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July 23 - August 4, 2018
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. —MARCUS AURELIUS
“When a person with experience meets a person with money, the person with experience ends up with the money; and the person with money ends up with an experience.”
(REITs). They provide a no-hassle, low-cost way to diversify broadly, both geographically and across different types of property.
So, deciding on the right balance of stocks, bonds, and alternatives is the most important investment decision you’ll ever make.
The moral: never bet your future on one country or one asset class.
Use Index Funds for the Core of Your Portfolio.
Always Have a Cushion.
The Rule of Seven. Ideally, we like our clients to have seven years of income set aside in income-producing investments such as bonds and MLPs.
Rebalance.
As Princeton professor Burton Malkiel told Tony, unsuccessful investors tend to “buy the thing that’s gone up and sell the thing that’s gone down.” One benefit of rebalancing, says Malkiel, is that it “makes you do the opposite,” forcing you to buy assets when they’re out of favor and undervalued. You’ll profit richly when they recover.
Rebalancing
you can’t add value, if you can’t create an asymmetry, then the best thing you can do is minimize your costs,” says Howard. In other words, “Just invest in an index.”
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Every day, think as you wake up, “Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.” —THE DALAI LAMA
What I’ve found wherever I go is that we all crave an extraordinary quality of life.
The First Principle: You Must Keep Growing. Everything in life either grows or dies. That goes for relationships, businesses, or anything else. If you don’t keep growing, you’ll become frustrated and miserable, no matter how many millions you have in the bank. In fact, I can tell you the secret to happiness in one word: progress.
The Second Principle: You Have to Give. If you don’t give, there’s only so much you can feel inside, and you’ll never feel fully alive. As Winston Churchill said, “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” Whenever I ask people about the most fulfilling aspects of their lives, they always talk about sharing with others. The true nature of human beings isn’t selfish. We’re driven by our desire to contribute. If we stop feeling that deep sense of contribution, we can never feel truly fulfilled.
When I think about this terrible tragedy, I’m struck by one simple lesson: if you’re not fulfilled, you have nothing. Robin Williams achieved so much that our culture has conditioned us to value, including fame and fortune. Yet despite all his gifts, it was never enough. He suffered for decades, trying to deal with his stress through the use and sometimes the abuse of alcohol and drugs.
A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. —MAHATMA GANDHI
The trouble is, the human brain isn’t designed to make us happy and fulfilled. It’s designed to make us survive. This two-million-year-old organ is always looking for what’s wrong, for whatever can hurt us, so that we can either fight it or take flight from it.
But I’m happy to tell you there’s another path: one that involves directing your thoughts so that your mind does your bidding, not the other way around. This was the path I chose. I decided that I would no longer live in a suffering state. I decided that I would do everything in my power to live in a beautiful state for the rest of my life and to become an example of what’s humanly possible!
But in reality, the mental and emotional state in which you live is ultimately the result of where you choose to focus your thoughts.
And all this suffering is really just the result of an undirected mind that’s hell-bent on looking for problems!
Your focus created your feelings, and your feelings created your experience.
Either you master your mind or it masters you. The secret of living an extraordinary life is to take control of the mind, since this alone will determine whether you live in a suffering state or a beautiful state.
To overcome fear, the best thing is to be overwhelmingly grateful. —SIR JOHN TEMPLETON
I’ve recorded this meditation and made it available online at www.unshakeable.com
appreciation, enjoyment, and love are nothing less than the antidotes to suffering.
Yesterday is but a dream, And tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. —KĀLIDĀSA, Sanskrit dramatist and poet, ca. fifth century CE
