Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

by Morgan Housel

“To know where we’re going, you have to know where we’ve been.” But more realistic is admitting that if you know where we’ve been, you realize we have no idea where we’re going. Events compound in unfathomable ways.

“Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman says, “The idea that what you don’t see might refute everything you believe just doesn’t occur to us.”

Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.

The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable

Take the stock market. You can show people that the market historically crashes every five to seven years. But every five to seven years people say, “This is wrong, this feels broken, my advisor screwed up.”

Even within a good story, a powerful phrase or sentence can do most of the work. There is a saying that people don’t remember books; they remember sentences.

If you look, I think you’ll find that wherever information is exchanged—wherever there are products, companies, careers, politics, knowledge, education, and culture—the best story wins.

Stephen Hawking once noted of his bestselling physics books: “Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.” Readers don’t want a lecture; they want a memorable story.

Or take the stock market. The valuation of every company is simply a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow.

A lack of recessions actually plants the seeds of the next recession,

A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea.

A good summary of investing history is that stocks pay a fortune in the long run but seek punitive damages when you demand to be paid sooner.

Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye.

“The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist.”

When you focus on what never changes, you stop trying to predict uncertain events and spend more time understanding