Crucial Life Skills
I'm not sure if these are crucial or they just seem crucial to me because I'm not so good at them and have struggled to get better. Because without these skills it seems like my life got worse. So I needed to develop them.
1. Having confidence in myself.
You will feel not worthy of the new skill you are learning.
2. Calling people back
But then I get busy with other things. Then more people call. Now I feel overwhelmed, like I have this huge list of people to call.
Then they start calling and asking if I am mad at them. I'm not! But now I don't call because I don't want to deal with that whole conversation.
And it spirals down from there.
One time i was talking to a business competitor of mine. We had regular lunches and would compare notes. He was a person I once didn't call back for a month or so.
He told me he once sent a cold mail to the CEO of Toys R Us about wanting to do business with him.
The CEO called him back the next day from his private jet. It was their first ever conversation and they did business together afterwards.
"Successful people call people back," he said to me.
I still am working on this.
3. Communicating
When I started writing I had the blessing of "Dunning-Krueger Bias". I thought I was good...but I wasn't. I was horrible. But Dunning-Krueger Bias tells your brain this, "Everyone just doesnt' realize how talented I am!"
So I kept going. I wrote 4 unpublished novels in the early 90s. They were awful.
But bit by bit I learned how to write. Later, when I had to write some material for HBO everyone said, "Whoah! I didn't know you write like this." and years after that when I started writing for finance sites I got a lot of readers write away because I was doing "real" writing instead of the usual finance-style writing.
This helped me even more when I had to learn to communicate in other ways, like public speaking or even standup comedy.
However you learn it, it's worth putting in the time to practice being a better writer or speaker every single day.
That's one of the things I like about this site. The "every day" aspect is how you build this muscle.
4. Losing with grace
A few weeks ago I beat someone in a game and he started crying at the board. I tried to comfort him by saying I had made some mistakes also in the game but he said, "But you won!!"
I don't blame him. Losing is painful when you care about something. It's painful for me. I've cried so many times over a lost investment, or lost time with my daughters or lost whatever.
In the past six chess games I've played in tournaments I've had five losses and one draw. This is painful for me. It never used to happen to me like this. Never. I don't even fully understand it yet.
That said, in each game I offered to go over the game with my opponent. When you have loss, as painful as it is, and as filled with regret as you might be, the only way to improve in this short life we have is to study the loss and learn from it so you can try not to make the same mistakes again.
Losing with grace is not only a strategy to reduce the sorrow and pain of living life, but learning also how to live a better life.
5. Humor
I read a study recently that, on a date, humor trumps looks, money, height, etc. All the things that are traditionally associated with "date selection".
I'm very introverted and have a hard time keeping going on social situations. I'm not shy but I lose "social energy".
So for years, even before I did standup comedy every night, before I went out socially I would watch youtube videos of comedians.
I do this before talks, I do this before going out with friends, I do this before the neighbors come over. I always do this. And, over time (and thanks to a lot of public speaking and standup comedy) I got more and more comfortable with having humor that's a bit on the edge.
I want people to think, "I can't believe he just said that!" Not because I want to shock people but because I want people to think of things in a different way. That's the odd benefit of humor and what makes it funny.
6. Give to receive
If you want money, then help others make money.
If you want to get good at a skill, then teach the skill to others weaker than you at it.
Don't resent others with more than you (I know this is hard.) Thank them in your head for showing that it's possible that even a F***G idiot like that made money.
Related to this is...
7. Constructive criticism
When people ask me my opinion of something I also never feel bad about being critical. Over years and years of being the subject of destructive criticism I try very hard to be constructive. I don't say, "I don't quite like that color" or "This writing is bad" I can say, "here's how I would reduce the words in your story to say this concept more simply," and then I would describe in detail.
One of my daughters is turning into a very good writer at a much younger age than I ever was able to write.
When she was younger we would open up a Google Doc of one of her stories (we were on separate computers) and I'd go through line by line and reword things, eliminate paragraphs, format differently, etc and explain why I was doing each thing.
Then completely left it up to her to decide what changes to accept and what to delete.
8. Making Bets (sometimes called "investing").
I'll use an example from poker.
You have a poker hand and you still have to get one more card from the dealer but first there are bets.
Eight people bet $100 each.
You see that if you get one card you will get a flush and you feel strongly that a flush will win.
You have four hearts in your hand. There are 48 unknown cards. Nine of them are hearts. So you have a nine out of 48 chance. Almost a 20% chance or 1 out of 5.
You have to put in $100 to call the bet so you can get another card and potentially win the $800 already in the pot.
So you have a 1 out of 5 chance to make eight times your money.
If you can map out the odds like this for every investment or betting decision, then you will make a lot of money. A LOT OF MONEY.
Note that the odds are you will still lose the bet. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is if the bet is a correct decision.
In the above example, the expected value is $160 (the $800 in the post multiplied by the 20% chance you can win it).
But the money you have to put in to get the expected value is $100.
If the expected value is > than the amount you have to put in, then make the bet.
This is all of investing but very simplified (for instance, can you take into account the odds someone is bluffing or the odds someone doesn't have a higher ranking hand).
In stock investing, you have determine expected value by asking what do know that others might not know so that the expected value is much higher than the amount you have to invest.
But one more thing is important, something I've failed at many times and often still do....
9. Money management
How much you spend, how much you save, how much you invest, how much you expect your future income will be, etc are all related to money management.
The way to win the game is to stay in the game. Unfortunately I've failed at this a lot so had to learn some really hard lessons on money management. Hopefully I've retained a little of what I learned.
10. Silence.
It's in these moments (not when you are rich and successful) that silence is important and it's a very specific skill.
It's using techniques that are known to calm the body and mind down (for instance, taking deep breaths, sitting in nature, etc) and then taking a step back from the emotions you are feeling so you can notice them almost like an outside.
Like where do you feel your anxiety. I often feel it in my stomach. Or sometimes if I'm a bad relationship I might feel it in my chest. Or if I'm regretting something, it's more in my head.
Just sit there and notice it. By doing that it's sort of a way that you realize that the emotion is something that is not "you" but it is just a passing visitor. It's in your body now and then it goes away.
Awareness and silence go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other. But you also can't move forward with life until you are aware of these many "visitors" passing through your body.
This is the essence of many meditation techniques. Not "enlightenment" or some other bullshit but simply awareness of "what is not me" and enough silence to sit there and get good at that awareness.
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