Don’t Do Stupid and Invert.
Some quotes by the legendary, Charlie Munger:
“I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick. It’s not brilliance. It’s just avoiding stupidity.”
Who going in a life anticipating the worst case? Charlie does. He prefers learning what not to do, it is best if you learn through other people’s mistakes rather than your own. Avoiding stupidity is best done vicariously. There is no better way to see a lot of stupid behavior over a short time than reading.
“Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits…. A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.”
“Let me use a little inversion now. What will really fail in life? What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.
Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts. Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity. It’s a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it, you get a great advantage over everybody else or almost everybody else because self-pity is a standard condition, and yet you can train yourself out of it.”