Juan David's Newsletter - May 3, 2020
Hi there,
New to My Newsletter? — Welcome! I’m thrilled to have you! You can view past emails here
I was talking to one of these Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (you know those you see on Twitter).
Then, he said something about how being 17 makes him less interested in what I do. If he meant to hurt me (sorry…you failed).
Age is one of these unconscious biases people have. If you’re young/old, belong to a different race, or think differently. Some people are going to be hostile to you without them even realizing it.
When this happened, I only thought about how I can be better and where I can improve. These biases exist. We have one choice: Strive to be better.
Why Optimism Isn’t About Positive
If it's easier, you can also read this article on my website.
In the book Darwin’s Pharmacy, author Rich Doyle talks about finding ways to become aware of the feedback loops among our creative, linguistic, consciousness, experience choices. In other words, our capacity that we have to mold our lives. A lot of people go through life thinking that they have no control over what happens, that life just happens to them. That’s not true! We have a lot more control than we think, and this control I’m talking about comes from the power of feedback loops. You can decide how your day is going to go by meeting with a friend, going to your favorite restaurant, listening to your favorite music, and drinking a certain beverage. Again, you can decide to be optimistic and look for the best possible experience. Once you recognize this power of feedback loops, you can create the intention of being optimistic.
Self-awareness in our lives brings us, as gimmicky as it may sound, life-changing benefits. The free will that we possess to decide and execute the ideas and experiences we want to have is a source of true happiness and therefore optimism.
Psychologist and author Martin Seligman says the key to optimism lies, as he says, in our “explanatory styles,” how we describe life events to ourselves. Seligman believes that anyone can learn optimism, as I said, simply by asking themselves more questions before automatically defaulting into a negative response.
I couldn’t agree more with Seligman, but the amount of effort this takes is HUGE. We’re just used to falling into a negative reaction. We do it all the time. Pessimism is for lazy people; it’s our default reaction, while optimism takes effort and commitment.
DREAMS + REALITY + DETERMINATION + OPTIMISM = SUCCESS
A little while ago, I read a book by Ray Dalio called Principles. In this New York Times bestseller, Dalio shares the story of his life, and how he came up with his principles that are, as he says, the main cause of his success. I enjoyed every word of this book, mostly because he is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, which is the largest hedge fund in the world. I love investing and the stock market, so reading how he started, his journey, how he founded his company. By the way, his thought-process to investing was incredible.
One of the topics that resonated with me the most was one of his life principles. “Dreams + Reality + Determination = Successful Life.” Dalio writes that this formula is almost always true. But he forgot a variable: optimism.
READ the full article at https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/blog/optimism-positivity
Curiosities
Curiosity #1
I’m huge fan of technology and decision-making. I found this conversattion between Peter Thiel (PayPal Co-founder), and Garry Kasparov (Chess Legend).
In this conversation, they talked about globalization, Warren Buffett, technology, politics, the world economy, and chess.
I highly recommend it! You can watch it here.
Curiosity #2
If we talk about great minds Peter Thiel and Garry Kasparov. We have to talk about Eric Weinstein.
Eric Weinstein is fabulous and has an amazing story. He is the managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's personal investment firm. He came up with potential unified theory of physics called Geometric Unity.
He recently started a podcast, The Portal. It’s my favorite place to learn about fascinating ideas.
I’d recommend you start with the episode with Peter Thiel or the episode with his brother, Brett Weinstein.
Curiosity #3
As high school comes to an end, I’ve been spending some time thinking about the education system. I had this thought experiment.
Take 1000 kids from diverse backgrounds across the world.
Take 500 kids and give them all good grades.
Take 500 kids and give them all bad grades.
To conclude:
- Study and understand whether the kids who get good grades (even thought they might not have) would be more engaged and interested in fields such as science or math.
- Try to study how positive reinforcement tricks the brain and performance of kids.
The Future of Education should be project-based and gradeLESS. The concern is that there would not be a way to know whether kids understand the material. THE REALITY is that grades test memory, and not CREATIVITY.
Creativity is hard to measure, but it’s what truly matters.
Project-based education would feel like a DREAM to many creative kids. (All kids are creative by the way).
When you work on something you care about. You don’t need to worry about things such as:
- Motivation / Procrastination
- Time Management
- Distraction
Just some thoughts…
Curiosity #4
Sometimes we have to print, sign, scan and send by email a high number of pages. To save trees, ink, and time.
Edouard Klein wrote this script. It’s incredible. You can make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned.
Thank you for reading!
May will be an interesting month. I wish you have a great month and great start of this week.
I’ll see you next week!
Best,
Juan David Campolargo