Except when you are in a gym and doing a continuous non stop exercise – a string I mean you normally do not like the word change! When you are 2 minutes into skipping or jumping and the trainer says ‘Change’ you LOVE him, do you not!!

This is not about a gym here let us see what we can do to become better investors. The process of becoming a better investor or a better human being is a process meant to DISCOVER oneself. IT HAS NOTHING to do with markets. So for a given period of time concentrate on the following attributes (this is a take from Edward De Bono’s Six thinking Hats, if you have read that book).

How long should you concentrate? Well it could be an hour, a day or even a week. What are the attributes to concentrate on?

Gratitude, Courage, Love, Loyalty, Trust, Honesty, Sharing, Belief, Respect, Achievement, Health

‘Concentrate on’ means what?

First think of the word. Say the first word you choose is Gratitude.

What figure comes to mind?

Who are you grateful to? What are you grateful for?

When you think of gratitude to whom do you want to show the maximum gratitude? why? what impact did that person have on your life? on your investments? Think hard.

Make a list. Have you told them about this? why? why not?

Can you write a nice thank you note?

can you take that person to dinner? Have you introduced that person to a million others who could benefit?

The list could be endless. Then there are parents, siblings, spouse, colleagues, children, – God the list can be endless.

Frankly if you decide to write down everything, would it not take you a week? Of course there is God for the believers too!

So call it the ‘Gratitude Week’

Now do it for each of the attributes! In 11 weeks you would have a wonderful book with wonderful thoughts.

Now apply the same to your investing. When it comes to Investing you will HAVE to include NEGATIVE thoughts also – like Fear and Greed. See what you did because of Fear and what because of Greed. Try to conquer that.

Next time when you are investing read about G and F. Then look at your portfolio.

When you feel depressed read your notebook. All this will improve your life. And your investment. Of course if you know them well enough make them your ‘Gratitude guru’ and LEARN how to behave like them – THERE IS NOTHING WRONG IN COPYING.

All my writings are copied from somewhere. At times I know where, at times I do not.

This one for example is from De Bono’s book that I read about 20 years ago…and he uses 6 thinking HATS….i am saying use thoughts…

Worst case scenario? at least you have sat down, introspected and done something more useful than watching me on Cnbc!!