Road to hell is paved with good intentions
Only way out is through it.
The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest battle in history. With it came equally superlative stories of how people dealt with risk.
One came in late 1942, when a German tank unit sat in reserve on grasslands outside the city. When tanks were desperately needed on the front lines, something happened that surprised everyone: Almost none of the them worked.
Out of 104 tanks in the unit, fewer than 20 were operable. Engineers quickly found the issue, which, if I didn’t read this in a reputable history book, would defy belief. Historian William Craig writes: “During the weeks of inactivity behind the front lines, field mice had nested inside the vehicles and eaten away insulation covering the electrical systems.”
The Germans had the most sophisticated equipment in the world. Yet there they were, defeated by mice.
This is the beginning of a post by Morgan Housel from 2018. It’s even perfectly titled - Nobody Planned This, Nobody Expected It
Isn’t it the irony of all ironies?
You may have the best weapons, but you still could be rendered ineffective.
You may have been gifted with intelligence, but you still could be blindsided.
You may have the best intentions, but you still could be rendered helpless.
Such is the comedy that plays out in all our lives constantly.
In one of the Founders' podcasts, David Senra asked Charlie Munger about the process of passing down extreme wealth to the next generation. The answer from Charlie was profound in so many ways - “No one knows. If you give them all the wealth, you kill their ambition and desire. If you don’t do it, they will hate you for the rest of their lives.”
One more irony added to the long list we already have.
Irrespective of what one has worked for, prepared for, planned for, or hoped for - things will go wrong and one has no choice other than to deal with them. You may spend hours convincing the world that you did everything right, but the world doesn’t care. All it cares for is motion, and your feeling unlucky/victim-like doesn’t create momentum in any way. So even if you know that fate handed a very bad hand to you, take it in your stride and keep walking.
And if you haven’t been dealt a bad hand yet, that’s great. But in time, it’ll come. Everyone has to travel through hell eventually. It’s a must-see movie for all on our planet.
“Establish business relations with poverty.” - Seneca
And since this route is part of the itinerary called ‘Life’, how about building a toolkit that allows you to deal with it, and that too, gracefully?
All the stoics have talked about practicing poverty, in case it ever was to knock on your door. Even Tim Ferriss, the world’s numero uno podcaster and an author of many best sellers, practices poverty regularly by wearing old jeans and t-shirts for days, sleeping on the floor, and surviving mainly on rice and beans. That’s an example of someone practicing a worst-case scenario for him, in case he was to lose his massive fortune somehow.
There are many things that you and I too could do, and should do. But first, let’s understand the sequence of events that happens when things go wrong for us.
The first thing that happens to most when adversity knocks on the door, is a complete shutdown of mental faculties and a surge of emotions overwhelming the system. I have seen people drowning in anxiety, desperation, hopelessness, helplessness, and acute stress due to unfortunate incidents playing out. One’s mind is the first place these emotions of dread and fear attack.
And many haven’t prepared for this huge army of emotions coming from all sides with canons and fireballs. If you have ever gone through adversity, you too might have sensed the calm of your mind being shattered to pieces against the enemy. And that’s where things start going downhill really fast.
With no mental faculties to think straight, you might act in the most irrational way possible. You might start blaming others, you might think of doing the unthinkable, or you might cross lines and burn bridges causing irreversible damage.
How else would you explain rising incidents of suicides during depression/recession periods, or the rising tendency for people to take on drinking/smoking due to stress at work? How else would you explain people giving in so easily to conspiracy theories or grapevine that make them feel right about their views and make other people wrong? How is it so easy to fall prey to grifters, fortune tellers, or finfluencers promising you a utopian world if only you took their USD 1000 course/consultancy?
And this can be avoided if only you could get a grip on your mind, get it to rest, and calm down. That’s the only way your mind allows you to tap into its reserves to make choices that are net positive to you, even if it's painful in the short term. And that would need a little practice, in many domains where you have failed to see opportunities to take control of your mind.
Let me list a few #
Fasting
Meditation
Taking responsibility
Committing in public
Greeting Strangers in a lift
Working Out and pushing hard
Going for long walks in nature w/o distraction
My perspective on a few of them -
Fasting #
Fasting is defined by Encyclopedia as “abstinence from food or drink or both for health, ritualistic, religious, or ethical purposes. The abstention may be complete or partial, lengthy, of short duration, or intermittent.”
I invite you to try out fasting to experience firsthand how hunger pangs will play havoc with your mind. Every sight of your preferred foods or others having a good time around a delicious meal would tempt you into breaking your fast and giving in. The longer you go without it, the more your body feels deprived and your mind starts to lose control.
Can you practice staying calm in this scenario?
Can you resist the urge to give in to your emotions?
Can you persevere?
And if you could fast easily for 12 hrs, I will urge you to try out a 16 hr one. A 24 hr fast would be even better. You won’t die doing it, but you will definitely build enough muscle for your mind to stay at ease without food. But more importantly, it's about staying at ease inspite of the surge of emotions that come with food deprivation.
Even if you know that you will get your hands on food eventually, the very practice of fasting has a huge bearing on your mental faculties getting stronger with time. And I am not referring to the fasting our Muslim brothers and sisters do during Ramadaan. I invite you to consider fasting on regular basis. I fast for 16 hrs on daily basis, and a 20-24 hr fast at least once every week.
My mind is benefitting from these exercises for sure, but it also contributes to my intention of a healthier life span. How about hitting two birds with one stone?
Meditation #
The practice of meditation is confusing to many. You sit in a position that is comfortable to you and just breathe while listening to some music or someone’s voice. What’s so great about it? At least a workout gives you a dopamine hit right away, making you feel great and pumped up :)
No wonder many don’t land up doing it regularly or giving enough importance to it. But the biggest benefit of meditation is developing an ability to let your mind observe the thoughts flowing through your mind without getting triggered by them or sucked into them.
Just imagine holding a pen in your hand. Do you become the pen? Or do you have a pen?
Naturally, you have a pen. You didn’t become the pen 🖋
But that’s now how your mind works. Many a time, when you have a thought, you become the thought. You have a surge of emotion e.g. anger toward someone, this emotion could take over your mind, making you angry, and causing you to say or do things that you might regret forever.
Try cutting a car on the highway, and just maybe, you will get to see the response of an anger-triggered driver on the road, while driving at 120 mph. He might shower you with expletives, or cut you back in return. He might regret it later or even rationalize doing that, but before he can think about it clearly, he would have already let anger decide his response to you cutting his car earlier.
A guaranteed way to remain calm and not give in to your emotions is to develop the ability to observe these emotions, or thoughts, and not get sucked into them. Meditation doesn’t stop you from getting distracted or getting thoughts, it just makes you better at observing, without responding. It develops an ability to remain calm, in spite of the chaotic whirlwind of thoughts inside your head.
If you could only get good at this, it could be a lifesaver in years to come.
You won’t become the pen. You will just have it.
All the other points listed above will force you to deal with a range of emotions - fear, anxiety, fatigue, laziness, and stress. They may be discomforting but dealing with them on a regular basis, makes your mind calmer, stronger, and more agile. It won’t be losing its marbles when adversity does knock on the door.
And it will.
“I judge you as unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent— no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” Seneca
Recommendations for the week #
The internet has been overwhelmed with news and articles related to AI, and its adverse impact on employment globally. Some research material has even stated that 300 million jobs will be lost due to AI. But the same fear-mongering took place when the internet was invested, but the world has only got better since the early days of MS and Apple. Dror Poleg has a very good piece on the possibilities that lie ahead for many of us and that’s exciting news, instead of being fearful of it.
If you have a desk job or spend a lot of time seated, then this tweet thread would be very valuable to you. At least, it was to me and I have started doing a few things regularly, to avoid the repercussions of sitting affecting me in the long term.
Tim Ferriss has produced a fantastic audiobook on the letters from Seneca and one of the letters addresses the practice of establishing business relations with poverty. There is a youtube link for the same and you can listen to it from 5:00 to get a perspective on how stoics looked at adversity and their recommendations on dealing with the same. Highly recommend you to give this audio your uninterrupted 17 mins. It’s a goldmine of sorts.
Wishing you all a fantastic weekend amigos.
And sending you loads of love and luck 🧿
Manish