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We tend to be on guard against negativity, against the people who are discouraging us from pursuing our callings or doubting the visions we have for ourselves. This is certainly an obstacle to beware of, though dealing with it is rather simple. What we cultivate less is how to protect ourselves against the validation and gratification that will quickly come our way if we show promise. What we don’t protect ourselves against are people and things that make us feel good—or rather, too good. We must prepare for pride and kill it early—or it will kill what we aspire to. We must be on guard against that wild self-confidence and self-obsession. “The first product of self-knowledge is humility,” Flannery O’Connor once said. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves. The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later. It’s worth saying: just because you are quiet doesn’t mean that you are without pride. Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous. “That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin,” Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling. It’s a quote from the playwright Menander, and it ends with “you who think yourself to be someone.” We are still striving, and it is the strivers who should be our peers—not the proud and the accomplished. Without this understanding, pride takes our self-conception and puts it at odds with the reality of our station, which is that we still have so far to go, that there is still so much to be done.
Ego Is the Enemy
Ryan Holiday
As the owner of one of the two primary steamship lines, Vanderbilt emerged as a powerful presence in San Francisco, where he never had and never would set foot. Railroad and newspaper promoters there besieged him with requests for investment. “If you knew of the hundreds of applications that we have daily for the same thing,” he replied to one, “you would at once see that it would be ruinous to grant them.”35
The First Tycoon
T.J. Stiles
basic checklist introduced earlier in this chapter: 1. Does the stock have a high earnings yield—that is, a low P/E? 2. Does the company do something unique that will allow it to earn super-profits on its growth opportunities? Does it have a moat? 3. Is the company built to last, or is it at risk from competition, fads, obsolescence, or excessive debt? 4. Are the company’s finances stable and predictable into the extended future, or are they cyclical, volatile, and uncertain? This checklist does not catch every undervalued stock, but it does cull out the most common sources of disappointment. It does not guarantee that bad things can’t happen, but it does improve your odds. When I can fill my portfolio with stocks with all four qualities, I see no need to consider those with defects. Most stocks will fail this screen, but that does not mean they are not undervalued.
Big Money Thinks Small
Joel Tillinghast
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