The Investor’s Second Self – Safal Niveshak

New book alert: The long game

My new book, The long gameis now available for pre-order. The book contains reflections from thirty investors who have survived decades of market cycles. You’ll learn how to tune out the noise that makes you doubt yourself, deal with the fear and greed that harms your decisions, and stick to principles that build wealth over time. Shipping will begin in late February 2026.

It was October 1915 and British explorer Ernest Shackleton was leading one of the most ambitious voyages in the history of exploration. He attempted to cross the continent of Antarctica on foot. Shackleton was inspired by Roald Amundsen’s 1911 South Pole expedition, and so this crossing remained, in Shackleton’s words, the ‘one great principal purpose of Antarctic travel’.

He and twenty-seven crew members embarked on a ship called Stamina.

For months, Stamina had made its way through the Weddell Sea, believed to be one of the most dangerous parts of the ocean on Earth, when the pack ice (sea ice that is not attached to the coastline or any other solid object) closed around her.

Slowly, over days and weeks, the ice tightened its grip. The crew could do nothing but wait, watch and hope. And they hoped, even though they knew the ship wouldn’t make it.

On the evening of October 27, Shackleton finally gave the order to abandon ship. The entire crew climbed onto the ice with whatever supplies they could carry. They were far from home, in temperatures of minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, with no rescue possible and no assurance of their survival.

That evening Shackleton wrote in his diary:

After long months of unceasing fear and tension, after times when hope was high and times when prospects were indeed bleak, the end of Endurance has come. But although we are forced to abandon the ship, which is so crushed that it can never be repaired, we are still alive and have supplies and equipment for the task ahead. The task is to reach land with all members of the expedition. It’s hard to write what I feel. To a sailor his ship is more than a floating house, and in the Endurance I had placed ambitions, hopes and desires at the center. Now, straining and groaning, her beams creaking and her wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her conscious life at the very beginning of her career.

According to Ranulph Fiennes, who wrote Shackletonsaid one of his crew, Shackleton just stood there on the deck, smoking a cigarette, with “a serious but somewhat carefree air.” He showed no ’emotion, melodrama or excitement’. He gave each man a word of encouragement as they dismounted. To one he said, “Don’t forget your diary.” To another: “Bring your banjo.”

All twenty-seven men survived. Over the next few months, Shackleton led them over ice floes, through the open sea in a small lifeboat and finally to safety. It remains one of the most remarkable stories of human endurance ever recorded.

Alfred Lansing’s book Stamina has been on my shelf for years. When I reread it a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think of Shackleton’s adventure as a study in the problem of the ‘second self’.

Think about your favorite topic: investing. There is a version of you who thinks clearly about investing. This version has read enough of Buffett and Munger, understands that markets are irrational in the short term, and has a set of principles that reflect years of accumulated wisdom. And thanks to this type of training, this version is calm, grounded and long-lasting. It knows what to do.

But then the market drops by 20%.

Suddenly another version of you appears. This person checks the wallet before breakfast. This one reads every bearish headline with a dejected feeling and starts building rational-sounding arguments as to why this time is different, believing that everything is going to collapse.

Before you think of this second version of yourself as stupid, understand that it isn’t. Actually, it’s worded frighteningly. It will construct arguments so compelling that the calm and principled first draft will struggle to answer them.

This is the ‘second self’ I’m talking about. And every investor I’ve met, read about, or talked to over the past 23 years carries both aspects.

The first person makes the investment plan in moments of peace and clarity. The second self must live with that plan even if the world is on fire. And the tragedy is that these are almost different people.

The first self makes promises that the second self cannot keep. And not because the second self is weak or undisciplined, but because it operates under completely different circumstances.

In investing, we talk a lot about the importance of a process and a set of principles. What we talk about a lot less is that having a process and being able to follow it under pressure are two completely different skills.

The first – having a process – is an intellectual exercise. The second – the ability to follow under pressure – is closer to what the ancient Indians called it sthitaprajna, that is, the one whose mind remains undisturbed in the midst of misery, who is free from desire for sense pleasures, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger.

When Arjuna asks what a sthitaprajna It seems that Krishna is describing their inner state: one who is undisturbed by even the deepest suffering, who does not overly rejoice in happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger. This, says Krishna, is a person of steadfast wisdom.

I used to read this and thought it was something you admire from a distance. I don’t think so anymore. I think this is an accurate description of the gap that most investors cannot close throughout their careers.

And yet even Krishna could only describe it. No one can teach you how to practice it. It must be earned slowly, by taking an honest look at yourself, over many market cycles, until you know your second self well enough to recognize it when it arrives.

If you want to start somewhere, try this: the next time the market drops and you feel the urge to take action, pause for a moment and ask yourself: which yourself lead me now?

Shackleton, who stood on that deck and watched his ship sink, was not the man who had overcome his fear. He was a man who had understood it and built a relationship with it so deep that when the moment came, fear did not overpower his clarity.

That, I think, is the real long game in life and investing… the slow and honest work of getting to know yourself well enough so that when the second self shows up – and it will – it doesn’t surprise you.

– Vishal