Mr. X, as a friend is more compatible to Mr. Y. At the same time, Mr. X is not compatible to Mr. Y as a friend. A same individual is compatible to one person but not compatible to another person. You all could have experienced this in your life.
Compatibility not only plays an important role in your personal relationship and also it plays a vital role in your relationship with investments.
An investment can make your life more miserable and the same investment can make the life of your friend more enjoyable. How come the same investment can trigger different emotions for you and your friend?
Your Frame of Reference:
The way in which you look at the investment, what you expect out of your investments, the way in which you relate with your investments is entirely different from your friend. That makes all the difference in your emotions.
From our childhood, we have been subjected to a series of impacts on our relationship with investments. These experiences have actually influenced us both positively and negatively to the extent of influencing our investment personality and generating essential investment beliefs and convictions in us, conditioning how we see the entire gamut of investment world.
Two important questions:
Finding out the answers to these important questions will unlock the potential to achieve your financial goals. The ultimate goal of any goal is peace. If you achieve a goal which is disturbing your peace of mind is not a goal worth achieving. Similarly making an investment disturbing your peace of mind is not worth investing.
How investments trigger emotions?
Take all your existing investments. Pay a close attention to them. Will you buy the same investments now? What made you select these investments? What are all the factors that influenced your investment decision?
You will see a pattern of influencers with different investments. Understand this pattern. Where did you get these patterns?
These patterns are only triggering your emotions. This will help you understand how you are emotionally balanced with your investments. This understanding is very important to take an investment decision which will not disturb your peace of mind.
Who you are as an investor?
You need to discover who you are as an investor. When you know yourself as an investor, turbulent times in the market can be easier to deal with. To find out what kind of investor you are, think about your personal boundaries, in addition to your strengths and weaknesses.
Are you patient? Do you incline to get panicky when times are unpleasant? How well do you deal with risk? Do you like to take chances? How do you balance the safety, liquidity and returns of your investments?
Investment Guidelines:
The answers to the questions, How investments trigger emotions? and Who you are as an investor? will set the guidelines for your investment decisions. This is completely unique and personal to you. Once you get these guidelines right, no one will be influencing you to take an investment decision which you are not comfortable or compatible with. Now you know in black and white what makes you tick an investment.
These investment guidelines will help you match yourself with the compatible investments. As these guidelines are based on your own self analysis, you will be in control of your investment decisions. You know what you are doing. You will never ever feel getting your peace of mind disturbed.
Once you frame these customized investment guidelines, investment performance will be in line with your expectation and investing no more will be an emotional distress.
The motive behind investing is not to make you miserable. The idea is to increase the sense of protection, peacefulness and pleasure. That’s why compatibility with your investments is more important than the return on investment.
Compatibility with your investments can make or break your investment success.
The author is Ramalingam K, an MBA (Finance) and Certified Financial Planner. He is the Founder and Director of Holistic Investment Planners (http://www.holisticinvestment.in/) a firm that offers Financial Planning and Wealth Management. He can be reached at ramalingam@holisticinvestment.in.
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