Silicon Valley Investors Club

An investment community for tech employees

Jordan

Working Out Mental Knots

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Being I’m a tech nerd I spend most of my day pecking away at a keyboard. Resulting in the occasional muscle knot. The knot causes minimal pain, but just enough discomfort to be irritating.

Dealing with the knot

Massaging the knot away is a painful experience that makes me want to skip the treatment. But once I do bite the bullet and have the deep tissue massage the minor discomfort is gone.

In our lives we have mental knots. The minor discomfort caused by these knots is sapping our precious mental energy. Yet, we aren’t willing to face the mental knot because we can’t handle the momentary pain.

The different forms of mental knots

Mental knots come in different forms:

Avoiding a crucial conversation with a loved one…

Failing to accept we can’t have what we want…

Hiding our art out of the fear of criticism…

Unwillingness to hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes…

Choosing to deny that our business plan or project is a failure…

If these mental knots are left untreated our ability to grow and live happy lives is stunted.

You have a choice: embrace your fears or continue running.

Being An Anthropologist

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The job of an Anthropologist is to study the values and socially acceptable standards of a group of people.

A good Anthropologist will visit a new culture to study how their society functions. A great Anthropologist embraces the host culture and drops any preconceived notions on how a society should operate.

At work and in your personal life try acting like an Anthropologist. Drop your preconceived notions on how the world should work. Learn about what makes people tick. And celebrate the diversity of ideas you see around you.

That’s one way you can connect with others and grow.

If I’m chasing money, should I become an investment banker or an entrepreneurial programmer?

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For the love of god don’t chase money for 3 reasons:

  1. Once you obtain your financial goal, you won’t be happy. What’s next? And how much did you give up to obtain it?
  2. 1 assumes you’re able to outperform those people who love the fields of work that are paying the most. The best in those fields aren’t driven by the money, there’s something else that drives them to succeed maybe it’s the thrill of the deal, or the fun of working in high pressure environments (not me). Odds are you won’t out perform those people and you will fail at the job.
  3. Chasing an exterior goal will never lead to true happiness. Yes, I went from section 8 housing poverty to silicon valley housing is too damn expensive poverty. Yes an improvement, but all in all am I any happier? Not really, because happiness is derived from an internal state of non suffering which is created by being true to ourselves and not deluding ourselves that external stimulus will determine are internal state of mind.

We are adaptive animals, I’ve known poor who have become rich, and rich who have become poor, and in the end, it’s not the money, it’s our own internal state that determines our happiness.

Good luck.

Original answer can be found here: http://qr.ae/8KQtWU