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Nagesh Belludi

I’ll Be Happy When …

October 19, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It is fallacious to let life slip away in the pursuit of the illusion that, “When I achieve something, I will be free to live in happiness.”

If you pursue a job, a relationship, a house, a material possession, or the settlement of a debt, happiness will never come because there is always another “something” that will follow the present one. The circumstances that you thus wait for do provide a transitory elation, but, too soon, they withdraw into the dull and mundane, only to be replaced by the next fantasy of happiness.

The Art of Simple Existence is One of the Most Difficult to Master

According to Buddhism, the art of simple existence is one of the most difficult to master. If you aren’t living in peace and happiness at this moment, you’ll never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only the aspiration of peace “someday when I accomplish something.”

The experience of pleasure, freedom, and love are available now, whatever your circumstance. The American clinical psychologist John Welwood reminds us of this in Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path:

Our society would have us believe that inner satisfaction depends on outer success and achievement. Yet struggling to “get somewhere” keeps us perpetually busy, stressed out, and disconnected from that essential inner resource—our ability to be fully present—which could provide a real sense of joy and fulfillment. Our life is unsatisfactory only because we are not living it fully, but instead we are pursuing a happiness that is always somewhere else, other than where we are right now…

Cultivating the capacity to be fully present—awake, attentive, and responsive—in all the different circumstances of life is the essence of spiritual practice and realization. Those with the greatest spiritual realization are those who are “all here,” who relate to life with an expansive awareness that is not limited by any fixation on themselves or their own point of view. They don’t shrink from any aspect of themselves or life as a whole.

Idea for Impact: When One Lives, One Must Live Entirely

However difficult your circumstances, however uncertain the times, peace is not to be earmarked for a future time. The definitive source of happiness lies in the quality of your thoughts. Real sustainable peace springs from a healthy and nurturing relationship with yourself. Let nothing and nobody take that away from you. Don’t postpone being at peace.

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Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Balance, Buddhism, Discipline, Happiness, Materialism, Mindfulness, Money, Motivation, Philosophy, Simple Living, Wisdom

Inspirational Quotations #758

October 14, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

I’ve always felt ideas were a dime a dozen. If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (German Holocaust Victim)

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Truth is not a crystal one can put in one’s pocket, but an infinite fluid into which one falls headlong.
—Robert Musil (Austrian Novelist)

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
—Catullus (Roman Latin Poet)

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

People do not get what they want or what they expect from the [stock] markets; they get what they deserve.
—Bill Bonner (American Finance Author)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #757

October 7, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

What I’ve learned about being angry with people is that it generally hurts you more than it hurts them.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from the disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do, and how you do it.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along—or don’t.
—Harrison Ford (American Actor)

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Like other practicing historians, I am often asked what the “lessons of history” are. I answer that the only lesson I have learnt from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers.
—Ramachandra Guha (Indian Historian)

To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.
—Angela Carter (English Novelist, Short Story Writer)

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

The effect of having other interests beyond those domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

I Admire Business Leaders Who’re Frugal to an Extreme

October 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Business folks are rarely frugal, especially when they’re on their clients’ dime or using nameless stockholders’ funds.

I admire businesspeople and companies that are frugal to an extreme and are obsessed with reducing waste. Here are three prominent examples of leaders who’ve successfully inculcated frugality in their companies’ cultures.

Walmart founder Sam Walton was famously frugal and lived a humble life right up until his death. He drove a red 1985 Ford pickup and said, “What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?” On business trips, Walton required Walmart’s buyers to lodge two to a hotel room, eat in family diners, and even bring pens from the hotel rooms for use at “home office.” One of their travel goals was to limit expenses to less than 1% of their purchases. Walmart did not have a corporate jet until they had $40 billion in sales. Walton wrote in his biographical Made in America: My Story (1992; my summary,) “A lot of what goes on these days with high-flying companies and these overpaid CEO’s, who’re really just looting from the top and aren’t watching out for anybody but themselves, really upsets me. It’s one of the main things wrong with American business today.”

Amazon is obsessed with reducing waste. From the very beginning, founder Jeff Bezos built a company focused on providing value in terms of prices and customer service. A micromanager, Bezos audited all corporate expenses when the company was much smaller and reproved everything not warranted for delivering value to customers—no first-class travel for executives, no color printers, office desks made from wooden doors, etc.

Thriftiness is at the heart of the Brazilian private-equity group 3G’s operating model. 3G is notorious for pressing the zero-base budgeting method of cutting operating costs at companies it acquires. Julie MacIntosh’s Dethroning the King (2010) has an interesting story about 3G-run InBev CEO Carlos Brito‘s first visit to Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis headquarters after InBev purchased the American brewer in 2008:

To honor Brito’s visit and pay him the respect it felt he deserved as the soon-to-be new chief, Anheuser-Busch arranged for him to stay in a suite at the cushy Ritz-Carlton. The Ritz wasn’t Brito’s style, though, especially since he was just about to start indoctrinating Anheuser-Busch’s staffers to InBev’s frugal way of life. He had flown commercial into St. Louis from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

He had someone call back and say, “No, no no, I’ve already reserved a room at such and such a place—like the Holiday Inn,” said one InBev insider. “I think that’s when it probably, for the first time, hit home in St. Louis that things were going to be different.” Rather than hitching a town car or helicoptering in to Anheuser-Busch headquarters from his hotel on Tuesday morning, Brito accepted a ride from [Anheuser-Busch President] Dave Peacock.

While on the subject of leaders and indulgence, I’d like to mention private jets, those symbols of corporate indulgence. Corporate jets were famously ridiculed when the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler flew them to Washington DC to seek government bailouts in 2008. General Electric’s former CEO Jeff Immelt’s was disparaged recently for flying around the world with a needless “backup jet” in case something happened to the corporate plane he was using. But a corporate jet isn’t an indulgence for a big company, it is a business necessity. Having used corporate jets during a previous job, I can swear that flying commercial is relatively counterproductive and costly. In the 1990s, Warren Buffett, the poster boy of thriftiness, reluctantly bought a private plane. He christened it “The Indefensible,” but within a few years, renamed it “The Indispensable.”

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Filed Under: Leadership, Mental Models, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Amazon, Attitudes, Jeff Bezos, Leadership Lessons, Materialism, Parables, Philosophy

Why I’m Frugal

October 1, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Frugality Over the Ages: Frugality as a Virtue

Frugality Over the Ages

From Socrates to Thoreau, from Franklin to Gandhi, philosophers, moralists, and spiritual leaders have identified frugality as a virtue and associated simple living with wisdom, integrity, and happiness. The Cynics were the first to reject wealth, power, sex, fame, and other desires in favor of a simple life free of all possessions. Diogenes the Cynic (portrayed in image) famously lived in a wine barrel and had no worldly goods.

For the Puritans, the love of material consumption was an evil; their spiritual doctrine stressed, in the words of the American historian Edmund Morgan,

A man was but the steward of the possessions he accumulated. If he indulged himself in luxurious living, he would have that much less with which to support church and society. If he needlessly consumed his substance, either from carelessness or from sensuality, he failed to honor the God who furnished him with it.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, a doyen of the self-improvement movement, listed frugality as one of the 13 virtues he followed as a young man. Between 1732 and 1757, Franklin published such famous aphorisms in his Poor Richard’s Almanack as “be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich,” “beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship,” and “he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.”

For the American philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, frugality or “transcendental simplicity” was a means to a higher end. In Man the Reformer (1841,) Emerson wrote, “Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love, or devotion.” For Thoreau, “high thinking was preferable to high living;” he wrote in Walden (1854,) “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor”.

Thoreau inspired the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. After suffering a mental breakdown in the late 1870s, Tolstoy, who was born into Russian nobility, rejected his family’s estate and serfdom. He renounced his decadent, racy lifestyle and engaged in a revolutionary brand of Christianity based on spiritual and material austerity.

Tolstoy’s philosophy showed the way for the creation of utopian communities of simple, self-sufficient living—the most famous example being the “Tolstoy Farm” ashram that Mahatma Gandhi established in South Africa. Gandhi was the quintessence of simplicity and sported austere homespun clothing. He famously said, “you may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them,” and “our civilization, our culture, our [nation] depend not upon multiplying our wants—self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants—self-denial.”

Frugality is a Moral Virtue

The distinguished career coach Marty Nemko once wrote, “I even take care to tear-off single sheets of toilet paper. Because I’m cheap? No. Because it’ll help the environment? No. I just think wasting is wrong.” That, in a nutshell, is why I’m frugal.

For me, frugality suggests an appropriate limit on individual and collective desires; it denies the materialistic expectations that the modern society imposes upon us.

Frugality is not some form of world-denying asceticism or austerity. It is a part of principled stewardship of not only the resources I’ve been blessed with but also of myself.

Frugality is about forgoing a subset of desires—as part of a quest for an abundant life. In other words, frugality restricts my indulgence of materialistic appetite, with the intention that I leave space for the cultivation of diverse forms of pleasure.

When I started to work while still in college, frugality was an element of my quest for financial independence. It became the lynchpin of a deliberate set of lifestyle choices and values. But my focus on achieving financial freedom never let me pining for the pleasures I might have had.

Six years ago, I gave up a corporate job and significant earnings in favor of a simpler life with plenty of discretionary time and money for world travel, leisure, learning, culture, and meaning.

Idea for Impact: Enjoying a rich life is more important than zealously stewarding one’s savings and investments.

Living frugally, with the particular intention of achieving financial freedom, requires a good measure of renunciation. This renunciation is easiest when one regards it not as deprivation, but as a deliberate choice in a trade-off for an enriched life.

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  5. The Problem with Modern Consumer Culture

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Personal Finance Tagged With: Attitudes, Balance, Giving, Materialism, Money, Philosophy, Simple Living

Inspirational Quotations #756

September 30, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today… Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise, one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.
—C. A. Dykstra (American Government Administrator)

The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God’s loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)

The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (American Nuclear Physicist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #755

September 23, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
—Paul Cezanne (French Painter)

All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
—Eddie Murphy (American Actor)

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

You are a fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don’t do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

People who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Investing is Saying “No” 99% of the Time

September 22, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

As an investor in high-quality public companies and startup ventures, I spend very little time each on a lot of investment opportunities and a lot of time each on a very few opportunities. Over seven-tenths of the returns I’ve ever produced have been with just four companies.

I try to learn of as many ideas and opportunities as possible, especially in companies led by first-class entrepreneurs and businesspeople. From time to time, I spend hours at the community library flicking through one-page summaries in the Value Line Investment Survey, arguably the best investment product available on the market.

Exposing myself to many opportunities makes me a better investor. Even if my stock-filtering method quickly guides me to say “no” commonly, my goal is to find a kernel of usable information to add to my “mental attic.” I can’t predict when something might come in handy to help make sound investment choices in the future. As the great investor Charlie Munger said at the 1996 Wesco Financial annual meeting,

Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly at scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.

A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then, all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.

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Filed Under: Personal Finance, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Decision-Making, Problem Solving, Thought Process

How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence

September 18, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Reciprocity, as described below, is a manipulative technique. My aim for this article is twofold: firstly, it sensitizes you to one of the many things people can do to get you to do their bidding. Secondly, reciprocity is a handy technique for those circumstances where certain ends can justify certain means.

Reciprocity is treating other people as they treat you, or for the purpose of this article, as you wish to be treated—specifically with the expectation that they will reciprocate your favor in the future.

In other words, reciprocity is a sneaky trick that permits deliberate interpersonal influence. Do something for other people and they will be willing to do something for you, partly because they’ll be uncomfortable feeling indebted to you.

The concept of reciprocity is ingrained in human nature. As part of our upbringing, we are taught to give something back to people who give us something. Reciprocity and cooperation are the underpinnings of a civilized society—they allow us to help people who need it and to hope that they will help us when we need it. Research suggests that the desire to repay goodwill is hard-wired in the human brain.

Jack Schafer’s The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over (2015) offers a clever technique to put reciprocity into action:

The next time someone thanks you for something, don’t say, “You’re welcome.” Instead, say, “I know you’d do the same thing for me.” This response invokes reciprocity. The other person is now predisposed to help you when you ask them for a favor.

The effects of goodwill are short-lived. A long-forgotten reputation for helpfulness gets you nothing. You have to renew your reputation by helping others regularly.

To learn more about reciprocity, read social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984.) He identified reciprocity as one of six principles that can help get others’ compliance to your requests.

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Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Biases, Ethics, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion, Psychology, Relationships, Social Life, Social Skills

Inspirational Quotations #754

September 16, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

You must intensify and render continuous by repeatedly presenting with suggestive ideas and mental pictures of the feast of good things, and the flowing fountain, which awaits the successful achievement or attainment of the desires.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

To create is to resist, to resist is to create.
—Stephane Hessel (French Diplomat, Writer, Concentration Camp Surviv)

The gods even envy him whose senses, like horses well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who is free from pride, and free from appetites.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation … Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person—it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen … to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
—Noam Chomsky (American Linguist, Philosopher, Social Critic)

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

In solitude, where we are least alone.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crises, maintain their neutrality.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.
—Jesse Lauriston Livermore (American Investor)

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.
—James Grant (American Writer, Publisher)

We can tell how well we’ve lived by how much hope we’ve left behind.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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