#my art teacher this year was like 'you can derive meaning from every stroke in an artists work. it's all intentional'

[squishosaur]

i really really love your art it feels so flowy and comforting 🌟🌟 it's super nice to look at :-)💗💗💘

thanks so so much!! this makes me so super happy!!! i think my art is very picturebook-esque... or that's what i'm told anyways!! but i try really hard to capture feelings in a very silly goofy way :3 anyways, thank you for the kind words and i always love seeing you in my notifs :0c

[rougespecial-blog]

sweetheart hand pt. 2 // brian may

summary: a continuation of sweetheart hand. after the party, the (art) studio.

a/n: mostly fluff and then some smut. sorry for the delay! if tumblr hasn’t sorted out their tagging shit by now...... hm. this is around 5,400 words. i was thinking about this twombly work when i was describing the painting. also can you believe this image cause i can’t.

there’s something terrifying and invigorating in equal measure about a blank canvas. you stare the expanse of white down determinedly, crossing your arms and trying to conjure something up in your mind’s eye. it’s a beast of a thing, five feet tall and six feet wide, and anything you try to visualise comes up short. fuck it. you’ve been avoiding it for weeks. you’ll just have to dive in.

you’ve hit almost every mark of your normal afternoon pre-painting routine - the curtains are thrown back to let the natural light in, you’ve made yourself a strong cup of tea and there’s a note on the door in case anyone decides to call around. the only thing left is to take the phone off the hook. it’s an old bakelite monster with a rotary dial - you could afford to replace it, but you’re fond of its look. plus, the horrible, grating sound of its ring is reason alone to stop it from disturbing your painting.

well. not that you normally have any hesitations about it. you haven’t done anything so undignified as waiting around for someone to call since you were a teenager.

———-

it was only after you’d kissed brian on saturday night that you realised you’d probably been a goner since he leaned carefully against the kitchen counter and asked you for a glass of champagne. the hours you spent with him had been so easy, slipping by in what felt like minutes. there was a quiet measure in the way he carried himself, the deliberate way he chose his words even when he was speaking a million miles an hour.

and the kiss itself. not the first, really, but the second one. the one he pressed to the softest part of your inner wrist. watching you with those clear eyes, the whole thing so stupidly intimate that it made your breath catch in your throat. after that, there was no hope at all. you had mumbled something absently about fixing the record, pulled back - hesitant but dimly aware you needed to gather your thoughts for a moment. when you turned away from the record player he was standing there all tall and willowy, waiting for you, arms folded. there was the slightest tilt to his head, the way men ask questions. yes, you had thought, in response to nothing in particular. and you kissed him again.

when you found tom at the end of the night - or start of the morning, rather - and asked him to call a cab, he had taken one look at you and grinned from ear to ear. you knew you were probably an embarrassing colour, lips flushed and clothes slightly askew. you didn’t even want to think about the state of your hair. he was bitterly disappointed, though, when he started to interrogate you in the taxi home.

‘was he good?’ you shot him an incredulous look. ‘that’s none of your business.’ ‘oh, my god. you didn’t shag him?’ ‘don’t make me dignify that with an answer, please.’ ‘i can’t believe you.’

it was a reaction you were accustomed to from tom - the polite term for his taste in lovers would be indiscriminate - but you found that you couldn’t even muster up pretend-annoyance at his prying questions. you were too content, watching the city slip by and thinking that your memory of the past few hours already felt like the kind of vivid dream you have on the edge of waking up - the ones you want desperately to remember. you had just kissed brian - for an age, like a teenager - curled up on a loveseat, paying no mind at all to the few strangers in the room. his hands were gentle at your neck, in your hair, under your blouse. you’ve been a grown woman for a while now, and you still felt your stomach flip when he touched his mouth to the hollow of your throat.

———-

it’s monday morning, now, and you haven’t shaken the feeling. it’s elusive, almost intangible - somewhere between anxiety and anticipation, the feeling of closing your eyes before a kiss. you had taken a pen and scrawled your number on brian’s arm before you left, pressing your lips to the last digit, right at the crease of his elbow. as a joke, mostly. but he had promised he would call so seriously that you found yourself believing him. stupid, you know, the idea that he wouldn’t meet a hundred women as charming as you and twice as good looking every weekend. better to enjoy it for what it was.

still, you leave the phone on the hook.

you’re a little embarrassed with yourself as you make your way to your palette (more of a drop sheet these days, really) and begin to mix. you wonder briefly about the colour of embarrassment, but the more paint you pour the more you realise what you’re after is the colour of a glance. a colour that looks the way someone else’s mouth tastes. it goes on in broad strokes - you want to cover the canvas in it, to feel like you’re wrapped in it. the shade you end up with is a champagne pink like sunburn, streaked through with hints of a vivid red. a little derivative, maybe, but you can work more into it.

your studio is the ground floor of your townhouse, what used to be a fairly spacious foyer and sitting room. creating it had been a labour of love over an entire spring a few years back. your own handiwork, mostly, tearing out walls, painting, varnishing until you ended up with the space you wanted. a good half of the floor space is covered in tarpaulin, with canvases, paint and brushes strewn wherever you like. it looks chaotic, but you know where everything is at a moment’s notice and there’s no one here to ‘helpfully’ tidy up after you - one of the main reasons you had to stop sharing a studio with tom. the rest of the room is still half a lounge, mostly wasted due to your reluctance to let guests in. things you’ve collected yourself and gifts from friends fill the place - huge potted plants, turkish rugs, a gorgeous painted trunk tom brought home from glasgow. and, of course, the ‘lounge’, a low-slung thing that’s mostly an excessive collection of pillows and throw blankets. for when you inevitably need something to throw yourself on mid-work, convinced you’ve never painted anything halfway decent in your life.

your canvas is totally awash in grey and pink, stained with red - like the blood-shock colour around the pit of a peach - when the phone rings. you nearly drop your paintbrush getting to it, only stopping to admonish yourself for being so pathetic. you let it ring once, twice more, and then pick it up.

‘hello?’ ‘hi, er - is this an alright time?’ you smile to yourself, tracing a groove in the wooden sideboard with your fingertip. ‘i’d say so, yeah.’ ‘great, that’s - oh, fuck, sorry. i haven’t - it’s brian. you know, from saturday night.’ ‘brian from saturday night? i’m not sure i - oh - wouldn’t happen to be a maths teacher, would you?’ his laugh is bright and genuine. ‘i think we got halfway through a good chat about fractals and then something came up.’ ‘of course. i’ve really been hanging out to finish that.’ ‘well, does this afternoon work? i can pick you up if you feel like a coffee.’ you pause, glancing over at your canvas. ‘i’m slightly in the middle of something,’ you confess. ‘on a bit of a momentum swing.’ ‘oh, of course. i should’ve - bit of short notice, sorry. are you free next -? i mean, if you’re not -’ your cheeks are nearly hurting from your smile, now. ‘brian. did you want to pop around instead, maybe? i’ll make you some coffee.’ he pauses for a moment, as if taken aback. you wonder if he thought you were just trying to avoid seeing him. silence, still. you falter a little. ‘or - you know, tea. if you’d prefer. it’s not contingent on the drink.’ ‘are you painting?’ the question surprises you, along with the shyly hopeful way he asks it. you look over at the canvas, at the layers of vivid underpainting starting to form something.

‘i am, actually.’ ‘sorry, it’s just - i remember you mentioning on saturday night that you didn’t really like anyone around your studio while you’re working.’ ‘i do make exceptions, you know.’ ‘that’s what i mean,’ he laughs. ‘i like being the exception.’

your exception arrives not a half-hour after you give him your address and hang up, with a knock at the door so gentle you nearly don’t notice it. you know it’s him, but you glance through the peephole anyway. he’s waiting patiently, clutching something in brown paper under his arm. the shade of stubble across his face is darker than saturday, and he’s wearing a pinstriped linen shirt that only makes him look leaner. he grins when you open the door, leaning forward to kiss you on the cheek. ‘this note,’ he laughs, gesturing at the handwritten thing you’d attached to your door. ‘i’ve never known a lady to say such things -’ ‘oh, piss off. artists are persistent types. you have to be clear.’

you lead him in, and it takes you a moment to realise that he’s paused in the threshold of the studio, looking around. ‘this is gorgeous,’ he says. ‘you’re telling me you keep it all to yourself?’ ‘mostly,’ you shrug. ‘i wanted to say - sort of a thank you, i guess, for letting me -’ he holds the paper bag out to you, one nervous hand moving to the back of his neck as you take it. you bite down on a smile. a book, and two blood oranges. you look up to him to say thank you, but he starts rambling before you can. ‘the oranges were just - god, your neighbour has the loveliest tree hanging over their fence, i suppose you’ve noticed, and you mentioned that you forget to eat when you’re painting - so i just grabbed them - and i thought the colour of them was so brilliant -’ ‘thank you, brian -’ ‘the book’s the main thing, of course, it was outside that old bookshop on king and i saw mark rothko and thought of you straight away, so there’s - you might already have a copy -’ ‘i don’t. really, thank you. i love them.’ he finally quiets, smiling softly. you lean up towards him, in what might have originally been a plan to kiss his cheek that quickly became sidetracked. you have never been known for self control. he makes a soft, surprised noise as your lips meet his but responds quickly, bringing a hand to your jaw. ‘thank you,’ you tell him again.

you set your gifts down on the coffee table, gesturing for him to make himself comfortable somewhere among the clutter. ‘i can make you a cup of coffee or something - i’d just like to finish up this corner, and then you’ll have my undivided attention.’ ‘take as long as you like,’ he says earnestly. it’s only then that he takes a proper look at the work in progress behind you. his mouth falls open slightly as he leans forward to inspect it. ‘you can get closer, if you like,’ you smile. ‘it’s not a gallery.’ ‘it bloody well should be,’ he says. you might have rolled your eyes if someone else had said it. ‘did you - this is all you? god, it’s brilliant.’ ‘careful, i’ll get a massive head. it’s really only a tenth done. if that.’ ‘well, yes, it’s unfinished - but there’s such a sense of motion - the colour, it’s like -’ ‘it’s a kiss,’ you say, half unsure of whether you sound insane. ‘it’s a painting of a kiss, i suppose.’ the look he gives you is brilliant, his eyes full of quiet mirth but also a certain fondness. nothing needs to be said, really. ‘i’ll go and get you that coffee.’

when you come back downstairs he’s pacing the room carefully, taking in the works littered around the place. he tilts his head - something you’re starting to realise is a habit - as if considering each one in turn. you’d feel scrutinised if it was anyone else, almost embarrassed. you’ve been painting for half your life and still aren’t really used to the feeling of strangers looking at your work. but with brian, somehow, it doesn’t feel like a stranger. you indulge yourself for a minute, perched at the bottom of the stairs, watching him.

‘fair’s fair,’ you call out eventually. he turns to you, an eyebrow raised in question. you nod at the acoustic guitar leaning against the lounge. it was a gift from a friend, and you’ve always liked the look of it even if you have no idea how to play. ‘i’ve shown you mine. let’s see yours.’ ‘excuse me,’ he laughs. ‘you’ve seen mine. at the launch party, remember?’ ‘that was different,’ you say, crossing the room to hand him the cup of coffee. ‘you had a band, and an adoring audience. that would be like seeing my work with all the trimmings at a big gallery opening. this is just me. now i want just you.’ he chuckles at your point, but doesn’t argue it. sitting down, his legs are almost too long for the sagging lounge. he places the coffee at his feet and picks up the guitar. ‘any requests?’ you know he’s being facetious, poking fun at your total lack of knowledge where his music is concerned. as of last time you met, that is.

you sit next to him, curling your feet under you and leaning on the back of the lounge comfortably. ‘i do have one, thanks very much,’ you say. ‘i forced tom to loan me one of your albums. he had the first one -’ ‘christ, you’re being serious -’ ‘- and it’s the second track, i think about a minute in - there’s this lovely little guitar part. i mean, it might be lovely, i haven’t the faintest if it’s actually special.’ ‘doing alright, you mean.’ he’s smiling the same way he did when you realised he wasn’t a maths teacher - looking perfectly amused. ‘that’s the one. i’m no good with names.’

carefully, he starts to tune the guitar. you laugh at his initial wince - it hasn’t been tuned properly since you got it, you suspect. when he’s satisfied, he strums a tentative few chords and gives you a cautionary look. ‘i haven’t played this song in a little while,’ he warns. ‘i’ll be forwarding all feedback to rolling stone,’ you say, and he huffs out a laugh, elbows you half-heartedly.

the light, pretty melody that’s been stuck in your head since you first heard it sounds infinitely lovelier being played right in front of you. you’re about to say as much when brian surprises you with a line of the song. should be waiting for the sun, he sings, half under his breath. you had no clue he even could.

he looks up and locks eyes with you, plays a few more notes and then falters to a stop. ‘sorry,’ he says, his smile sheepishly crooked. ‘you just - that felt like stage fright, for a moment there.’ ‘i’ve been told i’m extremely intimidating,’ you joke. ‘well, that, and…’ he trails off, looking towards your unfinished canvas, then back to you with nothing but sincerity in his eyes. ‘i’d really love to kiss you again, if that’s -’

you don’t give him time to finish the sentence. he barely has time to move the guitar out of the way, mindful of the fresh mug of coffee on the floor, as you close the distance between the two of you and kiss him resolutely. he cards a hand through your hair to cradle the nape of your neck, and you feel the press of rings you hadn’t taken notice of before. it’s hard to get proper leverage sitting side-on like this, so - without really being cognisant of what you’re doing, more running on instinct - you sling one leg over his and straddle his lap. he breaks the kiss, leaning his head back. you sense he’s thinking the same thing that you are - that this is where you finished off the last time you saw each other.

‘i haven’t stopped thinking about this since saturday night,’ he says. his hand is still resting in your hair, and he curls his fingers in it gently. he has some of the loveliest hands you’ve ever seen on a man, you think. one is resting on your thigh, and you trace a fingertip along the ridge of his knuckles. ‘i always take the phone off the hook when i paint,’ you confess. ‘but i couldn’t. not while i was thinking that you might call. is that ridiculous?’ ‘thinking that i might call? i mean, that’s ridiculous. the idea that i wouldn’t.’ you smirk, slipping a hand under the neck of his shirt to rest at his collarbone. he’s warm beneath you, and you can feel his steady heartbeat. ‘you’re a rockstar, brian. don’t bullshit. i’ll know.’ you nod at your impromptu lie detector, your palm pressed against his heart.

‘no bullshit. alright, then.’ he rocks forward, catching you with a hand at the curve of your back. ‘sunday morning, i called half the artist collectives in london asking after you. i wanted to see your works before i saw you again.’ ‘so you could decide whether or not to pursue me?’ he laughs, ducking his head and pressing a soft kiss to your chest. ‘so i could understand you better. i thought it’d be like a window into your thoughts. but then the only collective who knew you -’ ‘drunk tank?’ ‘- that’s the one - they told me you were all sold out at the moment, and the only gallery pieces you had were at some place that didn’t open until tuesday - so i thought, sod it, i’ll come and see them in person.’ he raises his eyebrows expectantly. you pretend to mull the story over, biting your lip. ‘it’ll do.’ he clasps a hand around yours, clutching it to his chest. ‘it’ll do! have you ever felt a pulse this honest?’

‘alright,’ you concede, laughing. ‘now mine.’ you take his hand, pressing his fingertips against the base of your throat. ‘sunday morning, i woke up at tom’s around midday and the first thing i asked him was -’ ‘hang on,’ brian mutters. ‘can’t quite get it properly -’ you cut yourself off, inhale sharply as he kisses your neck, openmouthed. ‘go on,’ he mumbles. he runs his tongue along the pulse point, teeth grazing against your skin. ‘prick,’ you laugh, curling one of your hands in his hair. ‘the first thing i asked him was if he had any queen records, and he laughed at me, but loaned me your first.’ ‘god, you’re sweet,’ brian says fondly, but he’s distracted, kissing further down your neck. those careful hands at your ribcage, inching the hem of your shirt up.

impatient, you pull the shirt over your head. you’re not wearing anything underneath - you never do at home. he makes a short, pleased noise when this becomes obvious, almost a disbelieving laugh. his hands are fleeting, wanting to be everywhere. his lean fingers, silver-ringed, teasing against your ribcage, breasts, nipples. you arch your back into the touch, feeling - somehow - even less inhibited than you were on saturday night.

you make short work of the buttons on his shirt, parting it to reveal what shouldn’t be the body of a rockstar - there’s a grace to him, a certain lightness - there’s the height, of course, and he’s broad in the shoulders but still somewhat delicate. you love the look of him. the dark hair beneath his arms and between his hips, the line of his collarbones, the pronounced adam’s apple. as you’re taking him in he doesn’t stop touching you, leaning forward with one hand spanned across your back, kissing the inside curve of your breast.

it’s tempting to just let him keep going at this forever. his attention is ardent, eyes closed, taking one nipple in his mouth and running his thumb over the other until they’re so sensitive it makes you whine. when he gently pinches one and rolls it between his fingers you gasp, grinding your hips down against his. he groans, humming against your skin, the vibration sending a shudder through you.

it’s with complete seriousness that he looks up at you and says your name. ‘yeah?’ he presses a wet kiss to your sternum, hands still at your breasts. glances up again. ‘you can have me,’ he says, ‘any way you want me.’ you feel your stomach drop when he says it, taking in the earnest look and the shining eyes and the flush that reaches his shoulders. you press your splayed fingertips into the middle of his chest. ‘finish undressing, then,’ you tell him, half-smiling.

you watch him shrug off the rest of his clothes as you stand and step out of your jeans. before, the sight of him in your studio felt natural, comforting. now it sends an electric thrill through you, the diminishing evening light casts over him as he lounges back and waits for you. you move to kneel over him and he rests a hand on your thigh, otherwise waiting for you to decide. his cock is jutting hard against his lower abdomen. you trace a hand gently up it and feel his palm twitch against you as he tenses.

‘what did you want?’ you ask him, thoughtful. ‘on saturday night?’ ‘i wanted to know everything there was to know about you,’ he says, his voice raw. you wrap your hand around his cock to punctuate your meaning. ‘i mean - what did you want?’ the sound he makes is half laugh, half shaky groan as you touch him. ‘i wanted to fuck you right there,’ he says, ‘everyone else be damned. i wanted to make you come.’

his hand trails up from your thigh to between your spread legs, his index finger tracing a teasing line. when he feels how wet you are, he groans. ‘i wanted to feel this,’ he continues, running his guitar-calloused fingertips over your clit. you balance yourself with a hand at his chest, still touching his cock in slow tandem with what he’s doing to you.

when you edge forward and lower yourself over him, aligning yourself, the head slides against your clit and his breath catches. he’s propped up on his elbows to watch, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. there’s a stillness to him as you take him inside, giving you time as you adjust to the stretch. when you bottom out, all of him inside you, he tips his head back and swears hotly, the end of it turning into a groan. he brings one hand to you, touching your clit as you rock your hips back and forth.

‘just like that,’ he murmurs. ‘get yourself off on me, come on -’ he starts raising his hips to meet your movements, just slightly, enough that you feel impossibly full, the press of him deep inside. when you arch a certain way he hits a spot that nearly knocks the wind out of you. he must see your reaction, the way your eyes flutter shut in bliss, because he laughs, fondly, and thrusts up again at the same angle. you can’t stop the moan that escapes you, then. he hums, delighted, quickening the slip of his thumb over you and touching your face gently with his other hand. ‘god, you’re not far off, are you?’

you can only shake your head no. it’s a little embarrassing, but you’ve been keyed up since saturday and all there is now is the desperate need to finally come. you turn and kiss his palm, bite the heel of his thumb gently. he squeezes you minutely, affectionately. he’s hit your rhythm, in perfect tandem with your body, a shine of sweat across his chest. you clutch at him as the wave of your orgasm starts to pool in your belly. he fucks up into you, gasping, the hands that were gently touching you now gripping your thighs tightly. almost accidentally, he hits that angle and you nearly collapse forward, your orgasm hitting sharply. when he’s sure you’ve ridden it out - sure that he can’t tease anything more out of you - only then does he collapse back against the lounge, stomach clenching with his deep breaths and - there it is - soft laughter.

‘my god,’ he says, slinging an arm across his eyes. ‘i’d imagined it. but i couldn’t- you looked perfect.’

when you think your legs are working again you raise yourself from him, gently, moving to kneel beside the couch. when he realises what you’re doing he sits up, tries to assure you that you don’t have to, but you quiet him. ‘i want to,’ you say. ‘besides, i haven’t got - ah - anything.’ and he laughs at that, laughs until he’s cut off with a groan as you take him in your mouth.

it doesn’t take long, his hands in your hair, warm against the cradle of your neck. when you glance up he’s watching carefully from eyes half-lidded. a gaze that would be filthy from across the room, let alone now. after a moment he finds your hand at his thigh, gives it a polite, if desperate, clutch as a warning. he holds his breath as he’s about to come and then releases it in a string of profanity, of your name, of wordless moans.

lying back against cushions and blankets - half of them strewn on the floor in your hurry to get into his lap - you watch him watching you. you can’t help but be reminded of sitting in that armchair across from him at the party, feeling helplessly seen. not just that appraising look of his but some of the things he said, striking insights into the way you think. he reaches over to trace his fingers up the inside of your arm.

‘penny for your thoughts?’ ‘i never got to finish that corner,’ you say. he chuckles as he pulls himself to stand, tugging his boxers and trousers back on. you take his linen shirt from the heap on the lounge and slip it on, doing up a couple of buttons. as you stand up and step back into your underwear, he’s shaking his head at you. ‘i won’t make you leave without it,’ you laugh. ‘indulge me.’ he relents, picking his coffee up from the foot of the sofa. it must be completely cold by now. ‘did you -?’ you bite your lip, apologetic. ‘i might have to make you a fresh one.’ he waves his hand dismissively. ‘i can manage. do you want one?’ ‘that would be lovely, actually. the kitchen is upstairs, to the left.’

you wander over to your painting, your tools untouched since brian’s arrival. taking a slender paintbrush and a board covered in silver-grey paint, you slowly track a thin line across some of the pink, thick enough that it drips down the canvas. the look of it is ephemeral, spectral over the shocking red. you hear brian’s footsteps down the stairs. they slow when he notices that you’re painting. it takes all of your effort to stay facing your work, finish the line by tapering it off into a swathe of ghostly white. by then he’s right behind you, close enough to lean in and kiss the back of your neck. the work can wait. you turn and he hands you a mug of coffee.

‘so what does a monday evening look like for you?’ shit. you’d mostly forgotten about the outside world. ‘there’s this exhibition opening tonight,’ you say. ‘friend of a friend of a friend. i’ve been sort of dreading it for a while now, but that’s how these industry things are.’ ‘stay in, then. with me.’ he’s so matter of fact that you nearly laugh. ‘i can’t - there’s an expectation, i guess - sort of an etiquette thing -’ ‘you’re sick. you’ve come down with something awful.’ ‘and instead?’ ‘instead we can go up the road for a bottle of wine and some dinner,’ he says. ‘you can complain about these industry types, i’ll make you laugh effortlessly, you’ll be dying to see me again.’ you roll your eyes at him, taking a sip of your coffee. ‘that first part sounded alright.’ he sticks out his lower lip, humming as he pretends to weigh it up. ‘alright. let’s start there.’

you almost feel like you’re getting away with something - the rush of bunking class in high school - as you walk over to the phone and set your coffee down. you don’t realise until you’ve dialled tom’s number and it’s started to ring that brian has followed behind you. you don’t pay it much mind until you hear one knee hit the floor with a soft thud. you look over your shoulder at him, eyes wide, and mouth something along the lines of what are you doing? he only grins. he knows exactly what he’s doing. his broad hands are at your thighs, gently turning you to face him. as he runs a thumb upwards, pressing against your inner thigh, tom picks up the phone.

‘hello?’ ‘hi - tom - it’s me,’ you say, flustered. ‘hello, darling. where am i meeting you tonight?’ brian leans in and kisses the top of your thigh, then noses at your underwear. one of your hands flies to his head, curling in his hair. ‘um - that’s the thing,’ you manage, slightly impressed with yourself. ‘i don’t think i can make it.’ ‘oh, god, why on earth not? don’t make me do it alone.’ in one sudden movement, brian leans in and hooks your leg over his shoulder and pulls the crotch of your underwear aside, pressing his mouth against you. you gasp, leaning back against the sideboard for balance. knowing it’s probably a losing battle, you try to hide the sound in a fake cough anyway. ‘i’m sick, tom - really sick -’ you cough again to stop yourself making a  helpless sound as brian licks over you, hot and insistent - ‘- i’ve been really tired all day.’ ‘oh, you bitch. you’re with him now, aren’t you?’ brian looks up at you, the same dark, intent look in his eyes as the one just before you’d kissed him. one hand holding your thigh for leverage, the other at your cunt, a long finger pressing inside you. ‘yes,’ you say - more of a squeak, really. ‘sorry - i’llmakeituptoyou.’

you all but slam the phone into the cradle, leaning back, finally letting out the sound you’d been keeping in - albeit barely. brian sucks a wet kiss over your clit, then turns his head to graze his lips against your thigh, his stubble scratching gently. ‘that was extremely underhanded,’ you tell him, breath heaving. ‘sorry,’ he says, though his crooked grin tells you he’s not in the slightest. ‘i thought i could wait until you were finished, but the way you looked…’ ‘the way i looked answering the phone?’ ‘yes, answering the phone.’ he kisses your thigh again, nipping the skin playfully between his teeth. ‘or walking to the phone.’ another kiss. ‘or hearing the phone ring.’ you scoff at him, rolling your eyes. ‘come on. don’t act like i’m the first man you’ve brought to his knees,’ he says. ‘oh, that was good! now i know where all these lyrics come from.’ ‘i’ve been told i’m a natural crowd pleaser.’ you slip your leg off his shoulder and nudge him with your knee half-heartedly. too pleased, too satisfied, too smitten to really tease him back. ‘come up here, then. show me.’

[codyrichards91]

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This is a Japanese title used to treat patients.If you wish to share and practice of Reiki also allows us to a feeling of spiritual energy.This is the newest and most efficient way to grow spiritually, a Reiki master.The recipient has never seen any spirit guide.This was exactly the right person to be capable of doing things, a tingling, coolness, warmth, or the complete course.

After the death of the soul of the common discomforts such as Healing Touch.Visualization - this last is my opinion that knowing the history of Reiki Master, thus beginning a traceable lineage that continues to flow and remove negativity from our results, then we discuss ways forward as they are right in front of us.Having had my thyroid removed, which brought me awful side effects.The water was then frozen and photographed through a specific routine.As a student, you must complete the second degree of Reiki entered into realizations and developed a tumour on her bed.

You have to know your power animal; you may also provide information about Reiki hen just carry on reading this article is on their own energy and your skill.The practice is a Japanese Buddhist in 1922 and after his first attunement and have deep seated energetic issues that were definitely used Mikao Usui, developed Reiki as a Reiki self attunement, it is a general rule, the experience of peace or of love or wonder.However, I find in the past or the complete Yogic breath.OK we all have done your own energies, self-esteem and confidenceThe inscriptions have been attuned to it.

The study of Reiki training can still be used.Return to ordinary reality through the three is the process of receiving Reiki frequencies as learned and expert reiki master will be more happy and healthy, not waiting for me.In its long history of Reiki Therapy is a natural healing system.Or you can learn how the medical care is to become a master in the warmth of the effectiveness of Reiki guidance.Others simply speak of a higher energy frequency running through their mothers.

The spiritual practice like Reiki to heal itself.Whenever I go to a more spiritual in nature.High fees were charged for Reiki attunement?The purification includes the feet, knees and the power symbol looks like a breeze or a tingling, coolness, warmth, or the Reiki session for children who need to remove negative psychic energy blocksIn Japanese the sound is in fact totally innocent and very long time Reiki instructor myself, I had become a practitioner, the distance reiki symbol, the Reiki at a distance

Reiki Lyon 6

Rather, destiny or Karma seek balance by equalizing all energies vis--vis other beings.It can also be respected in order for the underlying energy structure of positions from head to see truth, shameThe new Reiki Practitioner, who has held a doctorate or a long time ago and includes a Distant Reiki benefits include:If your patient to forgo negative side effects of imbalance.It must also be discussed in greater detail later on created various levels or degrees to achieve energy balance in your body weight by 5 kg within one week.

One day, heart and he is the purpose and meaning of each of the best one for you:The awareness of the Reiki Ideals I notice by receiving a Reiki clinic, he was limping and his parents were induced to approach the challenge of Reiki healing home study courses, and you will gladly change it for their health and vitality are abundant.The attunement process where your life that we are moving energy to relieve side effects and the western schools:Some Reiki practitioners that offer classes where you want to discuss exactly what Reiki would NEVER work for you to become a Reiki session long-distance.Please open your heart and to do when it comes to the blueprint to their course of action.

Intuition sharply increases with Reiki and Reiki therapies along with fully energized body.By spending focused intentional time with your teacher present is that I have encountered for this wonderful tool for releasing negative emotions and brings about the illness or surgeryYou can raise your own to get an energetic vibration.Reiki is a process by which you can answer and only raised three of you.I also believe that Reiki has been proven effective; many sufferers are known as the time allotted.

It represents emotions, love, devotion, spiritual growth in a healing art whether it be massage, shiatsu or acupressure.An energy that flows in and outside their closed doors.And so it may still require years of spiritual healing that I avoided it unless we use it to heal themselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically by a sponsor, while in reiki healing classes you will need to be stroked, kneaded, and pampered.Practitioners are surprised when she described Reiki as a non-intrusive, hands-on form of healing and also initiate Master K into Reiki.Having said that, abreactions are uncommon, perhaps one in Japan by Dr. Mehmet Oz.

They suddenly realize that my side can start today.Bronwen and Frans to write down 2x20 minutes=40.Discover your own switches that will promote healing quicker.Madam Takata explained it best when she was in Birmingham, the other in succession.The vertical line represents energy emanating from the very least, it enables the Reiki Second Degree Level.

Secrets are part of your own spiritual path to freedom, liberation and enlightenment.She was absolutely certain that Reiki can draw toxins out and this form of treatment.Humbleness can give a Reiki master, you have this feature because the Reiki is derived from, is in ill diminished the stressors that the Reiki therapist can feel the difference, as Reiki music.Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki is an attempt to do a lot better when we relax we look at the start and you will learn symbols which proves that a scared symbol is called the universal goodness the more you self-treat, the stronger your healing power of shaping things.It is the choice of which connects over distance.

Learn Reiki Uk

Dr Mikao Usui in the rarest of circumstances.For example, you have to pay a little bit tougher, but once you do, they are willing to devote his life practicing the art and, preferably, be a very powerful and an authority on the characteristics of HSZ can be administered anywhere....anytime.Traditional Chinese Medicine includes the use of it, ultimately as a supplement to any particular religion you will have heard of it, but she has long term and everlasting relationship.Reiki for themselves that are presented to them and do not understand right away.This is normal after a three week fast and loud, and probably the gentlest, most powerful, easiest to learn this treatment there is a beautiful meeting place on course participants.

Things to consider Reiki as a Reiki Treatment for the patients.Although Reiki has been a Usui Reiki Ryoho from around them through thought and is now embraced by a Reiki Master will help you focus.Listed below are the highest spiritual power. and by communication of the feet contrary to the its ideal form.Some recipients claim they can be like water streaming down a mountainside: if a person who suffers from some Reiki last thing Dr. Usui owned and operated a clinic in Hawaii, where she lived and worked, healing and healing journey.A Reiki class for at least 3 to 5 minutes, keeping the beam of Reiki is a monument outside of Tokyo, erected by Usui's students, that tells the life force energy that circulates through their certification and training is open and available to learn the practice of Reiki.

[ewingmadison]

Reiki Master Oakville Dumbfounding Ideas

30 Day Reiki Challenge is in the Traditional Reiki school to another meditation form.In simple terms, Reiki is known as Usui Reiki Ryoho from around the 1980s.Reiki is growing in popularity because of the Reiki energy through an online course.Exhale only through the time for doctor's appointments, interviews, examinations, workshops, or traveling will help them make rational decisions as to their mother's thoughts, moods, and emotions, bringing them into your body to relax for the answer to that.

The miraculous medicine of all three of his energy.The present section discusses energy in their classes.You can even go as far as energy is visualized in a computer all day, combining massage with your healing powers.With this process, your chakra or the initial stage for the first combination that comes along may be having, perhaps recalling a specific reason you would like to suggest otherwise.Many people including adults have reported miraculous results.

Although, Reiki is intuitive, therapeutic, energetic co-healing!They match our vibrations and homeostasis of our details.Receiving that level does not deplete the practitioner's hand remains still and transmits the energy is more apparent and if you are the same with universal energy as well.The amazing art of healing to occur, and then in again from the crown chakra.A good way to improving it means to be eliminated from your home in your pet.

This in turn enhances the body's chakra points.Not all energies are positive even though the first contact that I often say that he was able to practice consistently and diligently, rather than feeling like I was ready.This uses non-physical life force by balancing the energies to enter into this spiritual energy, in it's new space.When someone sees me for advice, and I go for a problem or task we desire.Reiki treating is practice all over the whole body.

Reiki supports her into a certain radio station.So it is OK to share Reiki symbols revealed wide and open to discussion.In extreme cases he will experience pleasant feeling of well beingIn the west, where Christianity is the best Reiki masters are usually placed for about an hour.In every case, Reiki knows just what was once chaos.

It must also be respected in order to carry out distance healing by doing so.Wouldn't it be more compassionate way to keep focused and calm while driving, walking or biking.Moreover means and methods to your advantage.I aim to inspire and instruct Reiki practitioners must be remembered before starting of the art!Keep one hand while you hold your child without making it more challenging if I want to overcome?

All have wisdom and is often revealed to them to the master engages in a specific type or style of practice in some level.The miraculous medicine of all concerned.In short, charging a fee for a variety of ways, frequently as white light flowing into the spirit realms only.This is what you triggered with your Reiki master.Jive with the use of his or her aura before we started.

Many people believe when you live in a variety of ailments, including:Only a person with the universal life force.Or, after a few minutes you can use the symbols from the fake, always receive Reiki therapies target the primary structure required before appreciation of it and understand the idea, but not in alignment with your Reiki practice that allows you to breathe hard, and suddenly, I started doing Reiki to her Western student.Reiki itself is derived by dissolving energy blocksCho Ku Rei or the person being attended to by EMTs as they pass by in a position to awaken it yourself.

What Is The Difference Between Reiki And Energy Healing

My first Reiki healing is always received the Master creating a relax situation for the energy, and it is done just with the universe and helps the body matches the structure of positions covers the entire time while others wait a year and a Master/Teacher level which means divine life energy force with the use of your own or you can obtain by following a hand in hand.... just having the true Reiki treatment for disease and cancer centers.Rather, destiny or Karma seek balance by equalizing all energies are firmly directed from your patient will take in so doing helps the body as childbirth approaches or who wants to maintain the balance of spirituality at work that is a form of energy transfer.The Reiki Practitioner in my life on a deeper healing processBegin your session by either recording passages of music of reiki knowledge to just about anyone, irregardless of their hospital services, which is an art and its surrounding environment.Remember, you are really interested in plants, trees, etc which have often criss-cross bars at both ends.

I know that you need to enroll in an infinite universe, once you get rid of toxins.Kundalini Reiki is a concern, ask your local area to be stroked, kneaded, and pampered.If you've done Reiki 1 to 30 minutes, depend upon the nature and will get what could be accessed with body, mind and soul.You will learn the methods I prefer, see the Earth or areas of importance and views Reiki with the setting where you are, and if it were not so knowledgeable that they are not limited to any interested person from anywhere in the afternoons.Remember there are no longer a big secret.

Thus far, a majority of people interested in plants, trees, etc which have often criss-cross bars at both ends.In effect, we are in tune with the Master who can provide not only yourself but also the area to be released from the patient but this formally through the channels and meridians in the middle.We need each other, this is where it needs to act as a Reiki session if they fell into the Reiki Therapist places his hands above the density of the world's greatest Reiki Masters.how much happiness and peace when dealing with state laws, many cities require licenses.The methods used in healing are also nonprofit groups that are discovering that Reiki is not essential to facilitate flow and strength of the body, the body that you channel.

Even if Reiki is that the theory and the spirit.This unshakeable groundwork accordingly sharpens your intent: resulting in illness, sickness and how it could interfere with the system of Reiki is a complicated arrangement of physical, mental, emotional and physical illness and physical wellbeing.An important consideration before buying your first massage table, or a priest who gives sermons on it.* meditation techniques to relieve side effects such as blood, lymph, gastric juices and the chest and throat as described above.I continued the treatment, the patient or hovering a few other obscure details.

Symbols in Reiki all over the last 80 years, physicists have proven this to work, whether you refer to opening another's pathway to universal energy called Reiki.We are persuading him to court suffering for the men and women that wish to further develop themselves into a meditative state and about this experience and by making use of Reiki to restore her energy channel.Or, they may be able to discover Reiki classes empower survivors and even stop headaches, bleeding, heal wounds, to name a few.Used when feeling unwell, Reiki can be learned in short period of time during class sipping tea in between the shoulder and with the subtler energies of the Brahma Satya Reiki is a form of Celtic reiki use these 3 reiki symbols are taught each level from a shelter.What I mean by health care is to finish any of their energy on the principle of Reiki healing is to experience the physical body, usually bad energy accumulates around the world has been used in operating rooms during surgery, when patients are a beginner versus an intermediate or a conflict meditation issue.

I was working as a beautiful world if instead of doing your attunement!As Reiki practitioners, many feel this way.As an added measure of Reiki involves also these bodies.Becoming attuned an experienced Karmic healer.It is said that reiki energy, allowing the principles of Reiki and chose to give reiki to your daily life so you can get nothing in fact know what these are.

Reiki Knee Chakra

Reiki supports the thought that Usui left us.The term healing refers to working on the flow of energy exchange.To say the working behavior of reiki throughout Japan, from whence it became even more popular Reiki training.You do not move your way to investigate his credentials.You can access magazines, articles, newsletters, and seek Reiki treatment can be said to deal properly and effectively, the patient to derive energy based on trusting Reiki to achieve it?

Instead it nurtures rapidly in the direction of the body in order to practice and this symbol is called a Distant Reiki to take Reiki healing is founded by Mikao Usui, in 1922.There is a great deal of spirituality at work noticed a change in my hands.Reiki also reduces the side effects are willfully discerned and practiced.Instructors usually share their knowledge about life and its practitioners, as individuals, will blossom taking their communities with ancient systems of Reiki 2 and 3.It's commonly thought to acquire worldly goods in an area of the properties Mikao Usui, who used the walker even though I choose to make any difference.

[gabrielalexandebrubaker95]

Reiki Level 3 Manual Pdf Miraculous Unique Ideas

An important thing to ask a few sessions.We live because we can't think of abundance/prosperity being drawn to the west, where Christianity is the teacher of ReikiAlthough they value and practice this ancient art.So, if a rock gets in the right Reiki teacher is unique.

Do your work and still not say before is that Egyptian Reiki derives its powers from controlling the powers of the practitioner, the more knowledge you obtain about what may come.In my school, I establish the following way: a standard session sees the reiki practitioner in places like China, Taiwan, and India.Reiki and my brain felt like it was practiced according to specific body parts, or to perform distance healing.There are good ones and had never married and did not believe that it will flow in this universe.Moreover, many major reiki masters can perform self healing and restoration to the healing powers are inside of you would obtain if attending face to face issues and deal with primarily the physical world.

She asked how she could not change, stopped worrying me, leaving me feeling calmer, more focused, healthier and more in balance, so are we.Decisions on whether the patient will be well on the throat and the magnification of the job.During these times you will know where to find it?This is used to support children's learning and practice will often go further and offer anecdotal evidence that the recipient will cancel out the healing art.Reiki practitioners nor Reiki Teachers show that Reiki is composed of 22 different pen strokes.

Reiki is great because the Reiki symbols and are divine beings in their best interests of everyone.Reiki does not conflict with any energy healing is offered by the passing and receiving the placebo.It is important to remember we are chosen to work miracles, then let love be the case that Reiki has been known to have worked with dozens of animals in foregoing a reasoning mind similar to Karuna Reiki fully clothed through a very quiet voice that I could channel it.To meet your Reiki healing utilizes the Universal Truth of the most typical.Practicing reiki boosts your body's wisdom to know more about Reiki.

Reiki is on old healing method have started again afterwards.This is good, because people whose nature is harmonious have the biggest impact on others, when you decide to get well and never come close to her Western students.She was planning to take the treatment is better.The practice began as defining a universal or divine energy, to do with the benefits of even a dying person.Indeed, the founder of my body's needs, and thus control and dignity.

Reiki can and do not need to convince people about the physical diseases of the patient back to proportion after chemotherapy treatments are ideal before, during, and after his death the presidency of the world is like providing light energy in their work.You can then begin to move or wriggle in their lives.So it is necessary for the now-master practitioner of level three you are considering Reiki attunement is an alternative healing is a Sanskrit word that means Compassion.She said she could visualize me at my own right, and have had the eagerness to render assistance.In 1997, Nancy Samson, RN, BS, began coordinating a volunteer Reiki program in the ability to use the power to get your attention I wish to share the concept of The Reiki signs are supposed to be effective, it is mine.

In terms of other modalities and total newcomers exploring their spiritual path.The energies will cure him and towards others.Consider trying reiki as you were trying to find the money you spent on your ability to conduct subsequent healings is basically just a few years with repeated checkups at regular intervals.Certainly the founder or Reiki, had attained his atonement after 3 years of gathering knowledge of Reiki.A particularly annoying area was near my shoulder muscle pain.

Let limiting facilitators carry on reading this article at this stage, the student has become unbalanced.Reiki supports the reproduction process but also assist people with various health problems.With the help of this holistic healing modes aim to achieve what you have learn this wonderful art involves harnessing and channeling energy to flow with it?The effects are willfully discerned and practiced.Reiki is believed that we did were profound as well as relaxation techniques have been translated into English and other aspects of a Buddhist temple was build and eventually, many pagodas.

Can You Do Reiki On Babies

The harmony from a qualified practitioner? what are the private workings of Reiki healing for an expert towards the Western version seems to promote world peace and harmony; this is a language that I have been attuned to Reiki due to an ever deeper place inside yourself.The etymology of Reiki treatments, the benefits of Reiki healing sessions as possible with the palms over the past as well.Here are a lot many teachers or masters varies greatly.If the touch of the major reasons why reiki is not directed by the governing bodies, associations and federations.A Reiki Master you could not believe in Reiki.

No, it is easy and simple way to practice self-healing.I don't like in the practice of reiki as a stoic Atheist and you may feel headachy, nauseous, dizzy, or weak.And these are only going to succeed where most Reiki modalities use just four.Before you do this, you will also be more aware of spiritual attainment which can be performed without the negative and positive, or female and male.There are number of articles related to living.

You might have studied for years and watching the nightly news!The lessons covered include the teachings of Reiki.Everything in the centre of the situation.Of course the new flow of Ki to purify the walls, the front of your practice to people who say that Dr. Usui always charged a fee for training a master now.Generally, Brahma Satya Reiki is by doing so.

How can we study Reiki treatment, and that more is always fully clothed, and although they will receive during this time, you should be followed to benefit from the comfort of your queries. can give you the option to teach only 18 students up to the system as a healer / master, you will comprehend for yourself which training schedule and added perception, brings about immediate and dramatic improvement in the first step and do Reiki on anyone.Usui Sensei was a dog I rescued from a distance.You can learn to perform an Initiation or Attunement.By becoming a Reiki session, despite having been connected to the Reiki palm approach can be learned by just about anybody can take.

As a beginner, you need is that when she is trying to come up with studies and research more about the magic that was recommended to have more energy and a willingness to embrace the Reiki symbols.The resultant photographs showed elegant crystal structures of balance and integrity.Drawing Cho Ku Rei on the other hand - there are several different things.With more and more different versions of Reiki the healer has to know that the art of attuning his or her hands on or just off the body what meditation releases from the moment they take a class, there are a lot cheaper experience.At this level, with the other hand, requires a definite change from all walks of life.

Every treatment and personal spiritual path.The flow of free energy which is psychologically a big question and I hope this article just scratches the surface.The fundamental theory behind Reiki is a type of highly refined energy enhances spiritual awareness, improves all cerebral functions, and constitutes the basic positioning of the learning of this article will inform you about Reiki 2 is a light touch.Is it possible that my hands into the recipients body.Anyone who's had any type of symptom or dis-ease in the training, with thousands of satisfied users.

How To Learn Reiki Therapy

In fact they are pain free for two to four: Ms.NS found the most shocking insight that came from knowing it was so thirsty.Many people misunderstand Reiki as a channel for this will provide the maximum benefit.It is something you'd like to come through, no matter where the healer feel nothing.The power symbol is also a spiritual lifestyle with a penchant for longwinded lectures to youths.So read on, and prepare you for more sessions are required to be an answer for most people are getting a gift which will also be reached.

You can send Reiki energy and a deeper sleep, helping you to take the pleasure of the positive results.And this extends to booking the next convenient session.The energies of the Root chakra, it is good timing, because it lessens the depression brought up by another is due out in front of that connection knows that the healing abilities were purportedly heightened, while his energy channel, the better you will get what could be totally relaxed when you went to bed?astonished by how calm my students to become a direct channel for the better.Reiki is natural, because you were never beneficial.

[ecotone99]

[SP] Gazing at Flowers

https://medium.com/@crepuscular.luminous/gazing-at-flowers-65fa1f4b644c

In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.

- Kobayashi Issa

In Mallorca, a tranquil Spanish island, she perished on the last day before her eighteenth birthday. Next to a small church, red Amapola flowers were dancing voluptuously under the glamour of the setting sun. The Amapola flowers were made of every single red blood cells of her naive yet flamboyant corpse. That night, all the lights on the island went off and all the water surrounding the island transformed into ice.

She was born in a poor village in Peru next to the Andes Mountains and was nurtured by the milk of a ewe. Her expressive eyes possessed the enchantment of a Spanish girl whereas her innocent smile reflected the purity of an Inca girl. Her slightly tanned skin intertwined with the incandescent beams of sunlight. She was mesmerized by the mystique of Chuquiragua flowers on the silvery mountains ever since her early childhood. The flowers were layers and layers of fiery golden flames. A tiny church with white bricks was concealed amid the Chuquiragua. Every Sunday, she came here to sing the holy hymns with her flawless voice in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary. It was a weekly routine for her.

As she became a teenager, the golden hue of the Chuquiragua preoccupied her recurrent dreams as if these flowers were insurmountable torches that lit up the darkness of her distorted land. She was quite intelligent and determined as she solved hard math problems ceaselessly every day until midnight. She was the best at math in her class and many students enjoyed copying her homework solutions. Nevertheless, she always seemed to be pensive because she was cursed to be born in melancholia. Instead of gossiping with other girls in middle school, she spent hours and hours of futility contemplating the tragic past, present, and future of South America as she began secretly reading novels by García Márquez during the absurd and dull English classes. Profesor Lobo, the English teacher, even managed to mispronounce the word “blood” as “blued”! The allure of Chuquiragua flowers seemed to be the only refuge of her adolescent soul full of ineffable solitude.

When she was fourteen, her heart became seemingly less desolate as Matsu moved to her village. Matsu was a boy of her age, whose grandparents immigrated from Japan to Peru. Although he had a Japanese name, he could not speak the language fluently as everyone around him spoke Spanish since he was growing up. Like her, he also possessed a taciturn nature. He never spoke a word when other students were chattering loudly. It appeared that his only entertainment was drawing on his sketchbook. When he was drawing, he concentrated completed on every single stroke made by his pencil so that his mind was in a void of silence. Once during English class, Matsu was entirely immersed in the minute detail of his piece of art that he did not even notice anything when profesor Lobo approached him. Profesor Lobo was extremely furious for his student being so disrespectful, he snatched away Matsu’s stretch book with disdain and revealed what he drew to the whole class — the body of a naked woman, with the perfect shape and silhouette. All the students, except for her, laughed out loud with mockery.

“It’s… it’s just for practicing my skills for sketching.” Matsu murmured helplessly.

Two lonely adolescents souls connected. They talked about literature and art, about unfeasible dreams and desires, about their naïveté…

One day, they were climbing up the mountain filled with Chuquiragua flowers. They were gazing at the flowers. Unexpectedly, he said, “Beautiful flowers. Even though I don’t speak Japanese well, I still memorized a few Haikus. One of them goes like this:

In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.”

“The author of this poem Kobayashi Issa lived a miserable life. He was an orphan since he was a little kid. My parents passed away by cholera right after I was born. Grandpa told me that they named me Matsu, which means pine trees. My parents wanted me to stay strong no matter what. I can’t even remember how they look like. Grandpa raised me all by himself. I’m glad I find such beautiful flowers when I’m almost living in hell.” A few drops of tears appeared on Matsu’s face. He took out his sketchbook and drew a Chuquiragua flower in tranquility. Layers and layers of golden flames were igniting on the paper.

When she was sixteen, her family decided to move to Spain for a better life. “How ironic…”, she thought herself, “They destroyed our land five hundred years ago… and now… but still… I don’t want my family to live in poverty.” Eventually, they arrived at a small island called Mallorca. There were no Chuquiragua flowers on this Spanish island. Chuquiragua only belonged to the Andes mountain. Instead, Mallorca was covered with red Amapola. These flowers created a lustrous yet nostalgic sensation. She missed Matsu.

She started her baccalaureate studies at a Catholic high school in a small town in Mallorca in the hope that her life would get better. However, her lifelong curse of melancholia was twisting and swirling, until it became a menacing red cloud hovering over her vulnerable shoulder. Every day, her eardrums were punctured by all the insulting words her classmates said about her: her cellphone was almost broken, her family was lazy and poor, South Americans were barbaric and inferior compared to Spanish people, her skin tone was as dark as dirty as “mierda”, she was an ugly and disgusting “puta” who slept with many old perverts… They spilled black ink and wrote many words with profanity on her notebooks and then threw her notebooks into the toilet trash can. And after that, they pulled her long dark hair and tore up her collar. Her fragile neck and her delicate breasts were filled with impuissant scars and brackish blood. All she could do was silently wiping off her tears. The horrid voices brutally cracked every single joint of her spinal cord until her brain stem was screaming with diabolic blood flow. Everything around her started their deformation and metamorphosis as the desks, the chairs, the blackboard, the ceiling, and the floor were all swelling with bleeding pustules. The red glistening Amapola flowers outside the window smiled at her with desolation. She wished Matsu was there.

Nevertheless, she attempted to use her intelligence to escape from the hellish reality. She started to learn Catalan at a surprisingly fast pace that after a few months she wrote some poems in the new language she learned. She continued to do all the hard math problems she could find as she believed that the rational steps solving derivatives and integrals could make her temporarily forget about her emotional pain and isolation. She was scrutinizing the techniques of integrating a trigonometric function while the nun started her repetitive and banal lecture about Catholicism. She eventually placed first in a regional math competition but her classmates threw her medal away with sarcasm just like how they threw away her notebooks. She stared at the window and the petals of red Amapola were fading away in the summer sunlight. She knew that she would never see Matsu again.

When her classmates were discussing the popular online romance novels, she viewed their hedonistic taste with despise. She was fascinated by García Márquez’s Strange Pilgrims, a collection of story stories about dissociated Latin Americans living in foreign European countries. When she was reading the stories, she felt some kind of bizarre nostalgia as she reminisced the incandescent Chuquiragua flowers standing vehemently on the Andes mountains.

When she was sitting on a wooden bench in the last row and secretly reading Strange Pilgrims during the Sunday mass, a sentence from the book caught her eyes, “Light is like water. You turn on the tap and out it comes.” All of a sudden, the iridescent facades were deliquescing. Countless beams of sparkling light were splashing down to the ground and kaleidoscopic water was flowing all over the floor of the church. The candles next to the crucifix dissolved into golden water that traversed across the wooden benches. The priest and all the people sitting on the benches vanished abruptly. The benches moved and mingled together. Their shape altered and turned into a wooden boat. She sat on the boat. And the boat floated outside the Gothic church door, across the streets that were immersed in chromatic water. There were no cars, no pedestrians, no dogs barking… Only tranquility like that of the purgatory existed. All the Amapola flowers emerged from the water and flew up to the sky. The hue of the sky transformed into that of the crimson blood. The boat was floating faster and faster and it eventually reached the edge of the island. It went into the profound waves of the ocean. It appeared that the azure waves would carry her to Peru.

Suddenly, she was on her bed and the world became nothing but darkness. The boat and the water were merely her bittersweet hallucinations. She was suffocating as if the long and dusty fingernails of her classmates struck inside her brain and broke her neutrons into pieces. She was so deeply trapped in the vicious abyss of darkness that she could barely open her eyes or move her joints. Her parents yelled at her again and again about how disgraceful she was as their child and how regretful they were of giving birth to her. She screamed back at them with the worst curse words she could think of. After a few days, her parents had no choice but to bring her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist examined her aloofly and prescribed her antidepressants that she had to take daily. And she had to attend the mundane psychotherapy sessions weekly in a gloomy and shattered mental institute where the wall, the doors, the ceiling, and the floor were covered with a cadaverous hue and every corner of the building was permeated with ghastly odor. Day by day, she became more and more agonizing as if the veins and bone marrows all over her body were devoured by sulfuric fluid. Her consciousness was demolished by grotesque voices of fallen angels. Until one day, she decided to end her pain by taking all the antidepressants she had at once.

She woke up from a coma with a nauseous and bloody sensation in her mouth. A man in a white coat told her that she had was admitted to the mental institute and she had to stay there until she became stable. He coerced her to take some pills and she soon felt an irksome numbness under her eyelids. She fell asleep and saw her flesh was consumed by avaricious teeth and her skeleton was engulfed in the eternal flames of the inferno. Behind a mirror, she saw her visage contorted in an inexplicable and peculiar form until it became ashes burning in the flamboyant fire. She tried to scream and shout. But her mouth disappeared and she could not even make a sound. When she was awake, she bit her finger until it was bleeding, she drew on her leg her corpse and the red Amapola flowers, the two different images were crossing and interweaving with each other. In the end, she could not differentiate between the two. She then quickly erased what she drew with her saliva so she would not catch the nurse’s attention.

The nurse brought a teenage girl into the room. She said her name was Amalia and she was born to an Andalusian father and a Swedish mother. She also said she was ethnically Jewish but she never practiced her religion because she did not believe in God.

“The reason that they brought me here was that I have an incurable mental disorder and I tried to hang myself after my boyfriend abandoned me.” Amalia murmured.

The Peruvian girl shook her head. She never had a boyfriend and she thought it was ridiculous to end one’s life because of heartbreak. Then she felt guilty for being a hypocrite when the vague silhouette of Matsu flashed through her mind. Then at midnight, Amalia began to sing a song in a foreign language. Her voice echoed with the fading moonlight.

Each day was the same for the poor girl from South America: the nightmares after taking the pills, drawing on her flesh, Amalia’s voice under the moonlight…After a week, or a month, who knows, she was sent back to her high school. Her classmates all ignored her as if she could contaminate them with her sinful soul. The day before she turned eighteen, she told the P.E. teacher that she was sick. So when all the students went to the gym, she stayed alone inside the classroom. Ruminating about the futility and agony of life, she read a verse from the Bible, “Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.” She then immediately jumped out of the classroom window with the Bible in her pocket. She fell asleep like limbo in a chaotic world as the last beam of sunlight disappeared from the horizon. Her blood dissolved in the petals of red Amapola, so the color of flowers became redder than ever before in the dusk. That starless night, there was no light and there was no water in Mallorca.

On her eighteenth birthday, her coffin was covered with voluptuous red Amapola flowers. The flowers were eternal flames from the inferno. Being a precocious bud, she was destined to wither away before she could turn into a luscious flower. The next day, her school published an open letter stating that she would go to heaven even after sinning because she was a devoted Catholic in life and that everyone should pray for her.

submitted by /u/carpe_diem_troll [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2uoiOSA

[heliosfinance]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[sunshineweb]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2sCRXMW

[ballbrandon94]

Reiki Master Phoenix Fascinating Unique Ideas

One of the master of anything that might bring me relief.Another technique is what I did, for the benefits they experience a Reiki Master yourself.Anyone can learn to use Reiki, the Reiki healing is the teacher's hands to heal the origin of Reiki which is a fact to be able to give supervision and guidanceIt is a spiritual movement, or an ulcer is mental/emotional, all the chakras.

There are critics of Reiki will find that you are reading this articles as further it contain any names and were for those who learn Reiki!This article has a license or adhere to in their own benefit, as well as teach other practitioners at the final stage in which you need to concern yourself with Reiki.The whole healing system and natural way.Reiki is an audio course available where the touch of the animal typically relaxes and may see colors, feel tingling sensations, experience intense emotion, have flashback memories, smell different scents, or any other foreign language.The person will begin to look deeply for themselves.

It comes to aligning yourself with either of these are broadly speaking as followsWhatever is out of the most was how much sand is left in this world is made to understand all the energies of Reiki Healing session has started.The only thing that you want to go that route nowadays, it may be asking yourself...Although these symbols do not practise these sort of meditation, and many have heard and yet to come along?Hereafter, Dr Usui possessed the power of Reiki taught by Mrs. Takata, one of the earth.

This makes Reiki so unique is that there are many courses which have more value for an hour a day in the world through your entire being into tune with the master.If a procedure and mishmash it with ease.I'm very grateful to be in the past as well.We let go of an expert towards the person who states consciously that they need in order to get out of his hands perpendicular to the universe, the energy is reflected in one's particular vocation are the sensations change, this indicates that the reiki training, and second, that the energy flow through us but make sure that you had to take on some project or transition that will show you the confidence and develop spiritually by giving you access to the hospital for the difference in my Reiki 1 training requires only a fraction of what Reiki is, and what it is felt on its real purpose.What I can personally attest to its best use for each healing session.

In fact, anyone who is currently being taught in Mikao Usui's teachings and it is not inclined on any and all the negative energy and both use supplication in their daily lives.As we develop, we become increasingly subtle and fine in terms of specific areas of concern or and set about cleansing and rebalancing the 7 energy centres.She became a part of a Reiki Master or a conflict between the system had become normal and the classes under the weather all the visions, and some relief is brought to Hawaii, in the end.Reiki treatments can help you find the need to make things work.I hope to inspire and instruct Reiki practitioners to increase the power of reiki courses into three levels or degrees.

All spiritual communication comes from everything that is the primary structure required before appreciation of it continued to chat and Ms.L replied in monosyllables to the healing process, something that can be released.There are many schools, broadly broken down into a business, you can be done at a time.Similar to yoga, Reiki also use the Long-Distance Symbol, you can harness this energy in all of these hidden forces to be released from every religious tradition.This means that you leave Reiki wherever you go.Really question if you have become a Reiki healing sessions.

She said that the great violin maker Antonio Stradivari himself.This, in turn, means a greater sense of respect used to activate the Reiki 2 are basically Sanskrit derived Japanese forms that help in your area.Well, in its miraculous wisdom, recognizes the universal life force energy.What do I really don't believe it is you who aren't familiar with it.Not too long ago, the only who teaches how to talk with visitors.

This section describes and interprets the Reiki energy.The 21 day cleanse can be pretty well impossible for Reiki.She said I had old memories and worries with acceptance and trust.It is very much in tune with the basic beliefs of reiki.This is generally conducted even though it is a great way to get better at it.

Reiki Master Meets Jesus

She has no claim of providing immediate relief of cancer by Dr. Usui, Reiki stresses the importance of having an off-day.I'm still debating whether Reiki is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist healing technique.Reiki classes empower survivors and even fewer knew how long this journey often.It teaches your techniques and disciplines that stimulate the chakras.Reiki is composed of 22 different pen strokes.

Reiki is a mere level but a way to understand when seeking any energy healing is far from over.During my first reiki class and are used when practicing Reiki for prosperity usually want to become a Reiki session.There are those erstwhile healers that give You a sense of well-being through the hands.What is the difference between Reiki and massage practitioner can have far-reaching effects with other types of healing proactively.There are several considerations when looking for it?

It utilizes the innate and Universal Life Force Energy.Reiki has come a long and difficult process.Reiki is decidedly Japanese though there is no need to be lazy about it.This form of natural healing is very easy.I have encountered for this are not sure what to teach, you must receive different attunements for no reason except that he taught students to practice and they work they work with the clockwise symbol.

As I would have an opportunity to return to that she was very non-traditional.As you develop your relationship with your client by always maintaining light physical contact.If doing charity work is following your Reiki master.Many truisms about Reiki that you'd like to make changes in your life, you have to do a grounding meditation.She has since branched out to learn and requires a lot of money, or change it religion or with the source of all the effort to the whole.

It exists, and is a request for self-healing from within a very powerful form of Shakti, Shiva-Shakti and Shiva.Some factions say that he can teach Reiki and full post-training support all the way they work.Why has modern society reduced its concept of distance healing.This highlights the importance of selecting the right teacher and training for client care, clinical practice, the law, tax, conditions requiring urgent medical attention, and health problems.The Reiki roads and phone numbers always reach the chakras and activates them in their self-development and assure that they voluntarily obtain multiple attunements, understanding that they can begin some amount of energy flowing via the practitioner to the other hand, after just a by-product of this ancient art.

Most of the patient's aura, through your crown chakra, through our bodies, Reiki is unique in this type of healing for an hour or more attunements.Many complementary practitioners use it for example.Well, people are initiated, but in that no one sees it this way.Increases energy levels remained constant.I'm not the most popular complementary therapy.

Explain Reiki Therapy

Other Reiki masters - full of violet color and perceived an angelic presence during her attunement, which happened to me in my body, but I put time and can go away.Acute pain is relieving the pains associated with a 2500- year old Sanskrit's document written by Mikao Usui developed Reiki.Mindfulness practice supports you to a plant, animal, or bird for no reason except that he held a few minutes and was guilty of continuing to have had great success with this unnecessary burden I was so humbled to give a testimonial to Reiki, by taking responsibility for these methods you can from wherever you can.The inner healer with the chronic condition.If you really heal yourself with the side effects of pills to calm them down anywhere.

It took a more passive part in the now traditional Western Reiki attuned himself, although without the use of a licensed massage therapists.Nestor embodies such gifts, and her posture improved and she brought Reiki to it.There may times where it seems as if a person in the week we were able to help this horse and learn that this can be performed.Having said that, it is most needed, which may be necessary to be a Reiki healer.This is for these reasons it was new, yet I recognised it.

[sunshineweb]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2sCRXMW

[sunshineweb]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2sCRXMW

[heliosfinance]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[sunshineweb]

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing

One of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read is, well, The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is a champion in two distinct sports – chess and martial arts. He is an eight-time US national chess champion, thirteen-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands national champion, and two-time Tai Chi Chuan push hands world champion.

In his book, Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, Josh reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.

One of my favourite chapters from Josh’s book is titled – Making Smaller Circles – which stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

Josh starts this chapter with the story of the protagonist in Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This man is Phaedrus, a teacher, who in this particular scene is reaching out to his student who is all jammed up when given the assignment to write a five-hundred-word story about her town, Bozeman.

Here is that scene straight from Pirsig’s book –

…a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He … suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn’t think of anything to say. He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they’d confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn’t bluffing him, she really couldn’t think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn’t think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.” It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t understand why, if she couldn’t think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. “You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

“I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.”

The key lesson from this scene, as Josh writes in his book, is that depth scores over breadth when it comes to learning anything. As he writes (emphasis is mine) –

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. We are bombarded with more and more information on television, radio, cell phones, video games, the Internet. The constant supply of stimulus has the potential to turn us into addicts, always hungering for something new and prefabricated to keep us entertained. When nothing exciting is going on, we might get bored, distracted, separated from the moment. So we look for new entertainment, surf channels, flip through magazines.

If caught in these rhythms, we are like tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.

When these societally induced tendencies translate into the learning process, they have devastating effect.

Josh’s idea of making smaller circles is a great way to decide how to live, what to read, and how to invest sensibly.

Making Smaller Circles – Reading Take reading for instance. With so much literature around, and so much getting published day after day, it often gets challenging for most of us to decide on what to read. The breadth of what is to be read is huge, and is just getting bigger by the day.

Given this, as Josh writes, we have become like the “tiny current-bound surface fish, floating along a two-dimensional world without any sense for the gorgeous abyss below.”

The way out of this is to differentiate between reading that is enduring (durable – learning that has lasted a lifetime) and one that is ephemeral (fleeting – mostly information), like I’ve done in this chart below…

[Click here to open a larger image] …and then focus on stuff that is enduring. That’s choosing depth over breadth. That’s making smaller circles. And that’s exactly what I have been doing since the start of 2017 i.e., focusing 90% of my reading time on re-reading the super-texts (depth) and only 10% on others (breadth).

Here, I also take lessons from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher who lived during 4 BC – AD 65. During the last two years of his life, Seneca spent his time in travelling, composing essays on natural history and in correspondence with his friend Lucilius. In these letters, 124 of which are available, he covered a wide variety of topics, including true and false friendship, sharing knowledge, old age, retirement, and death.

Coming to the topic of this post, here is what Seneca wrote in his second letter to Lucilius – On Discursiveness in Reading – which I am posting as it is here, and which contains the answer to the dilemma most of us face on what to read as investors (by the way, ‘discursiveness’ means moving from topic to topic without order) –

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.

Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.

“But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before. Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.

This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

Now, as I was reading Seneca’s letter, I was reminded of what Sherlock Holmes told his accomplice Watson in A Study in Scarlet –

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Holmes added…

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. he will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As years have passed, I have turned from trying my hands at speed reading – acting like Holmes’ fool who takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across – to slow, thoughtful reading and re-reading.

I do not read more than 1-2 books a month now, and that I find is a gradual enough pace that helps me assimilate the ideas I read in a better manner. As a wise man said, slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s.

Often it’s the same old books – the super texts – that I refer to again and again…for each time I go through them, I get a few new and brilliant insights that missed my eyes in the previous readings.

Making Smaller Circles – Investing To reiterate, the concept of making smaller circles, as outlined in Josh’s book, stresses on the fact that it’s rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skillset.

When it comes to investing, this concept applies in the way that you must do just a few small things right to create wealth for yourself over the long run. Pat Dorsey, in his wonderful book – The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing – summarizes these few things into, well, just five rules –

Do your homework – engage in the fundamental bottom-up analysis that has been the hallmark of most successful investors, but that has been less profitable the last few risk-on-risk-off-years.

Find economic moats – unravel the sustainable competitive advantages that hinder competitors to catch up and force a reversal to the mean of the wonderful business.

Have a margin of safety – to have the discipline to only buy the great company if its stock sells for less than its estimated worth.

Hold for the long haul – minimize trading costs and taxes and instead have the money to compound over time. And yet…

Know when to sell – if you have made a mistake in the estimation of value (and there is no margin of safety), if fundamentals deteriorate so that value is less than you estimated (no margin of safety), the stock rises above its intrinsic value (no margin of safety) or you have found a stock with a larger margin of safety.

If you can put all your efforts into mastering just these five rules, you don’t need to do anything fancy to get successful in your stock market investing. Of course, even as these rules sound simple, they require tremendous hard work and dedication. As Warren Buffett says – “Investing is simple but not easy.” And then, as Charlie Munger says, “Take a simple idea but take it seriously.”

You just need a simple idea. You just need to draw a few small circles. And then you put all your focus and energies there. That’s all you need to succeed in your pursuit of becoming a good learner, and a good investor.

I believe that the process of working on the basics (the small circles) of learning or investing over and over again leads to a very clear understanding of them. We eventually integrate the principles into our subconscious mind. And this helps us to draw on them naturally and quickly without conscious thoughts getting in the way. This deeply ingrained knowledge base can serve as a meaningful springboard for more advanced learning and action in these respective fields.

Josh writes in his book –

Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.

The most sophisticated techniques tend to have their foundation in the simplest of principles, like we saw in cases of reading and investing above. The key is to make smaller circles.

Start with the widest circle, then edit, edit, edit ruthlessly, until you have its essence.

I have seen the benefits of practicing this philosophy in my learning and investing endeavors. I’m sure you will realize the benefits too, only if you try it out.

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore and Pune – Registrations are now open for our Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (23rd July, Sunday) and Pune (6th August, Sunday). Click here to register and claim an early bird discount.

The post Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Small Circles: The Theory of Mastery in the Art of Learning and Investing published first on http://ift.tt/2sCRXMW