Don’t Push It
I'M ALL IN FAVOR of striving. But I’ve also belatedly come to see the appeal of acceptance.
Should we strive for more, or should we accept what we currently have and what’s currently on offer? As I’ve noted in earlier articles, there’s great pleasure in striving. We love the feeling of making progress, even if our achievements don’t make us happy for long. It’s an instinct we no doubt inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Their striving is the reason they were able to survive and reproduce, and hence the reason we’re here today.
Despite my terminal cancer diagnosis, I continue to set goals and strive toward them. Each day, I put in hours keeping HumbleDollar chugging along, trying to stay in shape and working on various writing projects. Still, striving in some areas of our life doesn’t preclude acceptance in others.
We should accept the limits of our talents. We’re told that if we work hard, we can achieve anything we set our sights on. Really? We all know that’s not true of athletic and artistic endeavors. No matter how hard I worked, I simply never had the talent to be, say, a pro athlete or a concert pianist.
Sometimes, gauging our talent is trickier. It took a while, but eventually I discovered during my career that I wasn’t an especially good manager and that my efforts to write about topics other than personal finance never turned out quite as well as I’d hoped.
To be sure, some folks are more successful than their talents would suggest. Hard work may have played a role. But there was likely also an element of luck. That’s great—but it hardly seems like something we should bank on.
We should accept that we’ll never be fully satisfied. We imagine that our next accomplishment will leave us happy forever, but then we end up moving the goal posts and targeting some new achievement. That’s just the way we humans are: We love to strive.
But we should also accept that this striving will never leave us with that ultimate sense of accomplishment that we crave. That doesn’t mean we should stop striving. But we should accept that it’s the journey we enjoy, and the destination won’t leave us permanently happier.
We should accept that we’re unlikely to outpace the market averages. Want to outperform most other investors? The surest way is not to try—by simply buying index funds and collecting the performance of the market averages. Because of fund expenses and trading costs, index funds typically trail behind their benchmark index. But that’s better than most active investors, who lag by even more.
We should accept that there are things we can’t control. We might be able to control our own behavior, though even that can be a struggle. What if we try to control the behavior of others? Life can get awfully frustrating awfully fast.
This is crystal clear in the world of investing. We can control how much risk we take, the investment costs we incur, and our own buying and selling. But we can’t control the behavior of other investors, as reflected in ever-fluctuating stock and bond prices. Instead, we need an investment strategy that doesn’t depend on others behaving the way we want, at least in the short-term. Got just a few years to invest? Don’t count on other investors acting on your wishes and bidding up the price of the stocks you own.
We should accept our own mortality. We may continue to strive every day. But this can’t go on forever and, in my case, probably not for much longer. When do I stop striving and accept the inevitable?
I don’t have the answer, but I suspect the question will be answered for me. With each passing month, I move more slowly and I have less energy. I haven’t chosen to strive less, but it seems I am.
As I observe what’s happening to me, I imagine that I’m aging, like so many before me, but for me it’s happening over months, rather than decades. I’m not saying this slowing down is enjoyable. But it also isn’t so terrible—because I feel like it’s helping me to accept what’s to come.
Jonathan Clements is the founder and editor of HumbleDollar. Follow him on X @ClementsMoney and on Facebook, and check out his earlier posts.
Should we strive for more, or should we accept what we currently have and what’s currently on offer? As I’ve noted in earlier articles, there’s great pleasure in striving. We love the feeling of making progress, even if our achievements don’t make us happy for long. It’s an instinct we no doubt inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Their striving is the reason they were able to survive and reproduce, and hence the reason we’re here today.
Despite my terminal cancer diagnosis, I continue to set goals and strive toward them. Each day, I put in hours keeping HumbleDollar chugging along, trying to stay in shape and working on various writing projects. Still, striving in some areas of our life doesn’t preclude acceptance in others.
We should accept the limits of our talents. We’re told that if we work hard, we can achieve anything we set our sights on. Really? We all know that’s not true of athletic and artistic endeavors. No matter how hard I worked, I simply never had the talent to be, say, a pro athlete or a concert pianist.
Sometimes, gauging our talent is trickier. It took a while, but eventually I discovered during my career that I wasn’t an especially good manager and that my efforts to write about topics other than personal finance never turned out quite as well as I’d hoped.
To be sure, some folks are more successful than their talents would suggest. Hard work may have played a role. But there was likely also an element of luck. That’s great—but it hardly seems like something we should bank on.
We should accept that we’ll never be fully satisfied. We imagine that our next accomplishment will leave us happy forever, but then we end up moving the goal posts and targeting some new achievement. That’s just the way we humans are: We love to strive.
But we should also accept that this striving will never leave us with that ultimate sense of accomplishment that we crave. That doesn’t mean we should stop striving. But we should accept that it’s the journey we enjoy, and the destination won’t leave us permanently happier.
We should accept that we’re unlikely to outpace the market averages. Want to outperform most other investors? The surest way is not to try—by simply buying index funds and collecting the performance of the market averages. Because of fund expenses and trading costs, index funds typically trail behind their benchmark index. But that’s better than most active investors, who lag by even more.
We should accept that there are things we can’t control. We might be able to control our own behavior, though even that can be a struggle. What if we try to control the behavior of others? Life can get awfully frustrating awfully fast.
This is crystal clear in the world of investing. We can control how much risk we take, the investment costs we incur, and our own buying and selling. But we can’t control the behavior of other investors, as reflected in ever-fluctuating stock and bond prices. Instead, we need an investment strategy that doesn’t depend on others behaving the way we want, at least in the short-term. Got just a few years to invest? Don’t count on other investors acting on your wishes and bidding up the price of the stocks you own.
We should accept our own mortality. We may continue to strive every day. But this can’t go on forever and, in my case, probably not for much longer. When do I stop striving and accept the inevitable?
I don’t have the answer, but I suspect the question will be answered for me. With each passing month, I move more slowly and I have less energy. I haven’t chosen to strive less, but it seems I am.
As I observe what’s happening to me, I imagine that I’m aging, like so many before me, but for me it’s happening over months, rather than decades. I’m not saying this slowing down is enjoyable. But it also isn’t so terrible—because I feel like it’s helping me to accept what’s to come.
Jonathan Clements is the founder and editor of HumbleDollar. Follow him on X @ClementsMoney and on Facebook, and check out his earlier posts.The post Don’t Push It appeared first on HumbleDollar.
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