Sometimes you just have to take the L

Never confuse hope with discipline

My progressive and liberal friends have been anxious after the elections and with Trump’s cabinet picks. I suspect most of the readership¹ of this newsletter too. I have been mostly fine, but have noticed that I was reading plenty of the Democrat post-mortems on how they lost the election. I’ve been reminded that, as an Enneagram 5, I try to control the world by gathering more information. Of course, control is a fiction of the ego.

Researchers say that we say the equivalent of 4000 words to ourselves every minute. Sixteen hours a day, every day, we consumed by our own mental chatter. I don’t know how they figured this out, but apparently we spend half our time thinking about the past or the future. When we attach negative feelings to it, that constant chatter is called rumination (past) and worry (future). When we attach positive feelings to it, that constant chatter is called nostalgia (past) and fantasy/hope (future).

We spend half our lives ruminating, worrying, nostalgizing, or fantasizing/hoping. All the sleepwalking chatter of the ego.

Some thoughts² that kept my ego in check this week:

1. Life rumbles on

On Election morning, my friend Rachel unexpectedly went into labor and spent the day birthing her first child. Congrats Rachel and Gabe!

On Thursday, my FB friend Grant posted: “I’m in Kaiser Hospital after having a heart attack this evening. Then Angela passed out by my bed and is being checked out. Please pray for our family.”

Rachel and Gabe are liberals who would have normally been upset by the election results. Grant and Angela are conservatives who would normally be excited by the election result. But life rumbles on, whether we are reading the online news or not. We are where we put our attention.

Babies continue to be born, people continue to get sick. People fall in love, hurt each other, grow in unexpected ways, run up into their own emotional limitations. I don’t have anything more insightful to say than we are where we put our attention. And most of us spend a lot of time in the news instead of our own lives.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

As most of you know, climate/environment is my main issue (I used to do work in regional sustainability before FIRE). I talked with my friends Jenn and Tera after the election. They have both worked in climate policy since graduating from college in 2000; they’ve dedicated their lives to it in a way I was not able to. In the twenty-four years they’ve been working in climate policy, there have been twelve years of Democratic administration and twelve years of Republican administration (count and you’ll see it’s true). Leave aside how serious the Democrats have been about climate legislation and see the larger political point: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, almost to where it’s always 50/50.

Widen your gaze 64 years to 1960 and you’ll see that both Republicans and Democrats have held the presidency for 32 years each. You can keep going back and you’ll recognize the pattern is the same.³

Each election, the winning side says hooray for our side, we can finally change this rotten system. Each election, the losing side feels the loss existentially: the bad guys won and the country will slide into Communism/Fascism. We’re going to have to fight! And we do it again four years later.

Over time, it’s a series of coin flips. It’s almost like our political system is finely balanced:

You probably know the Taoist wisdom story of the farmer and the wild horse. This author’s interpretation is so insightful:

Coaches often tell clients this story to help those that are “fused” to their stories about a situation—to get their clients to create a little distance between their story about a situation and what the ultimate reality might be. They point out that the lesson of the Taoist farmer is, of course, that no event in and of itself can truly be judged as good or bad, lucky or unlucky, fortunate or unfortunate. Only time can tell the whole story. The thinking goes that getting some space between the story and reality might reduce stress and/or help the client move through life with more grace. That is certainly true.

But there is something important here that is often overlooked. The Taoist farmer didn’t cultivate detachment as a means to an end. He didn’t keep an open mind to achieve better outcomes for himself. He didn’t distance himself from his “story” to lower his blood pressure. He didn’t answer “maybe” to maintain aplomb as a way to better deal with Life’s ups and downs.

The truth is, he didn’t care.

The Taoist Farmer literally does not care what happens. He doesn’t divide Life into good events and bad events, like piles of laundry. He experiences Life as one thing: undifferentiated energy/consciousness. Given a choice between another Ice Age or another Renaissance, it would be a jump ball for him.

For the Farmer, this open-minded approach is not a strategy. It is the byproduct of what he was searching for and his ultimate realization. - source

The ego always wants to win but life doesn’t work that way. As the Buddhists will tell you, the results is craving and aversion. When we only accept good events and fear bad events, we suffer. In fact according to the Buddha it is the cause of suffering.

The ultimate victory isn’t getting what you want. It isn’t detachment from life. The ultimate victory is undifferentiated consciousness, experiencing life as One Thing.

We go through our lives, our years on this Earth, thinking of ourselves as separate. That sense of separateness basically causes every stupid, sinful, silly thing we ever do. The little, separate self takes offense when people don’t show us proper respect. The separate self lies, steals, and does unkind things to other people. When we’re separate, everything becomes about protecting and defending ourselves. It can consume our lives. — Richard Rohr

2. Sometimes you have to take the L

Roger Federer is one of the best male tennis players of all time. This year, he talked about winning and losing in his commencement speech at Dartmouth College:

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches... Now, I have a question for all of you... what percentage of the POINTS do you think I won in those matches?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot…

The truth is, whatever game you play in life... sometimes you’re going to lose. A point, a match, a season, a job... it’s a roller coaster, with many ups and downs…

You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That to me is the sign of a champion.

The best in the world are not the best because they win every point... It’s because they know they’ll lose... again and again… and have learned how to deal with it.

You accept it…You move on… Adapt and grow.

Roger Federer, winner of 20 Grand Slams, only won 54% of his points. Now imagine what the numbers are for the 10th or 100th best tennis player in the world. They are probably losing the majority of their points.

A year ago, I was in conflict with my neighbors. They had installed a heat pump near my bedroom window, which I thought the fan was too loud and disturbed my sleep. We had a long string of texts about what decibel level was too loud, where in my bedroom we should be measuring decibel levels at, on and on. I was getting emotional about the issue because I have sleep issues. And then I realized sometimes you have to take the L. I stopped arguing about the fan noise. As the spiritual teachers from around the world point out, ego always wants to be right, always wants to win. But life doesn’t work that way.

When I accepted that, unsurprisingly, I slept better.⁴

Anytime I insist on winning and being right, I try to ask if it’s me living with eyes closed, and misunderstanding is all I see. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, the need to always win or be right (what she calls perfectionism) is the voice of the oppressor⁵, and will keep you cramped and insane your whole life. Accepting the fan noise outside my bed was just another opportunity to allow Reality to be reality. Can I connect and allow? Where am I causing hurt? Where am I causing separation?

3. Accepting the brutal facts of your situation

“The most consistent road to unhappiness that I know comes from turning a blind eye to reality.” - Patricia Madson

My current FF1 cohort is nearing the end and is hitting a reading almost every graduate remembers: Lesson 3.1: Stockdale Paradox. Admiral James Stockdale spent 8 years in a POW prison camp in the Vietnam War. As the highest ranking officer in the camp, he was repeatedly tortured to make an example of him. Jim Collins, business school professor, interviewed him decades later:

“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”

“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

For my liberal and progressive friends, I think there’s an implicit demand that life should always get better. And any historian will tell you it doesn’t. Sometimes things get worse. Bad things happen. Empires fall. And people live through them until things get better. Last week’s election was a wake up call, a dose of reality. And as my friend Annie Bickerton says, all spirituality is intimacy with reality. The people who spent their time ruminating, worrying, nostalgizing, or fantasizing/hoping didn’t make it out of the POW camps.

You must never confuse hope with discipline. Watch the National Geographic documentary Endurance about how Ernest Shackleton kept his 27 member crew alive for 497 days on the South Pole. A very long string of Ls. Discipline matters more than optimism.

And because this is also a personal finance blog: three years ago (this newsletter has been going on that long!?) I wrote about how can people save if they fear there may not be a future. I know so many people who have “given up fighting against capitalism.” But saving and investing for financial freedom is the best way to prepare for catastrophic events in the future. Having a nest egg shields you from the worst consequences of job loss, illness, or global financial downturn. (I’ve experienced all of these, multiple times). Not doing so is an abrogation to your own life.

If you can take the L’s in life and not catastrophize, you’re more able to create a nest egg,⁶ work your entire career in climate policy, or, in the most extreme, stay alive for a year on the South Pole or survive eight years in a Vietnamese POW camp. Life rumbles on: babies are born, people have heart attacks, the inevitable next stock market crash. What do we do with that other than to accept it, and continue to act? Don’t divide Life into good events and bad events, like piles of laundry. Embrace it all, and then have the discipline to do the thing you are required to do in order do the thing you were meant to do.⁷

The ego always wants to win, but life doesn’t work that way. But if you can only be happy when Life gives you want you want, you’re only going spend a lot of time ruminating, worrying, nostalgizing, and fantasizing/hoping. You’re only going to be happy in half the elections. You’re going to shortchange your Future Self’s finances. You’re not going to play tennis, or any sport. What allows us to become, physically, financially, and spiritually, is being able to take it all, losses included, and keep going. Undifferentiated consciousness.

You can never lose faith in the end of the story. But you must never confuse faith with discipline.

We are where we put our attention.

Do the thing you are required to do in order to do the thing you were meant to do.⁸

1. (progressive/liberal)

2. Thoughts, ha!

3. You can go back 100 years or more, and it’s basically the same pattern.

4. I also put up noise blocking foam to cover my window.

5. The ego.

6. More W’s than L’s all the time in investing (well, until the U.S. blows up haha).

7. Aka dharma.

8. Aka dharma.