Life about additions, substractions
Sheldon Kopp, born on March 29, 1929 and who died on March 29, 1999, was a fine psychotherapist and author, who influenced the world greatly with his sense of understanding of how life should be lived, or at least, what will make you happy if you understood very well, the science of living.
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Even though Kopp is famously noted for this quote: "All of the significant battles are waged within the self", I’d rather choose his words: “We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power and partial knowledge. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. Yet we are responsible for everything we do”, as my favourite among the lot l have read from him.
Yes, we will never be in the position of having full knowledge of every given situation before applying ourselves to finding the right solutions for it. Meaning, also that, we often make decisions without knowing all that we need to know.
Even science struggles with the exact “nature” of things. Take the case of the surgeon who is to perform a surgical procedure on the brain for example.
To ensure that the risk associated with the procedure was well contained and rightly assessed, he would have a computed tomography (CT) scan done to make detailed pictures of the “structure” to be tackled, have blood tests done to ascertain normal and abnormal patterns within the body that could possibly aid or affect the procedure negatively; even urine test when necessary is done, as well as simple tests like taking a reading of the blood pressure level, blood sugar level, are all done.
The fine details are checked by the surgeon, with simple “walk-through” assessments detailed out to ensure a successful end to the surgical procedure, and yet, in most cases, the professional would conclude his or her assessment of the patient without a 100 per cent assurance to the patient or the guardian.
Conclusions along the line of “We are happy to perform this procedure as we have taken all the necessary precautions, however, much will also depend on what we actually find when we open you up. But you should be fine, we believe”. Yes, the team is always ready for such life threatening procedures!
So with all the necessary precautions taken, why would there not be a 100 per cent assurance from the surgeon? Well, the degree of risk, the surgeon knows, even if it was estimated at 5 per cent was still a significant risk.
Anaesthesia, for example, in itself is a significant risk part of the procedure, which the surgeon cannot always say he or she has an absolute control over its application and effects on the patient.
What works well, in this scenario, and in fact in most of the life events that we have become accustomed to, is to be able to work out the probabilities of the occurrence of a given event, and the rest becomes a hopeful success.
This is how nature rolls with us - and the field of finance is never spared this risk and uncertainty in decision making. And, therefore, what we need to understand generally in life, for us to have a life of security, happiness and success is to be able to work out probabilities so that we don’t worry about unlikely events and be surprised by those that are likely.
Yes, life is about additions and subtractions, and therefore if you can’t add and subtract you will make bad choices!
Hence, Kopp cautions us to be ready to live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge, even though we are still responsible for our actions.
In the field of finance we are constantly reminded of the devastating effects, sometimes, of risk and uncertainty through market turbulence and the likes.
We have currency markets moving awfully against us, surprisingly with all the necessary indicators failing to spot the anomaly in the first place.
“Experts” who had presided over such catastrophic failures of financial markets soon find themselves a new job as “market commentators” and “market watchers”, running commentary on what had happened and not why they failed to spot the coming events.
In partial effect, therefore, much of what happens to us is not in our control but rather what is in our control is how we interpret what happens. The meaning we create about a given situation and the scenarios we build around that meaning structure determines what we do.
In context, again, look at the failed interpretations of the world economy for centuries. We have had situations of severe global stock market crash in the 1930s, and similar occurrences thereafter, with the most recent financial market turbulence in the 2000s. Whereas the effects are still with us, and could continue for more years to come, the lessons seem forgotten already.
It is true that we need information which will provide a wide array of choices from which we can make our decisions but then we must always understand also that there is that little part of reality which we will never know.
This means that the “external” information that we need, that is the knowledge of the world around us must always be in tune with the world inside us and that is when we can interpret situations that measure up against reality.
I have, over the years as a trainer and coach, listened to many people talk about “their world” during seminars and conferences and in most cases it is very easy to identify the various influencing factors in one’s life - the typical case of the glass being half-empty or half-full.
Even though l am yet to read a full glow of an economy that had presented favourable returns to all its investors without the ultimate problem of a slow-down in returns over time, many of those l have had discussions with about exploiting opportunities have always alluded to the “poor state of the economy” as a reason to stay aloof.
Several of such people are never ready to overcome that inertia; following newspaper commentaries and political economic-talk as the true meaning of the world around them.
For that reason, those who have taken it upon themselves to ensure that the limited information available to them (useful information of course) was exploited are the ones who have made the right mark and impressions on all of us.
Some are called entrepreneurs and others simply described as generational thinkers. Those who wait for the perfect conditions before they act are never the stars in our eyes. They are always the ordinary ones we see.
We therefore need to understand how we create meaning about given situations, doing more of the most useful and less of what doesn’t work. Learn to add and subtract to get decisions right.
