3. The Challenge of Expectation
Hi 👋🏻 , I'm Cal! Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this week's newsletter about setting expectations, a quote that made me think, and a recap about what happened with $GME this week.
If you are anything like me, you’ve probably started a project or set out to meet a goal with the best of intention, but then along the way you met some unexpected friction. Your aspirations were so high when you started! But all too quickly the going gets tough.
This sort of experience is germane to most serious endeavors. There are times when you lack inspiration, forget the vision, or simply get caught in a malaise of self pity and doubt. I know I’ve been there.
It is so easy to fall prey to the myth of feeling. We think it should feel a certain way along the journey. We have an expectation of what it will be like. And when reality does not met our expectations, there is a painful schism that occurs.
If you consider your life, examining moments of pain and discomfort, how often do those moments arise from a mismatch in expectation? This is a somewhat recent revelation that struck me. In moments when I feel sadness or am otherwise suffering, often there is a root cause of misaligned expectations.
There is a quote from Seneca that sums up the issue of expectation:
“Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.” - Seneca
While I don’t think that Seneca would have promoted an expectation-less life, I also think that expectations not grounded in reality can lead to psychological suffering. Here is a quote from Marcus Aurelius that lends some practical guidance to dealing with expectations:
“Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it – turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself – so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.” – Marcus Aurelius
The key is to not base your inner posture on what is happening around you; rather, shift your perspective. With many things, the key is to continue to show up even when the going gets tough, because it is only by continuing to show up that you can see yourself through to the finish line.
Quote That Made Me Think 🤓
“Money can buy you happiness if you earned it.” - Naval Ravikant
Weekly Recs 🧠
This week, GameStop ($GME) was THE story of the week. Inextricably linked to the story is a subreddit known as /r/WallStreetBets (WSB), which is best known for YOLO plays on stocks and the pursuit of “tendies” (which you may think means chicken tenders but is in fact is a derivation of ten dollar bills). At the core of this story is something called a short squeeze. What this means is that some folks on Wall Street made huge bets that GameStop stock would go down. While this is not unusual at all, the members of WSB bet against them, acting as a collective and buying up all the stock, causing the stock to skyrocket. Checkout this video below for a fantastic explanation of what went down.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!