When I was a young boy, I studied martial arts. But not any martial art. The fashionable ones at the time were Karate and Kung Fu. They were full of very flashy strikes and kicks.
No I studied Judo, the Japanese art form. One of the things we learned in Judo is that if someone is coming at you, you could expend a lot of energy trying to stop them.
Instead, in Judo, you use the energy of your opponent to their own detriment. In the simplest example, you might have someone coming at you at very high speed. If you stick out your foot and trip them, they are probably going to fall flat on their face. Or you could rotate them over your shoulders and flip them onto their back on the ground when you can easily pin them down.
They’re too big and heavy to pick up slowly, rotate in the air above your head and then place them down on the ground on their back. But if they’re coming at you, it doesn’t take that much energy at all.
Many people I speak with are trying to push against the system.
We’re starting to major defaults across many industries.
We’re seeing J Crew, JC Penny, Hertz Rental Car, Neiman Marcus, all filing for bankruptcy protection, or on the verge of filing for such protection.
There are a lot of people out there fighting against the tide. They’re resisting the tidal wave of energy that is coming at them.
My advice is don’t fight it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight to save your business. Absolutely you should. When I say don’t fight it, what I mean is don’t enter a state of denial. If the energy in the system is in the direction of an economic downturn, then lean into the downturn.
When I say don’t fight it, what I really mean is to align yourself to take advantage of the energy in the system, to use that otherwise destructive energy to your advantage. You literally want to perform a judo flip on your investments.
