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The Strange and Subtle Way You Can Ruin Your Life (Possibly Without Even Noticing You Are)
Be careful to avoid this massive pitfall
The future never happens the way you want it to or picture it. It can be close, but the subtle nuance of life — decision-making, influences, and circumstances — will find its way into your plans.
So how do you deal with the future? I don’t have the perfect answer. I have what I’ve learned and what I’ve done.
Maybe there isn’t a way to create a perfect future, but there is a way to do the next best thing.
The Counterintuitive Strategy For Building a Better Future
Billionaire business owner Charlie Munger says “he wants to know where he is going to die” so that he never goes there, his point being that avoiding stupidity is a better strategy than trying to be smart. He refers to this process as inversion.
The writer and philosopher Nassim Taleb refers to a similar idea known via negativa, which means a life of subtraction. Taleb was an options trader. In his profession, mistakes can be costly. He set up his entire career and life to avoid risks that could cause a level of harm he couldn’t overcome.