First steps

Late eighties.
My cousin is a year elder to me and he had then just moved to Bangalore.
I went to see him.
I saw some share applications in his room.
I knew people become rich by investing in shares.
I picked up one - Usha Rectifier.
My cousin said he was not going to apply for this company and that I could apply if I wanted to.
I should have asked him why he doesn't want to apply.
The share whose face value was Rs. 10 was in the market for Rs. 50.
Another colleague of mine who understood this a little better that I asked me to find out more about this company.
I looked it up in a finance newspaper.
It was being traded at Rs 170.
That was the only information I needed.
Wow! At Rs 50 this was a bargain!
I started dreaming how much I will earn in a few days.
The day I applied, the share value fell to Rs 110.
With a few months it fell below Rs 50.
And then it disappeared.
This share - renamed Usha India - is no longer traded.

My first attempt to become rich was a miserable failure. I went back to my shell. This way is not for me.
That was a serious mistake.
Instead of learning from my mistake and instead of learning the way share market works, I stopped at the first sign of failure.

And what was my chance of succeeding?
Nil.
I had no knowledge of the share market.
It was entirely an instinctive decision driven by dreams of becoming rich the easy way.
Doesn't work.

In all other endeavours I have always pushed hard against failure., If I slip, I push back harder.
My humble growth in my job could be attributed to my determination to do better.
But I did not transfer my resilience from one domain to another.

Making wealth was a new domain for me. I started by diving into the deep end. That was fine.
But I failed to learn from my failure.
That was a huge mistake.

Lessons:
1. It is natural to get excited when you take your first steps. Do not have high expectation. The first steps are likely to fail.

2. Be mentally prepared for the first failures. You are likely to succeed subsequently.

Years later I dabbled in shares again. But that is another story.