NOEMAYA

It is not that we don’t have capital. We are all sitting on an endless resource that’s available to us at no cost. Our problem is that we invest in the wrong things; and not just once but over and over again. 

We, in particular, are investors of the worst kind. All our lives we have been investing in low return markets. And what is that? It is investing in manipulating reality, things that are totally out of our control. And it has never worked; instead, it has made us addicted to chaos and anxiety, and that has driven us into investments in controlling our anxiety, an endless cycle of pills, therapy, and self-improvement videos and conventions. 

We have invested in controlling our feelings and our thoughts, your feelings and your thoughts, and the outcomes and results that lie in the unforeseen future.  Isn’t this total insanity! And all the while, we have totally lost sight of the things that are within our control: our capacity to respond to reality moment to moment, of freely lifting, shifting, and investing our attention on things that we value instead of trying to change things and others to conform to our values, a totally futile investment!  

In other words, to be a good investor is to mind my own business, to become present and responsive to what is mine to do at any given moment, and to remember that my or your thoughts and feelings are not my business either.  

So, what can I do? To focus my attention on what  lies in the domain of my immediate action. And that’s all I have; that is the only thing that’s truly mine in this world and of which I have perfect control: my attention and the ability to navigate it.  

And another important skill in investment is to learn patience; to wait things out, for it’s not always appropriate to act, or to pull out of the market. The waiting part, the heavy lifting part of life (nothing is harder to mankind than shutting his mouth and doing nothing), can be done together, for we are not alone in this: you can always call up a friend. To buy time and know how to do it, which means to have friends. To grow in the market of life one must have friends. To do it all alone, complete self-reliance, is a sign of weakness in investment.