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Life Lessons
Love Means Always Having to Say You’re Sorry
My first boyfriend dumped me.
Thankfully, he was a gentleman, so he didn’t disappear without offering me valuable feedback: Stop being so damn critical.
My offense: He’d prepared a lovely picnic, one involving strawberries and Cool Whip, and because I have a thing about plastic food (despite a hypocritical weakness for Doritos and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches), I suggested that real whipped cream would be preferable.
No one likes a food zealot, never mind an ungrateful wench.
And while I’ve learned since then to show appreciation and gratitude for what works and brings delight, it’s not easy being a Pollyanna — I’m hardwired to find mistakes and want to fix them (whipped cream would have totally been better).
So it wasn’t surprising that I became a money manager. My mistakes were calculated in real time and down to the penny, blinking red on my computer monitor for extra emphasis, lest I failed to notice that we were costing our clients money.
Making mistakes and fixing mistakes are not the same things
While it’s easy to tote up investment mistakes, it’s a lot harder to gauge whether a firm ever learns from its mistakes. Investment…
