Archives 2020

That means: Please, please don’t put pressure on me.

When you go to a store and the clerk approaches, the less you want is to feel like you are being played or forced into a decision.

But how about life? Do you walk your days just looking? Are you trying to tell life (and any agent in it) to back off because you don’t want to be forced into anything? Maybe you started a few years ago stalling any fatal decision. Maybe your belief system took over and now is steering the wheel. “Let’s keep you safe”, he says, but you are feeling more and more isolated. And at the end of the day you, and your life, amounts to nothing.

One way to break this dynamic is setting a tangible intent on what you should accomplish. Intent gives you clarity. And it may work or not. But you will KNOW. With that knowledge you will be able to correct course.

How to start? Just ask yourself what is the kind of person you want to be?

We all are more ignorant than knowledgeable.

There is just too much to know out there. The amount of data is just ridiculous. And know, with the mischievous social media, our filtering systems would never be able to process all there is and selecting just what we need for the matter at hand.

So starting from this first principle “We will ALWAYS make decisions with incomplete data” then we could think we are lost.

What to do?

One of the most interesting approaches I have seen, is from Naval Ravikant. He says that since he can’t have a complete set of info to support his decisiones, then he has constructed (copied or borrowed) a set of mental models.

The set is supposed have different mental models that best approaches and adaptas to different situations.

Mental models are actually what drives value on being less wrong. Think is overreaching? Think about all those decisions in which you lost a lot. How much value could you have captured if you had made a different decision.

Definition of sunk costs: A sunk cost refers to money that has already been spent and which cannot be recovered.

Broaden the sunk costs definition to include EVERYTHING that you invested in the past: money, time, resources, emotions, friendships, family, ideas…

If what you really want to do is move forward, it just doesn’t matter what you did in the past. The only thing that matters is what are you doing today and tomorrow.

So there’s this guy: he found the solution to productivity, empowerment, performance, supervision.

He went from working from 7 am to 21 pm (14 hours), to 8 am to 11 am (only 3 hours). Better results in almost 80% time reduction.

And how this miracle happened? Thanks to the COVID, all his people working from home. That’s it.

His response? “Fuck this, we have to go back to the office.” And so he did. He made his people go back to office. Putting himself and their employees at risk; increasing the transmissibility rate. And even further, spending more money, achieving less and making himself miserable.

It did happen. It is a true story. This is not an imagination exercise.

There is a great amount of people that have found a new & better way of doing things, but amazingly, they are not entertaining the idea of staying in this betterment. They just want to go back to where they were. Even if it sucked (Some of them, specially because it sucked).

Facing the unquestionably better they decide: “I will Fuck My Life.”

You will die digging.

You won’t have enough energy or time to extract the precious liquid if you wait until you need it to start looking for the right place for the water well.

The right moment to start digging is when you don’t need it yet. This is true for back up plans, for savings and for relations.

You can’t expect to people going to your rescue if you only call them when you need them. You should nurture relationships when you are at your best. Then it is super easy to lend a hand. To help with no expectations. To create a safe net of resources that will be prone to help you when you need it.

You plant those trees today, even if you won’t see them bear fruit.

Chances are, unless you are into kenjutsu or fencing, that it will never happen. You will never face a swordsman.

Nevertheless, your brain is trying (and succeeding) to picture a complete hoarde of ninja-samurai-fremen out to get you. This false reality of ubiquitous clear and present danger it’s everybody’s worst nightmare and nemesis.

However, this is it. This our life or death situation. And it is happening each and every day, every hour of the day.

Your only chance at living a fulfilling and joyful life and maybe even some peace, is to tame the beast inside. That beast is no one else but your own biology.

Notice I am not blaming you. You are not your mind and you are not your body. The brain is designed like this in order to attain survival of the species…thousands of years ago.

Today it is responsible for all you perceive, feel, think and do. It creates your reality. So you better start training on the quest to beat him, to conquer your brain so it acts in your advantage and not against you.

Nature hates change but thrives in it.

When a caterpillar begin it’s transformation process inside her cocoon, the first new cells, those that will be a butterfly, are being killed by the caterpillar’s immune system. Until the number of butterfly outnumbers those of the caterpillar.

It is a never ending battle between homeostasis and evolution.

If you are struggling in your present thinking a possible future for yourself, be assured that it is alright. You could be in a cocoon phase. All that turmoil you feel inside yourself is the immune system called your present fighting the next you.

It’s hard to change. It is even painful. But life is all about mastering the infinite cycle of being and reinventing one self.

Happy birthday to me from my own cocoon. See you guys out there. Soaring. Flying. Being perfect for that period, until the next metamorphosis is required.

We wish we had our own Tyler to drive us out of our comfort and into the glory.

Happy news. He could. And he does. He lives in all of us. If we summon him.

The use of an Alterego that empower us is one of the most elegant, easy, fast and effective ways I have seen to give ourselves super powers.

I know, it sounds silly. It sounds even like a magic potion.

Well, try it. We all used lots of them when we were kids. Develop your own alterego, read or listen to Todd Herman. And see for yourself

Someone else and not me turned of my alarm clock in the morning, avoiding me to wake up and exercise and meditate.

Someone else who doesn’t like me took the piece of bread and nutella and took 2 bites out it before I realized the taste in my mouth.

Yes, he takes decisions for me and before me. He doesn’t care what I care. He just care about me being safe. Me not dying. Me passing my genes into the next generation.

But how about my dreams and hopes? What about my goals? My happiness?

Nope, my brain just doesn’t give a damn about it. That is why he takes the form of that nagging little voice telling me to take it easy, that I shouldn’t try to do huge things, that I must be average. Safe in numbers he says.

Now that you know it is nothing personal: It’s not you, it’s him. And he means good but he sucks at making you happy. That is why, from now on, your main goal should be to force him to learn what is really important: The greatest of dreams is what you both, together, shall seek.

How many times will you have left to hug your son? And visiting your parents? How about enrolling in a seminar?

It is a probabilistic exercise, but it changes the perspective on things.

Measuring the number of times you have left to do certain things, like Jessy Itzler suggests, and maybe that will modify the frequency or the quality of how you do them right now.

The formula is really simple: TN = NTY (AA – YA). Where TN is the Total Number of times left; NTY is Number of Times a Year; AA is the Average Age you will reach in life and YA is your age.

Now I’m sure you will give a different value to things.