How to Start Changing Your Environment for the Better
I read Guy Spier's book, The Education of a Value Investor My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment, in a single sitting. The section of the book I was most interested in reading was on his charity lunch with Warren Buffett. While details of what transpires at these lunches are fairly scant, there is a whole chapter on it in this book. I tore into that chapter first, eager to find out the pearl of wisdom that eluded me. Finding no secret, I flipped to the front and fell into the story. I had the serendipitous pleasure of running into Guy at the Omaha airport earlier this year. What I loved about him  and his book  is that he's open about his struggles. In a world where so many of us, myself included, are closed and guarded about things we don't want other people to know or see, Guy is an open book. He has struggles. He's human. He's real. Things are not black and white. He didn't come out of the womb fully formed with uncompromising ethics. He's a testament to the fact that we can make mistakes, admit them, and get better. We can change. We can even change our nature. We can find ourselves in compromising positions  be they professional, moral, or ethical  and recognize that we've made poor choices and find a better path forward. Guy is living proof that we can teeter on a moral cliff and change the path we are on. First, however, we must stop digging. That requires recognition that what we're doing or about to do is wrong. "These moments of clarity are so rare in life," he writes, "and even the people closest to us may question whether we should act on such instincts." We only have a few of these moments in life, we must learn to recognize them and act. "If you're going to do something, it's best to commit to it with wholehearted gusto.", And Guy did commit to changing himself. "When you begin to change yourself internally," he writes, "the world around you responds.", But the question worth exploring at this point is how you go about changing yourself? It sounds so simple doesn't it? I want to change and poof. Change. It doesn't work like that. One lesson that Guy reinforces is that your environment matters to the decisions you make. "It's important," he writes, "to discuss just how easy it is for any of us to get caught up in things that might seem unthinkableto get sucked into the wrong environment and make more compromises that can tarnish us terribly." While we think that we change our environment, it changes us. One non-intuitive way to improve your environment is to choose the right teachers that have already discovered the truths you want to learn. Self-help guru Tony Robbins calls this "modelling" our heroes. "The key," Spier writes, "is to be as precise as possible, picturing them in as much detail as we can. A related technique that he teaches is called matching and mirroring, which might involve changing the way you move or even breathe to match the other person's movement or breathing. In my experience you start to feel what they feel and you even start to think like them.", A few other lessons from the book are worth noting, one of which is the fundamental nature of Guy's approach to life not investing., Remind you of anyone? That's an approach that Nassim Taleb employs. It's also the one that investor Mohnish Pabrai describes in his book The Dhandho Investor The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns. As Pabrai puts it, "Heads I win. Tails I don't lose much.", Another lesson is that small differences in behaviour over time can lead to incredible impacts. Sending thank-you notes is A Simple Act of Gratitude, with profound benefits, In the end the biggest lesson that I took away from meeting with Guy and reading his book is that we need to stop living our life through other people. I can play basketball every day for 18 hours and I'm never going to be Michael Jordan. I can study financial reports until I'm blue in the face and I'm never going to be the next Warren Buffett. In the end The Education of a Value Investor, is an important reminder that we need to be more authentic versions of ourselves. We need to do what is right for us and that might not be what is right for others. We need to stop pretending to be other people and compromising our internal standards or ethics. We need to find who we are and how we want to live. "Instead of trying to compete with Buffett," Guy writes, "I should focus on the real opportunity, which is to become the best version of Guy Spier that I can be.", Join over 60,000 readers and get a free weekly update via email here.