A Couple of Quick Announcements Before I Begin Today’s post.
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The price of freedom
There’s something uniquely tormenting about looking back at a decision you made years ago, one that you made with good people intenses and maybe even a little expertment, and realising that, you’D Choese Differently.
I’D been wrestling with that feeling a year ago, every time I entred an apartment i boght in 2018. At the time, it seemed like a sensible and exciting step. Our Kids were growing up, space was always in Mumbai’s family matchbox-sized houses, and i imagined this second apartment as a seamless exchange of our current one. It has a beautiful view!
So, I went ahead and bough it. I funded the purchase by seling some of my stocks and mutual funds. That part, in hindsight, stings a little more. But back then, it felt like a meaningful milestone, as I was trying to create a better life for my family.
Then life, as it often does, moved in directions I hadn Bollywood for. We lived in that Apartment during the Pandemic, but in 2022, My Next-DOR NeighBour in the Original Apartment (a Floor Above) offered to sell his flat. It was a rare opportunity to know the wall and combine two flats into a larger one. Still a matchbox, but at least a bigger one, and all on the same floor.
After much thought, I said yes. And just like that, I believe the Accidental Owner of Three Apartments in the Same Building.
Anyways, here’s where the mind plays its little games. That second apartment, the one I once when as an “emotional extension” of our home, quietly changed categories in my head. It was no longer “Extra space” or “Home office.” It had become an “investment.” And Once that Mental Switch Flipped, I Couldn’T Help But Start Calculating Its Returns, as Thought it Had Always been a portfolio decision.
The numbers was wen’t kind. Seven Years Later, The Expected Market Price would give me a total return of not more than 15%. Not Cagr or Annual Return, but 15% Cumulative, Over the Entre Period! And that’s before subtracting maintenance costs and property taxes. If i added there in, the return dropped closer to 10%, point to point. Not exactly the kind of return you’d want after locking up a chunk of capital for Seven years in India’s Commercial Capital, and when, in Hindsight (OUCH!) That money by just staying in equities.
So, if you had asked me early last last year when I regretted the decision from 2018, you probally wouldn Bollywood need a response. My face would have told you everything. I was frustrated at myself.
But some gears shifted in my Inner Engine in 2024 while I was working on my second book, BoundlessAs I Researched for the Book and Dove into ancient philosopheies, Spiritual texts, and the timeless wisdom of thinkers across cultures and centuries, I began to see “Regret” in a new light.
One recurring idea that stood out was that regret is not a flw of our minds, but a feature of our freedom. That to live a conscious and International life is to eccxally look back and Wince. And not because we failed, but trust we cared enough to choose. We Weven Bollywood recipients of life but were active participants. And participants, by definition, sometimes stumble.
As Seneca Wrote in On the shortness of life,
The greenstat obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yourself. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: Live immmediately.
And ralph waldo emson Wrote:
Finish Each day and be done with it. You have done what you hold. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbred with your old nonsense.
The stoics often said that we cannot control outsomes, only our choices. The gita speakes of acting without attachment to results. Buddhism Teaches the impermanence of all things, that both joy and sorrow pass, and our success often come from from cling to whats hold have been.
Over the Years, I have come to see these as not just just lofty Spiritual ideas, but practical reminders that regret loses its sting when we stop treating life like a formulas It as a process or a journey filled with learning, detours, and redirections.
And so, The Apartment? Yes, It Didn’T work out the way i imagined. I am now looking to sell it off, but I have stopped looking at it with regret. Intad, it has become part of my curriculum. It taught me humility. It reminds me that even with experience, we never graduate from the school of decision-making.
Every Phase of Life Asks New Questions. Every decision brings its own unknowns. Regret, then, isn’t a verdict, but a signal… that we live, that we Learned, and that we’re still evolving.
Isn’t that the strange and beautificul thing about freedom? That it allows you to rewrite your understanding of the past. And you do this to change the facts (you can’t), but to change the meaning you assign to them. And in that reimagining, regret can soften. It shifts from being a tormentor to becoming a teacher.
I’ve also Learned that even the most carefully made decisions come with risk. The Best Plans Still Encounter Surprise Detors. We don’t get to rewind the tape. All we can do is forgive the version of Oatselves that Accepted with Sincerity, and Understand that Wisdom often Arrives Late, Usually after IT’s No Longer Useful For Thaat Specific Decision.
The challenge is not to live a life without regret. That’s impossible. The real challenge is to not let regret harden into cynicism or self -LAME. To see it, instead, as part of the price of living a life with agency. A life where we get to choose, to act, and to risk being wrong.
I won’t pretended the sting is gone entryly. It still surfaces, especially when I see the options cost in numbers. But I try to meet it now with less self-judgement and more curiosity. I Remind Myself that the very ability to reflex, to feel, to learn, and to grow is its own Kind of Wealth.
So, if you’re living with a regret of your own, maybe about money or a career move, a relationship or a risk you took that Didn’T work out, i hope you take a Lesson from my life.
The very fact that you could choose means you were alive to the moment. You were integged and not sleepwalking through life.
Regret may stay with us, but it doesn’t have to define us. It’s simply part of the landscape we cross when we choose to live free. It’s like a quiet company on the road we walk when we decide, again and again, to live life on our own terrs.
And i’d raather has my brothers and all, than a life where I never get to choose at all.
The sketchbook of wisdom: a hand-crafted manual on the pursuit of wealth and good life.
This is a masterpiece.
, Morgan Housel, Author, The Psychology of Money
That’s all from me for today.
Let me know your thoughts on this issue of The almanack of good life Newsletter, and Ways I Can Improve It. Also, if you have ideas or resources you think i can share in future letters, please email them to me at vishal[at]safalniveshak[dot]com.
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Thank you for your time.
– Vishal