The Anagogic Banker – Be watchful of Anger and Fear

Beth Solano

By

Siddhartha Rastogi

They are CONTAGIOUS and can SPREAD all over……

Small incidents lead to major catastrophes!

In 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb member of Young Bosnia, a Yugoslav organization seeking an end to Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, led to a series of events that led to World War 1. This led to killings of more than 9 million soldiers and 5 million civilians involving 28 countries. It blew up $186 billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs and left at least 7 million men permanently disabled.

In 2008, the subprime bubble was led by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, resulting in the worst banking crisis, even more catastrophic than the Great Depression of 1939. The Lehman crisis wrote off more than 33% of the net worth of all companies the world over and created massive unemployment of approx. 8% as against a decadal average of less than 2%.

2014 saw the rise of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq & Levant). This can be attributed to the US-led invasion of Iraq which lasted for 6 weeks. It brought to an end of the 24 year rule of Saddam Hussein in 2003, which by then had created an administrative vacuum. What followed was sheer brutality which the world had never before witnessed. An ISIL militant who was detained by Kurdish authorities admitted to raping 200 women and killing more than 500 people after joining ISIL in 2013. In Sept 2014, the Syrian observatory for human rights estimated 80,000 to 100,000 such men fighting in Iraq and Syria.

Emotions of anger and fear arise on account of a single factor – Insecurity.

Insecurity causes panic and directs the brain to take steps which in all likelihood will not be the RIGHT one.

FIGHT or FLIGHT

In both cases self-destruction is guaranteed. If one fights and s/he starts winning, adrenalin pumps in and pushes for more to keep winning or killing as in this case. This leads to addiction as constant winning or killing gives a high and whenever one wants a HIGH, or a KICK as some say, the brain sends stimulus to win or kill. In case one seeks to leave, his/her ego kicks in and s/he reorganizes to come back and fight to seek revenge and boost the ego.

If the person is not able to control his or her emotion of anger, it rubs on to all the things he comes in close contact with.

Imagine you had a rough day at work, you are upset and once you reach home you behave in an unruly manner with your partner. A similar emotion or behavior passes on to the next person who your partner interacts with, say your son. He too is disturbed and doesn’t fare well in his class test the following day. The teacher then reviews his performance and on prodding your son, learns about the reason of his poor performance and gives you feedback. Thus, you see the negativity you received could have been very well controlled at your level should you have shrugged it off. But you chose to carry it with you and it came back to bite you.

Another example – We all have some investments or the other. We believe we make sensible, smart, well-informed choices at least where investments are concerned. One fine day the investment we are holding drops by 8-9% and some acquaintance calls us to give further negative input on the investment. Without verifying, we react and exit the investment. Then we go ahead and share the information with others who hold the same investment. They too panic and exit, causing a spiral. Thus fear aggravates the downside and pushes the investment further down. Without understanding fundamentally what went wrong and how soon that anomaly will get corrected, the investment is exited.

A similar situation happens when investments are rising and most decisions are made on hearsay rather than on rational judgment. In fact, GREED emanates from insecurity and so does Fear. Greed arises on 2 accounts, one that you will have lesser opportunities in future and two that if you don’t cling on to the opportunity now to make more you will be worse off.

Thus just like fear, GREED also leads to self-destruction.

Hence the Anagogic Banker says –

“Follow your intuitions, recall past patterns and then rationally decide…else destruction is certain”

Siddhartha Rastogi

Siddhartha was born to a learned middle class educated family in Semi Urban India. His father was an extremely honest man who because of his honesty had to pay the price in corporate world. Mother is a determined woman who ensured that children are being well taken care off. After a few years of birth, doctors called Siddhartha, a slow child having flat foot. He would fall more than he could walk. Determined mother ensured all therapies for her son to come out strong to fight the world. Siddhartha joined swimming when he was in 6th standard. Seeing other children of his class, he jumped in 10 feet deep pool and learnt swimming on his own, the very same day.

From that day there was no looking back. He topped his city in 12th and went to score highest in his B school exams. During his profession as banker, he became youngest branch manager of a MNC bank managing their biggest wealth branch in the country. There he found love of his life and got married. His love of his life emerged in the form of his daughter who completely changed him for good.

Siddhartha Rastogi is Director for a boutique Investment bank in India.

Siddhartha is a forward looking thinker & writer who has written a book on decision making. 8 Simple steps to effective decision making.

He writes on various social and current issues via his blog and can also be found on twitter.