Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathway’s Vice Chairman and Warren Buffet’s partner gave a wonderful Law School Commencement address at the University of Southern California recently where he lays out his tenets of life. Here are five things he says that really resonated with me…
- Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.
- To deserve what you want you need a lot of “assiduity”. And what’s assiduity? It’s the ability to sit down on your ass until you do it.
- In addition you need to practice continuous learning. People who rise in life are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but those that are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
- You must never allow yourself to drift into self-pity. It’s a ridiculous way to behave and when you avoid it, you get a great advantage over everybody else or almost everybody else because self-pity is a standard condition, and yet you can train yourself out of it.
- Finally go through life anticipating trouble. So when it comes you are prepared financially and mentally. It’s your duty to deal with a terrible blow in a constructive fashion.
Read the whole speech here. (Thanks Yuvraj for sharing).
[My earlier post on Passion, Happiness, Work, Play and Life may also be of interest to you.]
Update: Sadagopan has a nice post on this as well.
7408 Responses to “Charlie Munger’s Tenets of Life”