The next time the stock market takes a sickening plunge, perhaps you should take time out to meditate.
That would be the recommendation of certified financial planner Graham Byron and meditation coach Maria Gonzalez. The pair recently published a book called The Mindful Investor. The book’s subtitle makes an impressive claim: By maintaining a calm mind, you can obtain both inner peace and financial security.
Gonzalez, president of Toronto-based Argonauta Strategic Alliances Consulting Inc., says the book was conceived after Byron noticed how practising “mindfulness” and “equanimity” helped his clients when the market crashed.
Mindfulness meditation involves cultivating the simple awareness of whatever is arising in the moment. “It enabled him to work with clients more effectively, listen to them more deeply and help him in ways he didn’t think of before he learned about mindfulness.”
Or, as they write in the second chapter, mindfulness meditation is “simply noticing the way things are.” The ability to accept what is, without resistance, is called equanimity. That means accepting things you can’t control, such as stock prices or interest rates.
That doesn’t mean the authors recommend a passive indifference to investment portfolios. It means, simply, “don’t fight with yourself.”
Failure to keep a calm mind when financial markets are plunging may lead to…