always control what goes on inside.” – Wayne Dyer
There are no absolutes in life. When you find yourself making absolute statements, check yourself – are you experiencing a bias or do you need to have some humility about what you’re saying? Then take the next step, which is questioning, is this bias helping hurting me and is it true?
There are so many instances that I can point to where the “experts” firmly believed in the absolutes they predicted, to the point they were blind to any other option to the detriment of those they were providing guidance to. Each one with mixed results, but none on par with the black and white thinking.
Rather than a steadfast absolute, hold tight to the uncertainty, it’s not a negative- it merely means we’re not sure how things will go, but we are sure that no matter what comes our way, we’ll be able to handle it.
Check out my full video on humility:
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Transcript
Hi there. Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management; a comprehensive full service financial services firm headquartered right here in Boulder Colorado.
About once a year I do a video on humility and, well, today is the humility video for this year. Because I think that it is so important that we remain humble as investors, as people trying to reach our financial goals, as people, in just so many different aspects of our lives. Right now the market is doing great. I love that. That’s wonderful. What’s amazing is when I look back at the people that I read, that I talked to, that are friends, that are clients, that are other professionals, whenever they talk in absolutes it’s a certainty that I’m going to react to it because I don’t believe that there are any absolutes in the world. I mean you want to be a good parent, you want to support your child but you don’t want to smother them. The world is filled with all kinds of dichotomies like that. You want to be a good manager and keep on top of things but you don’t want to micromanage, I mean the world is filled with them.
And the reason why I bring this up is the sense of humility about the future, I don’t know the future, you don’t know the future and certainly that guy writing the newsletter or your next-door neighbor or your brother-in-law, et cetera, doesn’t know the future either. And so, when you find yourself making absolute statements maybe check yourself say wow maybe I’m having a bias here or maybe I need to have some humility about what it is I’m saying and then take the next step, which is hey, is this bias is this helping me or hurting me and is it true? Maybe give me a call, give somebody who might have a real sensitivity to this. Some examples of this are about six months ago someone said well we know that after 2018 and 2019 and years going forward are going to be all kinds of volatile, I mean we know when things are going to be volatile. No not really. I’m going to put a chart up there as of September 30th you’re going to see that 2019 has been like 2017 an unbelievably low below average volatile as defined by movements of one percent or more.
I had clients that when after the last presidential election say well the market is definitely going to go down negative. That’s just not true. And on the flipside I had people 12 years ago when another president from the other party came in, you know, Obama said oh yeah this is going to be horrible and the market is going to continue to plummet. And the answer is no that didn’t happen. I mean there’s just so many instances that I can point to, particularly in the investing world, where supposed experts, supposed people who called the 2008 decline and financial crisis now say it’s the time to move into all your cash into gold or all your money into cash or to gold or whatever.
And I’m going to put a chart up there right now it just came out a couple of days ago where some supposed big-name experts called it completely wrong and how people who would have listened to them would be drastically worse off by sometimes over 50 percent of missed opportunity gained. These experts I’m sure believed in what they were saying, but they unfortunately started to believe with absolute certainty what they believed in without any kind of reservation or humility so that’s where things really become a problem.
I’m a believer that if we’re going to have a bias the bias ought to be being fully invested in the market. And the reason why is I’m not looking at one year, five years, ten, I’m looking at decades upon decades. And you’ve heard me talk about this in all of my videos going back multiple years about historically that has been the winning strategy. The future, absolutely could be different. Once again, I don’t know the future and you don’t know the future, however, what I do know is that the instances of our emotions causing us to do one thing over another, those are the things that have caused us to have problems. When we look back at, and I even look back at my anecdotal, okay I’ll even admit it anecdotal conversations with people throughout my 28 years of doing this when someone is so certain about something many times it’s the opportunity that the possibility might be that they’re absolutely wrong. In the late ‘90s, a great example, if you weren’t all 100 percent in tech you were a fool right before the technology bust. Real estate never loses money right until it does at the end of 2000s. So, having the humility, being invested, even with what I’m saying here today that’s why I believe in a diversified portfolio for clients and investors as you reach your goals you’ve got to have that humility and it’s one of the big lessons that 50 year old Mike would tell 20 year old Mike if I could have that conversation.
Mike Brady; Generosity Wealth Management; 303-747-6455. You have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye bye.