Feeling Snarled up?

Prosperity Scroll
Jane Bellows

I've been strangely compelled to forage through my book stacks. Perhaps it is a inner niggling that I've not completed my book consolidation and organization project.

My slim volume of Musashi's (Book of Five Rings) and Munenori's (The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War) work has several 'Post-It' flags in it. Putting my hands on this book as well as Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

It's been an indescribable joy to read these. I've been pouring a glass a wine and retreating to the deck in the evening to read this. The kittens, Minnah and Wyatt join me. Naturally, the dogs pester for a ball toss.

There's a passage in Musahi's work that I think is very important.

When fighting with enemies, if you get to feeling snarled up and are making no progress, you toss your mood away and think in your heart that you are starting everything anew. As you get the rhythm, you discern how to win. This is "becoming new." (p.46)

The applicability of the above thought to so many contexts (work issues, interpersonal issues, and of course, investing) makes it a rather durable concept. For me, one of the most difficult aspects about investing is the rather high batting average of being wrong. Further, there is a rather distinctive disconnect between cause and effect at time. Good companies (insofar as we can tell that they are 'good') don't always go up and bad companies do not always go down. Psychology also plays such a big role in addition to other dynamics.

Yesterday, my thinking was that if you were wrong that often in business you'd be out of business. But I've modified that thinking. My first reaction was from that of making strategy decisions. However, if you think about it from a customer acquisition perspective, you have to make many calls to gain a few really good customers--that is the more appropriate way of equating business and investing. As resources are limited (as is capital) you have to know when a prospective customer will never turn into a good customer.

So if prospective stocks/laggard stocks are tying up your mental and physical capital--that keeps you from developing a really good stock that will give you better rewards. We all need mental models to help us operate within a framework that makes sense. For myself, this seems to be a mental model that helps with this evaluation AND provides a chance to 'become new'.

I have lunch with friends today....that will help me along the way!