The Course
When you first begin as a strategist, you hold the faulty assumption that foresight means predicting what happens next. Of course, though it sometimes does, more often than not, the proper plan is proven wrong before it is proven proper.
There are plenty of opportunities to undermine yourself along the way. To have doubts. To want to turn back. To disavow the instincts that brought you here. They say that the market bottoms out when the last bull finally blinks and throws in the towel.
So you may beat yourself up when it doesn’t work out exactly as you envisioned. You forget that the timeline could be a year or five years or longer. Groundwork can suddenly pay off without expectation. It can look very bad before it ever starts to look good – or worse it can look like nothing, like you did nothing at all.
What you need to develop is the quiet confidence that Seneca called euthymia—”the belief that you’re on the right path and not led astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost.” You’re after something elusive and rare and critical: to not be shaken. If you can accept that your strategy will almost certainly “feel wrong” at some point, you’ll be less likely to ditch it at the critical moment. In fact, you’ll come to know this test as a positive experience that exercises your tolerance for dissonance.
Nice post, enjoyed it like usual. Keep up the good work, breh.
Thanks for this. It’s been a very rough week, and I needed to read this post.
So… you’re saying Tucker Max could still turn out to be a success?
Sometimes I really enjoy what you write. This is most definitely one of those times.
YES Ryan.. this is really good. This line especially -> “If you can accept that your strategy will almost certainly “feel wrong” at some point, you’ll be less likely to ditch it at the critical moment.”
great post. keep it up.
Thanks for that, eerily prescient for me.
Definitely one of my favorite posts in recent weeks. Really resonated with me and what I’ve been feeling with my work lately.
Golf clap.
Euthymia aka the Narrative Fallacy.
Or no. Not at all
@Ryan
If you don’t consider Euthymia a narrative fallacy, where do you draw the line?
There is a difference between being on the right path, and thinking you’re on the right path.
“The right path” is not an illusion, Matt.
Euthymia is a steadiness of mind. It can roughly be associated with tranquility. This is where not being shaken or distracted or led off the path you’ve chosen comes in.
Ahhhhh, I agree. So very much.
I find that successful people are able to deeply appreciate their successes because of their initial struggles. That much is obvious.
The other point, perhaps a view a little less common, is that they only were able to be successful because they were able to reach that deep gratitude and aliveness for everything related to their true vision of success – related to their goal – in their lives as they were reaching.
It’s been said, and I agree, vision comes from doing what you love.
Very inspiring post. This is a great blog. This can be appplied to relationships in life yes? If people applied this to relationships they would last much longer.
Q: “If you don’t consider Euthymia a narrative fallacy, where do you draw the line?”
A: “Euthymia is a steadiness of mind. It can roughly be associated with tranquility. This is where not being shaken or distracted or led off the path you’ve chosen comes in.”
This is a really interesting question, and it seems like something you’ve thought a lot about, Ryan. I don’t know what your process is for selecting topics for your posts, but I hope you write on this in the future.
Inclined to agree with Matt Mk 1 on this. “Euthymia,” insofar as it approximates tranquility, equanimity etc, is obviously not a narrative fallacy. As soon as one introduces talk of “the right path,” however, then one certainly does slip into story-telling territory. Which is a shame, because the strength of purpose imparted by the stories we tell ourselves is usually a necessary anchor to produce that state of mind.
p.s. You write a great blog.
“Euthymia” and “the narrative fallacy” are just labels. They both describe potential results from what could be considered the same psychological process. If the story doesn’t work, we call it the NF. If it might, we call it “Euthymia”. Those with “Euthymia” just use this process more effectively.
It’s like disorders in the DSM. If it doesn’t work it’s a disorder, but if the very same brain process works for a person, he is not said to have a disorder.
Remember that most of our decision making is actually subconscious. The “rational” mind is mostly a teleological failsafe, useful for predicting future circumstances. Logic can only work with givens; the rational mind can only evalute with predeveloped values.
Humans create meaning. That’s what we do. Self-preservation is no more inherently logical than suicide. But we can show that these actions are inconsistent with certain values and force a weighing of incompatibile actions that might not have been previously understood as contradictory.
Perhaps “Euthymia” is what happens when you blow apart the rational cover story, when you stop trying to turn it into easily consumable plot points and truly engage your role in life.
You can narrow the scope of NF if you want, say the label only applies to the process gone awry, but the real question is not the dogma but the underlying behavior.
So, assuming a broad view of NF, do you believe that the NF requires words? Could someone with no concept of language fall victim to it? Ever seen a movie without words? How about a soundtrack?
First of all, I’m glad you took some time to write out a response. I think I have a better understanding of how you’re looking at the issue now.
I would agree with you that what Seneca calls “euthymia” certainly has the potential to lead to what we sometimes describe as “the narrative fallacy”. However, by equating the two we’re left with a picture of our own sense of direction that is incomplete, and as a result it’s all too easy for us to justify not investigating what we see as “the right path”.
There are a lot of ways to rationalize throwing out faith in our own sense of direction, but it seems like that faith is absolutely crucial to living a life we can be happy with. It might seem trite, but I’d hate to sit back and watch someone let their brain trap them that way. I don’t know if that’s happening for you, but I thought it was, so I wanted to say something that would encourage you to not take your skepticism so seriously.
What are you people talking about? Both Matts should look at what I wrote last week because neither of you know how to read apparently and project whatever you feel like onto what’s in front of you. It’s so pervasive that you don’t even realize you are doing it or else you’d likely not say you “yes, I agree with _________”and then fill in that blank with the OPPOSITE of what was I had just said.
Ryan, I was saying I agreed with Matt.
He said:
“They both describe potential results from what could be considered the same psychological process.”
I said:
“I would agree with you that what Seneca calls ‘euthymia’ certainly has the potential to lead to what we sometimes describe as ‘the narrative fallacy’.”
Maybe you made a typo in the last comment, but you seemed to think I was addressing what you had just said. I wasn’t, though.
Other Matt, let me be clear: THERE ARE NO SIMILARITIES BETWEEN EUTHYMIA AND THE NARRATIVE FALLACY. NONE.
They are utterly different concepts and if you are conflating the two then you understanding neither.
“hi my name is Tim and I don’t know what an ip address is”
You’re probably right, Ryan. I haven’t read Seneca’s description of what he called “euthymia”. All I had to go off was your allusion to the idea at the end of the original post. I did my best to try to understand where Matt was coming from and communicate to him my understanding. I apologize for not being faithful to the concepts, I know they were the original topic.
Your vehement lack of understanding proves nothing. How the heck did you miss that your statement about Euthymia (quoted at end) can just as easily describe what your wannabe rat pack person in the previous post feels when he walks into a casino? Stop depending on your preconceived notions and be objective for a second! I can understand disagreement, but to see no relation is just mind boggling. It is just like your last post and you are the one not getting it. You have complained that blogs are just reported opinions and there is no meaningful thought, yet here you are doing the same thing. Except it’s Seneca you are reporting on.
Your very critism of the narrative and soundtrack delusions is that people fail to see the dissonance, yet in this post you talk about needing to increase your tolerance from dissonance.
I looked at your Narratice Fix post and you commented “Luke, it’s actually the opposite. The Narrative Fallacy is the tendency to create meaning and story and significance from things that do not inherently have them. Driving into the city makes you feel like you’re the most goddamn important person on the planet. The thing is…you’re not.”
As I said in my comment, nothing has inherent value. If the sense of well being you get from “the course” is in any way based on meaning, you are projecting meaning on that which has no inherent meaning.
Just imagine that your strategy is to win big. Don’t take all those other paths people try to pull you on, they are just trying to stop you from that jackpot! Sure, you lost your house, but revel in the dissonance. Ryan, have you ever read about gamling addicts? Don’t you know that they feel a sense of calm when they lose everything?
“the belief that you’re on the right path and not led astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost.” You’re after something elusive and rare and critical: to not be shaken. If you can accept that your strategy will almost certainly “feel wrong” at some point, you’ll be less likely to ditch it at the critical moment. In fact, you’ll come to know this test as a positive experience that exercises your tolerance for dissonance.”