Sage Advice from Wall Street

They call Warren Buffet the sage of Wall Street because he is the most successful investor ever. His core advice for investing is this: “Be fearful when others are bold, be bold when others are fearful“. The wonderful part of this advice is that it applies to life in general. It parallels chapter 73’s ‘He who is fearless in being bold will meet with his death; He who is fearless in being timid will stay alive. ‘

Implementing that advice is another matter. Alas, as we know, ‘words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice.’ Why is this easy to understand and yet difficult to put into practice? I suppose for the same reason it is easy to imagine yourself climbing Mount Everest, and yet difficult for the body to do. There is a real disconnect between what we think and what we do. Hence, to know yet to think that one does not know is best; not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Couplets and the Co-generating Principle⁽¹⁾ (another way to view correlations) states matters very similar to Warren Buffets advice. I suppose one advantage of the Couplets is that they peal away various issues pertaining to one’s approach to life. For starters, consider how Couplets deals with Buffet’s advice:

Boldness evolves forth into MEEKNESS as it contends, yet MEEKNESS revolves back to boldness as it BOWS DOWN; hence, contend within the MEEKNESS, yet BOW DOWN within the boldness.

As you can see, Buffet’s and the Couplet’s punch line is essentially the same. However, the Couplet describes the whole process in two parts. The first part portrays the ebb and flow. Personally, I find that being more aware of how this pendulum swings gives me a ‘heads up’. The second part, the punch line, offers guidance on how best to maintain at least some balance. How successful I am waxes and wanes. Even in utter failure though, at least I know what is happening. That alone is worth the price of admission into a ‘taoist world view’.

⁽¹⁾ A wish to apply Taoist principles to specific emotional issues lead me to make up couplets as a way to see more clearly the ebb and flow of  such ‘happenings’ . This soon lead me to break perception down further into Correlations. I suspected that words, being preconceptions, were hindering my ability to see life as broadly and impartially as possible. It is 30 years later now, and everything I’ve seen tends to confirm that initial suspicion; words bias perception from the get go.