A Few Good (Lateral) Thoughts #15
Quick little thoughts at the end of the week
You absolute hero, you! You made it through another week. If you received this newsletter from a friend (or enemy), don’t forget to subscribe.
Last week I told you that if you’re active in the stock market, you need a hug. If you’re still active, now you need a therapist. Don’t ask why. Don’t open your favorite stock app.
Let’s jump into our end of the week lateral madness.
Rachel and Monica move into a new house. Monica doesn’t like the new accommodation because of the very angry and aggressive cat that greeted her when she walked in. She has no idea where the cat came from.
Rachel realizes this isn’t going to be a problem. Why is that?
An answer, as usual, at the end.
It’s been a crazy week, but here are a couple of thoughts that kept me up at night:
Stresslaxing. Buzzword aside, I relate to this so much that it’s probably my long lost uncle.
For those who don’t have patience to read the whole article, the TL;DR is that normally you work hard, then relax. But a lot of people don’t actually relax because they feel guilty about not working hard.
I blame hustle culture for this. The whole “Zuckerberg was a billionaire by 22”, the millions of fakepreneurs, the social media influencers that peddle words of wisdom like “all you have to do is work hard”.
That’s not all you have to do. That’s one prerequisite, true. You also have to be born at the right time. In the right family. In the right country. Have the right education. Have the right support.
Wealth is generational. Almost all of the famous people you see bragging about how hard they worked had a head start - which is not something bad, it’s only bad when you teach people that all there is to it is hard work.
In order to relax, compare yourself with people that started on equal footing with you. Most of the time, you’ll be able to take a deep breath and realize you deserve the rest you’re getting. And you’re going to need that rest if you plan on working hard.
The age of filtering
A few months ago, I went down a content rabbit hole. I was consuming so much information my brain couldn’t tell left from right.
99% of the information in the world right now is either pure garbage, manipulative marketing or straight up wrong.
Algorithms, in theory, fix this. They do eliminate a lot of the clutter - I don’t even want to imagine an internet without them.
But algorithms are motivated by money - and all they want is either your attention or your hard earn bucks. So an algorithm will never act in your interest, it will watch you and learn your habits and tell you what you want to hear.
This is not new.
What is new(er) however, is people disconnecting from these algorithms.
There are hundreds of ways of doing this - from uninstalling apps to setting limits or using other tools built specifically for this.
I probably used a lateral (pun intended) method, but it worked for me.
I started considering all the information I saw online to be false or at least partially incorrect. If a topic interested me, I would do my own research - that means hearing both sides of the story.
Otherwise, I’d simply not engage with the topic.
If someone brought it up in a conversation, I’d just say I don’t have an opinion on it. People react strangely to this and it’s telling of what we’ve become.
The status quo is that you need to have an opinion on every topic on the “public agenda”. No, you don’t.
Concentrating on the things that really mattered to me gave me the time and energy to grow and learn new things I cared about.
I created more and I felt happier.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a break from the internet.
You don’t have to consume content every waking moment. We’re all still gonna be here when you come back.
Answer: Monica is a cat. The angry cat that she saw was her own reflection in the mirror. Rachel knew she’d figure it out and relax.
If you missed the last post, here it is again. It’s probably my most successful post so far, reaching well beyond the ~2.000 readers of this newsletter.
Thank you for sharing it and for the great feedback!