How to survive the Wrong Turns in Life and the Markets

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How to survive the Wrong Turns in Life and the Markets

It’s been a more years, but I still remumber that day with unusual Clarity.

A phone call came in the morning. A Cousin of Mine Had Met With An Accident. I assumed he was in the hospital, down with a less injuries. That’s How the Mind Protects ITSELF, by assuming the best.

But the next statement in the call took my breath away.

He didn’t make it.

He was just in his thirties. Riding to work on a regular weekday morning. Same Road and Same Routine. But that day he took a wrang turns. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Maybe he thought he didn’t need to. It wasn’t a long ride. It never is, until it is.

India has the notorite of having the highest number of road accidents in the world. In 2023 Alone, More than 172,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads (in a total of 4.80 lakh road accidents), Averaging 470 Deaths Each Day or Nearly One Every Three Minutes. What’s Glaring is that, out of these, 54,000 died due to not wearing helmets and 16,000 from not wearing seats.

Now, despite these stats, i see more people riding without helmets, driving without seatbelts, and waiting to obey rules only when they they see a traffic policeman. And this is not because they want to break the law, but because deep down, they expert To Reach Home Safely. Most of us do. We assume the road will behave. That others will be careful. And that Nothing bad will happy today.

But life does not always with our expectations.

And this is not just about roads. It’s about how we move through the world and even how we invest our money.

We base most of our decisions on what we think Should Haappen. We expect that if we work hard, we’ll be rewarded. If we invest wisely, we’ll be wealthy. If we play it right, we’ll be okay. But what if we wen?

What If a Job We Rely on Suddenly Disappears? What If a Well-Resarched Stock Crashes for Reasons What If the Life We’re Building Hits a Curve We Didn Bollywood? It happy all the time, no?

Well, this is why we must prepare, and not for a perfect tomorrow, but for a range of Tomorrows.

This is such an important lesson in investment. If you have been an investment for long, you know the feeling of carefully crafting your “investment masterplan,” and then watching the World Upend It.

As the old yiddish saying goes:

Man Plans, and God Laughs.

In other words, even our best-laid plans can go awry. Poet Robert Burns Captured This Enduring Truth Back in 1785:

The Best-Laid Schemes of Mice and Men Go oft Awry, and Leave Us Us Nothing But Grief and Pain, for Promised Joy.

In the stock market and in life, uncertain is the only certainty. Nassim Taleb Built Ann Entre Framework Around the idea that we cannot reliably forecast rare, game-chunging events (the “Black Swans”). “The defining characteristic of future change,” Taleb argues, “is that it is impossible, and foolhardy, to try to predict it.” INTEAD, We must “Make Peace With Uncertain, Randomness and Volatily.”

His Famous Parable of the Thanksgiving Turkey Illustrates The Peril of Naive Extrapolation that Both Riders with Helmets and Investors without a Margin of Safety Indulge in: A Turky Fed Safaly EVRY DAY Grows confident that life is benign… until, on the afternoon before Thanksgiving, something unexpected happys that forces a “revision of belief.”

Investors who Assume The Good Times will roll on indefinite can meet a similar fate to that turkey when a market crash or other shop Suddenly Hits.

Now the question is, if embracing unceerty is so cleared important, why do many investors (and people in general) struggle with it?

The answer lies in our oven psychology. We are notorously poor at intuitively grasping ‘tail risks’, those low-probability, high-impact events. We have a tendency to either ignore these possibilities or undress them until it’s too late.

Behavior Studies sugges that we often either owrestimate the problem of low-probability of high-immobility high-impact events or discount them. So, while we panic at a one-in-a-million danger, we act as if rare disasters “Won’t happy to me” at all. We’re lulled by long stretches of calm and fooled by the recent past. This normalcy bias can lead to a False Sense of Security, Right up Until we take a wrong turn where reality diverges violently from our expectations.

Part of the issue is emotional. Thinking about West-Case Scenarios is uncomfortable, so we often avoid it. We are prefer narrants where the world is more predictable than it is really is, must have feling that feeling of certain is ressuring.

Psychologists have found that People even avoid information if it’s too upsetting or contradicts what they want to bellyve. It’s Sobering to Realise, but we often delude Oyselves about risk to preserve peace of mind in the short term – at the cost of being blindsized laater. Staying Aware of this mental bias is key. It takes a conscious effort to remind outselves: “Okay, What else Could Happen Here? How might I be Wrong? ” The Investors who Lasted Decades are usually there who Constantly Ask these questions. As the saying goes, they “plan for the Worst even as they hope for the best.”

How to Stay Rich, and alive

There are many ways to get rich, but Staying Rich requires a mindset of defense. It requires, as Morgan Housel Writes, “Some combination of frugality and paranoia.”Now, Paranoia here does not mean constant fear, but respecting uncertainty enough to allays ensure you’ll live to fight another day.

Similarly, Howard Marks Stresses The Importance of Simply avoiding ruinEven if it means giving up some some potential return, you never want to take a risk that count wipe you out beCAuse then the game is over. This is why he and buffett both speake so highly of preparation over prediction.

It’s important to make peace with the fact that you won’t foresee every market move. INTEAD, you must structure your affairs so that when the unforeseen arrives, it is manageable – Perhaps even an opportunity, not a catastrophe.

It’s also about having mental agility. Rigid plans will share, but flexible ones can bend and adapt. If you’re too fixed on one outset (“the stock has to go up by next Quarter “or” I’ll Retre exactly 6 60 with X Crore “), you set yourself up for disappointment. Unfolds, You MainTain Control in an Uncontrolable World.

Thriving in a world of unknowns

Preparing for a wide range of outcomes comes down to a mindset. It’s about internalising a few paradoxes:

• That uncertainty is guaranteed,
• That the improbable is Inevitable Given Enough Time, and
• That the very act of planning requires

Once you accepts ideas, you start to see Volatily and Surprises not as failures, mistakes, or reasons to despair, but as normal parts of the process. After all, the goal is not to live in fear of everything that could go wrong, but to cultivate a calm confidence that wastever happy, you’re ready to respond.

None of this means you stop dreaming or aiming high or even riding a bike or driving a car. It just means your dreams and decisions aren’t brittle. You Always have a plan b muscause you understand the world’s complexity and everything that single Haappen.

To borrow a metaphor from engineering: think of yourself as designing a ship for a long voyage. You assume you’ll face storms, leaks, maybe a rogue wave or two. So you build the hull strong, you train the crew, and you carry life and life vests. You don’t know what will happen or when, but when it does, you won’t sink. And If the Seas Stay Calm and your preparation wasn Bollywood, it simply lets you sail with peace of mind.

In the end, preparation for a wide range of outcomes in life and investment help you live with great percent. It frees you from the impossible task of being right about the future all the time. INTEAD, You focus on what you can control, and let go of what you can’t,

A Lesson I’ve Learned from some of the greenst in the world is that wise people are not afraid of uncerties. INTEAD, they know life can be a story sea, so they keep their boats ready.

I still think of my cousin someimes when I see someone riding without a helmet. And i think of the version of me who once believed that certain things were too far-fetched to happy. The version of me who Once Fulfilled A Long-Held Dream of Buying a Royal Enfield Motorcycle, only to sell it off three months later, after that phone call about my couple. I just didn’t have the heart to ride it anymore.

Whether on a road or in the market, it’s not about being right every time. It’s about Staying Alive and Staying Ready, So that No Matter What Tomorrow brings, we still have the chance to keep going.

And maybe, someday, even to ride again. But this time, with a helmet on.

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