Hi, The Investor’s Podcast Network Community!

Hey everyone, happy Sunday. On this early January weekend, when you have a little extra time to decompress and reflect after the holidays, we bring you some light reading on the power of meditation.

🙏 Calm goes a long way in the lives of top investors, leaders, and artists, regardless of their field. They make room for stillness, no matter how busy they might be. 

Let’s discuss, in just 4 minutes to read.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

THE MAIN STORY: MEDITATION FOR INVESTORS

Overview

Long before it was popular, Ray Dalio credited much of his success leading the world’s largest hedge fund to something simple: a daily meditation practice.

Twice per day for decades, the billionaire closes his eyes and repeats a short mantra in his head for about 20 minutes.

The investor and entrepreneur Sam Altman also sticks to a consistent meditation routine: He has said meditation mitigates his “crippling” anxiety and transforms his decision-making. It has made him calmer and more joyous in and out of the office.

Daniel Loeb and Paul Tudor Jones also start many days with a calm meditation.

In an investment world of news, notifications, and constant price updates, some of the best investors love to meditate to release tension. Many also say it improves their decision-making.

Let’s dig deeper.

The practice

Many consider meditation just another task to cross off their to-do list while they go about their busy lives. But that misses the point of the practice.

The truth is, you can practice meditation at any time, wherever you are. You can start at any age, and you can begin with or without a phone, app, studio, or formal practice.

You could meditate for a few moments while sitting at a traffic light, in line for a cup of coffee, or walking in your neighborhood. Looking deeply into nature (from the birds to the trees to the sun hitting a plant or body of water) helps the mind settle down.

You don’t need to carve out any time in your schedule for meditation. Instead, you can incorporate it into what you’re already doing, particularly if you’re in a tense state or want to make higher-quality investment decisions.

You might slow down, with your phone off, and sip a cup of tea. You could sit by a tree with your journal, listen to the birds, and close your eyes.

There is no “perfect” way to meditate, and it isn’t a quick fix promising instant happiness. Like any worthwhile pursuit, it’s a long-term process that requires patience. Find what’s comfortable for you.

The benefits

Meditation fosters a sense of awareness, and its benefits are hard to overstate: It helps people build skills to manage stress; reduce negative emotions; increase imagination, creativity, patience, and tolerance; and manage unhealthy habits, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Decades of research on the health effects of meditation show that our body’s response to meditation helps decrease metabolism, lower blood pressure, improve memory and focus, ease chronic pain, and improve heart rate.

Wall Street titans seek calm

Dalio has said he uses meditation “to reflect on mistakes and to clear my mind. When the pain passes, don’t just go forward, reflect, because that’s where your progress is.”

Dalio has said he took up meditation after the Beatles discovered it in India in 1968. He focuses on mindful breathing, closing his eyes, and repeating a mantra in complete silence.

Meditation is “the single most important reason for whatever success I’ve had,” Dalio once said. He starts by finding a quiet place to sit and gently close his eyes.

Dalio knows to meditate anytime he feels anxious or tense at work. It also fosters creativity for his investments, business management, and family life.

“When you want to be creative, you don’t say, ‘I’m going to work hard and think about being creative,” Dalio said, adding that meditation helps him “see things clearer.”

Not just a trend

Many corporations, including Goldman Sachs, offer a meditation program for employees. Apps like Calm and Headspace make it easy to meditate on your phone.

The effects are real: A 2018 study in a Thai interdisciplinary journal proved that investors who meditated regularly ran portfolios that gained more than those run by traders who didn’t meditate or meditated less intensely.

The study collected data from 226 retail and professional traders, concluding that intense meditation was associated with better discipline, particularly not overreacting to news and panic selling.

But the biggest reason investors meditate is to reduce stress. Plus, meditation can increase metacognition, the awareness of one’s thought processes. This could help assess the quality of your decision-making.

Dive deeper

For more, check out our interview with Ray Dalio. And here’s his book, Principles.

As Dalio says, even just a few minutes of meditation a day makes a big difference.

Readers, how do you find a sense of calm in this noisy investment landscape? We wish you a peaceful start to 2023.