Temperament - The Power of Patience

Temperament – The Power of Patience

There’s an old-world stillness to the word temperament. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t seek attention, and it is wise. You will see a certain temperament behind every lasting success, including investing, life, and the relationships we nurture over time. We’ll often find this quiet invisible force at work in many situations in life.

Temperament isn’t a single trait, it’s not a personality quirk or a soft skill you add on. It is the foundation upon which all quality decision-making rests. At the heart of this foundation sits one attribute so simple, so undervalued, yet so profoundly powerful that it shapes many of our outcomes. ‘Patience’ is not merely a passive waiting game but an active and deliberate practice essential for quality decision-making. This doesn’t mean decision-making needs to be long and arduous either, in fact, you can still make quick decisions, the bigger point to internalise is the fact that there will always be a space between the stimulus and response where patience sits. How you choose to filter, and synthesise your thoughts will dictate the temperament.

By embracing patience, we align ourselves with the natural pace of growth. Truly valuable outcomes often require time to materialise.

The Evolution of Patience in Human Experience

Reflecting on the past, patience was an intrinsic part of daily life, there was no choice. Consider the anticipation of waiting for a letter to arrive from distant family members, a process that could take weeks or months. This imposed waiting cultivated resilience and a deep appreciation for time's natural rhythm. Delayed gratification was a default setting for the older generations. In contrast, today's digital age offers instant communication, fostering a culture accustomed to immediate gratification. This wires the brain to want everything ‘now’. This shifts the way our brain operates, and challenges our ability to engage in prolonged endeavours that require sustained effort and delayed rewards. Calling all Entrepreneurs. Sound familiar?

With it, we have lost so much of humanity’s potential to create great works of art. We’ve lost the great novels that never got written, the perennial films that never got conceived, the world-changing companies that were never given enough time to mature and scale.

I also wonder at times, why don’t we have modern-day philosophers anymore? The answers lead to the way our modern-day minds are wired. Not many have the time to sit in silence and think about thinking. It’s seen a waste of time because of the demands of our fast-paced world that has made patience an afterthought.

In investing, the stillness of being anchored in the present moment requires perspective and ample patience when making decisions. This is the opposite of what anxiety and stress would conjure. We all want to follow Truenorth, but sometimes we end up carving a path that follows a different compass because of a lack of patience, which leads to a different temperament. Even a few degrees of difference between the two can mean ending up in two entirely different destinations over the long term.

Investing in patience and discipline has a payoff that can be asymmetric. I forget the author, but there is a quote that says that ‘patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet’, which encapsulates the passing of time and the sacrifices that come with it. Patience is more than a simple word. For there to be quality investing and a quality life there needs to be a rational thought process in how we get to our destination. This is never a linear equation or a straight line, and there will be adversity and discomfort along the way. But not everyone can accept the bitter taste in the short term.

Patience: A Sacred Space Between Stimulus and Response

The word patience finds its roots in the Latin word “pati” meaning to suffer, to endure.

Not to wait passively, but to withstand, to bear, to hold steady amidst discomfort. From the very etymology, we are reminded that patience is not gentle. It is a form of quiet strength, an intimate relationship with discomfort, uncertainty, and delay. Maybe, this explains why so few want to practice it? It's certainly food for thought.

However, the true power of patience reaches far beyond simple endurance. It is not merely a delay of gratification or the ability to bear frustration for some future payoff. Patience is a deeper faculty of the mind and soul, one that allows us to ‘release our grip on control’, it has the power to soften our attachment to outcomes, so we can live more freely in the truth that ‘we don’t always know what is best, not yet, and not fully’. Thinking things through and being rational isn’t about being perfect, it’s more about having the ability to accept imperfections, whilst having the foresight to negotiate uncertainty better. Doesn’t this sound like the right temperament to aim for? That’s more food for thought.

Patience has the power to dissolve rigidity. It helps us pause amongst the chaos. Patience asks us to hold our questions longer, to suspend premature judgments, and to let uncertainty do its work so we can keep asking ourselves the right questions. Patience is not time ticking on a clock, it is ‘space within’, a ‘new mental bandwidth’ that appears when we truly pause to think. As a result of these intentions, patience tends to become the consequence when our awareness deepens, and wisdom finds its way to the surface to provide rational solutions between stimulus and response.

Wisdom, after all, is not found in what we know, but in how we live at the edges of what we don’t (uncertainty). Patience anchors the temperament of those who ‘can live at this edge’ without panic, who allow clarity to appear in its own time.

Investing: The Ultimate Temperament Test

Both public and private markets provide a real-time onslaught to our temperaments. Prices flash. News flows scream at you through your internet feed. Some illiquid assets in private funds get written off as they get marked to market. The lack of liquidity can sometimes amplify anxiety, especially during crises if markets contract or economic conditions deteriorate, as cash flows get affected. Narratives in public markets can shift every few weeks. This only touches the surface, but as you can see the entire structure of the financial world is designed to trigger our impulses so we feel something. This normally equates to ‘doing something’ which can be detrimental to our capital if it is not thought through.

However, those of us who actively manage capital will tell you that investing is (ironically) not a game won by lots of activity. It is won by stints of inactivity, waiting for the ‘right price’, and when you do allocate the capital, letting time reflect the true value of the asset. This requires the right composure to endure long stretches where nothing seems to happen. This requires a robust temperament amongst the trillions of dollars of activity happening in both public and private markets, and it doesn't make things easier when the next-door neighbour and the taxi driver are turning everything they touch into gold. This is why investing is hard, the inner game is what gives the endurance to play the long game.

Temperament is a tough characteristic to internalise, and it does require intentional practice over long periods. We must remind ourselves that no outside activity or the opinions of others should matter when it comes to making clear investing judgments, it must be reasoned, and there must be ownership. It is no accident that the greatest investors have attributed success to temperament rather than intelligence alone. Markets test your patience precisely when it is hardest to hold.

The market doesn’t reward speed. It rewards clarity, and clarity only emerges with the right temperament, and this can take a little longer than we normally want it to.

You can analyse businesses, calculate valuations, and model outcomes, but if you cannot sit still when prices dislocate from value, when narratives turn against you, or when the market disagrees with your analysis, none of the intellectual work matters if you can't command the right temperament.

This is why Buffett has said: "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."

In our analysis, this certainly rings true. Once again, a sentence so simple but we could quite comfortably unpack it with a PHD thesis of its own. 

Why Most Fail: The Misunderstood Simplicity

We’re all susceptible to urgency and making snap decisions in our lives, sometimes it is required we do so. It is a part of being human. If we are to look around us, who do you think works on temperament and practices patience in their life? Many don’t even think about this, it’s irrelevant to most.

Why?

It's irrelevant because it's not needed, a part of cracking on in life requires urgency. It’s boring because it lacks immediate feedback. It feels like doing nothing, and people naturally feel there is no progress being made, which leads to frustration.

It’s understandable why it's an afterthought.

We have a ‘hustle’ culture addicted to action, noise, and validation, having no immediate feedback is unbearable.

But the truth is unavoidable:

The right temperament is not revealed when things are easy. It only shows itself when it is needed the most, when the market tests you, when life tests you, when there is fear, confusion, and discomfort, when failure knocks at your door. This is when we need the fundamental truths to help us navigate uncertainty.

That’s when your inner architecture is tested.

Final Thoughts

True patience is not passive. It is fiercely awake. It is what allows us to stay grounded while everything else shifts. It is what helps us develop grace toward ourselves and others when progress is slow, answers are elusive, or paths are obscured.

Temperament is nothing but your relationship with time, and patience is its most powerful expression.

The question is not whether you understand this or agree with my words. Everyone has their compass and has the right to follow their path. But one truth remains, next time adversity hits, it will be your temperament that helps you navigate the storm. So the question remains, have you built the inner architecture to use it when you need it most?

When the noise rises, and the discomfort mounts, it won't be your intelligence that saves you.

It will be your patience, discipline, resilience, awareness, stillness, and tolerance to discomfort that will manifest itself as your temperament.