Protect yourself from yourself

Protect yourself from yourself:

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Protect yourself from yourself.

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You think you’re so smart.

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You think you have everything figured out.

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You think you know what you’re doing.

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You don’t.

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None of us do.

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So we need to build systems to protect ourselves from our own stupidity.

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We’re all dumb.

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The smarter you think you are about a certain topic, the more you should question what you know.

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There’s always more to learn.

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There are always unknown unknowns that blow up what you believe.

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Risks you didn’t account for.

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Knowledge you didn’t have.

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Decisions you could’ve made differently.

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So protect yourself against yourself.

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Investing is a classic example.

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Everyone likes to think they can be the next Warren Buffet.

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But they won’t.

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No one will be.

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Buffet can teach everyone the hacks, strategies and processes he used to achieve his success but no one will repeat it.

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They don’t have the same emotional resolve and brain that he does.

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They also didn’t live through an era in which America flourished and he rode the wave of being an investor in the American stock market.

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But there’s more to it - he wasn’t stupid.

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Charlie Munger, Buffet’s right-hand man, talks about this concept in his book ‘Poor Charlie’s Almanack’ - don’t be stupid.

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A lot of success is not being an idiot.

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Not making stupid decisions when you know they’re stupid.

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Stanley Druckenmiller, another great investor, talked about this on a podcast. In the middle of the dotcom hype in the early 2000s, he knew everything was in a bubble yet still bought billions of dollars worth of stock because everyone around him was making money and he got impulsive.

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He knew what he should have done, yet he still gave into his emotions anyway.

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There’s a lesson in that.

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You will screw up. You will let your emotions get the best of you. You will cave to external pressure.

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That’s ok. The important thing is to be aware of what you’re doing, understand the process and decision-making it took to get you there, and don’t repeat the same mistake again.

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You need to reflect on the moments where you screwed up and not think about the outcome, but the decisions you took to get to that outcome.

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Outcomes are largely out of your control. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.

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But the decision-making process is in your control.

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Understand how you came to that conclusion.

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Figure out your flaws.

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Protect yourself from yourself.

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