The process goes:
Awareness —> recognition —> familiarity—> comfort —> capability —> proficiency —> mastery
It applies to everything. I’m learning piano. I’m learning sales. I’m learning AI. I’m learning business. I’m learning Stoicism.
I’m an expert in none. Compared to experts. But compared to the unaware, I’m a master.
We think that since we don’t know more about something than the top 5% of folks in that field, our opinion and voice isn’t worth a damn. But your opinion and voice is worth a whole hell of a lot to the people that know even a little bit less than you.
The people making money say “yes” to opportunities and then figure it out from there. Someone told me yesterday that if you know 10% more thanks someone else, you can sell that person whatever you want.
But we suffer from imposter syndrome pretty much to a person. “I’m not an expert”. That statement is relative. That statement holds back millions of people from sharing their opinions. It’s sourced from a fear that they will “find you out.”
Who cares what they think. If they think they know more than you, then hear them out. If they’re right, then maybe they should be putting themselves out there more and all you need is the audience in the right spot of the spectrum.
There are so many YouTubers and thought leaders spouting off like they are the expert and eventually just because they are doing that, they become an expert. They speak it into existence.
And thanks to that hubris, The Rad Stoic now has 75 subscribers, 18 editions, and a memorialized record of my “expertise”.
So a big hello to my fellow Drexel Dragons who subscribed yesterday after my talk about AI and philosophy and entrepreneurship and residence halls.
There are no walls between a college student and a graduate. Between a buyer and a seller. Between an expert and a novice. There is just a space. It is up to us if we intentionally choose to bridge that space with our unique value and how we choose to spend our time - the most precious resource.
I hope to give my children the opportunity to find what they love to do, work to be great at it, pursue it, and do it. Rather than cover their eyes from ugly truths, I want to cover their eyes from fictional fantasies that will handicap their ability to negotiate tomorrow's reality. I believe they can handle it.
— Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights
Choose not to be harmed--and you wont feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed-- and you haven't been.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I wrote this book so I could have a written record to hold myself accountable to. I wrote this book so you can hold me to task and remind me of what I forget. I circled back to prior times; lessons learned, repeated, and revisited. I noticed that the realizations arrived quickly, the learning took time, and the livin' was the hardest part. I found myself right where I left me.
— Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights
Rads Take
Alright, alright, alright. The random quote generator gave us 2 from McConaughey. For those who haven't read it, it's more of a memoir of his first 50 years on Earth. I didn't underline much as a lot was personal stories with some questionable activities at times. All the notable quotes came at the end of the book but they were good so I put them in the mix.
In the two, he talks of parenting, raising mentally tough kids, and being able to look back on your life with the fewest regrets possible. And it's funny that his written record echoes my "memorialized record" from above.
In fact, yesterday at Drexel, someone asked for advice and I said document a system, a go-to document that becomes your "bible". I guess that is what the Rad Stoic is for me. I will be able to revisit this in a year, or 10, criticize my ramblings but appreciate the fact I took the time.
Journaling is an important part of self-reflection, gratitude, awareness, and emotional processing. If you are not writing, even if just for yourself, write 2 sentences today. Then 2 tomorrow. 2 on Saturday. Email yourself. Start small. Keep it small if you want. But keep it consistent.
In terms of the quote on parenting, I agree in principle. It's just a matter of treating kids as adults which is a case-by-case basis in terms of at what age which kids should be exposed to the "ugly truths". Wait too long and the kid is overly sheltered. Pull back the curtain about how babies are made when they're 4 years old, and you might be dealing with a parent-teacher conference in pre-school. It comes back to Temperance. Which is another way of saying "don't be an idiot."
Finally Marcus hits us with "are you hurt, really?" A large percentage of the time that we feel hurt, we aren't. We might like to complain, drum up drama, have a story to tell. But really, we aren't hurt. Epictetus said that if someone cuts off your arm, offer up the other one. Because you body is not you.
So if someone cuts you off in traffic or writes a scathing email or ignores a text, think - are you actually hurt? We are complicit in being harmed. If someone else does something and we find it egregious and take offense, that person didn't force us into those feelings. Our impressions of external events turn to judgments which turn to thoughts which turn to actions. The further upstream we can go in recognizing our control, the less we suffer and are "harmed".