New Book Alert: The Long GameMy new book, The Long Game, is available for pre-order now. The book contains reflections from 30 investors who’ve survived decades of market cycles. You’ll learn how to tune out the noise that makes you second-guess yourself, handle the fear and greed that hurt your decisions, and stick to principles that actually compound wealth over time. Shipping starts end of February 2026.Click Here to Pre-Order NowIt was October 1915, and a British explorer Ernest Shackleton was leading one of the most ambitious journeys in the history of exploration. He was trying to cross the continent of Antarctica on foot. Shackleton was inspired by Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition in 1911, and so this crossing remained, in Shackleton’s words, the “one great main object of Antarctic journeyings.”He, along with twenty-seven crew members, started on a ship called Endurance.For months, Endurance had been making its way through the Weddell Sea, supposedly one of the most dangerous stretches of ocean on earth, when the pack ice (sea ice that is not attached to the shoreline or any other fixed object) closed in around her.Slowly, over days and then weeks, the ice tightened its grip. The crew could do nothing but wait and watch, and hope. And they hoped despite knowing that the ship was not going to make it.On the evening of October 27th, Shackleton finally gave the order to abandon the ship. The entire crew climbed out onto ice with whatever supplies they could carry. They were far away from home, in temperatures of minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, and with no rescue possible and no certainty of survival.That night, Shackleton wrote in his diary:After long months of ceaseless anxiety and strain, after times when hope beat high and times when the outlook was black indeed, the end of the Endurance has come. But though we have been compelled to abandon the ship, which is crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted, we are alive and well, and we have stores and equipment for the task that lies before us. The task is to reach land with all the members of the Expedition. It is hard to write what I feel. To a sailor his ship is more than a floating home, and in the Endurance I had centred ambitions, hopes, and desires. Now, straining and groaning, her timbers cracking and her wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her sentient life at the very outset of her career.As per Ranulph Fiennes, who wrote in Shackleton, one of his crew members mentioned that Shackleton just stood there on the deck, smoking a cigarette, with “a serious but somewhat unconcerned air.” He showed no “emotion, melodrama or excitement.” He gave each man a word of encouragement as they climbed off. 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 across ice floes, through open seas in a small lifeboat, and eventually to safety. It remains one of the most remarkable stories of human endurance ever recorded.Alfred Lansing’s book Endurance has sat on my shelf for years. Re-reading it a few weeks ago, I could not help but think of Shackleton’s adventure as a study in the problem of the “second self.”Consider your favourite subject of investing. There is a version of you that thinks clearly about investing. This version has read enough of Buffett and Munger, understands that markets are irrational in the short run, and has a set of principles that reflects years of accumulated wisdom. And thanks to this kind of training, this version is calm, grounded, and long-term. It knows what to do.But then, the market falls 20%.Suddenly, a different version of you shows up. This one checks the portfolio before breakfast. This one reads every bearish headline with a sinking feeling and starts building rational-sounding cases for why this time is different, convinced that everything’s going to come crashing down.Now, before you consider this second version of you as stupid, please understand that it’s not. In fact, it is frighteningly articulate. It will construct arguments so persuasive that the calm and principled first version will struggle to answer them.This is the “second self” I am talking about. And every investor I have met, read about, or spoken to over 23 years carries both of these selves inside them.The first self makes the investment plan in moments of peace and clarity. The second self must live with that plan even when the world is on fire. And the tragedy is that these are almost different people.The first self makes promises the second self cannot keep. And not because the second self is weak or undisciplined, but because it is operating under entirely different conditions.In investing, we talk a great deal about the importance of having a process and a set of principles. What we talk about far 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— being able to follow it under pressure—is something closer to what the ancient Indians called sthitaprajna, meaning the one whose mind remains undisturbed amidst misery, who is free from desire for sensory pleasures, and who is free from attachment, fear, and anger.When Arjuna asks what a sthitaprajna looks like, Krishna describes their inner state: one who is not disturbed even by the deepest suffering, who does not rejoice excessively in happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear, and anger. This, Krishna says, is a person of steady wisdom.I used to read this and think it was something you admire from a distance. I no longer think so. I think it is a precise description of the gap most investors spend their entire careers failing to close.And yet, even Krishna could only describe it. Nobody can teach you how to practice it. It must be earned slowly, by watching yourself honestly, over many market cycles, until you know your second self well enough to recognise it when it arrives.If you want to start somewhere, try this: the next time the market falls and you feel the urge to act, pause for some time and ask yourself—which self is guiding me right now?Shackleton standing on that deck, watching his ship go down, was not a man who had conquered his fear. He was a man who had understood it and built a relationship with it deep enough that when the moment came, the 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 that when the second self shows up—and it will—you are not surprised by it.— VishalPre-Order The Long GameThe Long Game is available for pre-order now.India: ₹1,799 (regular price ₹1,999 after the first 1,000 pre-orders). Free shipping included.International: $50 (regular price $55). Free shipping included.Every pre-order comes with a limited-edition, hand-illustrated art card featuring Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, paired with a timeless quote on choosing your heroes wisely.Shipping starts end of February 2026.Click Here to Pre-Order NowThe post The Second Self appeared first on Safal Niveshak.