In his book Open Heart, Open Mind, the Tibetan Buddisht educator Tsoknyi Rinpoche recounted a conversation he had with his late father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.
The younger Rinpoche was about to visit the US for the first time to deliver teachings on Buddhism. He wanted advice from his father on how he should approach educating a new audience. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche responded:
“Don’t let the praise go to your head. People will compliment you. They’ll say how great you are, how wonderful your teachings are… Whatever compliments your students give you have nothing to do with you… How you teach is not important. What you teach is.”
The elder Rinpoche also said that he had observed many Buddhist teachers develop a mistaken notion – that they are special because their ways of imparting Buddhist lessons are popular with students. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche gently reminded his son: “What’s really special, is the teaching itself.”
The investing analogy
If we invest soundly in the stock market with a long-term, business-focused mindset, it’s likelier than not that investing success will knock on our doors. When we taste success, it’s easy for ego to enter the picture. We may look into the mirror often and proclaim, “I’m a special investor!”
But the entrance of ego plants the seeds of failure. My friend, the fund manager Goh Tee Leng, recently wrote in his website Investing Nook that Pride, or Ego, is one of the seven sins of investing.
If we have done well in investing using the underlying framework that stocks represent a piece of a business and that the value of the stock is a reflection of the value of the underlying business, we’re not special. This framework was already fleshed out thoroughly by Benjamin Graham 85 years ago in his 1934 book, the first edition of Security Analysis. We may each have our own unique interpretations and applications of Graham’s then-groundbreaking ideas. But what’s really special, is the framework itself.
Conclusion
Preventing ego from getting into our heads is of utmost importance. Without ego, we can invest in a safer manner. That’s because we won’t fall prey to overconfidence. When overconfident, we think we know more than we actually do, and we may end up doing risky things, such as borrowing to invest or overly concentrating our portfolios.
This post will serve as a constant reminder to myself, a barrier that keeps my ego at the door. I hope it can serve the same purpose for you too.
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