#51 - It Is What It Is
Hello,
The theme for this week's newsletter - how we respond to good or bad things that happen to us - came naturally, as our family was impatiently waiting for the announcement of my eldest son's high school graduation scores. Getting honors meant admission to the engineering school of his dreams, not getting - settling for the Plan B, rock-solid, yet not a dream. As we were holding our breath, I thought that whatever happens, we humans have an extraordinary ability to always come up with stories that make failures and disillusions more palatable. Stories that make us feel better, whatever the outcome.
So how do we react to good and bad things that happen? The answer is, just as the ambiguity in the cover image, "it depends". But on what? I think, our reactions are shaped by variations along 2 critical dimensions: skin in the game & time horizon. Just a few examples:
War or natural catastrophes on the other side of the world are likely to leave us indifferent, while those that touch family and friends - shake and shock us.
The unpleasant surprises, like getting a flat tire or red wine spilled on a white shirt, drive us mad on the spot but will be blissfully forgotten a couple of days later.
Getting fired can turned out to be the best thing that has happened to you.
When we made a decision or invested time and energy but got a bad outcome, we will likely blame bad luck rather than our own poor skills.
When an unpleasant event (climate change, death) looms somewhere in the distant future, we don't really care until it stares you in the face. At the same time, the anticipation of a future certain joyous event (a birthday party, a date, Christmas) often feels sweeter and more intense than the event itself. Etc, etc, etc.
In this edition, I have collected tweets, videos, and snippets of wisdom from East and West that teach us two things: (1) Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems, and (2) Equanimity is probably the best strategy to face everything that happens to us.
PS. Adrien got honours :)
PPS. At the end of this edition you will discover the best Justin Bieber cover ever. A gem, just a click away.
Nothing is Ever as Good or As Bad As It Seems
"Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. When things are going really well for you, remember that it's probably the function of luck. The region you are born in and the education you have access to are largely the arbiters of your success. So remember when things are going really well for you it's not entirely your fault. Have some humility. At the same time, (...) when you screw up, it's not entirely your fault either.
Life isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to things that happen to yourself."
"I think we can learn from both good and bad investors, as long as we're open to recognizing that there are things that each of these groups does that is good and things that they do is bad, but that the overwhelming factor driving success and failure in markets, we hate to admit this in academia and practice, is luck. It's amazing how as human beings when we succeed, we attribute it to our skills. And when we fail, it's always bad luck. I remember the shock of the Shopify CEO complaining about markets and how markets didn't understand the company, because the reason there's a stock prices drop, he's convinced that markets are misunderstanding the company. I said, it's amazing how you discovered markets misunderstandings when your stock price is dropping, but you never talked about this new stock price was going up, quadrupling in a year. I think people often attribute to markets any of their mistakes and then claim for themselves as successes. Recently, Cathie Wood has been complaining of how inefficient markets are. How amazing how in markets move against you, they're inefficient, but they move with you, they're efficient. Very strange definition of efficiency, but it's self-serving."
"Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.” The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The farmer steadfastly refrained from thinking of things in terms of gain or loss, advantage or disadvantage, because one never knows… In fact we never really know whether an event is fortune or misfortune, we only know our ever-changing reactions to ever-changing events."
Equanimity & Non-Judgement: It Is What It Is
Let's start with of the best definitions of equanimity I came across.
"Every day, we have dozens of encounters or experiences that can send us spiralling into outrage, anger, or frustration (...) The biggest obstacle is not the external triggers, but our reaction to them. The person who is most in your way is the one you see in the mirror. The secret to getting off the roller coaster is to cultivate equanimity.
Equanimity is not the same as indifference or non-feeling. It is a state of even-minded openness that allows for a balanced, clear response to all situations, rather than a response born of reactivity or emotion. Equanimity describes an open acceptance of what is happening in our current experience. In other words, we reach a state of equanimity when we stop resisting our experience. The practice of equanimity requires us release of our expectation that life — circumstances, people, results — should be different from how they are.
Whatever happens, whatever people do, whatever result we achieve, is not “good” or “bad.” It just is."
You can also understand equanimity as awareness without judgement and evaluation.
"Do you want to change the world? how about beginning with yourself? How about being transformed yourself first? Through observation. Through understanding. With no interference on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand.
No judgement, no commentary, no attitude; one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is. Because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand.
The day you (reach awareness), you will experience a miracle. You will change - effortlessly, correctly. The change will happen, you will not have to bring it about. As the life of awareness settles on your darkness, whatever is evil will disappear. There's nothing so delightful as being aware."
Awareness: Conversations with the Masters, by Anthony De Mello
A variation of intellectual equanimity is counterfactual thinking.
"You cannot fully understand what there is to learn from any outcome without understanding the other things that could have happened.
This is the essence of counterfactual thinking.
Exploring counterfactuals helps us to understand why things happened or didn't happen. Exploring those what-ifs is a reminder that you don't have any control over when or where you were born, things that define the set of possibilities for your life. The might-have-beens and what-ifs put your experiences in their proper context, helping you to:
- understand how much luck might have been involved in the outcome;
- compare the outcome you've got to the outcomes that might have happened;
- let go of the feeling of inevitability;
- improving the quality of the lessons you take from the experiences of your life.
There's an asymmetry in our willingness to put outcomes in context: we'd rather do it when we fail than when we succeed."
How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, by Annie Duke
You can practice equanimity when listening. Freud called if "free-floating attention"
“Listening from a psychoanalytic perspective implies being sensitive to unconscious meanings. The basic assumption is that clinical listening means being open to the exploration of unconscious meanings, and empathy and intuition are therefore potential modes of data collection. Freud recommended almost a century ago that the best way to approach and listen to patients was to offer what he called free-floating attention.Freud describes the rationale of this technique as follows: It consists simply in not directing one’s notice to anything in particular and in maintaining the same “evenly-suspended attention” in the face of all that one hears.
It will be seen that the rule of giving equal notice to everything is the necessary counterpart to the demand made on the patient that he should communicate everything that occurs to him without criticism or selection..."
Coach and Couch: The Psychology of Making Better Leaders
And the visual metaphor of equanimity is stereograms - two-dimensional images that allow you to see a three-dimensional shape. But if and only if you unfocus your eyes. Click on the link to try.
What Do You Mean?
If you have read all the way through this - thank you. And and feel totally lost, please accept as my apology this wonderful ear and eye candy. Cullum. Bieber. 1 Piano. 1 Hour. Every sound you hear was made with the piano. Learnt and recorded in an hour.
Stay happy and observe life as it is,
Arina