It’s a cycle:
-delusion, ignorance, denial
-acceptance, pessimism, desperation
-growth, enlightenment
Examples?
-and most people you know
Let’s explain the cycle:
DELUSION, IGNORANCE, DENIAL
-Anything you’re not knowledgeable about, don’t have significant experience at — you’re basically ignorant about
-Since you’re ignorant — you’re also ignorant about being ignorant. I.e. you can’t tell exactly just how clueless, how ignorant, how ineffectual you are.
-The problem you’re clueless about could be a difficult problem or an easy problem. If it has to be solved — it has to be solved
-If it has to be solved — then of course you will assume it’s more easy than it is hard. Since you’re clueless — you have no information contradicting it (nor validating it) — and decisions must be made — so might as well make that decision and do one’s duty, optimistically. What will happen will happen — but let’s be optimistic and not assume the worst, and demotivate oneself before anything has even been tried. There’s the optimism bias and it’s good — it makes you ACT.
ACCEPTANCE, PESSIMISM, DESPERATION
-Once you actually start doing something, actually doing something, with skin in the game — you begin learning, and eradicating your ignorance
-We already established that previously you were over-optimistic, regardless if you consciously wanted that or not. It’s just your “wiring”. This is why you always underestimate how much time given project will take, or how much money building that house will devour.
-What goes up must goes down — so now reality is in stark contrast to your clueless overoptimistic estimation. Therefore it’s quite pessimistic
-Furthermore to proceed you have to be REALISTIC. You have to start ACCEPTING the REALITY. You’re no longer dealing with a fantasy. Now the necessary step is to accept every single harsh reality that you discover.
-This should rightfully make you perhaps a little pessimistic. ACCEPTANCE invariably has to be a little pessimistic. Quality problem solving and planning ahead entails predicting what may break, what may go wrong — and safeguarding against. If you’re SERIOUS about something — you are PESSIMISTIC, CAUTIOUS in your planning. You prepare for the worst.
GROWTH, ENLIGHTENMENT
-Once you actually get through the phase of facing reality, ploughing through the early obstacles, letting go of your delusions and accepting the reality, and setting in motion a constructive plan…
-…you now are in the phase of actual steady growth
-The chances of things going wrong diminish — while you start benefiting from the positive externalities — which you couldn’t have predicted beforehand
-It is now that you should again become more optimistic — as now you derive your optimism from actual real successes, rather than from blissful ignorance.
-It is important now to leave behind your pessimism and resistance — and let yourself be carried by the winds of inspiration and possibility. You have no idea what is possible
Why I find this cycle interesting?
We get generic, one-size-fits-all, conflicting advice like:
“be optimistic”,
“think big”,
“be sceptical”,
“accept things as they are”,
“don’t accept this reality! change it!”,
“it’s a hard work”,
“it should be effortless!”,
“it must be sustainable”,
“there are no limits”,
“you must absolutely know your limits”,
“you need that big breakthrough”,
“it’s a long long grind and you need patience”,
nonsense.
All of the above are just attitudes.
The simple reality is that this is just a journey.
Only the JOURNEY is REAL.
The simple reality is that it’s just a journey, at the start of which you had seen nothing and know nothing and expect everything but also expect nothing — and when deep into the forest you had seen a lot and expect a lot, but what you expect is what actually has some bearing in the reality,
You will have different attitudes at different points of the journey, different experiences — but all in all the journey is always the same.
And if you’ve ever been on a journey, and if you watched yourself on that journey, observed yourself and you attitudes and perspectives and perceptions and how these changed — then you will understand how a journey looks like, and that it’s this kind of a cycle.
And this will perhaps make you less likely to get lost in the forest,
To get stuck for too long wandering slowly at the side of the forest, pretending you’re actually delving into the forest, pretending you know the forest, while doing nothing, getting nowhere,
Or to panic for too long at the beginning of the forest, overwhelmed with all the different trees and animals and paths to take. And moving too cautious. And then escaping the forest, crying.
Don’t get to attached to your subjective attitudes and just make sure that you are MOVING FORWARD.
Action action action, movement movement movement,
That’s the only constant here, the only truth.
The rest are just passing landmarks, just moments.