NeuroInvesting: Build a New Investing Brain

Preface

Investors or not, as humans we have two deep yearnings. We are all born with them and are ruled by them. We can't seem to escape their grasp. These two deep needs are the need for survival and the need for happiness. In this book I refer to them as the need for more and the need to be more.

Every thought, act, and emotion emanates from these two sources, which may sometimes seem to be opposing each other. If there were a “Bell Curve of Human Needs,” I would put survival and happiness at either end of the curve. As an archer pulls the string of the bow and aims, the tension between these two instincts is the power and strength that gathers within the archer. The tighter the tension between the two ends of the bow, the further the arrow will go, and the more likely that we will achieve our target.

That's our aim in both life and in investing: to gracefully and confidently handle the tension between the two needs, giving us the precision and the power to get us to the target. The survival instinct drives us to grow more, invest more, make more money, and attain more. Without the tension to keep it going, it weakens and allows disappointment and fear to set in when the “more” we want is not yet achieved or simply the fear of losing them dominates, even when we have attained them. We need the tension to keep us away from this unproductive fear.

The happiness instinct drives us to reach for social significance, career achievements, and to seek value and worth in life. When not ...