James Barry

Sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly what you need.

At the start of 2020 I was unemployed.

I had just dissolved the business that I worked on for the past year.

So I started my job hunt and applied to my two “๐˜‹๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ฎ ๐˜Š๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฑ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ด”.

Here’s how the interview process went:

๐‚๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ง๐ฒ ๐€: Got to the reference stage. Then they froze hiring.
๐‚๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ง๐ฒ ๐: Got to the project stage. My project wasn’t good enough.

I was absolutey crushed.

Recently, I decided to check in on both the companies

๐‚๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ง๐ฒ ๐€: Everybody who interviewed me has quit / left.
๐‚๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ง๐ฒ ๐: Laid off half of their employees.

Now I work at a company I love.

With coworkers I respect.

Sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly what you need.

Be Yourself…

An AMAZING song by Audioslave, and also a terrible piece of advice.

If I had a dime for every time that I read “Be Yourself, Be Authentic, Be Real”, I would have at least 100 dimes. Maybe 200. But definitely not 500.

Be Yourself is advice that people who have already “figured out life” give because… their current state is who they believe they were meant to be.

For the rest of us though, “Be Yourself” can be shitty advice.

Here is why:

We’re Constantly Changing:

The person you are at 15 is a lot different from who you are at 18, which is even more different from who you are at 25.

I’m only 27 (at the time of penning this article), and only in this past year have I felt like I’ve started to hit maturity.

And because I know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is, I realize that I’m not even close to being mature.

Part of being alive is accepting that who you are will change.

We all will move forward, and need to embrace the chance as it comes.

We All Have Bad Qualities:

Except for Fred Rogers. He’s the example of the best a human can be. He should be himself ๐Ÿ˜Š.

For the rest of us ordinary humans, we all have things that we should, and can, improve upon.

It may be how we treat others.

It could be the vices we give into.

But most likely, it is how we treat ourselves. I know I can always improve in that area.

None of us will ever be perfect, and that’s a good thing.

So don’t just be yourself, strive to be somebody better.

But It’s Not All Bad:

Being yourself is actually fairly good advice.

As long as you think about what you can’t change.

The parts of your personality, your character, your upbringing that make you… well YOU!

Those parts you should embrace. Everything that you can’t change.

The atomic units that build up the incredibly unique individuals that we all are.

For me… those characteristics are being loud, being opinionated, and making decisions quickly.

Your qualities are what makes you unique, and even if you don’t like them, they are there to stay.

At The End of the Day…

This post was written tongue and cheek. ๐Ÿ‘…

Be Yourself is probably one of my favorite sayings.

There is nothing wrong with embracing yourself, fully.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t, and shouldn’t, try and improve.

Who you are right now is just a moment in time.

So yes, be yourself.

But also strive to be somebody better.

What Would You Do If Other People Didn’t Matter?

Our choices are driven by many factors.

  • Background (how we were raised): If you grew with a specific religion, you’re more likely on average to continue following it.
  • Personality: If you don’t like meeting new people, you will gravitate towards doing solo activities.
  • Physical Limitations: If you can’t run due to an injury, you won’t be doing any marathons.
  • Social Circle: It’s easier to do what your friends do.

Three of the four above factors are outside your control. You don’t pick how you were raised. You don’t choose your personality, and you definitely don’t decide physical limitations. Those are all given to you.

What you do pick though, is your social circle. Specifically, how it influences the decisions you make.

From a young age I always had a big desire to fit in. (Don’t we all?)

To have friends. To get invited to parties. To be liked.

So the majority of decisions I made were influenced by that end goal. How could I ensure I had a large social circle?

As time progressed and I met more people, it became easier to achieve this goal. My default answer just became saying “yes” when people asked me to do anything.

It makes sense. The more often you yes, the more often people will invite you to do something.

Time was never a consideration. The amount of time it takes to travel. The collective months of life lost to being hungover. The time that I didn’t devote to pursuing other things.

Saying yes to what others want to do can be a great default earlier on in life.

After a certain point though, it should no longer be the default.

Instead, ask yourself this question: “What Would You Do If Other People Didn’t Matter?”

Maybe you’ll spend your scarce time just a bit differently.

Doing the Bare Minimum

Everybody has those days where things are just… hard. Life is harder than usual.

Maybe you’re overwhelmed. Perhaps you’re not sleeping. Life may have just knocked you down one too many times.

This is where the bare minimum comes in. Doing the absolute smallest amount required, so you can rest and get back to normal.

You need to know what your bare minimum is first though.

If you’re a student with no responsibilities, the minimum amount you need to do is usually zero. Everything can wait.

If you’re a parent or a boss, the minimum amount is much higher. You’re responsible for kids, employees, etc. Nothing can wait.

Occasionally, I love doing the bare minimum, because doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

Cocaine All Day, Everyday

There is a 99.99% chance you are destined to live a boring, unexceptional life.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Living an exceptional life is just that. It’s an exception to what is normal.

Because of this fact, we are obsessed with the 0.001% who live truly remarkable lives.

The outliers who live in their chosen extreme such as:

  • David Goggin’s – Did BUD/S (Navy Seal Training) 3 times. World Record holder with 4030 pullups in 17 hours. 60+ ultra-marathons.
  • Elon Musk – Runs two companies. One makes spaceships. The other, electric cars.
  • Hunter S. Thompson – Author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Hunter S. Thompson made the list because of one thing – his famous drug use. Below was his daily routine in his prime:

  • 3:00 p.m.ย rise
  • 3:05ย p.m. Chivas Regal with the morning papers, Dunhills
  • 3:45ย p.m. cocaine
  • 3:50ย p.m. another glass of Chivas, Dunhill
  • 4:05ย p.m. first cup of coffee, Dunhill
  • 4:15ย p.m. cocaine
  • 4:16ย p.m. orange juice, Dunhill
  • 4:30ย p.m. cocaine
  • 4:54ย p.m. cocaine
  • 5:05ย p.m. cocaine
  • 5:11ย p.m. coffee, Dunhills
  • 5:30ย p.m. more ice in the Chivas
  • 5:45ย p.m. cocaine, etc., etc.
  • 6:00ย p.m. grass to take the edge off the day
  • 7:05ย p.m. Woody Creek Tavern for lunch-Heineken, two margaritas, coleslaw, a taco salad, a double order of fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone (a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jigยญgers of Chivas)
  • 9:00ย p.m. starts snorting cocaine seriously
  • 10:00ย p.m. drops acid
  • 11:00ย p.m. Chartreuse, cocaine, grass
  • 11:30ย p.m. cocaine, etc, etc.
  • 12:00 midnight, Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write
  • 12:05-6:00 a.m.ย Chartreuse, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies.
  • 6:00 a.m.ย the hot tub-champagne, Dove Bars, fettuccine Alfredo
  • 8:00ย a.m. Halcyon
  • 8:20ย a.m. sleep

While the lives of these three men make fantastic stories to read about, the reality is that their lifestyles have tremendous downside:

David Goggins pushes himself to his physical limit every DAY. Just read his book “Can’t Hurt Me“.

Elon Musk publicly said “You don’t want to be me”. He works 100+ hours every week.

Hunter S. Thompson killed himself due to years of drug abuse (see the above).

It’s may be fun to dream about having an exceptional life, but there’s something amazing about just living a normal one.

We All Play Slots. Every. Single. Day.

If you ask 10 Americans if they’ve gambled in the past year, 6 of them will say yes.

Gambling is a vice of choice for many, and for good reason. It’s designed to be addictive.

This is in part due to a concept discovered by B.F. Skinner known as a variable schedule of rewards or “variable ratio scheduling”. Skinner conducted tests in the 1950s that concluded: If you build a system which produces a positive result after a random number of responses, you condition the user to respond at a rapid and steady rate.

Skinner learned this by running tests on rats. They were kept in a cage with a lever which delivered food when pressed. When the food was provided at random intervals, the rats would press the lever madly until a reward was received.

Slot machines in casinos replicate this experiment. Gamblers sit in front of the machines for hours, feeding in coins and repeatedly pulling the lever. Slots came way before Skinner’s breakthrough. He made his discovery in 1950s, while the first slot machines had already been invented in 1891.

In gambling, you give up money in exchange for a chance at winning more money. The gamblers behavior follows this equation:

  • Money * Random Chance = Random Amount of Money

For the rats, they gave up their time to pull the lever in exchange for a chance at receiving food. The rats behavior follows this equation:

  • Lever Pull * Random Chance = Food (Sometimes)

The two above behavior systems mirror a similar behavior most of us engage in daily: Looking at our phones.

We give up our time, attention, and focus in exchange for a chance to get a small hit of dopamine. The dopamine may come from checking email, scrolling social media, or playing a game. Most of our daily behavior follows the below equation:

  • Check Phone App * Random Chance = Dopamine (sometimes)

In all of the variable reward systems above, you can increase the response rate in two ways:

  1. Lowering the amount of friction required to respond
  2. Reducing the # of responses required before getting a positive result

This makes our phone the strongest variable reward systems in existence. We always have it with us. Checking our notifications is as simple as looking at the screen, and the developers of the apps control how often we get positive results. (Which they optimize to make us spend more time on their apps).

For me, I’ve fallen into this trap more times than I would like to admit.

I’ve done it in the past with social media and I do it daily by checking my work email.

If an outcome of any daily habit is random, be wary of it. It can be just as addicting as playing slots.