Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life

By Vitaliy Katsenelson

Soul in the Game is a book of inspiring stories and hard-won lessons on how to live a meaningful life, crafted by investor and writer Vitaliy Katsenelson.

Drawing from the lives of classical composers, ancient Stoics, and contemporary thinkers, Katsenelson weaves together a tapestry of practical wisdom that has helped him overcome his greatest challenges: in work, family, identity, health—and in dealing with success, failure, and more.

Part autobiography, part philosophy, part creativity manual, Soul in the Game is a unique and vulnerable exploration of what works, and what doesn’t, in the attempt to shape a fulfilling and happy life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harriman House
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9780857199089

Vitaliy Katsenelson

Vitaliy Katsenelson was born in Murmansk, Russia, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1991. After joining Denver-based value investment firm IMA in 1997, Vitaliy became Chief Investment Officer in 2007, and CEO in 2012. Vitaliy has written two books on investing and is an award-winning writer. Known for his uncommon common sense, Forbes Magazine called him “The New Benjamin Graham.” He’s written for publications including Financial Times, Barron’s, Institutional Investor and Foreign Policy. Vitaliy lives in Denver with his wife and three kids, where he loves to read, listen to classical music, play chess, and write about life, investing, and music. Soul in the Game is his third book, and first non-investing book.

Book preview

Contents

Introduction – How to Read This Book

Student of Life

Born in Russia, Made in America

Soul in the Game

Speechless (Future) Father

Here She Is

This Is What Happiness Feels Like

Why Do I Torture My Kids… with Classical Music?

Reading and Listening

There Is No I in Hannah (But There Are Two in Vitaliy)

Girls’ Gambit

My Russian Book

Parents of La Mancha

Inhaling the World

I Left My Heart…

Santa Fe: Remember This

Inhaling Europe

One Day at a Time

I Don’t Eat Desserts

The 8%

My Crash

I Don’t Eat Pork

Attend a Party in Your Own Head

Dale Carnegie – Better Late than Never

You Are Responsible for What You Have Tamed

Set Your Egg Timer to Six Months

Personal Finance Advice That Changed My Life

Stoicism – The Philosophy for Life

Stoicism: Part 1 – Operating System

Knowing and Doing

Dichotomy of Control

Event, Judgment, Reaction Framework

Negative Visualization

Last Time

Reframing

Temporary Insanity

Each Day Is a Separate Life

What Others Think

Insults

In Beta

Go Ahead, Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife

The False Sophistication of Sophists

Creating Stoic Subroutines in the Subconscious

Cold (and Warm) Showers

You Want to Be? Do

Stoicism: Part 2 – Values and Goals

Material Success

Always Being Right

If This, Then…

A Twist: Applying If This, Then... to Form Habits

Good Values Start with Good Problems

What Pain Are You Willing to Sustain?

Good Values

Tranquility in Motion

A Story of Four Books

One More Thing

Soul in Creativity

Don’t Let Your Environment Control You

Time Does Not Scale

Abracadabra

Opera. Pain. And Investing. (Or, What We Should Learn From Pain)

On Writing

The AC/DC Effect

Creative Rollercoaster

Melody of Life

Why I Write About Composers

Tchaikovsky – Master of Emotions

In the Shadow of Others

How Franz Liszt Revolutionized the Piano and Classical Music

The Two Sides of Chopin

Fantastic Fantastique

Bruckner – Humble, Odd, Sex-Deprived Religious Fanatic

The Art of a Meaningful Life

Intermission – Stop Eating Sugar

Gallery

Publishing details

Praise for Soul in the Game

"A fascinating, often amusing, occasionally jarring journey – just like life itself. Vitaliy Katsenelson’s Soul in the Game is one of those much-needed reminders that although we have no control over when we’re born or when we’ll die, we are the architects of how we live."

— General Stanley McChrystal, Author, Risk: A User’s Guide

Vitaliy knows how to tell a story. This book reads like a conversation with Vitaliy: deep, insightful, inquisitive and civilized.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author, The Black Swan

"Soul in the Game is a beautiful way to search for the lost value of happiness, strength and health."

— Wim Hof, The Iceman, Author, The Wim Hof Method

Wow! This is surprisingly good. Honestly I was suspicious (why should I listen to a money guy talk about life?) but I liked it a lot! Vitaliy brings an insightful, fresh perspective to the question of how to live life. He is caring and considerate, with a really engaging writing style.

— Derek Sivers, Author, How To Live

"Vitaliy Katsenelson has been singled out by financial media for his brilliant investment strategies, but perhaps even more impressive are his philosophical writings. Soul in the Game is no ordinary self-help tome. I’ve never read anything quite like it: a collection of wonderful observations and insights about Vitaliy’s native Russia (he emigrated to the US in the 1990s), parenting, living one day at a time, and – especially – creativity: in business, classical music, and art. Vitaliy’s life is an integrated one, from which we can all draw some surprising and (like his investment approach) contrarian notions. This book is worth anyone’s time."

— Carl Bernstein, Author, All the President’s Men

Touching, honest and insightful – it’s hard to put this down.

— Morgan Housel, Author, The Psychology of Money

Vitally has captured much of the awe I hold for composer creators and he uses that insight to offer positive, constructive steps for us today who want to live life to the fullest.

— Marin Alsop, Music Director Laureate, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself and in your relationships. Vitaliy’s book is a big step forward in that direction. A must read!

— Gautam Baid, Founder, Stellar Wealth Partners, and Author, The Joys of Compounding

"Soul in the Game is a wonderful compilation of cogent observations and life strategies, derived from the author’s unique personal journey. From classical music to the Classics themselves, Vitaliy Katsenelson both educates and inspires."

— Jim Chanos, President, Kynikos Associates

A wise and irreverent narrative, replete with humor, life lessons and philosophical insights, which amply demonstrates that being a successful investor and a compelling writer are not mutually exclusive.

— Leon G. Cooperman, Chairman and CEO, Omega Family Office

A treasure trove full of bite-sized actionable wisdom.

— Rolf Dobelli, Author, The Art of Thinking Clearly

"Vitaliy Katsenelson’s engagingly readable life-a-log, Soul in the Game, parses so many spirits it will benefit most everyone. Wisdom, life-long learning, human capital, struggles, music composers, immigrant life, philosophy, family life, stoicism and so much more – presents for everyone in 76 enjoyable bite sized bursts. Have fun!"

— Ken Fisher, New York Times Bestselling Author, Global columnist, and Founder & Executive Chairman, Fisher Investments

I thought it would take me a week to read the book, but when I started I could not stop and finished it in a day! After reading, I feel like I have spent one day of my life together with Vitaliy conversing with him through his warm words. His writing style is entertaining and at the same time it engages with the mind of the reader, making you think deeply about your own life. In every chapter, in every sentence and word, you can feel Vitaliy really put his SOUL into it.

— Héctor García, Bestselling Author, IKIGAI, and A Geek in Japan

"Soul in the Game is impossible to categorize. It is part memoir and part self-help book; it is part philosophy and partly about parenting; it is partly a book about writing, music history, and art appreciation. In the end, it is nothing less than a manual on how to live a good and meaningful life and achieve those most elusive and yet desirable of all states: balance and self-mastery. This book has changed me, and it will change you as well."

— Robert Greenberg, Composer, and Author, How to Listen to Great Music

"Part eclectic autobiography of a diverse life, part endorsement of critical thinking, part investing principles, and part how-to guide on how to be a complete human. Soul in the Game is always interesting, often funny, and at times profound."

— Greg Maffei, CEO, Liberty Media

"Vitaliy Katsenelson’s craft is investing, his art is writing and his passion is to live a meaningful life. All are abundantly in evidence in Soul in the Game. Part memoir, part meditation, part self-help, with mini courses on Stoic philosophy and classical music, this book is personal, quirky, and marvelous. Invest some time with Vitaliy and you will be richer for it."

— Bill Miller, CIO, Chairman and Portfolio Manager, Miller Value Funds

Vitaliy Katsenelson’s book is a delight to read and contains a great deal of sound advice, including some nice tips on applying Stoicism in daily life.

— Donald Robertson, Author, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

Superb guidance on how to unravel what’s really important in life. There’s a gem of wisdom in each short, snappy chapter.

— Professor Jeremy J. Siegel, Professor of Finance, Wharton School, and Author, Stocks for the Long Run

From Murmansk, Russia to Denver, USA. When Vitaliy Katsenelson immigrated to the United States from Communist Russia he had plenty of Skin in the Game. Now, a couple of decades later he has even more Soul in the Game. Katsenelson is a learning machine and is on the road to somewhere. He’s going places. This book is his story. His life journey. You will be inspired. Congratulations Vitaliy on your latest (and best book). Like your mother, you might have been born in Russia, but you were made in America!

— Guy Spier, Author, The Education of a Value Investor

"Vitaliy is a gem and Soul in the Game is a rare read worth relishing. I first met Vitaliy as a fan appreciating his value investing writing, became a colleague appreciating his valued investment ideas, and then became a friend appreciating and learning from how he finds virtue and values in family, fatherhood, and more. Taking threads from markets, music, art, philosophy, personal history, and universal humanity he weaves a tapestry worthy of kings and teaches us how to ‘go long’ the scarcest asset of all: making meaning."

— Josh Wolfe, Founding Partner & Managing Director, Lux Capital

To Jonah, Hannah, and Mia Sarah. Because you don’t read my emails.

Introduction – How to Read This Book

If someone had suggested a decade ago that I would write a book that had nothing to do with value investing, I would have laughed. Even after writing two books on investing, I thought of myself as an investor who thinks through writing, not a writer. I preferred to leave that stuff to professionals – the Dostoevskys and Hemingways – and stick to what I knew best: value investing.

However, over the years, I brought life stories about my childhood, my kids, and classical music as supporting actors (often as analogies) onto the main stage of my writing about investing. Kids change you; the realization of your mortality changes you – and writing changes you. It was just a matter of time before these life stories wanted to grow out of their supporting roles into lead roles.

Thousands of emails from my readers had a lot to do with that, too. Readers wrote that they came for the articles about value investing but stayed for the life stories (and my father’s art; but more on that later). They encouraged me to turn my life (non-investment) essays into a book. They told me that reading these stories had made their lives a little better. Reading my essays nudged them to reflect on their own lives. Often, I even seemed to inspire them into action: to travel, to spend more time with their loved ones, or to just simply slow down and inhale life.

This book is about the most important investment you’ll ever make: the investment in your life.

I hope a story or two in these life essays will touch you, add a ray or two of sunlight to your day, and motivate you to fill the gap in your life that needs filling.

This book is evergreen, and so I have structured it thematically, not chronologically (you will notice this in the variability of my kids’ ages throughout the book). It started out just as a collection of stories I’ve written over the years. But as I was editing it, the writer in me took over. I ended up completely rewriting old essays and writing many new ones. Though it is not a traditional book with a story arc running through it, it morphed into more than just a collection of random stories. It is written to be read in sequence.

The book is loosely organized into six sections:

The Student of Life section has an autobiographical character. It takes you to Soviet Russia for my childhood, the fear that my aunt was an American spy, my family’s emigration to the US, and our first (wonder) years in this great country.

Then it takes you on my most educational journey of all – being a parent. Those stories are full of joy and mistakes (kids don’t come with an instruction manual), but also growth. Being a parent is the most transformative experience of all.

This section also features Soul in the Game, an essay that provides a lens through which to view the rest of the book. It touches on everything one needs to find meaning in the creative part of their life. It is so important to me that I titled the book after it.

In Inhaling the World I share my experiences and impressions from visiting Santa Fe, San Francisco, Switzerland, France, and Italy with my family. I discuss topics ranging from how visiting a modern art museum can enhance your trip to an IKEA store, to Jeffersonian lunches, to the caloric content of uncooked fish. If this section inspires you to see a bit more of the world, I have succeeded.

One Day at a Time is the self-help part of this book. Well, kind of. I am not dispensing self-help advice; I am just taking you with me on my journey of learning about how to stick to a diet, sleep better, work out, meditate (a little), and firm up new habits through trial and (a lot of) error. I’ll share personal finance advice that was given to me by a friend when I got married – advice that eliminated any bickering about finances from my marriage!

I was almost done editing this book when I stumbled onto Stoic philosophy. I was so taken by it that I put editing on hold and embarked on a five-month learning and then writing journey about Stoicism. This spilled into Stoicism – The Philosophy For Life. It’s a mini-book within this book, with two sections of its own. One section focuses on Stoicism as an operating system for life, and the other outlines a value system that could lead you to a happier and more meaningful life.

Soul in Creativity houses my essays on… you guessed it, creativity.

Creativity is a thread that runs throughout the whole book. I have found that creativity is a secret sauce that makes life more meaningful; it’s what draws me out of bed every morning.

I share with you what I’ve learned about the art and process of writing, not to mention how the music of AC/DC can turn you into a better writer. And you’ll learn how I structured my life to have time to run an investment firm, do investment research, spend time with my family, and still write the equivalent of a book a year.

The essay Pain, Opera and Investing explores an excruciatingly painful professional period in my life. Most importantly, it offers tools (based on Stoic philosophy) for coping with pain. This essay sat in my virtual drawer for years; I couldn’t bring myself to publish it, until now.

After I finished writing the essay Creative Roller Coaster, I realized that I had to take all my life essays and publish them as a book to share with others. There was an instigator who was singlehandedly responsible for my starting to work on this book: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I explore Tchaikovsky’s struggles as a composer, which I can so relate to as a writer; though I get the feeling that this struggle is universal in all creative endeavors, not just composing and writing.

Tchaikovsky brings us to the last section, Melody of Life. In this series of essays, I delve into the lives of classical music titans –Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, Berlioz, and Bruckner.

Though these essays about classical music and composers may seem out of place in this book, they continue to tug on this thread of creativity. Today we listen to the music of these superstars, and it still moves us (to me it is the best drug of all). We call them geniuses. But their talent and success, which seems evident to us, was anything but evident to many of them. Just like the rest of us, they were full of insecurities and went through a lot of personal and creative struggles, accompanied by a lot of pain. There is a lot we can learn from them.

By way of summary and conclusion, in The Art of a Meaningful Life I collect the breadcrumbs I left throughout the book and connect the concept of soul in the game, Stoic philosophy, creativity, and lessons from classical music composers by means of an art and craft framework. Oh, and I break the fourth wall.

Finally, if you are questioning why a relatively young adult with plenty of life experiences still ahead of him writes an autobiographical book, read Intermission – Stop Eating Sugar (the book’s conclusion): It will answer this question.

My advice to you: Read this book as if each essay is an email that just appeared in your inbox. You are invited to ponder for a while before you move on.

For reasons that will become apparent as you read the next essay, I also had to include a few of my father’s paintings in this book. You can find them in the middle painting section. And you can always see more of his artwork at katsenelson.com.

I approach this book the same way Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, approached his students. Zeno did not claim to be a physician – he saw himself as a patient describing the progress of his treatment to fellow patients in the hospital beds beside him.¹ Grab a bed next to mine and let’s have a conversation about life, creativity, Stoic philosophy, classical music, and other fun topics.

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1 D. Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (St. Martin’s Publishing Group), pp. 32–33.

Student of Life

Stories and lessons from my life as a child, a parent, and everything in between.

Born in Russia, Made in America

Warning: If you skipped the book’s Introduction and went directly to this chapter (something I’d normally do), you just ventured into a jungle without a map. Friendly advice: Read the introduction first.

Red October

I spent my youth in Murmansk, a city in the northwest part of Russia, located right above the Ar ctic Circle.

Murmansk owes its existence to its port. Thanks to the warming of the Gulf Stream, the port doesn’t freeze during the long winters, providing unique access to Russia from the north. During the Cold War, Murmansk’s coordinates must have been on the speed dial of the US military, as it is the headquarters of the Russian Northern Navy Fleet. Fans of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October may remember Murmansk as the home base for the submarine Red October.

The winters are cold and dark; Murmansk makes Seattle look like a sunshine city. For six weeks every winter we lived without daylight. On those days during the winter when the sun would grace us with its presence, I still wouldn’t see it. In the morning I’d be walking to school in complete darkness. The sun would come out for 30 minutes around noon while I was in class. I’d walk home in complete darkness.

The city was so desperate for sun in the winter that it even created a day celebrating the sun, called Hello Sun. All this sounds awful, I know. Especially for my kids, who have spent their whole lives in Denver – with its 300 days of sunshine a year. But I was born into that life. I embraced it and never really thought twice about it.

Though I never felt it, I can see now how my parents’ life was very difficult. Murmansk is located so far north that the ground is permafrost – there is no vegetation to speak of. Most food had to be brought from other parts of the country. Murmansk had an abundance of fish (after all, it was a fishing port) and bread; that’s about it.

When I was a teenager, a few years before we left for the US, Russian bureaucrats figured out that if you grind fish, you can feed it to chickens. Suddenly we had an abundance of chickens. Unfortunately, the chickens that were fed fish tasted like fish. When I moved to the US, I could not eat chicken for ten years.

There was no fruit in stores during winter. In September, my parents would pickle cabbage in giant jars that we kept on our windowsills so it wouldn’t spoil. Pickled cabbage was one of our few sources of vitamins in winter. We’d also drink what was called fish fat (fish oil), an extract from cod liver that was our source of vitamins A and D.

Today when people look at me, at 5’10 (on a good hair day), standing next to my 19-year-old son Jonah, who is 6’3, they ask me why he’s so tall. I explain that I grew up in a place that had no sun or vegetation, and thus my diet, in addition to lacking vital vitamin D, lacked all other vitamins, too. Then I add that if I had grown up in Denver I would have been 6’5" and blond.

My mother always worried about what we were going to eat. Store shelves went through different phases of emptiness. Every month we were given vouchers that allowed us to buy a few pounds of meat, per family member – if the store had meat. Even when they had meat it was for a short time and we had to stand in long lines to get it. My parents never complained. It was our life and the life of everyone around us. I did not know any other way.

But my parents had known a different, gentler life. My father grew up in Moscow. Being Jewish in the 1950s was difficult in Russia. There was hidden (not in-your-face) anti-Semitism. My father aced math in high school, and even tutored other kids in the subject. Yet when he applied to university, he somehow failed the math test. I don’t know whether, if he had applied to other universities, they would have accepted him, but the rebel in him decided to go study in a godforsaken place at a school that would accept him without even an entrance exam – Murmansk Marine Academy. They accepted anyone who was able to fog a mirror.

Late in the 1950s my father met my mother while visiting his relatives in Saratov, a beautiful 400-year-old Russian city on the Volga River. My mom was my father’s distant relative (not blood-related). They fell in love, and she moved to Murmansk. My mom must have loved my dad very much to move from the comfort of an intellectual life in Saratov (she played piano and violin and went to the symphony on a regular basis with her parents) to the hellhole that Murmansk was at the time. It was better in the 1960s than it had been in the 1950s, but it was still a fisherman’s town, where the only music you’d hear was the drunken sailors belting out bawdy seaman’s chants as they stumbled through the streets.

My parents could have left Murmansk for Moscow or Saratov. But all their friends were in Murmansk and my father had a great job there that he loved. He was a gifted and much-loved professor. My father had taught most of the high brass who occupied positions of power throughout Murmansk, and thus if we needed something my father knew someone who knew someone. That was Soviet Russia: Every single company or organization was owned by the government, and to get anything you had to know someone. That included simple things like my brother wanting to transfer to a different school, or my parents wanting a larger apartment for their growing family to live in. As I write this, I realize how weird this sounds. Welcome to socialism.

This power my father had was born completely out of love and respect. My father liked walking home from the Academy, which was two miles (this is where I got my love of walking). This 30-minute walk always turned into a two-hour walk-and-talk journey, as my father would meet people he knew and stop and have a ten-minute conversation with each. I think he enjoyed being loved and respected by others. He is a warm, honest, well-rounded, non-judgmental human being, and a great listener. People love that. I remember the admiration with which people looked at my father.

If we moved from Murmansk, he would have had to give that all up. My mom could never ask him to do that. I only understand now, almost 40 years later, how much my mom loved my dad – she shielded him completely from the difficulties of the outside world. She just let him be him – he taught and painted. Worrying about what we were going to eat was my mother’s burden. Though this was a difficult life, we never starved. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who went hungry.

My mom gave up a career for our family. She had a graduate degree in physics from the university in Saratov, but in Murmansk took just a part-time job working at an institute that studied the Northern Lights. Her work and her own interests were always secondary to the family. She put my father, my brothers, and me at the center of her life. In her late 40s, she found a sliver of daylight in her day and joined a choir. That is the only thing I remember my mother doing for herself.

Life takes a terrible turn

My mother and my father were born a year apart. Both of their birthdays are in May. I remember May 1983 vividly. A few days before my father’s 50th birthday, I was playing outside, holding a bottle that had a broken bottom. My friend hit the bottle, which flew right into my face, breaking the skin right under my right eye (I still have a scar). I ran home with blood running down my face. I remember Mom’s calm face when she saw her youngest child with a cut right next to his eye and covered in blood. I remember her calling the ambulance and calming me down. Miraculously, I did not lose my eye – the bottle had stopped just nanometers from the eyeball. I spent my father’s 50th birthday in the hospital.

A year later my family was not so lucky. On May 6, 1984 – a day after her birthday – Mom was hospitalized with an enormous headache. She was diagnosed with brain cancer. Knowing my mom, she had probably had the headache for weeks but hid it, not wanting to ruin her or my father’s birthday celebrations.

A day after Mom was hospitalized my father took me to see her. That was the last time I saw the mother I had known.

Even at that time, as she was suffering enormously, I don’t remember seeing any fear or self-pity in my mother. She could not bring herself to think about herself and, on that last day with her, I remember her quizzing my father about my brother Leo and giving instructions about what my brother Alex needed to do in school.

My father fought for her using everything he had. All his energy went 
toward saving her. He found and brought a neurosurgeon from Saint 
Petersburg, who promised the moon – full recovery.

When people of science see a loved one facing death, they’ll cling to anything, even the empty promises of pseudoscience. I vaguely remember my father reading and reporting that water sent through a contraption that contained electricity and salt helped some people with cancer (or something along those lines). My father constructed that contraption and made that water for my mother.

Neither the surgery nor the contraption helped.

Murmansk’s population leaves Murmansk in the summer months and goes south (not much different from New Yorkers moving to Florida in the winter, except that half of Murmansk emptied in the summer). We needed as much warm weather and sunlight as we could get to warm our bones and store up heat for the coming winter. (That is how my mother jokingly explained it to me.) In those two or three summer months my family usually traveled to Moscow and Saratov to visit both sets of my grandparents, or visit other parts of the country.

Summer 1984 was different.

My brother Alex was 17 (he is six years older than me) and was sent to a resort in Tajikistan. My oldest brother, Leo, was 21 and a cadet at the Murmansk Marine Academy, so he stayed in Murmansk. My father