This One's Going To The Moon

When NASA stopped flying the Shuttle, it seemed that was going to be the end of the reusable spaceplane concept. Until everything started going to the moon. Again.

When the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, the idea of astronauts flying a rocket into outer space, while a little ahead of its time, became a real possibility.

It was only 65 years later when the maneuvers of a large spaceplane, known in real life as the space shuttle and presumably directed by mission control, became a big part of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Then, a mere 12 years following, a musical act with the bold and auspicious name The B-52's, discovered, and told us, that there was a moon in the sky.

Moreover, as they so cleverly revealed, it was called, wait for it:

The Moon.

And that's where this one was going. On a moon mission.

Why?

Because of unreasonable expectations, that's why.

Okay, okay, I'm not talking about NASA and real lunar orbit space flight.

I'm not talking about putting humans into space.

I'm talking about investors and investing as usual, except of course from a happiness perspective.

According to history, a lot of people seem to think that there's luck involved with investing.

Now of course there is a little bit of luck. And it can be a bit of a race.

And when I say that, I should be specific and say GOOD luck, which reminds me of the old blues line:

"If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."

But getting past that, it's mostly experience and understanding.

Let me give you an example, a giant leap as it were.

I've added an image to this which is key to understanding what I'm talking about.

It's called the Wall Street Cheat Sheet.

I’ve put a link to a copy in my show notes.

Look at the capsule created by this picture and tell me what you see.

If that's an ambitious mission that's not going on for you, I'll tell you that it is, what we call in audio, a sine wave.

A up-and-down curve that starts at a midpoint, curves down, back up through the midpoint to a top, then back down to the midpoint, over and over and over again.

Starting at the midpoint, our sample investor gets in. To what investment, we're not concerned right here right now. He gets in somewhere with something. He just gets in.

It goes down.

Our sample guy "knows" this is just one of the fascinating features used to separate the wheat from the chaff and he stays in.

It goes through the bottom and starts to climb.

Sample guy says, "yep".

It climbs through the middle.

Sample guy says, "yep".

It climbs upward some more.

Sample guy says, "I knew it. Boy am I smart".

It climbs toward the top.

Sample guy says those fateful fateful, yes fateful, words.

This One's Going To The Moon.

Instead of getting off the rollercoaster at the top, most people give over to the fantasy that it will just keep going.

NASA didn't fall prey to that kind of thinking.

It turns over and starts to drop.

Sample guy pretends to not be worried.

It drops back to the middle.

Sample guy seethes inwardly while smiling too big.

It drops more.

Sample guy says, "I knew it. Boy is this rigged."

Sound familiar? It should.

It's called human history.

Apollo 20! Didn't happen. The program stopped after Apollo 17.

But NASA had built hardware and had plans for missions up to and including it. But not long after Apollo 11, it seemed we reached our goal. And we HAD reached one goal. We had won the moon race.

The moral? Have more than one goal. Address many different fields.

Sound familiar?

Once upon a time, our hero Daniel Rose found himself exploring the moon, where this one was going.

It was not exactly smooth sailing, as the metaphor goes.

Even though Daniel sailed across the Sea of Tranquility, he found mostly excitement and misinformation.

And he wasn't even in a crew capsule on the Dark Side of the Moon.

It was worse there, he'd heard.

But back to going to the moon.

Specifically, THIS ONE.

As in:

"This One's Going To The Moon"

Daniel thought that was kind of silly, but he also thought that sometimes silly thoughts turn out to be right.

Where did THAT thought come from?

Turns out that like most things, it comes from human nature. The entire mission revolves around it.

Many people, myself included in the past, have put ourselves in a time capsule and made the mistake of thinking ourselves too smart for the system.

When we buy something, investments included, we rightly or wrongly, mostly wrongly, inject our own smarts into any good results that come forth.

"I sure bought that one at the right time" we say.

Sure that's vague, but it's purposefully vague.

Nobody wants their rationales undermined too easily, right?

Daniel wasn't slow.

He could see this rationale playing out, and following the magnetic field, he jumped right in.

This one WAS going to the moon. Or at least to the International Space Station. Okay, maybe some other celestial body.

It had to be.

Without goals with which to form expectations and set guidelines, there would be a highly controversial future. The only good thing left for any investment was a moon landing or beyond.

Daniel committed himself to learning how to avoid this mistake in the future, just not this time. He chose to be the chief historian for his own self and to apply what he'd learned.

You, on the other hand, can learn right now, so you're ready when you need to be.

Instead of saying "This One's Going To The Moon", you can use real space science.

I mean investing science.

I mean psychology.

We’re changing the way we look at things, and

Remember, “THAT’S GOOD”.

Also remember, this is Financial Life Coaching from A Happiness Perspective! Coaching Happiness.