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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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

You purchase it.

As easy as that. At least in this day and age. You can be part of anything just by getting some merchandise with the desired lifestyle brand.

In the past, the identity was deeply intertwined with what you did and where had you born. If you born in a locksmith’s house, chances were, you would end up acting, speaking and even dressing as one. Because you became one.

Even further back, the tribe would set the position you would take within it to ensure the survival and the prosperity of the community.

Now you can choose your occupation, fortunately. And in that choosing, your context, your belief system and your hopes and dreams will drive you to the road of desire. You will desire those things that give you evidence that you are part of a certain group and you will try to adopt the culture of said group.

So, again, we buy stuff that help us create and reinforce the narrative of ourselves that we want to portray to the world, including ourselves.

Do you want to know how you can always win in anything you venture? If you love what you do, even if you fail, there is no loosing.

Love should be your driver, your measure and your guide.

So make sure you find, create or procure yourself that thing you care deeply about.

In the words of Tom Bilyeu: “Fullfilment is •Work your ass of to be real good at something that you care deeply about that allows you to serve not only yourself but other people. “

Techne is a term in philosophy which resembles epistēmē in the implication of knowledge of principles, although techne differs in that its intent is making or doing as opposed to disinterested understanding. According to Wikipedia.

So you see, we should stress 2 parts of techne. First, it is all about knowing deeply some skill, so deep that you become outstanding, so you become unique. Your uniqueness needed to help push the human race as no one could but you. Then it stresses the doing, not only the knowing just for the sake of knowing, but to apply the knowledge into building or creating something.

But for that you need a special kind of drive. This kind of fulfillmet is not for the faint hearted.