title:How I Live Is How I Invest: The Barbell of Life.”
hook
Most people separate money from life — but I discovered they run on the same operating system.
How I invest is how I live. How I live is how I invest.
The same mindset that grows my portfolio also shapes my habits, my work, my relationships, and my peace.
two statages
The Buffett Side — Stability and Compounding
The Buffett ’s value investing is the stable, long-term core of your portfolio. It’s built on patience, understanding, and discipline. You invest in businesses you truly understand — ones with durable moats, consistent cash flow, and trustworthy management. You hold them through volatility because you know their intrinsic value.
This side relies on the power of compounding — letting time and earnings do the work. The goal isn’t excitement; it’s endurance. You focus on quality, margin of safety, and temperament. Returns here come slowly but steadily, creating a strong foundation that can survive market cycles.
The Taleb Side — Optionality and Asymmetry
The Taleb side is the black swan, the smaller, high-upside part of your portfolio. It’s built on curiosity, experimentation, and surprise. You take small, calculated positions in opportunities that have limited downside but potentially large upside.
These are asymmetric bets — trades or investments that won’t hurt you much if they fail but could multiply if they succeed. It’s how you expose yourself to positive black swans — the unpredictable events that can dramatically accelerate growth.
This side doesn’t depend on prediction; it depends on positioning. You protect most of your capital on the Buffett side, so you can take bold shots on the Taleb side without fear of ruin.
A Higher Integration — Dynamic Equilibrium
Because no single strategy is complete on its own.
The Buffett side keeps you grounded — it protects you from ruin, builds wealth slowly, and trains your patience and temperament. But if you only follow Buffett’s path, you might miss rare, asymmetric opportunities that can accelerate your growth.
The Taleb side keeps you alive — it allows you to stay open to change, innovation, and randomness. But if you only follow Taleb’s path, you might live in constant uncertainty, never building a compounding foundation.
Together, they form dynamic equilibrium — a system that is antifragile: strong enough to withstand shocks, yet flexible enough to benefit from them.
One side gives you stability. The other gives you optionality. And together, they create not just a portfolio, but a living philosophy — a mind that can thrive in any environment.
in investing
My portfolio mirrors this perfectly.
In Taleb’s barbell strategy, the safe side consists of extremely safe assets — usually cash or short-term government bonds. But my definition of safety is different. I group my safety assets by time horizon, not just by risk category.
Short term — 5% growth, no downside risk SHV and bonds — extremely safe, preserving liquidity and stability.
Mid term — around 10% growth, limited downside UNH — a defensive stock. It may not be as stable as a bond, but its downside is limited and it still offers solid upside potential.
Long term — over 20% growth, short-term volatility but long-term safety NVIDIA and TSMC — high-growth companies that fluctuate in the short term, but their dominance in their industries makes them long-term safe.
Together, these positions form my safety side — a foundation that compounds steadily across different time horizons.
On the optional side, I keep small, asymmetric plays — the kind of opportunities that could bring large gains without risking my foundation.
One example is RDDT. As a value investor, I shouldn’t have bought it — but when I saw a unique setup, a short-term black swan, I acted. While searching online, I noticed Reddit was suddenly everywhere — and at the same time, the stock had fallen sharply from 220 to 100, even below 90.
So I took a small position — only 12% of my portfolio — and held it for about four months. The result was a 100% gain.
That’s how I practice the barbell strategy in my own way: a stable, compounding base, combined with small, bold bets when opportunity appears — and collecting the “coupon” when the asymmetry disappears.
I don’t chase every move. I protect the base by holding high-moat companies, staying patient, and letting compounding work. But I allow myself to experiment — to take small bets when opportunities arise, and to exit when the probability changes. That’s why I didn’t keep Reddit as a core holding for long.
My 65% return didn’t come from prediction — it came from design. Without realizing it, I had subconsciously built my own version of the barbell strategy.
in life
my safety side
my Optionality side
- youtube First, I have stability — a strong body, a solid investment base, and a detached spirit. That foundation allows me to create without fear or urgency.
Second, I treat YouTube as a compounding machine. I detach from outcomes so I can focus on what improves my thinking. Every video becomes a small upgrade in my own awareness — a chance to gain clarity, to practice surrender, to show my weaknesses, and to see them not as faults but as guidance. Because when something feels uncomfortable, it’s simply my system asking me to grow.
Third, YouTube gives me the possibility of a black swan. It’s not a stage for performance, but a laboratory for wisdom — a space where consistent effort and openness can meet serendipity.
- realationship Emotions used to be my weakest part because I always suppressed them. But with the stability I built through routine and discipline, I finally had enough inner safety to take a bold move this year — when a black swan appeared. I turned a real encounter my training ground for emotional mastery.
I knew it would be brief — and logically, I should’ve stayed guarded — but instead, I chose to act with truth. The return was asymmetric — emotional and spiritual growth I could never have gained by staying safe.
Because we learn by doing, that experience gave me the chance to face my emotions at their most intense — and to discover that even in emotional volatility, I could stay aware, open, and grounded.
After that experience, emotions became my strongest asset. I realized two things: first, emotions are simply energy in motion — and once I learned to observe, feel, and redirect that energy consciously, I could use it as fuel. Second, emotions are messages — everything is a mirror, revealing the parts of myself that are still incomplete, and guiding me toward wholeness.
- language I used to be shy and unsure of myself, but speaking English changed me. English awakened a part of me that is confident, expressive, independent, and logical — as if another language activated a new layer of consciousness.
Now I’m learning Italian, and perhaps it will awaken yet another part of me. Each language feels like a key that unlocks a different dimension of who I am.
Consciousness itself is the ultimate meta-learning tool — it doesn’t just upgrade the operating system, it can recode it.
compounding steadily but expose to optionality
My Buffett side is consistency. My Taleb side is wonder — the unpredictable joy of discovering meaning in another culture. In every area, one side gives peace; the other gives expansion. Together, they make me antifragile.
Bonus Insight — Even Nature Uses the Barbell Strategy
The same structure that guides my investing and life also appears in nature.
In biology, evolution balances two forces — stability and experimentation. DNA preserves what works; it’s the stable foundation that keeps life functioning. At the same time, evolution allows small, random mutations — most fail, but a few create extraordinary breakthroughs: flight, vision, intelligence.
That’s the ultimate barbell. Stability ensures survival, while small, safe experiments drive innovation. Life itself grows stronger through stress and variation — it becomes antifragile.
My own strategy mirrors that same law of nature: protect the core, experiment at the edges, and let time, variation, and compounding do the rest. 🌿
end
How to invest is how to live. How to live is how to invest.
The whole operating system is the same. Take every experience in your life as training for your temperament in investing. Apply mental models like compounding, circle of competence, and the barbell strategy in life.
Because the barbell is not just balance — it’s optimization. It keeps compounding running at all times: your stable side protects the base, your optional side opens new dimensions of growth. Even when one side rests, the other expands — so your system keeps evolving without interruption.
This is how life, markets, and even nature grow stronger: they protect what works and experiment with what might. That’s the mathematics of resilience — the secret that keeps compounding alive forever.