Archives June 2020

Crazy ideas

Imagine you are reading this post a year ago. Now here’s a crazy idea: Everyone will be wearing masks around the world. How about another one: people at home for months and months.

I someone approached you and tell you it would happen all this, would have you believed the amounts of change we have gone through the last months? No one could ever foresee it, you say? Well the change is here to stay. And we must learn or die.

How about your company’s response to the disruption? Did you manage a pivot? Did you started doing things you didn’t even wanted or imagined?

Chances are, small companies will run out of money. And big companies will be very slow to change, loosing markets to abrupt changes in consumers behaviors. Unless inside your company you have a department of crazy new ideas, it will not survive.

What would this department look like? Somehow the skunk words? A little like the moonshots at google? It is no longer a luxury of the giants, it is a must in today’s world. You cannot afford not to.

Bullshit Excuses?

It is very easy to criticize someone who is not feeling capable of doing something that for you is just a piece of cake.

Then comes the harsh words: you are useless, you are just giving lame excuses, you just don’t want it enough…etcetera.

But reality is not that obvious. There is a complete belief system inside our heads that is not just preventing that person of doing that something, it is showing her a complete different reality.

You’ll see, when a belief is held by somebody, the brain will filter any perception that may contradict the system. Then, when is looking for information on the particular subject, it will much more easily find evidence to reinforce that belief. It might even be almost blind to any info suggesting otherwise.

It takes huge amounts of energy and effort to break these dynamics, so next time you encounter someone in this situation (it could easily be yourself) think about the whole different worlds you are living before calling them bullshit excuses.

My brain don’t want to change

And nobody else’s brain either. It is structured this way.

The brain will try to maintain the emotional, cognitive and beliefs homeostasis. even further, it is programmed to protect those beliefs, emotions and thoughts.

It would mean a threat to our very survival if it wouldn’t.

That is why it is so hard to change, it is why we must inflict upon ourselves so much effort and pain to change our behaviors.

Flawed brain.

The brain is trying to understand statistics.

Statistics of the world, the environment, and statistics of yourself. They are fundamental operations that happen below the cortical layer.

The brain simplifies. The brain interprets. The brain draws conclusions. The brain fills gaps. The brain is flawed.

Well, it is a wonderful machine. The most amazing machine we have knowledge of, but jt is working like that despite yourself.

Would you trust your whole life to a person that gives you an oversimplified, often wrong, depiction of the whatever information you requested from her? Of course you wouldn’t.

Antifragile

Let’s sit everyday for 5 hours in the couch and binge watch our nice little series. It will develop our muscles and will sharpen our physical abilities. It will also clear our minds and will infuse us with loads of inspiration.

That sounds ridiculous to you? Our intuition tells us we won’t grow stronger if we don’t put ourselves under some kind of pressure.

Then why do you think we act as if by doing nothing things may change?

It is obvious that if we want to survive and prosper in today’s world we should better ourselves. But stronger and resilient are no longer enough. Those two words talk about static traits. And with the ever growing madness, chances are there will be a tipping point or an event that will manage to find a weakness in you. That will break you.

We must become anti fragile.

As the great Dave Mustaine expressed: “That that doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger”.

Nassem Taleb introduces his antifragile book as follows: “Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better”.

If you were waiting for a sign THIS IS IT. The world has never been so chaotic, disordered, dangerous and uncertain.

If you have a weak spot life will find it. What would you rather happen when the blow comes? Feel the pain and anguish of the eventual shattering? Or feeling the pain and the confidence that you will come out of it better suited for whatever comes next?

Back up plan

Where is your back up plan? No, seriously, where is it?

And i don’t mean a plan where you mention, shallowly, what could you do if this or that happens.

I mean a detailed set of steps you would be forced to follow in order to either get out of the predicament, or endure it.

And if you have not the resources, means, tools and knowledge to follow that plan, then you are delusional.

Go device another plan. And this time you should do it as if your life depended upon it.

Feelings are overrated

They do tell important information. But you shouldn’t act over them as if they are dictators.

There is so much physiology surrounding their arousal and their interpretation that everyone should be super careful before even considering to act in result of an emotion.

No one should try to be super happy all the time. We need all the spectrum of emotions in our lives so we may learn from all kinds of situations.

So we are not our feelings. As we are not our bodies and we are not our minds.

Thrive by friction

More than thinking that you are somebody who can be better tomorrow than that you are today, growth mindset is being aware that you need friction in order to grow, and taking that friction as a platform to overcome the fear and anxiety.

It is also being able to tune your inner reward system to celebrate the very process of friction itself.

That ensures unlimited resources in your quest through life.

The winner just keeps winning

So there’s this experiment in which they put 2 rats in a tube.

They are naturally uncomfortable and they will try to push the other rat while trying to move forward. In even physical conditions, same size and weight, you would think that the odds are 50/50.

Well, the observation is that when a rat wins, it has greater chances of keep winning. And the loser also has greater chances of keep losing. This may seem unfair and even fatal. Winners will win and losers will lose.

But wait!! When a loser rat gets “help” and the scientists push her from behind so it can win, now this loser turns into a winner and just keeps winning. Not so unfair anymore, right?

The brain creates a belief system of a winner or a loser based in the evidence of past experiences and reinforces the subject’s brain into whatever status it has achieved so far.

There is so much opportunity here, Isn’t it? You actually can influence someone (how about yourself) to become a winner.

More about identity

Let’s say, for any service or product there are fundamentally 3 groups.

Those who are, actually, part of the group that are living the dream. They are driving the ferraris and the lambos.

Then, there are the wannabes. They are those who would love to be part of the first group, but for different kinds of reasons, they are not. They will get the backpack, the keychain, the hat and whatever they may get.

Finally there are the couldn’t care less. They have no intention whatsoever in forming part of any of the former groups. They may even look at them in disdain.

So who would you try to sway to buy your product?