Your life is exactly like the stock market. Let the graph represent the progress in your life. When the S&P500 hits new highs, everything is great, your pension, your investments are great. You are at the peak of health, life is going well, your relationships are fantastic, you have control of your life, the world likes you. It is all good from here on out.
When the S&P500 crashes, the economy is in shambles, you’ve lost your job, your partner has dumped you, your cat doesn’t like you anymore, your investments are worth more as toilet paper and your house plants wilt in your presence. It will never end, the graph keeps going down!!
So how is the stock market applicable to my life?
If you look at a graph of an index say the S&P500 over a week period, its absolute chaos, its up, down, left, right, every hour of every day. There is no predictability to it at all! Some days are great, some are downright awful.
The magic happens when you view the graph at the maximum time period possible. Then its suddenly equatable more to your life. When you look at the chart of the S&P500 over a 50 year period, the overall trend is up. Like your life there are ups and downs along with a few recessions like the death of a loved one, ill health, or unexpected shocks that life will throw at you.
When you look at the chart over a 50 year period, you have your ups and downs, no day is perfect. But with the right focus you can make each day a little bit better. In the pursuit of self development, each day will be a little bit better by your own metrics. Be it increased skills, knowledge, salary, happiness. The beauty is that compound interest also comes into effect just like your earnings.
When you look at life over such a large period suddenly that week long struggle at work with the endless late nights last year is something more of a distant memory, no longer having an effect on your life. When you are stuck in the day-to-day of life its hard to take a step back and look at how high you have climbed over the past week, month, years, and decades. Sometimes you have to reflect on yourself, read your old blogs, journal entries, look at old pictures, or ask someone you know to get a real idea of the full picture.
As your level of knowledge, skills, and salary increases the growth begins to compound more and more. Starting out doing anything new is a daunting task, and of course your remuneration is reflective of that. As you grow everything increases, and like the stock market time in the market compounds the levels of return. The shocks in the short term are devastating but after months, 1 year, 5 years, you can look back and see that you have surpassed the lows and gone to new highs.
When I reflect back on my life, I can now look at how much I have grown over the last decade, the increases in my knowledge, skills, and how my remuneration has increased to suit.
The important thing to to seek the long term, and plan for the future. In the day-to-day it can be too chaotic to not see the forest for the trees. You simply have to keep planning and keep going.
Until next time
Faz