 Welcome to the Bogleheads chapter series. This episode was jointly hosted by the New York City and San Antonio Bogleheads chapters and recorded August 24, 2022. It features a discussion on the philosophy of stoicism and concepts of behavioral finance. Bogleheads are investors who follow John Bogle's philosophy for attaining financial independence. His recording is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice. What we're showing here is that clear to everybody. Great. Great. Well, thank you for the introduction, Miriam. And also, thank you, Jim, Lady Geek for the help in getting this all set up. So yeah, what we'll be presenting on today is stoicism and behavioral finance. Right. So one of the one of the first questions is how can stoicism benefit your personal finance goals? Right. There's the connection between stoicism and finance concepts can help us achieve our personal finance goals and peace of mind. Right. So this is kind of why we're here, right, and why we're presenting on this topic. So one of the ideas behind this is framing to help us make good financial decisions, even turbulent markets. And one of the key ideas here is the idea of framing, right. Another big concept within stoicism is the idea of focusing on what is in your control and differentiating between what we can change and what we cannot. You'll hear what is in our control. That's something you'll hear a lot when people are talking about stoicism. Another idea here, which is kind of related to framing, right, is appreciating what we have more than feeling of misery over what we don't have. Right. So learning appreciation. Another is focusing on putting in our best efforts, rather than defining success by the outcome. So the idea here being focusing a little bit more on the process rather than explicitly on results, right. Another idea here is kind of learning to control your reaction, rather than letting the outcome define our experience in our reaction. And then also in finding strength and tranquility through objectivity and rationality. So a lot of these ideas, you'll kind of hear us reiterate throughout this presentation. And then another idea is to identify biases to help us make better choices. And then another big idea is understanding loss aversion. Next jury is going to walk through the agenda. Thank you. And similarly, thanks to the many people who helped make this possible. Sorry, could you raise your volume please. Sorry, my mic was far away from my math. Thanks. So similar to Luke's comments. Many thanks to the team of people who helped make this possible. So as Luke mentioned, I'll cover the agenda. I'll cover item number one here, which is how stoicism can benefit you with your personal finance decisions. Following this slide, I'll cover three early contributors, three Roman contributors to stoic philosophy. Luke will cover some similarities between stoicism and Boglehead philosophy. He'll also cover a metaphor of a greyhound and a rabbit, and the takeaway lesson to that. And Luke will also cover, interestingly, Seneca, one of the early Roman contributors and a prolific writer, wrote about, wrote to his friend a letter called on retirement, and so Luke will cover that will cover an intro to stoicism really high level for folks who aren't yet familiar with it. Luke will cover mental impressions and objectivity and through a working diagram, walk through a practical application of a lot of what we're talking about. Luke will then cover some of Jack Bogle's overlay on emotions and reason. And then I'll cover five slides on the philosophy of stoicism in a little more detail. There's so much depth to stoicism but we want to keep it somewhat digestible. So, we'll, we'll cover some foundational concepts there. And from that will transition to behavioral finance, specifically in the invite. A lot of folks would have seen the link to the wiki. There's a comprehensive summary of behavioral finance pitfall so we'll touch on a few of those will specifically cover some of the work of Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel in for his work in applying psychology to behavioral finance, then we'll close with some quotes will post some additional resources like books, and then we'll turn q amp a over to the audience. And that will begin with three early Roman contributors so they're not in chronological order, starting with Marcus Aurelius, he's one of the more famous because a work of his indirectly got published so for context, he was Roman emperor for years that's a big deal he was the most powerful man in the world, given how sprawling the Roman Empire was, and he was considered the last of the five good emperors what does that mean so many emperors were brutal self serving and destructive. Marcus on on balance was very good for his community and the empire. And what we know from him as it relates to stoicism is, he kept a private journal to himself these weren't notes meant to be published, but academics compile them translated them, and it came to be called meditations. If you're folks interested and I'd highly recommend it. It's worth reading his insights are timeless and super practical. You'll find, if you choose to read it, how relatable it is he went through so many struggles as you can imagine as emperor. Marcus had these profound insights and practical tools to to approach his obstacles. And with that, his guidance is still empowering 2000 years later. So that's Marcus next Seneca the younger. He's the most prolific writer of these three he was a playwright, and he was also one of the wealthiest people in Rome at his time he the equivalent he would be a billionaire. But for his time. He was an advisor to Nero and for which he was ultimately exiled. But he was as a playwright and prolific author much of his work survives and he was such a good writer that his contributions to stoicism are long standing. And the last that we'll cover here is Epictetus Epictetus was born a slave. But he earned his freedom, and he became a philosophy teacher he studied philosophy and became a teacher and although he didn't write directly one of his students transcribed his teaching so his work survives and contributes to us today. So that's some context for the stoicism that we have access to via original sources or semi original sources, and I say that to differentiate from academics who write about it. Okay. Next, we'll be discussing some philosophical similarities between the philosophy of stoicism, as well as the bogal head investment philosophy, which kind of funny funny story when I was building this slide. So we had planned on talking about things that were strictly so it, and things that were strictly bogal head, and then just kind of talking about some similarities. But what was interesting, I actually had a very difficult time finding something that could fit into this category. So I kind of was forced to to revise how we did this slide, I thought that was kind of interesting. The bogal head tends to be applications and prudent. So, the first, right. So within the philosophy of stoicism, the founder of this was actually Zeno of stadium, who founded stoicism during the, the Hellenistic era of grief. Right, so he was with within with using Athens, when when he founded this, the school, which is one of the many schools of in Athens at that time. And then, of course, the bogal head investment philosophy, which is based on Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, who of course is a proponent of index fund, who lived from May 8, 1929 through January 16. 2019. One other thing I would note about Zeno is he lived somewhere around 334 to 262 BC. Right, so we're talking about about 2300 years ago. And some of the other folks that we had mentioned earlier from the Roman, right, that was, you know, 100 plus years AD, right, so we're talking about hundreds of years of the school of philosophy, thriving, thriving within the Greek and Roman era. A couple of similarities, right, we're talking about applications and prudence, right, wisdom, applied wisdom, these are things that you find similar between bogal heads and the philosophy of stoicism. The idea of focusing on what you control, right. A lot of the wisdom that you find within Jack Bogle and his philosophy is really focusing on the things that you, you control. And then also there's the idea of recognizing human psychological tendencies, and then changing your opinion through rationality based on recognizing some of your own self behaviors, right. And then there's also strategies to to replace certain unhealthy and possibly irrational emotion and try to replace those by healthy and rational ones. And then another idea that, you know, these these two groups tend to think similarly is spending time on forethought and preparation, as well as learning from the past right. What can, what can, you know, the the the ancient teacher, or if we look at history, what can we learn a couple of things that we are not going to. Well, I guess, what one idea that I do want to address is the word stoic right if you look it up in a dictionary. It actually kind of means cold and emotional, which is actually a bit of a misinterpretation. And sometimes you have to, that's basically that that word throughout time has changed its definition. But really, so we within when you're talking about stoic philosophy, a lot of times how they make this distinction is with a capital S is stoic. This is in reference to the school of philosophy versus stoic with a small S, which is cold and emotionless. And what's actually interesting is practicing stoic philosophy actually has the exact opposite effect of being cold and emotionless. And actually, there's there's studies, there's recent studies that have shown that it actually makes people more warm and empathetic. So it's actually interesting how the definition of the word stoic can be completely misrepresentative of the stoic school of philosophy. And then, oh, one other thing, the word stoic, what that means that came from the Greek word porch, right so they used to practice their philosophy on the porch of the, the, the, the, the, the stoic, which forgive my mispronunciation of that. But it's basically where they went and practice philosophy. So really they were the, the, the group of folks that would go talk on the porch. So next we're going to touch on a great metaphor that that Jack Vogel, he actually used during a March 23 2007 commencement speech at the New York NYU Stern School of Business. And this is a story originally by Reverend Fred Craddock. And interestingly enough, it's between the Reverend and a Greyhound. So, so of course it's, you know, true story. Um, the, so, so it started off. So the Reverend asked, are you still racing to which the Greyhound says no. The Reverend asked, well, what does it matter? Did you get too old to race? No, I still had some race left in me said the Greyhound. Well, what then? Did he not win? I won over a million dollars for my owner. What was it? Bad treatment? Oh no, they treated us royally when we were racing. Well, did you get crippled? No, didn't get crippled. Well, then why? Why? I quit, said the Greyhound. You quit. I quit. Why did you quit? The Greyhound responds, I just quit because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn't even real. Right. So, so what's, what, what's kind of the idea here, right? So, we'll kind of pose a question, right? So, you know, what, what rabbit are you chasing, right? You are chasing real, right? And so kind of the idea that we maybe want to highlight here is, you know, perhaps it's worth considering if what you pursue is real and really worth that pursuit. And that kind of gets into the idea of priorities. And then next we're going to come into some, some saying from, from Seneca, right, which this is on, on saving for retirement. And this is a kind of a couple ideas here is discussing financial wealth versus wealth of mind. Well, the first idea here, right, for many people, the acquisition of wealth is not the end of trouble, but only a fresh start. So no surprise there, the fault is not in one surrounding, but in the mind itself. For interest to accrue for ventures to pay off for some fat inheritance, when you could become rich right away, right, wisdom pays off immediately, its wealth is bestowed on all to whom wealth has come to seem irrelevant. So trust me, you should make philosophy your out, out advocate. So persuade you not to linger over your balance sheet. And so, just to kind of keep in mind, this is, this is around 62 AD, right, so this is, you know, just, just under 2000 years ago, that that we're talking about, and he's talking about these ideas. Yeah, so kind of highlighting the idea that the, you know, the human condition, you know, it extends quite a bit in the past, and some of this wisdom that, you know, the ancients can teach us it's applicable to us today. But there's an idea here right, a distinction between financial wealth and the idea of a wealth of mind, right, the idea of, you know, peace of mind, your character that sort of thing. Um, and the, so the, the, the Stoics, they actually don't deem financial wealth as either virtuous nor vicious. It's something that it depends on how you use it, right, so you can use wealth in a virtuous way, or it can be used in a vicious way. Right, so it is treated in that way that depending on how you use it, which depends on your mind depends is basically how they would view wealth. So, the next slide will, Gory is going to talk about intro to stoicism. Great. Thanks, Luke. So, again, we'll get into detail with some foundational stoic concepts after a few slides so the next two slides will be really high level. There's some debate in academia about the primary purpose of stoicism so we keep that we, we're keeping it pretty general here. One of the main concepts is to live virtuously just like Luke was talking about how, how folks spend money money while wealth is objective. It's neither good nor bad. So, virtue is the potential to pursue virtue is within each of us and the stoics focused on four cardinal virtues those being courage, justice, temperance and practical wisdom temperance and practical wisdom meaning not just intellectual knowledge but to put what you've learned into practice they felt so strongly about this they felt that just learning something and not practicing it was almost as good as not learning it. So, another core foundational concept to stoicism is that we can avoid unnecessary negative emotions, and I'll differentiate as Luke did that it's not about being emotionless, but stoicism and even as Luke mentioned how it survived 2000 years, folks who are with CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy, which is rooted in stoicism finds that we, we don't need to suffer through our negative emotions we may experience them reflexively for a variety of reasons, but we don't need to stay in that state. Moving on. So, again, academia debates is about happiness contentedness, some say tranquility but the idea is similar enough that through stoic philosophy contentedness and tranquility are within us, and the overlay to personal finance or behavioral finances, obviously this institutes of the market, how your portfolio performs so we'll go into more detail later on that. And the immediate practicality is, you are able to empower yourself with tools that help you reduce worries and anxiety. And, as mentioned earlier, the converse of what stoicism, we should talk about what stoicism isn't so it doesn't say that you shouldn't enjoy positive things. You certainly can. You can enjoy positive emotions and positive possessions, experience happiness, but not define yourself, your contentedness your self worth on these things so you can enjoy a big house or fancy car, even though the standards may not may be less likely to define themselves with those things. stoicism says our character and our virtue, our core and other things are we'll get to a phrase called preferred indifferent so that it's absolutely okay to to enjoy things so that that's an important clarification for folks who are attached to the the kind of lowercase stoic. And stoicism allows us to meet challenges with calmness and reason. So we'll discuss a tool for that which is preparing for catastrophes in advance so that when they finally present, you're empowered to deal with them. And this will come up over and over again because it's so fundamental and it's focusing on things within your control. And part of that is how you respond to things so in retrospect we may regret having done something or having said something. And stoicism reminds us that we're not defined by what happens to us we're, we're more defined by how we meet those things. So the path to that is pausing, reflecting and being thoughtful and intentional about how you respond. And also separating yourself from those external events and so philosophy tells us that most things in the world are things external to us have an objectivity and we often assign our own judgments to them. We, we often label them as positive or negative but many of these things in fact are neutral and minus our own judgments. They exist in that neutrality. So, next slide in summary. Again stoicism is meant to be meant to be a practical toolkit you can use it throughout the day whatever challenges and you can find equanimity and contentedness and tranquility by practicing a lot of it. It does get easier with practice like many things. And again it's not intended to just be intellectual knowledge, and we'll leave off this slide with a quote from Seneca or concept from Seneca he says, the outside world will not give us happiness or unhappiness. Our character is the only guarantee of everlasting carefree happiness or tranquility. With that, I'll turn it back to Luke. So, so now we're going to touch on a couple of ideas within stoic philosophy. The idea of mental impressions and the idea of objectivity. And these these call fall within they have so they have different they call them different disciplines. And this is the idea of discipline of a sense and a high level way of thinking about this would be to only accept and act on objective mental impression. Right, so what on earth does that mean so let's let's kind of walk through that a little bit. So, so there's the idea of something. There's an impression on your senses right you hear something you see something that sort of thing. Right. So for example, they the news media says so so so so this is by the way this is going to be a financial example. I tried to make this a little bit practical to kind of give an idea of what we're talking about right so then you'll kind of have a mental impression right so something outside of you, and then the oppression on your mind, right. And that's kind of where, for example, the idea enters your mind that you may consider selling some of some of your assets in a downturn or something. And so here here what we're going to show here is you have the external things that are kind of external to your mind. And then you have what's happening internally within within your mind right. And then there's this other aspect of it right so this is kind of a certain aspect of it right but then then you kind of have your judgment and your will right. And then you have your more conscious ideas, right that. So, for example, you may have studied historic market resilience you kind of understand market behavior, right. So, so then basically these two things kind of combine and result in in this idea that you can either accept or reject this mental oppression, right so this is basically your judgment and your will. And then you, you can accept or reject that idea, right. So for example, you may reject the idea of selling based on your knowledge of historic market resilience, right. So then you may take action or inaction, right. So in this case right do nothing and you'll stay the course, which of course is a bogal has no is a very bogal had saying, right. And then there's some type of outcome, right. And history has shown that this is your more likely to achieve your financial goal. Or at least that's one of the core tenants of bogal heads right. So the Stoics would overlay another idea here right. So they're going to say, well guess what, when you think about this whole process, what aspects of this are in your control, versus what things are outside of your control, right. And so what they say is your judgment and your will, and it's interaction with things that are outside of your control is really what you need to focus on. Right. So, their, their whole idea is to focus on things that are in your control. And all the practices. So, so gory is going to, he's going to talk about various practices that that'll kind of help there they're all kind of intended to impact your judgment and will with the intent of allowing you to have better ascent right. So, an example that that the Stoics often use was, was the idea of an archer. Right. So, so what things is the archer in control of right. So he's in control of how much he practices, you know, where, where he's aiming how hard he's pulling the stream back. So, like, that's basically his, his angle of launch. So, and, you know, his steadiness, some of those things are the things that he's in control of, but at the end of the day he has to release the arrow, right. And at that point it becomes outside of his control and things in life can have its own influences in, you know, that that that sort of thing. And so where it ends up hitting on the target right is that this is where the Stokes would say you are not in control of right you can do your best, but at the end of the day, there are still things that you do not control. So, what they the Stoics say is focus on the things that you control, and then do your best. Right. And don't focus necessarily on on the outcome. And then a couple of labeling a couple of things on this, this diagram here right. So, the Stokes would say you want to focus on your center of rationality. Right. This is kind of your, your, your, your, your virtue, this is where virtue is. And this is where it lies. This is where your character lies. Right. So, this is where you want to spend your time improving. Right. And then the idea of the discipline of a sense, right, is to be objective, right, in what the things that you object and reject, right. And so, a more modern way of thinking about this would be maybe some of your biases, right. You want to use objectivity to help eliminate some of these biases. And Gory's going to explain some more on biases here a little bit later. A couple of other examples of things that are in our control and outside of our control. For example, you're, you're, and these are like Boglehead type examples, right. Your asset allocation, that's something that is in your control, your investment policy statement, right. Typically, you're going to write that when you're, you're in a rational state, not in a hyper emotional and reactive state, right. And within the idea of lifestyle creep, right, so as you get older, or as you basically your desires kind of creep up, you want a bigger house a bigger fancier car. That, that sort of thing, right. So these, this kind of ties back into the idea of desire. Right. So there are in the Stokes are believe that that that a large portion of your desires are under your control. Right. And so that part of the practices would aim at trying to keep some of your desires in chat. Right. And some things that are outside of your control, right. And this is relevant to the personal finance that we're talking about here right is market performance political events interest rate inflation right. These aren't things that that you control right so you can take action to mitigate these things but you have to recognize that at the end of the day, you do not control these things. And so, at Jack Bogle recognize a lot of these ideas, right, and in his article clash of cultures. He kind of touched on a lot of these ideas. You know, Jack was always very good with words and articulate right. He said that intelligent investors try to separate their emotions of hope, fear and greed that separate the volatile market of short term expectation from the real market of long term transit value and trust in reason to prevail over the long term. And the last sentence here he says, in this sense long term investors must be philosophers, rather than technician. Right, so here, here, you know, you see Jack highlighting, you know, the idea of reason and trying to separate out your emotion, which, you know, is pretty on par with, you know, a lot of the things that that the Stoics say and try to practice. Next we'll hand off to Gory, who's going to touch on the philosophy of stoicism. Excellent. Thanks, Luke. So again, we'll keep it somewhat high level but go into a little more detail with some foundational concepts. Again, the key purpose can be debated within academia so we'll keep it pretty general here tools for stoicism offers tools for a life of meaningful equanimity reduced anxiety and heightened virtue which we spoke about avoiding unnecessary negative emotions. And what is unnecessary negative emotion so on the spectrum of emotions. Stoicism maintains that worry envy and regret, or overall avoidable and destructive. So they have a purpose and you know folks can say well I worry so I prepare for things or I preempt things and I solve things but again to stay in a sustained state of worry is often and stoicism helps us with that perspective. Another purpose of stoicism is to enjoy positive things but not rely on them with such a dependency that if it affects your self worth so that you can you can enjoy these externalities as we mentioned, but the phrase they have for these external things is preferred and different so that can be good health wealth, but you know while you'd say you know good health is is fundamental to a content life. Stoicism argues that even without good health you have your character so as long as you have your character, and you can pursue virtue, you can do without good health and you know it's an easy, easy to expand on that with wealth that having money is great, but even without money you have your character so it would take a lot to have your character removed from you and there are many examples of this. This Admiral Stockdale, his plane got shot down and he was parachuting and he knew that he was going to be a POW for a while and he said I'm entering the world of epictetus and he was the highest ranking officer while he was in captivity, and he he maintained his character and through stoicism practice leadership that also inspired the men who are also imprisoned with him. Moving on, satisfaction in life comes from overcoming challenges and benefiting society this last piece benefiting society is also foundational to stoicism. They were encouraging of being active in community active in politics so it's not about being apathetic and we'll talk about that more. It's about taking action to affect. I'll say noble outcome there's a lot of subjectivity in that but it wasn't to resign yourself and accept the world around you it was to to cause change where it was in your ability to do so. And when we say satisfaction comes from overcoming challenges, if you think about, you know, in our own lives it's often something we overcame that was super difficult in whatever it is personal or career or sports. Those things derive, you know, we derive a lot of satisfaction from those. And this next one, building habits and practices. It's a reference to Seneca he said, how great is it to have a disposition to good. So what does that mean. What if, in, in modern day life so many things that we enjoy are bad for us, right, or to a certain extent bad for us and so many things that are good for us, take a lot of effort or a lot of time. You could argue saving and investing is more of a marathon right it's it's delayed gratification, but within stoicism and within Boglehead philosophy. There are many things that are easily accessible to us that are entirely enjoyable and also not particularly expensive so listed listed here or some nurturing habits like a lifestyle where your natural preferences are satisfying and healthy. And examples of that are healthy eating preparing your own food right you can derive a lot of satisfaction from that. And it happens to be good for you. Taking walks in nature, hosting a game night and amongst your friends right these things cost very little, and they're super satisfying pursuing self improvement. Stoics were big on journaling. We mentioned Marcus Raleigh has kept a journal earlier. Meditation, not necessarily in the modern sense of meditation but think, you know, reflecting on the days events in advance and as well as when I say reflecting so looking at what you expect from the day ahead of you and then reflecting on it. These were common stove practices will end the slide with the quote, it is not death, a person should fear but never beginning to live. Marcus. And so we'll go to the next slide dichotomy control. Again, you'll hear about this throughout determining what's in our control and what's not we each. You know, whether it's ourselves or family or friends or coworkers, people are frustrated by all these things but if they, or we can separate. Okay, here's a situation. What it what can we affect what's in our control and what's not right it could be global politics it could be something so much broader than ourselves and beyond us. But if you're able to effectively separate what's not within your control, as Luke mentioned, market performance, you know, we'll get more specific with examples like that. The concept is so foundational, and it's not exclusive to stoicism obviously the serenity prayer which a lot of people know grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference that the serenity is directly rooted in stoic philosophy. And again, it's stoicism is not about resigning yourself to just accepting the world around us it's separating. Okay, this frustrates me or this brings me joy what what's within my control so local politics you can obviously vote you can start a campaign, you can affect your community you can affect your relationships, and to a certain to a large extent you can affect your health. But stoicism reminds us that our health is not entirely in our control so separate the two, and take action where you can. Find comfort that you took action. And for those things that are out of your control, try to let them go and stoicism will come easier and naturally to a lot of folks like some people have a natural affinity for it some people were practicing stoicism without knowing that term or that label for years or decades if you can go an entire lifetime, living aligned with stoic philosophy, just not knowing that label. And then there are other folks who will hear this and say yeah that that sounds nice but that's not really me or that's not possible. So, I would say know that these tools are within you are within your reach, but some people. It'll come much more naturally to and some people if it interests them will find it'll it'll take a little more work but they they really are practical effective tools. Another core, don't tie your contendiveness to the outcome so we take action. Lucas mentioned the archer example I'll reiterate it on the next slide I think just because it's so important. But know that you did everything within your control the best you could. And the outcome is not necessarily within your control so we just accept the outcome, and you could apply that to portfolio construction. Your control withdrawal rate is within your control market performance obviously not within your control. So, if you know that you aligned your goals timeframe risk tolerance with your portfolio construction and you stayed the course. When appropriate if you find your asset allocation wasn't appropriate. That's within your control to change it. So those are practical applications of this core foundational concept. Another one, people think like oh so much of my finances aren't in my control but to some extent you can increase your savings rate, you can try to increase your income a lot of people will say oh that's not within my control. You can often reduce your expenses but we'll heads, you know are completely adept at this. So to visit the income for this last bullet. A lot of people think oh, you know I'm paid what I'm paid but you can negotiate a raise obviously you can, you can work towards a promotion and you can say that those things aren't in your control, and it's true but you can influence them There's a lot of negotiating techniques there's a tons of YouTube videos or books or blogs and a technique is at your mid year review or end of year review you meet with your manager and you say okay. XYZ happened and I expected this and it may or may not have occurred, but can we agree on our approach for next year that if I accomplish XYZ and do it really well that I'll be considered for a razor promotion. It's a tool of something that is in your control applied to influence something that largely you know like a promotion or raise can be seen conclusively is not within your control, but you can, you can learn what tools are in your control to affect it. And with that we'll go to the next slide. This is a process and systems not outcome. So we kind of touched on this and Lucas mentioned the, the example the archer I'll reiterate it. So the, the choice of arrow is within your control. The quality of the arrow may or not be may or may not be but you'll you'll get the best arrow you can the tension on the bow the direction your focus. You can let go to, to send the arrow towards the target, a lot of these things are within your control, but stoicism teaches us that once you let go that arrow, and so many other, you know, examples that this applies to that arrow is no longer in our control so there could be wind. There could be faulty someone could move the target, any of these things can happen. So why is that important. We should not tie our self esteem or self worth or in a lot of cases portfolio performance net self self worth to our net worth right that for the things that are out of our control, realize that you did everything you could. And what's out of your control doesn't define you. Okay. So a practical application of that and the following bullet atomic habits by James clear highly highly recommend if folks haven't read it already. It's an amazing empowering book that helps you, whether it's going to the gym or, you know, pursuing a hobby turning a hobby into a side hustle. So many things. They say, we overestimate what we want to do in a short period of time like a week or a month but we really underestimate what we can do in a year or five years, and atomic habits lays out. As you improve your process and your systems and your efforts that desired outcome that we keep saying isn't within our control, you improve the odds of that desired outcome, coming to fruition, just by improving your systems. At a certain point, don't rely on willpower or motivation. A lot of people say, Oh, you know, I'll exercise tomorrow when I feel like it right we think our future self is going to be more motivated or more agreeable to doing these things. It's just unreliable. But if you have the system if you say you know in the morning, I'm going to do this. You're more likely to achieve these goals. Another important concept, and Marcus is big on this, he says, let doing the right thing be reward enough. So just know that you did the right thing, and that should be sufficient. What does that mean a lot of people do things for praise appreciation credit public recognition, and then those things do or don't happen or they happen to a lesser extent than we wanted. And that's why racism empowers us by saying those things are out of our control focus on what's important to you meaningful to you what you feel is the right thing to do. And if you do that, that is reward enough. So practical application, applying these things to your health your finances career side hustle, etc. With that, we'll go to the next slide. I will try to pick up the pace. So, here, we'll talk about premeditatio malorum. This is Latin for basically premeditating on catastrophes or evils or trouble so it's probably self explanatory at this point we spoke about a market downturn so don't just imagine it as a remote possibility as you adjust your lifestyle your spending your income your savings your withdrawal your portfolio construction. Think, okay, could I survive a 20% sustained downturn what if the market tanked and remained, you know, down 20% or 30% or 10% for X number of years how would you handle that. So you could really play it out you could do the numbers and you could say, Okay, I park this much cash or you know whatever or you have dividend investments or other income sources, so that you are equipped, if and when that terrible thing happens that you don't have to experience the level of anxiety that other people might or that you otherwise would have. So basically, you can prepare for illness or adversity. This quote, sweat more in training, bleed less in war self explanatory, and Mike Tyson has a famous quote everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. The Stoics would say plan to get punched in the face. With that, we'll move to the next slide. Or rather, by the way credit credit credit the gory for that by the way that's a great. Thank you, I'm sure someone else. So framing very important here a lot of this is probably intuitive just that using your ability to change your perspective to your advantage can be very powerful. So if you view obstacles as opportunities to improve. You can be strengthened by them, and you can also respond with virtue and there are many examples of this and you know I'm sure every person has some challenge they experienced in their life where they met that challenge and exited stronger and a lot of people will say. Life was better on the other side of that challenge. Marcus talks about this in meditations that are reflexive reaction, you know you could feel overwhelmed or you could feel self pity. Charlie Munger will say self pity is one of the most useless emotions but again, these are reflexive so we can expect ourselves to not experience them. But the tool to apply here is Marcus would say who better than me to handle this right. He was in a position of power and influence, and instead of dwelling in this feeling of being overwhelmed. He said, Okay, what can I do to make this better and who better than me to solve this and we can each find things in our life to apply that to in the fire community. There's a well known phrase called one more year syndrome. A lot of people who make good incomes have significant savings they've mapped out via spreadsheets and they think with a high probability they can retire early, but then they say, I'll work for one more year just in two weeks, I'll save up one more year of income for that additional buffer. And perhaps there's nothing wrong with them perhaps that's the right choice for them, but using framing, we could say, What's the worst that could happen if you stopped working. You could probably go back to work so that if you, and this is exhaustively studied a lot of people say they wish they retired early, and there are many reasons for that, but a lot of people don't act on that and they, you know, they stay working. When they finally retire, they say, Oh, you know, I'm not physically able or I'm not, you know, whatever it could be capacity or family or friends they're not able to enjoy life to the extent they would have, had they retired early and you could, you could apply that to many other things. So we have to pick up the pace, because we still have a lot to cover feeling grateful for what you have this is obviously not limited to stoicism this is found in probably, you know, all of the world's philosophies realize that we take things for granted that seems to be human nature but if you zoom out from your to see how others would see you from, from far away or from, you know, way up above. We each have many things to feel appreciative of and grateful for. And more specifically, I feel this is factual it sounds exaggerated but several billion people around the planet would probably trade their life for yours, right your comforts your conveniences your access to health care or amenities. The things we so take for granted we lose sight of it day to day but other people would give a lot to have what we take for granted. And, you know, overlaying that to even as recently as 100 years ago some, some kings had less quality of life than we have today be a running water or, you know, effective medicine so these are things that even the most powerful, the wealthiest people in the world 100 years ago didn't have that we have. And then the last, I'll skip to the last bullet, imagine you died or were severely injured or had something taken away could be family member loved one. Sam Harris talks about this he says they're around a dinner table and the family everyone was on their phone everyone was depressed and sullen, and he joined in that mindset and then he kind of zoomed out and he said, you know, what if something what if I died tonight right that could happen to any of us. He would give anything for this moment to be with this family to have a quiet basic dinner. So, with that framing, that's the tool here, he was able to reengage and appreciate what he had. And that will move to behavioral finance. So hopefully people found philosophy of stoicism relatable practical there, there are tools that we can use throughout the day any day throughout, you know, our lives and the overlap with behavioral finance. Hopefully, people previewed this wiki page. The link is here and it was in the invite listed on the screen or common pitfalls on the next slide we'll tank we'll talk more about anchoring and loss aversion more specifically. These behavioral pitfalls are so embedded in us and in our daily lives that we don't realize they're going on. And what behavioral finance teaches us is, these are unconscious biases, a lot of times right if you ask the average person or even ourselves. Are you being rational fact factual logical objective. A lot of times we would say yes many instances we would say no by intent, but a lot of times our decision making we think we're being rational factual factual logical and it's just not the case. So behavioral finance has studied this and teaches us about these biases in more detail so highly encourage people to get more familiar via the wiki page and there are many online resources about this just high level confirmation bias. And the rich engines are a huge example of this that we are more likely to Google something the way we phrase it. The result will more likely confirm our existing beliefs and, you know, we would often benefit by seeking out dis confirming evidence. So you, we need to be aware that sometimes, you know, it's well known now especially in the political environment we, a lot of us live in echo chamber it's important to realize that we are kind of hindering the broadening of our perspective with something as simple as. Yeah, well on the confirmation bias. Gory, I was just going to point out, you know, just think imagine the, the tool the Boglehead forum is right in terms of challenging your confirmation bias right stating, you know, hey, these are the advantages disadvantages and having debate, you know, people people having healthy challenges right. So, it's, I mean just what what a wonderful resource we have, you know, in modern day life to have somewhere where you can, you know, have the internet, you know poke holes in in, you know, a lot of these behavioral pitfalls, right, you know, on, you know, is my logic clear and my reasoning right, you know, during market downturns right you see, there's actually more people visit the Boglehead forum during market downturns right is that, you know, they're, they're, they're basically it's either you people use it as a tool to help mitigate, you know, some of these behavioral pitfalls that are known known to play, you know, humans and our behavior towards personal finance. Excellent point. I'll mention two others on this slide before we go to the next slide. One framing effect. I'll share a recent personal example and this will be less finance but the importance of framing. So my wife and I went on a retreat a few weekends ago to a few hours north of New York City really scenic place. We were with a great group was actually on stoicism, and one of the attendees flew in from Denver, and his flight got canceled. Fortunately, fortunately we exchanged info contact info before we parted, and he ended up staying with us. The flight from Newark got completely canceled and they put him on a flight out of LaGuardia, which is closer to where we live in within New York City. So he ended up staying with us and he had time in the morning to enjoy New York City so we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we just had a nice time spending time with him we had a healthy meal together. And he, he wrote that he could easily have been so upset about the cancel flight and he could have been screaming just like so many other people in the airport, but he reframed it that he got better memories from his flight being canceled then he would have otherwise. And the last one. I'll talk about on this slide is recency bias you see it in the third column second from the bottom. A clear example of this is how we sometimes instinctively react to a market downturn or sometimes the bubble fueled by euphoria right. Although we know the market's performance over decades that it keeps chugging along despite, you know, World War one World War two recessions depression. COVID tech bubble housing bubble. The market trends upwards but recency bias if if the news like Lucas's slide the media says sell sell sell. This is so powerful, it can override our conscious decision making, because we, we believe this, you know, recency bias is so powerful it can, the belief can override our logic. And the same is on an uptrend, right we can believe in this euphoric bubble and often people enter just just before the peak. So with that, again, we encourage folks to visit that to start at least with this wiki page with that we'll go to the next slide. And we'll talk about Daniel Kahneman huge contributor in behavioral finance. He won the Nobel in economics for his work bridging psychology with behavioral finance, his contribution. And one of the foundations of his work is framing our thinking through two systems system one and system two and this is well written about in his book thinking, comma fast and slow so it's thinking fast and slow. And system ones basically are reflexive, call it reptilian brain. And this is evolutionarily very, very important right on the savannahs. We didn't have time to reason and think and analyze and reach the most logical decision right you're being chased by a tiger and you need to a lot of tribal behavior, you know, ties to evolutionary psychology. And it makes sense why system one is so powerful and system to compliment system one. And that is, it requires more effort, more intense focus and it operates methodically so his work isn't about squashing one with the other it's not like system one is in fact better. They coexist, we just need to separate and recognize which one is being active, and then from that we can make better decisions. So if we go to the top two bolded questions, how often are we in control of our decisions. We would think, most of the time or a lot of the time, and it's frequently not it depends how you define we but there's so much going on unconsciously or around externally we can be manipulated. A lot of marketers take advantage of these biases and manipulate us and even people informed get manipulated. So the second question, how often are we rational when making decisions, frequently not, even though we think we are. So jumping to the last two. So loss aversion this is well studied. Folks, and it's almost human nature to be more a verse to losing than we are winning and sometimes in this example, losing $100 hurts more than winning $150 and that's, you could argue irrational or illogical but this is how powerful loss is to us. So the bias of loss aversion, and then anchoring has many examples in personal finance and one is, you know, in any negotiation and opening price will become the anchor and so you can think about it in terms of we were speaking on a earlier call. A parent has an adult child getting married, and they said, you know, here's the price per person. And if if the kid was using anchoring as a negotiation technique they could start with a super high price like 300 a person or 500 a person or whatever it is these days. And then the parent can react and then the kid can say the real price or a much lower price Oh, you know, how about 150. And then, you know, the, the person writing the check feels relieved. An example of this in the retail marketplace. Let's say someone puts out a high end designer shoe markets it for $500 right and no one buys it, but it's marketed for 500. And then suddenly the retailer marks it down for to 200. All of a sudden people think wow it's on sale wow it's such a discount. And they buy it even though they may not have bought it at 200 originally they suddenly buy it because of anchoring bias. Another example of this. You can have a contractor give a quote, and that that first quote will affect, you know how you frame that project or the cost or how agreeable you are to it. So hopefully, oh and a stock purchase price. I'll close with that example for anchoring. A lot of people won't sell a stock until they say it recovers but the universe doesn't care about your purchase price. And the stock may never recover so we are anchored to this purchase price because we think we may be entitled to recoup our losses and it's just, you know, I want to say it's just not the case but I can't say what you're entitled to or it's basically an effect of anchoring. So we should close to leave enough time for Q&A I do want to mention a book called Scout mindset by Julia Gallif she has a TED talk on YouTube also where she uses a phrase motivated reasoning, and that explains evolutionarily why we hinge to these beliefs that are influenced by desires and fears. And why we let those things cause us to misinterpret information. And sometimes it's because we want to win right winning is more important or in tribal behavior, you know our evolutionary ancestors needed to exude confidence and so sometimes we're we're less likely to admit we're wrong. And so, I would say, in closing. Just in terms of practical tools what we what can we do to improve on all these biases and our unconscious tendencies. One approach is distancing yourself from the feeling of shame of being wrong right like we we sometimes make investments and we're committed to them and stay the course has a lot of value to it if the portfolio is well structured and the investment choices are good. But a lot of times. We make bad investments and we cling to them because of the shame of being wrong or that applies to a lot of things in life but if you distance yourself from that, and you zoom out and you kind of apply objectivity, you can work towards a more rational decision. And you can take pride in being someone who's comfortable changing their minds a lot of leaders or a lot of people publicly think it's a weakness to change your mind but if you get new information new material information, it makes sense to change your mind. Another tool is seeking out blind spots right I mentioned dis confirming evidence earlier fine try to figure out what you're missing. You know about portfolio construction. Once you have a good alignment in terms of your goals timeframe risk tolerance asset allocation diversification right fundamental for the Bogle heads. You need not check your portfolio constantly, and that will protect you from these unconscious biases right we're human. We are subject to fear and greed. Your will powers often weaker than our ability to reason and be logical. So, by not checking your portfolio often and Bogle heads know this so I say this in part for our friends and family and co workers and you know the broader community that comes to Bogle heads for guidance. It's sort of like not trusting your willpower around snacks. So they say the, the war with healthy foods is one or lost at the supermarket so you think oh, I'll get these cookies or chips and I'll have the willpower to not eat them but once they're in the house. Your willpower is weak and you're you're very likely to to eat them. So how does that apply to a portfolio by checking it constantly you're subjecting yourself to testing your willpower by saying I don't need to check it I'm going to stay the course. You're more likely to not make impulsive changes. With that. We can go to the next slide for closing quotes. You have power over your mind not outside events realize this and you will find strength. So hopefully folks can tie Marcus's wisdom there to to many things in life. Jack Bogle in enough spoke about the importance of character which is mentioned is fundamental to stoicism fundamental to how we can define ourselves so he says in life, we too often allow the illusory to triumph over the real. We focus too much on things and not enough on the intangibles that make things worthwhile too much on success award I never liked, and not enough on character without which success is meaningless. So, completely aligned with the philosophy of stoicism. And the last quote. This, I believe Miriam found, and Jack was a participant on the forum, and he posted to the Bogle heads, and he wrote. Good morning my friends a lot will happen in the coming 12 months. It's a perilous world out there. So get your asset allocation right for you, and then just stay the course best always jack. That will go to additional resources, folks will have this via the PDF various books written by people we've spoken about Dan Ariely another leader in the space predictably irrational. Richard Taylor if folks are interested co wrote nudge. There's so much there. Like, just just too much I opting in and opting out for 401k plans is now normal. And this, this is something that nudge talks about that people have inertia, and they're less likely to enroll in a 401k plan. So Congress passed the pension protection act. I think it was 1996, and folks can be automatically opted in to their 401k plan as a result. Another example of that is organ donation so I think Dan Ariely writes about this that some of the Sweden, Denmark type that area of countries have different opt in and opt out for organ donations and so the, the organ donor participation rate is so dramatically different just because of the opt in opt out because people experience inertia and if you opt them into organ donation, it's shocking, many people will agree to donate their organs. Okay, winners curse another one by Taylor. And then, in terms of stoicism, we spoke about Marcus as an original source, Bill Irvine a guy to the good life is a great portal a starting point to stoicism very digestible very practical. He's a modern day academic he lives and teaches in Ohio. There are other modern day academics, Massimo Pellucci, who's listed here has very accessible free blogs he has free ebooks. He has dozens of YouTube videos incredibly articulate and practical. So with that, we'll open it up for q amp a. Thank you. Thank you, gory. Thank you, Lucas that was very interesting. I enjoyed it very much. I'm sure Mr bogel would have enjoyed it also. Thank you for the quotes gory and Mr bogel. Sure. Do we have any questions. Are there any questions in the chat. Anybody like to start out with questions raising your hand. We do have one chat question. Okay. Um, you lead G. Why do we say that action or inaction is out of our control. I believe that was posted during your archer example. Okay, I can comment but Luke did you want to take it. Yeah, yeah, sure. So yes, the question, why do we say action or inaction right so kind of. This is why is this considered out of our control. So, without getting too philosophical on the Stoics, they, I mean they're they're pretty big on the part that you control in your mind. And really, once things, once, like outside of your mind, you don't necessarily control it. Right. So they actually they the way they describe it is, there's actually something else in between here, which this is just a, it's just a model right some models are useful. It's always 100% accurate but there's actually they it would be an impulse, a mental impulse to action, right that you control, which would then lead to that, that your body, which would take the action, but you aren't necessarily in control of your body. So the example would be, let's say you go throw to baseball, right, maybe 99 times out of 100, you know that that your arms and a function exactly as you want it to. But you know maybe that one time, you know something happens and your arm just isn't functioning the way it does right, or, you know, even like a major league picture is, you know, they try to control their action as best they can, right to, you know, make sure that you're throwing the best pitch possible. But even then, even the most trained athletes in the world lose control. So that's that's kind of the idea that you're in control of the impulse to action, not necessarily the the action and and definitely not in control of the outcome of the action. That would you say, would you say then that when the archer releases the arrow, this action or inaction there would start as soon as the arrow is released and then the outcome is the target. Well, I mean, you're going off of our example it actually would probably the part that he controls would probably stop at his mind. Even though it I mean it is, it's kind of a, and I know philosophers debate about this right, like where exactly do you draw the line of what you control and what you don't control right. And it's, it's, but yeah, that's, that's, that's my understanding. And by the way, I'm absolutely 100% not a professional philosopher. This is just to the best of my knowledge. And I'm sure there's a grad student somewhere that may watch this video that is rolling their eyes at some of these responses, but that's, that's, that's, that's my understanding is is is the things that we control. But it starts and stops with within the mind, and that that's kind of the kind of a core tenant of Stoic philosophy. Well, if we have any grad students rolling their eyes. You can raise your hand or speak up. Yeah. When it says do not on this slide. I think what the question might have meant was action or inaction with our portfolio. In other words, we can do nothing we can stay the course when the markets around us are in turmoil. But that is really an action that we take it's not something that is out of our control. We can, for example, move some of our money. If we're going to retire in the next year or two, we might want to preserve some of our 401k that is in stocks, preserve it in a stable value fund or something just to make sure that when we retire in a year or two. It doesn't doesn't tank really bad for us. It's an action that we take based upon external events, but it's our reading of them, and also as being practical. And I think Mr Bogle would agree that changing the course for practical personal reasons based upon your life situation is appropriate. Not to react to the markets and say, the market's tanking therefore I'm going to sell that would not be what he would advocate. So would you say in that case, you're not really, maybe that needs to be moved. Well, so maybe the way to think about it is like a cause and effect relationship, right? So your cause is really impacting the effect, right? So the effect of it would be the action and maybe it's kind of, this is kind of what philosophers end up talking about definitions of words all the time, right? So it may end up being exactly how are we going to define action versus the impression and at what point in between. But, but I think the baseline underlying idea, right, is the causes, the cause that you are that have effects in the world outside of us all come from, initially from the mind and then the impulse to action, which then the effect of which is action. I mean, I just kind of, I'm trying not to give too philosophical of an answer, but that's, that's, I don't know, I don't know if Gory, if you have a better answer, but that's about the one that I can give right now. Yeah, I think that's reasonable and I'd reiterate what Miriam said in terms of how Jack would answer this. I think that quote that we read of Jack's, he inserts that to make sure the portfolio is right for you. If you go to that, that quote, Lucas, it was the ending closing quotes. This one, so he says, so get your asset allocation right pause for you. So I think that's what Miriam was commenting towards that. As long as the allocation is right for you and for you means at this particular particular phase of life or this time, right, it's not just there's no static you because as you age, maybe you want your portfolio to be more conservative but if you have other income sources and you're not relying on your portfolio, maybe you don't necessarily want it to be more conservative so there's no single answer here. So it's for you it's very that specific piece and then stay the course but to Miriam's point, if it's not appropriate for you. If the circumstances change, let's say there's a medical event or a family friend in need or you know it could be any of dozens of things so that this for you is a material change, then it would warrant the change. That's, that's how I read it. Any other questions in the chat or live questions anyone want to raise their hand, since we have about six minutes in the allocated time. Any other questions I, and if it's okay. Yep. We have one someone said is asking is there truly a reliable stable fund, and then of course I fired back with the link to the wiki article but was there anything more involved with the word stable value in terms of finance. Actually, their stable value fund is insurer insurance contracts but maybe there was a slide there. There was someone that used that example. In my 401k there was a stable value fund, and a stable value fund is like Lady Geek says it's offered by insurance companies, but it's in part of a 401k, or a five four was a five 457 B plan. What I'm understanding is they're not offered outside of workplace employer plans, and what it is is it's kind of like a money market, no it's not a money market it's not a short term paper fund. It is more like a CD, shall we my stable value fund. It's actually offered by via through T roll price, and they would guarantee a certain percent, you would earn a certain percent, and it was a lot. It was like 4% for a year, or a year and a half. At that point it would be they would tell you when it was up and then they would renegotiate. And you could guarantee for that period of time that's what it was. So, in that sense the stable value fund was stable. But it was within the workplace. It's not with outside in a 401k or something. You can't buy them on the open market is my understanding. And, Jim, do you have a question. They have an area in their life that maybe they can't hear it we can't understand you. I'm sorry I'm on a weird remote connection so I'm going to, I'm going to just sit down sorry. Can you hear me now. Yeah, yep, yeah. I'm sorry. Okay, so my question to both presenters is, is there an area in your life in which you use stoicism to get control of or to get it on the on the stoicism line. And then what, what things do you feel that you might be slipping away from that whether the trigger items or what, what gives you that sense that you're, you're falling off the wagon for stoicism. Hmm. Lucas, do you want to start. Yeah, so I mean, there's two questions there the first first was kind of, I guess, I think I was kind of how to how to kind of get into it. Was that kind of the first question right. Well, or something that you really thought you had a control over. I use those as a, but now you felt that times you slip away and what's telling you that. I. Well, when I kind of first started paying more attention to my personal finances. You know, there's, well, I'm going to back up. So, one, one idea within stuff is you don't control other people. Right. You can offer suggestions, but you don't control other people. When I first started top like constantly focusing a little bit more on personal finance. I had to learn that I do not control my spouse's spending. And that was, that was something that right we did in terms of, you know, budgeting and that sort of thing, right, that you don't completely control the other person right. And so that was something that it was, you know, a bit of a learning from from my end. I'll, I'll answer. Kind of more broadly, I think it's so practical. Daily, like, you can meet most any challenge with it, like, let's say I drop something, and it spills all over the floor, I think, you know, man, you know, it's very upsetting and then I just before reacting like before losing one's temper or whatever, I'll just like zoom out and say, All right, it's actually no big deal, I could clean that up pretty easily, and then you do. And that might be a really simple example but you could expand on that to, to almost, you know, many unwanted things in life and just zoom out and reframe and then realize this has a solution this has a practical approach, and I can take action for it and then it's like instantly empowering. I'll respond to what the other thing you asked about veering from it to the credit of stoic philosophers. They sent a refer to himself as a patient in the hospital amongst other patients so he was writing to his friend, and he wasn't claiming to have like some superior enlightenment he was just saying these are things that that work that help me that may help you. And so stoicism was big on pulling the best ideas wherever they existed it was not. It was not confined to these certain beliefs and in fact, I think Seneca said he, he doesn't mind being a spy in the enemies camp, as long as they're doing something better that he can learn from he's happy to take that knowledge. And so, when you said veering from it there, there are many instances where you really have to reach like it's, it's not immediate. But if you find something better and Marcus says this to if you find something better than courage justice temperance then go for it. But in his lifetime and his practicing of, you know, running the empire for 20 years he did not find anything better than the combination of those four. So I see we're at 930. I think in a minute or two I could highlight some takeaways from this scout mindset book because it's so relevant. I, we didn't include it as an additional resource because it's not behavioral finance but I have another behavior questions. Oh, sure. And it has to do with the losing of $100. We hate more than making $150. I've read that before. And that relates to the stoic view of what I can't remember what. And actually it occurred to me when you posted that slide. There might be an evolutionary reason for it. In other words, we had the, the Savannah, you know, running from the tiger and Savannah that if you sometimes losing something has greater risk, you're more at risk when you lose something than making something that as long as you make something you're okay, but losing something, you can lose your life. Sure. And there's also a sentimentality there's an emotional attachment to things. They've done this experiment with what people will pay for concert tickets or show tickets. And once they own that ticket. So by saying if we offered you X percent more or X dollars more than what you paid, people will hold on to that ticket, even though they were, they were only willing to pay up to a certain amount for it logically you think they would sell it for a higher price but not necessarily because there's an emotional bias. And I think that was included more so for behavioral finance and less so than a stoic concept but included there as a overlap into behavioral finance. And I see that Jim is you have your hand up. Did you have another question. Jim, did you want to lower your hand. Oh, no, okay. Okay, so I don't know if folks are staying on, but I think there's there's so much value in in this scout mindset that I'll just quickly cover some of her points because part of the part of the theme of this presentation is that we are often not rational but it's within our power to to find tools and use those tools and strengthen our ability to be rational logical and less influenced by unconscious biases. So she says, how do we get there and she she her paradigm is scout versus soldiers soldiers are performing a certain function. Scouts go out and try to get the lay of the land align with reality and objective reality that's part of how she defines a scout's purpose. And she says, what traits are in people who are more likely to be good scouts. So what traits are more likely and she found curiosity is a commonality, feeling pleasure from learning new information so that can help you identify objective reality, itching to solve a puzzle versus just accepting things how they are. Being intrigued, when you encounter something that contradicts your expectations or your assumptions or your conclusions. And all of these things might sound oh intuitive or easy or yeah who wouldn't do that but realistically day to day and year to year and entire lifetimes. We are often ingrained in our ways and our habits that we don't realize we're not being logical rational practical, as we've said, so she said feel they feel virtuous testing their own beliefs and this was fundamental to stoics when I say Marcus said if you find anything better than courage justice temperance and wisdom, he adamantly meant test your assumptions test your conclusions, you know, and if you, if your, your assumptions were wrong your hypothesis had holes in it, you know, strengthen it so not being married to early conclusions. We spoke about being less likely to consider someone weak, if they change their mind right like in politics we saw this phrase waffling and it was, it was framed negatively. But as you find new information. It's actually a strength to, to sometimes evolve with that new information. So those were some traits for what she found to be a scout mindset. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Nothing in the chat. One thing, the gory. The finance buff. Also known as his name is Harry said he often get he's a bogey head who writes on the bogey head forum. He has his own blog, the finance buff.com no dot. Yeah. And I think he had a wonderful article years ago, and he called it safety in the mainstream. And basically, it relates to the stoic values that you were talking about, or the value of you that you do the best you can with what you can control. And what you cannot control. You don't lose your sleep over you don't stress over it. You do the best you can. And he related that to index funds, investing in index funds. He invests in index funds. You said because I do the best I can, I create my portfolio with index funds, knowing that at least I will receive market returns that if the market tanks if the market goes down, if there's a recession. If there's just a bear market. My, my index funds are going to go down, my stock funds are going to go down. But I did not cause that the market caused that I invested in index funds. And I know that they will go up and down, but I don't have to worry I am safe from my own emotions of kicking myself that I invested in a stupid stock. I did not invest in a stupid stock. I put my money in the index fund that invests in 3000 stocks, and it is doing what I expected it to do it is following the market. And so I am happy. I'm happy. I'm safe. I was safe in what I did in my own mind. Excellent example, super practical. And again, sometimes it takes convincing ourselves like it's an exercise right if your portfolio goes down it's really hard to feel isolated from that experience right but, but you can do exactly Miriam you can do exactly what Miriam just said like, think about the decision you made how you made it that you made the best decision at the time with what was available to you, and you can find consolation and that you can find comfort and peace of mind has made. I think so many bogelheads know this, that it's interesting. Folks who who might benefit the most from this message are not, you know, hearing it as easily, because there's so much noise in the world and the media that, you know this practical approach gets drowned out. But yeah, I'll reiterate another thing, you know that overlaps that a lot of these things are so much easier to say, but they are in fact within our reach they are able to be practiced and they are, they do strengthen with time. Understanding that they're more natural intuitive.