Everything you want is on the other side of “worse first”

Moontower Munchies #58

Kris Abdelmessih

Apr 03, 2024

📢Programming note: It’s Spring Break with the fam so Moontower will return next Wednesday

Friends,

Worth 30 minutes. Great for teens too.

“How to Live an Asymmetric Life,” Graham Weaver lecture at Stanford Business School

My takeaways:

It starts with how Weaver was preoccupied with protecting downside:

Imagine you start dating. And your only purpose of dating is not get your heart broken. And you’re going to have one foot in and one foot out. And even if you have good data, it’s not going to be that great because you’re not really in it. But the more likely outcome is you’re going to guarantee the very outcome you’re trying to avoid, which is you’re going to get your heart broken.

He was struggling in his investment life and personal life because he was playing tp “not lose”.

Time for a new strategy

4 principles

There are four principles, and if you get one of these principles right, you will dramatically improve your life. If you get two or three right, you’ll have this magical incredible life. But if you can run the table on all four, you can have literally an infinite life, you can have almost anything that you want. And you can live with joy and you can have energy, and you can sustain it for decades

1) Do hard things

“no matter what you do, it’s going to hurt”

Well, throughout the course of the rowing season, the day that I’d show up, which would be like September 1st, from that date all the way through March, I would improve my time by 20 seconds roughly. From the first day that was all conditioning, everything we do. So a big part of that would be rowing, stadium stairs, we’re lifting weights, and on and on. It was grueling and it was a lot. But all that stuff I just said would take about six months and only 10 seconds of that 20 would come from that. The other 10 seconds would come in the first two weeks. You’re like what? So what happened in the first two weeks that could save 10 seconds. I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. You didn’t change your cardiovascular fitness you didn’t change your strength, you didn’t change your VO2 max, or your technique, all you changed is your comfort to be uncomfortable. You realize that you could push yourself a lot harder than you thought you could. That’s all that changed, that was half of the gains that would get all year would just be me reminding myself that I had a lot more than I thought I did.

Buddha figured out something 2,800 years ago. The first principle of Buddhism, which is called dukkha, which is that there’s going to be suffering, either way. There’s no easy path, there’s no safe path, there’s no path of ease. There’s no path that’s going to be, that’s going to make everything right. You’re going to suffer either way, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that. But I’m 20 years out of school and it’s the truest thing I’m probably going to say today. Life is suffering, and so choose something worth suffering for.

“it gets worse first”

If we want to move forward and reach the next peak, the key is to understand that your life is almost always going to get worse first. Any change that you want to make is almost always going to make things worse at first. So, if you’re in a relationship and you need to have a difficult conversation, that particular night your life is going to get a little worse. But then, you’re going to come out the other end, and it’s going to get better. Or if you need to leave a relationship that you shouldn’t be in in the first place, your life is going to get worse first. If you want to change careers and learn something new, you’re going to go down a learning curve. Your salary is probably going to decrease, you’re not going to be good at your job when you first start, your life’s going to get worse first. If you want to start a new habit, whether it’s taking a cold shower, meditating, or starting to exercise, it’s going to get worse first. And you’re going to follow this pattern, but you need to realize that the thing that’s keeping you there is the first move is always going to be worse. And eventually, what’s going to happen is these downward curves are going to get a lot shallower. Because you know what the biggest part of that curve is? It’s just fear. So the more you put yourself in situations where you do hard things, the shallower those dips are going to get because you’re going to remove that fear, just like I mentioned in the rowing example. I had no fear at 2,000 meters, or at 1,500 meters. Everything that you want in this life is on the other side of “worse first”.

2) Do your thing

Okay, so you’re going to do an expected value calculation, right? But there’s one thing you’re not factoring into that equation, which is you when you’re turned on. I went to this dinner in New York, and it was a bunch of private equity people there. It was ridiculous, this dinner. We went to this restaurant in New York, one of those restaurants that has ice with fish heads in it. You can go up and point to the fish that you want. For the privilege of doing that, you pay four times more for the same fish, but they’re in the ice. Anyway, there was this one guy there, Dave.

Dave is in the same business, in the same role as me, at a competing firm. Dave starts going off, saying, “I just won this deal, you won’t believe this. Here’s what happened, this is what we did on the debt covenants. We didn’t step them down, we had the debt to EBITDA that didn’t step down for two quarters, we’re going to save 50 basis points on our interest. And we used pro forma adjusted trailing 12 months yesterday EBITDA times 365. Therefore we’re getting an extra quarter of return on debt and that’s going to help our…” and he’s going on and on.

And I’m thinking, Dave thinks he’s colonizing Mars, he’s so excited about this. In his head, he’s colonizing Mars and I’m thinking to myself two things. First, Dave is going to kick my ass because I don’t care at all about any of this stuff. And the other thing I realized is that this is what Dave had written his business school essay about. He was living it, he was doing the thing that he wanted to be doing. And you’re not going to win doing someone else’s dream, you can survive for a little while, but you’re not going to win.

3) Do it for decades

This is one that probably a lot of people don’t want to hear. So, I have conversations with many of you and the conversation usually goes something like this: “My roommate’s sister’s friend, Megan, is trading Dogecoin and made $2 million. That could have been me if I was just in the right place at the right time. And her friend Kristen is day trading Bored Ape NFTs and makes $30,000 of passive income and all this stuff, right? And that could have been you if you were just in the right place, but you’re all behind, you’re not there yet, you’re way behind where you should be.”

And I thought that same thing when I was here. When I was here, it was Internet 1.0, B to C, like petfood.com. My classmates all went into that and Dave at that dinner had asked me, although Dave was not a good conversationalist, so he never asked me but had Dave asked me about what I was excited about, I would have talked about building this little label business. I would have talked about the culture we were trying to build at this company. I would have talked about how we punch way above our weight and we hired this person for his attributes and no one thought of this and we pulled him from this public company and then we were putting lean manufacturing in the plan. We’re building a culture where people wanted to stay and spend their lives and we’re training people from high school to be press operators. And Dave would have been like, “Frank thinks he’s freaking changing the world, with this little label business.”

Equation for Returns (compounding)

So, what we didn’t factor in at the time was I was willing to just keep going because I loved it. If you think of the equation for returns, it’s 1 plus r to the n, n is quadratic [Kris: actually it’s exponential, but point taken]. The n is the number of years you compound, that’s the most powerful part of the equation is n. And so, if you think of me, my rate of growth, it almost doesn’t matter. I’m growing every year. In year three, I’m a better CEO than I was in year two, in year five, I’m better than I was in year four. But I’m in year 23, and if you take that r, which is how fast you’re improving, you can work on that r a little bit, executive coaching and writing out your goals, and meditating and trying to work and be good at your job. And now you put a 23 on it, you can be the best in the world, it’s just about how long you willing to do it. That’s the most powerful factor and there is no obstacle that will not yield to you if you’re excited about something for a decade or longer.

4) Write your story

[see the video to appreciate the story about exercise he does with the business coach he randomly happens upon]

You put out the thing in the universe that you want to happen, and the universe responds. What’s really happening? And that sounds like woo-woo, you’re like, “God, here we go. Universe responds.” But what’s really happening? What’s really happening is, you’re putting on blinders to where you want to go. You’re making goals, you’re aligning your day to where you want to go. You’re attracting people who want to go to the same place that you want to go. So it is the universe, but there are actually some mechanics behind it too that make it happen.

[Kris: This reminds me of how Mark Manson hates the term “manifesting” not because it’s fake but because it’s taking a real thing, weaponized confirmation bias, and making it woo woo:

The traditional “law of attraction”. Like The Secret. Manifestation. The idea is to visualize and believe something, and it will happen. It’s not entirely wrong. I addressed this topic in an extensive article on my website years ago. The concept in psychology known as confirmation bias plays a key role….It occurs consistently and the law of attraction leverages this bias in our favor. For instance, if your goal is to become rich, you’ll start noticing opportunities that were always there but went unnoticed because you hadn’t been thinking about your goal.
There’s nothing magical or cosmic about it. It’s a common, well-documented perceptual bias. When used effectively, the law of attraction trains you to use confirmation bias to your advantage. The problem is, it’s often shrouded in cosmic jargon and extends beyond simply thinking about your goal. There’s a crucial distinction between focusing on an external goal and the identity you want to inhabit. If, for example, I decide I want to be seven feet tall and play in the NBA, no amount of thinking will make it real. That’s not success; it’s delusion.
I have several issues with the law of attraction. I’ve been quite critical of it, despite recognizing the grain of sound advice within. It advises to look for the positive in anything that happens to you, which can be helpful but should not be applied indiscriminately. It’s perfectly normal and healthy to feel sadness when tragedy strikes.
[Kris: Notice how calls to be indiscriminately positive backfire by setting impossible expectations. Happiness is the gap between reality and expectations.]
What many attribute to the law of attraction is often just confirmation bias, accountability, and goal setting. When you set a goal, it provides a finish line. Without a clear goal, it’s difficult to measure your actions. For instance, if you want to make a lot of money, define the amount. Once you decide on a figure, you can break it down into monthly targets and figure out the steps needed to get there. The law of attraction isn’t responsible for this. It’s simply setting a goal, breaking it into subtasks, holding yourself accountable, and using confirmation bias. It’s easy to see why people appreciate this concept, but it’s crucial to remember that it requires action. You can’t merely wish for wealth and expect it to materialize.

]

Recap

The biggest obstacle you really have is fear, if you boil it down. Fear is very manipulative and it shows up in all kinds of different ways. It tries to disguise itself. It disguises itself as being practical. “I’m being practical right now.” It disguises itself as, “I’m helping you.” It disguises itself as, “I’m saving you.” And most of all, it disguises itself as, “Not me, not now.”

What I have given you today is the antidote to fear. That’s been my goal. The four things that we talked about are ways that you can tangibly and tactically look fear in the eye throughout your lives and say to fear, “Not today, today I’m going to play big, today I’m going to live this asymmetric life.”

Now is the time to do hard things. There’s something that you fear right now, that’s exactly where you should go. You should be doing that thing. There’s something you’re putting off right now, you should be doing that thing. Everything that you want is on the other side of your worst fear. Now is the time to do your thing.There is suffering, you will suffer. So pick something worth suffering for.

Realize that you are underestimating yourself at your full power when you’re excited about something; that’s not going into your equation. Do it for decades because your excitement for a decade knows no bounds. There is no obstacle that will not yield to you when you’re excited for a decade.

And finally, write your own story. No matter where you’re starting and no matter what role you have after school or where you are right now, it doesn’t matter. You can start today writing your story. Inside of you, you have magic. You have your own life. You have something that’s special for you. And there’s really only one question you need to answer, which is, are you going to give yourself permission to lead that life, to live that life, and to let that out? That’s the question you’re going to answer over and over and over in your life from now on. Are you going to give yourself permission? It’s permission you need.

☮️

Stay Groovy

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