The last Lecture, from Victor Niederhoffer - Daily Speculations

Great post on Daily Speculations.

The last Lecture, from Victor Niederhoffer
LINK
"If one were to deliver a last lecture like Randy Pausch, what would it be like?"

This is a summary:
- Prolong life to enjoy the benefits of compounding
- Be aware of deception
- The power of indirection
- Develop good character
- Learn to be humble
- Develop good fundamentals
- Learn how to count
- Learn how to handle failure and learn from it
- Educate yourself through good books
- Match position size to your character
- Have a good escape plan

With all the wisdom of that post, I humbly commented:
The eight thing is important: “how to handle failure. It’s bound to happen, and you have to learn from it”.
I learned some hard lessons. Failure is part of life and, as such, you have to accept it. It hurts because when you fail you may think you are not a valid person. And that may not be the case, although it this possibility cannot be ruled out at all. Every day you have to confront yourself with some degree of failure. Nobody likes to lose. Sometimes I play Monopoly with my little twins. They are competitive and get frustrated when one of them loses after a long game. I know it is not a good thing what I do, but I tend to tweak the rules so that there is no loser eventually. Games are useful because they teach children how to solve problems, make decisions, compare their choices with others’, learn to win and lose. And most of the times you lose, it’s a fact of life. As they learn their lessons about success and failure daily at school, at the gym, with their friends, I have created an environment where you can have fun making and losing money, building houses and going to prison, without having anyone who is the best and someone else who lost because of bad luck or because she is not able to play.
Failure can be caused because of many reasons: wrong or risky choices, lack of skill, lack of information, unpredictable events, etc. However, the record of your failures will display specific patterns that can highlight your strengths and weaknesses, but, most of all, what the limits to your ambitions can be. Not recognizing these limits can lead you to have a very frustrating life, as you insist establishing objectives too ambitious and get systematically unsatisfactory results.