ..
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