I have earlier written about long term thinking (non-finance & stock market) but this time I want to cover something I missed last time.
The mindset of short term greed is connected to various aspects in our life. It can also come in disguise as fear of not wanting to face reality or afraid of not fitting in. Hence, short term gains often take priority over long term gains.
It is very common among stock market participants to give in for short term gains as short term pleasure is near-sighted but it blurs the needs which might arise later.
Another common practice occurs in relationships. Moving from one talking stage to another to keep the excitement high. There is always that excitement to interact with someone new and start with the stories again and there is a new story every time you meet someone new.
This gives you a hit as you go through the process of meeting someone new again and the moments (canon event!) happen again. But such thinking is deeply rooted to one’s short term mindset.
It might feel good moving from one person to another but soon one might end up being with someone who doesn’t know them deep enough as they haven’t spent that much time being around them (as most of them didn’t stick around).
If one gives up when problems show up, which is easier to do as there is craving to give in for the short term gain, they harm the long term path which was building up. Things need time to work out and have a strong foundation. To give them time one has to let people stick around and not bash them out. The standard of bashing people out of your life can be kept high for someone who has been your closest.
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” ― Warren Buffett
The short term pleasure can apply to your interest as well which you decide to pursue. For example, with my blog the content which I wanted to share on it was plenty in the first year of writing as it was similar to talking to a new person who doesn’t know you.
But eventually once you are a few months into the friendship the initial getting to know each other conversation gets over. This is when your friendship is tested on whether you vibe together, otherwise it all fades away. When I started this blog I used to write one article per week slowly shifted to one per month but now there seems to be less things to share.
Sticking along is important. Jumping from one exciting thing to another can be dangerous. If this is constantly repeated then it becomes difficult to get deeper into any subject because as soon as the going gets a little difficult one might shift to exploring something new to get that exciting hit again. (ends up becoming jack of all trades?)
Even friendships which survive for longer term come out of understanding each other deeply and knowing what to ignore and what triggers them. The roads do get lumpy sometimes but if one can hang in there, the journey eventually becomes worth travelling.
The greed to switch to something new often crawls out when everything comes easy to you. Dating apps make it easy to meet new people, making money during bull markets makes investing look easy, etc. Hence, It is important to avoid constantly running behind the greed of creating short term higher highs in life at the risk of creating a long term lower low.
Thanks to Pramit Dev Pandey for reading drafts of this.