“Throw me a pop up.” Those were my last words of my very first pee-wee league baseball practice. My friend Michael Taylor obliged, but the ball came down out of the blinding sun and hit me right in the mouth. It busted my lip and broke off one of my front teeth. I was seven years old. Luckily my dad was a dentist and took care of me while my mom shed a few tears. Back then the players were insured for things like that. My dad took the money from the claim and bought a few shares of a blue chip stock for me. That was my first lesson in investing.
He was also a rancher. When I was nine we were driving by a pasture where all the cows were skinny. He said, “Those cows have high trough disease.” I asked what that meant. He said they don’t have enough to eat. Then he gave me my second lesson in investing. He said, “You can’t starve a profit into an animal.”
There are lots of different types of investing. They all have one thing in common. Action is taken now in hopes of reaping rewards in the future. One of my best investments was buying the book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale for $2.75 in 1983. In it I learned the dividends paid from positive self talk.
His book made sense to me because negative thoughts are like trying to starve a profit into myself. It doesn’t work. I established the positive self talk habit quickly and have been doing so ever since. When a challenge comes along my self-talk is optimistic, such as “I’ve got this.” Sometimes things aren’t the way I’d like them to be. However, I avoid thoughts like, that’s just my luck or I knew that was going to happen. Those starve my spirit. I also do my best to be objective with myself, as if I were speaking to a good friend who wants to hear the truth.
In my last post, Making Life Easier and Better, I talked about the wonderful effects of having a healthy vagus nerve and how easy it is to influence in a positive way. A small amount of effort and time pays huge dividends, like picking a great stock. Except this is much more important because it helps me physically, mentally, and emotionally. That along with positive self-talk are two of my most important assets. I’m investing in my relationship with myself which helps another important investment, my relationship with others. A major long term physiological study was done in America. The findings basically said, tell me the quality of your relationships and I’ll tell you the quality of your life.
It would be easier to neglect/starve these parts of my life, but that wouldn’t be profitable. Instead I make valuable investments in these key areas. Throughout history it’s been said in a variety of different ways that you reap what you sow. My Dad made that lesson come alive for me and it’s made a huge difference in my life. At his funeral my great friend Bill quoted one of Dad’s favorite sayings, “The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” Nothing more complicated than perception.
May you have enough today, one moment at a time.
Let your vagus nerve help.
THIS HELPED ME 