Why are we not able to learn from our own mistakes?

Why is it so tempting to push all our difficult task to a virtuous tomorrow but indulge ourselves just for today?

Why we do not understand the power of small numbers?

Cognitive Dissonance. Heard this before?

Well there can be examples to answer this. Well  CD is when you tell yourself a lie, but you want to tell your mind that you are being correct. It is a funny way of silencing your conscience when you prioritize wrong things. You do not want to be a bad boy, do you? At least your mind does not want you to, so you tell yourself a series of lies to JUSTIFY A WRONG.

Let us say, you (like me) are trying to lose weight, and one of the culprits you have identified is white sugar (and related empty calories like bread, biscuit, chocolates, ..literally anything that is packaged and branded)..your mind cannot say “Dammit I do not care, I will eat white sugar” . The super ego WILL NOT ALLOW this to happen. So the ‘Idd’ which is craving for sugar has to make a series of suggestions that the ego can accept.

So, it has to be:

“Today was stressful, I must have a Coffee – and I will add brown sugar – it is not as bad.”

” I know sugar is poison, FROM TOMORROW I will go off sugar”.

So the mind is at ease, and you can now have your sugar kick. Happiness all around. So that one extra cup of coffee (which can actually not do much harm)..becomes one in a series of 2 you had today, yesterday,…etc. – this adds up to about 600 cups in a year with 2 teaspoons of sugar….and wow that is a couple of kilos around your waist 🙂 .

Now apply this to investing.

Learning from Subramoney.com:

1. I must invest at least Rs. 25,000 per month in equities, because I am young and have a nice surplus which is sleeping in the bank.

2. Subra says I should not buy stocks, because for me to beat the indices or a good fund like Franklin India Blue Chip, I Pru discovery or even a balanced fund like Hdfc Prudence is IMPOSSIBLE over a long period of time.

3. I should have started the SIP about 25 months ago when I stumbled on his site.

Actually what happened:

Procrastination. Now what do you tell your mind / how do you justify:

1. My father does not like equities – so I am also scared – but this is packaged as “I may need the money anytime – just in case”

2. I work in an IT company which helps some brokerage houses, I can get information from them and invest in direct equities, I can beat the market. (CD at its peak)

3. Subra himself does direct equity (completely supporting the IDD, Superego cannot argue against facts)

4. This is a bad month I will start investing next month.

5. Shankar Sharma says the market will fall, I will start my SIP when the index comes down to 22,000.

I could just go on and on. I am sure you are getting the drift , are you not?

So if you are starting your investing today because I urged you , ping me on Facebook…or leave a message here…and I will give you my terribly under utilised code 🙂