Working through adversity

I worked early on in my career at a number of companies where I, for long stretches of time, was uninspired. I would go to work for eight hours a day and I would not be exercising the maximum of my capacity. I would not be stretching and reaching and firing my neurons in a way that would rebuild them faster. I was just plotting, or not plotting. That sounds devious. Just muddling through, and that muddling through I thought, "Do you know what? Work isn't super interesting right now. Work isn't super motivating, but then when I come home, I'll have all this extra energy."

That's not how it works. You can't save energy like that. In fact, you get energy by using energy. You get stronger by exercising your muscles. You get smarter by exercising your brain. It doesn't work to reserve it. I can't save the day. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to take it really easy today and then tomorrow or the next day I'm going to have that extra day." What? No. That day has passed. That energy just gets flushed. It gets wiped out. That sense of taking on responsibility, even when it's uncomfortable, even when you'd rather not is the source of meaning. I think for perhaps even most people most of the time, but it's such a difficult one to realize, particularly when you're starved for it. When you are in the dumps of it and there isn't enough and the energy is low, the last thing you think of is, "How can I spend more? How can I take on more," but that's exactly what you need to do.

It's not often this happens, but on TikTok recently I was exposed to this brief thing. TikTok is this mindfuck in many ways that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. But this particular one was one of these things, yes, this just crystallizes it, which was one of these quote things that come up. The quote was, "Don't wish for things to be easier, wish for you to be stronger," or, "Work for you to be stronger." That idea that you should not wish for the world to be any different than it is, that's outside of your control. You control your response to that. You control your reaction to that, both short term and long term. You're like, "Shit. This was difficult. Man, I better get stronger so the next time it comes around, I'm better." It won't be difficult. In fact, it will be easy. This is one of the lessons I've learned over and over again in every single domain. These things that seem like insurmountable challenges early on when you're just getting started, they will be nothing once you're a little further.

It's funny because in racing, for example, I'll sometimes take someone out in a race car, in a two-seater race car. Because I have a passenger and whatever, I dial it back. I drive at 90%. Driving at 90%, for me, means I have time for all sorts of other things. We can be chatting about where we're going. I can be pointing things out on the track. I'm not using 100% of my capacity to drive the car as fast as I can, but invariably I take someone out and they're all mortified. They think we're just about to crash at every turn. They think the car's totally out of control. They're getting dizzy. Their head starts bobbing back and forth. I come in, I'm like, "What? This was nothing." They go like, "Please stop the car." This was insane, right?

It reminds me every single time that this was how I felt the first time I was in a racing car. I felt like this. Everything was just coming at me so fast. I can't even think. Then you do it more and you get better. You develop your eye, you develop your reflexes, you develop your synapses such that they literally run at a higher clock frequence. When they do, all the inputs slow down and now it's easy. Imagine playing tennis with a Federer, but you slow down the ball 100 times. That's not a difficult tennis match. That's an easy tennis match. So much of learning is the capacity to slow down reality in real time just that you're no longer dealing with such difficult problems.

One of the exercises of stoicism is you imagine a world where you've lost the things that you hold dear or that you feel that make you, you. So one of the exercises that they did in Roman times was: the emperors would imagine that if all this was taken away and I was cast into exile, I lost all my people, all my money and all my riches, and I had to sleep on the floor. Would I still be me? And what would I feel?

If you prepare for that, when loss does then eventually happen, A) you're ready for it. So you are emotionally better for it. But also you start to appreciate that the trappings of life don't make you, you make you. And you have ultimate control over your decisions.

I don't remember which one this was, but they would actually sleep on the floor. They were an emperor, they had everything they needed, but they would sleep on the floor every so often, to practice what it would be like if they didn't have a bed. So you can take away some of the things in your life for a period of time. It's why people fast. It's why people force themselves to do hard things in that way. And it builds up your resilience.

I always remember that phrase: change comes out of inspiration or desperation.

And we always connect change to the inspiration part, but in many cases, it's just this feeling of seeing everything is so wrong that it becomes a driver to do something.

I think the one thing is when you want to leave someplace, for whatever reason, I think this is something that I would listen very much to my gut. And sometimes the problem more with my gut is that I don't react to it.

So my typical resilience would say, "Let's keep it down. Let's ignore it. Let's ignore it. Let's ignore it." And that's, I think really false. And you should listen to that and talk about it and really address the issue you feel. And as early as possible.