Neuroscientist David Eagleman once wrote, “There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”

Following Eagleman’s reasoning, Charlie Munger, who peacefully passed away last night, will be immortalized, for he will never experience the third death—his achievements and the wisdom he shared throughout his lifetime will ensure this.

Munger is one of my investment heroes. In commemoration of his life, I’d like to share some of my favorite lessons from him.

On the Importance of Inversion Thinking

“Another idea I found earlier, summarized by Dean McCaffery in an earlier story, is about a countryman who wanted to know where he would die, so he wouldn’t go there. The countryman who proposed this seemingly ridiculous idea actually possessed a profound truth. The workings of complex adaptive systems and the workings of the human psyche often become easier to solve through the inversion of problems. If you flip the problem around, you often think better. For example, if you want to help India, you should consider asking the question not: How can I help India? Instead, you should ask: How can I hurt India? You will find out what causes the most damage, and then try to avoid it. Perhaps these two methods logically seem the same. But those who understand algebra know that inversion often solves problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. In life, just like in algebra, inversion will help you solve problems that you can’t solve in other ways.”

On the Importance of Maintaining Calmness in Investing

“If you’re not willing to react calmly to a market price drop of 50% once or twice a century, you’re not fit to be a common stockholder, and you should get mediocre results compared to other people. Whoever has this temperament will be more philosophical about these market fluctuations than others.”

On the Importance of Incentives

“In all industries, my favorite incentive example is FedEx. At the core and soul of their system—the integrity of creating the product—is to have all planes arrive at one place in the middle of the night and transfer all packages from one plane to another. If there’s a delay, the entire operation can’t deliver the complete product to FedEx customers. And they kept screwing it up. They could never complete the task on time. They tried everything—moral persuasion, threats, everything you can think of. But nothing worked. Finally, someone came up with an idea, not to pay all these people hourly wages, but to pay them shift wages—when everything is done, they can go home. Well, their problem was solved overnight.”

On Great Career Advice

“Career Three Rules: (1) Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself; (2) Don’t work for people you don’t respect and admire; (3) Only work with people you like.”

On the Importance of Admitting Mistakes

“You can’t live a full life without making many mistakes. In fact, the inability to cope with psychological denial is a common reason why people go bankrupt.”

On the Importance of Not Letting Rare Events Completely Affect Your Approach to Life

“As an investor, Ben Graham had a lot to learn. His ideas about company valuation were almost destroyed by the Great Crash and the Great Depression…This left a fear of ripples in his remaining years, and all his methods were designed to avoid this fear.”

On Handling Problems from Different Perspectives

“Most people have been trained in one pattern—like economics—and try to solve all problems in one way. You know the saying, ‘To the man with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.’ It’s a stupid way to deal with problems.”

On Becoming a Bit Smarter Every Day

“I often see people rising in life who aren’t the smartest, sometimes not even the most hardworking, but they’re learning machines. They get a little smarter every night before they go to bed than when they woke up that morning, oh, that helps, especially when you still have a long way to go.”

On How to Invest

“In the long run, a stock is hard to get a higher return than the business behind it. If a company earns a capital return of 6% over 40 years, and you hold the company for 40 years, your return won’t be much different from a 6% return—even if you initially buy the company at a huge discount. Instead, if a business earns an 18% return on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay a seemingly high price, you will eventually get good results. So, the key is to get into better businesses. This involves all these economies of scale, and you can consider the momentum effect.”

On How to Get Others to Agree with Your Point of View

“Well, you’ll eventually agree with my point of view because you’re smart, and I’m right.”

On the Secret to a Happy Life

“I always say the same thing: realistic expectations, which is low expectations. If you have unreasonable demands on life, you’re like a bird trying to destroy itself by beating its wings against the edges of the cage. You really can’t get out of the cage. It’s foolish. You want to have reasonable expectations and accept the good and bad results in life with a certain perseverance.”

On Courage and Perseverance

I saved the most profound lesson I learned from Munger for last. Few may know this, but Munger’s first decade after reaching adulthood was tragic.

Munger got married at 21, only to have the marriage end at 29. According to his daughter Molly Munger, he “lost everything in the divorce.” Shortly after the divorce, Munger’s son Teddy was diagnosed with leukemia. “There was no medical insurance at the time—I just paid all the expenses,” Munger once said. But more importantly, the doctors at the time had no cure for leukemia. When Munger was 31, Teddy passed away. Munger recalled the heartbreaking experience: “I can’t imagine anything worse in life than losing a child inch by inch. When he died, I lost 10 to 15 pounds below my normal weight.” Munger’s friend Rick Guerin said, “When his son was lying in bed dying slowly, he would go in and hold him for a while, and then walk out crying and walk the streets of Pasadena.”

So, by the time Munger was 31, he had gone through a divorce, experienced the agony of his son’s terminal illness, and was penniless.

But when Munger left this world last night, he was already a billionaire, respected worldwide for his wit, wisdom, and character. He told me that with courage and perseverance, we can eventually create a better life for ourselves. He cautioned, “When you face an incredible tragedy, you shouldn’t let one tragedy become two or three because of a failure of will.”

Mr. Munger, see you on the other side.