1: Billionaire Charlie Munger, the longtime vice chairman and “right-hand man” to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, was well known for his fiercely independent thinking.
He took pleasure in rejecting the “wisdom of the herd” and going his own way. Regardless of what others thought or what they might be doing.
Yet, equally important, although perhaps not as well known, was Charlie’s willingness to change his mind when new facts emerged.
“Both Warren and I are very good at changing our prior conclusions,” he writes in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. “We work at developing that facility because without it, disaster often comes.”
Charlie saw the wisdom in John Maynard Keynes‘s statement: “It’s not bringing in the new ideas that’s so hard. It’s getting rid of the old ones.”
He admired Albert Einstein‘s reflection that his mental success was due to his “curiosity, concentration, perseverance, and self-criticism.”
“By self-criticism, he meant becoming good at destroying your own best-loved and hardest-won ideas,” Charlie reflects. “If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.”
2: There is a temptation when people are successful to assume that they never made mistakes. That success was somehow a given. Or guaranteed.
It’s that way of thinking that is the mistake, Charlie believed: “I don’t want you to think we have any way of learning or behaving so you won’t make a lot of mistakes.
“I’m just saying that you can learn to make fewer mistakes than other people—and how to fix your mistakes faster when you do make them.
“But there’s no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes,” he reflects.
What we must do is learn how to handle our errors. Oftentimes, this skill requires us to remain open to new information. When new facts emerge, we must be willing to abandon our prior thinking.
“Life, in part,” he writes, “is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand.”
3: Showing up this way in life requires us to stay vigilant. To be on the lookout for trouble.
As the commencement speaker at USC Law School in 2007, Charlie said: “You may well say, ‘Who wants to go through life anticipating trouble?’
“Well, I did, trained as I was. I’ve gone through a long life anticipating trouble. And here I am now, well along in my 84th year. Like Epictetus, I’ve had a favored life. It didn’t make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came. It didn’t hurt me at all. In fact, it helped me.”
His final words that day: “Well, that’s enough for one graduation. I hope these ruminations of an old man are useful to you. In the end, I’m speaking toward the only outcome feasible for old Valiant-for-Truth in Pilgrim’s Progress: ‘My sword I leave to him who can wield it.'”
More next week!
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Reflection: How willing am I to challenge my own beliefs and let go of cherished ideas when new evidence emerges?
Action: Practice identifying one outdated assumption I hold this week, and intentionally seek out information or perspectives that might challenge or refine my thinking.
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