OF ALL THE LIFE LESSONS that legendary American investor Warren Buffett has shared, the one I like the best is about a dream car. One that the Berkshire Hathaway CEO would be happy, let’s say, to buy for me. On the condition that I would take care of it as best as I can.
The story appears in an essay on Buffett in Gillian Zoe Segal’s Getting There: A Book of Mentors, in which 30 highly successful people disclose how they reached the top. In the essay, Buffett says it is crucial to convey a message early to youngsters: Take care of your mind and body.
Dream car with a catch
Warren Buffett begins the story by hypothetically offering to buy a youngster the car of his dreams. The youngster would just have to name the car, he says; by the time he gets home from college, he would find it standing in the porch. The catch, however, is that it would be the only set of wheels the youngster would ever get in his entire life.
“Now, knowing that, how are you going to treat that car?” asks the 89-year-old business magnate, one of the richest men in the world.
“You’re probably going to read the owner’s manual four times before you drive it; you’re going to keep it in the garage, protect it at all times, change the oil twice as often as necessary,” he says. “If there’s the least little bit of rust, you’re going to get that fixed immediately so it doesn’t spread — because you know it has to last you as long as you live.”
One mind, one body
Buffett then drops a bombshell on the youngster: That’s exactly how you are placed vis-a-vis your mind and body! Do you realise that you have just one mind and one body to last you a lifetime?
“You have only one mind and one body for the rest of your life,” Buffett says. “If you aren’t taking care of them when you’re young, it’s like leaving that car out in hailstorms and letting rust eat away at it. If you don’t take care of your mind and body now, by the time you’re 40 or 50, you’ll be like a car that can’t go anywhere.”
Inner scorecard
Another bit of wisdom shared by Warren Buffett — in interviews with newspapers and news portals — has to do with an ‘inner scorecard’ as opposed to an ‘outer scorecard’. Simply put, an inner scorecard defines the essence of a person and the kind of value system that makes him tick. It comes from within and speaks a person’s individual truth.
Conversely, an outer scorecard is driven by what the world thinks of a person’s success, image or brand value. It is an external measure of success calibrated by other people’s opinions, not one’s own.
Buffett says: “I got an awful lot of good advice from my dad. He taught me that it’s more important… what’s in your inner scorecard than your outer scorecard. Some people get into a position where they think all the time what the world is going to think of this or that, instead of what they themselves are going to think about it…. If all the emphasis is on what the world is going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’ll wind up with an outer scorecard.”
Pick companions wisely
According to a third gem attributed to Warren Buffett, a person would do well to associate with people better than himself. “I learned that it pays to hang around with people better than you are because you will float upward a little bit. And if you hang around with people that behave worse than you, pretty soon you’ll start sliding down the pole. It just works that way,” he says.
Say no and walk away
Often called the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ for his life lessons – he was born on August 30, 1930 in Omaha in the US – Warren Buffett learnt early that using time well was crucial for success. Accordingly, he mastered the skill of saying no and walking away from projects that didn’t resonate with him. “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything,” a quote attributed to him says.
Importance of integrity
For Warren Buffett, integrity is non-negotiable. All decisions have to be grounded in integrity. “We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don’t have the latter, the first two will kill you because if you’re going to get someone without integrity, you want then lazy and dumb,” he says.
Bill Gates’s take
According to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Buffett’s habit of reading every day is a key factor in his success. He reads books and newspapers for five-six hours every day, according to the HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett.
One of the books that changed the way Buffett thinks is Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. “It changed my life,” he says. “Graham’s book gave me a bedrock philosophy on investing that made sense. He taught me how to think about the stock market. He taught me that the market was there not to instruct me, but to serve me.”
Disclaimer: This article is inspired by and based on reports published in newspapers and on news portals. We have not personally verified statements attributed to Warren Buffett.