Rishad Tobaccowala: Exercising Belief.
The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 196.
In today’s changing world amidst chaos and conflict there is a break down in trust, an increase in polarization and a rise in rage.
We all have a list of bad actors, things that we oppose, ideas that we reject and views that we abhor.
It may be worth the while to also make a list of what we believe to be true.
Ideas or insights gleaned from experience, or from our elders and inspirational people or from our own experience that provide the wisdom to steer our lives by.
A focus on what we running towards and what keeps us running, rather than what we are running from or believe are running things down.
Here are a list of five beliefs to drive a life operating system:
1. Life is how one deals with loss, connects with love and grows through learning.
Loss: Loss is central to the human experience in three ways:
First, is we often lose in our attempts to succeed. We lose promotions, jobs and opportunities. We lose money and valuable assets.
Many times, we also win.
Some people win a little and others win a lot.
But we all lose.
But these losses however daunting and disappointing are not the big ones.
The second set of losses are the losses we will face of loved ones and friends either because relationships end, or death comes.
And our final loss is that of ourselves.
Our health.
And then our lives.
Franz Kafka wrote that “the meaning of life is that it ends”
How we live amidst these losses defines a large part of life.
To learn to practice “personal resurrections” after setbacks and to endure and keep on growing and going.
Love: A big part of what makes life worth living despite the guarantee of loss is love.
Love of people, of work, of art, of culture, of craft and of things and hobbies.
It is in fact this love and attachment that is deeply intertwined with the feelings of loss
Love does not compute; and computers though they are getting increasingly advanced into deluding us that they love us since they ingest all our stories and then customize their reaction to be our “personalized” friends cannot love us.
In part that is because they cannot feel.
And therefore cannot feel loss.
And with love comes loss and love is an anti-dote to loss.
Learning: Today we have large language models that learn by ingesting, sorting, parsing, co-relating, re-combining and digesting all they can eat.
It is clearly a form of learning and the machines are getting “smarter”
Thus while machines may not know about love and loss they definitely can learn.
But do they feel joy as they learn?
Without the reality of loss or the feeling of love can they turn information into insight into wisdom?
Love, loss and learning are intertwined with each one feeding and influencing and resonating with each other.
2.Success is being able to spend your time in the way that creates joy.
Success is sought by all but what is being sought?
For some it is making a mark in their field or leaving some enduring work. For others it is seeking financial wealth or creating and nurturing a family. For some it is helping others.
For most people success also means a measure of happiness.
In the end if time is all that one has than success probably has to do with how one uses time.
Ann Dillard wrote that “the way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives”
When one is financially constrained one’s mind and time are colonized by making ends meet.
When one is physically in pain or suffering from ill health it is often hard to be happy.
So, if happiness is the ability to not spend time thinking all the time about ones financial or physical situation it means a certain amount of financial and physical well-being is key to being happy and possibly successful.
Sooner or later once these basics of not having to worry about the next rent check or waking up the next day are overcome the words and emotions that link the happy and successful are those of purpose, meaning, connection, flow, recognition and growth.
And these can change over time and are different for different people.
But it all comes down to having the freedom to allocate one’s time the way one does.
How can we spend your time, that increasingly gets to a place where we spend more of it in ways that give us joy?
3. Do not live in other people’s minds.
It has been written that “comparison is the thief of joy” but so is living one’s life to score points in somebody’s else’s scoreboard of what success is.
The rise in mental anguish among teenagers is in part how social media has accentuated the need to look good in somebody else’s eyes.
But it is not just teenagers who live in other people’s minds versus theirs.
Caring what other people think is human and often learning and getting feedback on how one can improve is key to success so not living in other people’s minds does not mean not listening to or caring what other people say or think.
It means stopping using their metrics and their rulers of success to rule the way we live our life.
If nobody was looking and we do not have to preen and strut would we live differently?
Living in other peoples minds is like giving somebody else a remote control to direct your life.
4 There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
While one may not agree with Hamlets’ statement that “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”, our mindsets matter a lot in how we perceive life, how we are perceived and the degree of success we may have in our varied endeavors.
In rapidly changing and chaotic times an agile mindset can be critical to success.
How we react to a thing or event is often what determines the impact of the thing or the event.
While there are many personal trainers to help sculpt our bodies into somewhat supple forms, there is a scarcity in those who can show us how to exercise our minds to be as flexible as they need to be.
Mindsets matter.
Growth mindsets. Learning mindsets. Optimistic mindsets. Realistic mindsets.
Optimism matters.
In the novel “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon a character is described as one whose “mood collapsed the room”.
While misery may love company, nobody likes being in the company of miserable people. Optimism is not just an essential component of innovators but a trait that you must have if you wish to inspire folks to follow you. “Woe is me, doomed are us” works for a few drinks in a bar, but at the workplace it saps energy, hurts culture and is just a plain downer. Pessimism is something we all wallow in, but it fails to show the way out.
A way to get optimistic is to forget all the legacy nonsense we may have to grapple with and ask that if we had a fresh sheet of paper and no constraints except those of the law, science and the need to become/remain economically viable what would we do?
Can we reframe, rethink and reinvent?
Every day is a new career beginning.
Tomorrow is where we will spend the rest of our lives.
5.Practice Compound Improvement.
The single most powerful concept in finance is that of compounding.
Compounding interest and compounding returns can over time create wealth or lead one to bankruptcy depending on whether you owe or own capital.
In a world of change we all may want to consider another way compounding can help us grow in changing times and drive mental, emotional, and even financial wealth which is compounding improvement.
There is so much we cannot control in a world driven by global, demographic, social and technological change but instead of being buffeted about helplessly in a sea of chaos maybe we can try to control and build our ourselves to be better.
Three learnings about compound improvement.
a) Discipline equals Freedom: This is the title of a book by Jocko Willink, a Navy Seal. Basically, if we want to get a grip on the world get a grip on ourselves. Things are more up to us than we think if we are willing to work at it.
b) Never graduate from school: The world is changing so fast that many of our skills and expertise and mindsets need continuous upgrading. While many of us set aside time to exercise to maintain our physical operating system we need to also feed and exercise our minds. The power of this habit is that at the end of a year one will have spent 365 hours learning new things by just doing one hour a day. The day we start dying is the day we stop learning.
c) Deliberate Practice: Anders Ericcson wrote a book called “Peak” which is the best study of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice involves three components
1) immediate feedback, 2) clear goals and 3) a focus on technique. According to his research, the lack of deliberate practice explained why so many people reach only basic proficiency at something, whether it be a sport, pastime, or profession, without ever attaining elite status.
To become great become great at something. It may be art, business, fishing, caring for somebody. All of us have some great expertise and things we can give the world.
We just need to architect, hone and sculpt with deliberate practice to unleash our skill on the world just as Michelangelo revealed “David” by removing all the marble that was not him.
Try an exercise of listing a few beliefs that drive your life or ask others to do so.
It is likely to help one grow and connect better with others.
Photography by Sho Hoshino
May 16, 2024
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