I love Darius Foroux’s writing, especially this one that we discovered through Rob Berger’s weekly newsletter (Rob also had a great video on Remembering Charlie Munger on his channel):
If You Want to Achieve Your Dreams, You Have to Be A Little Crazy [Darius Foroux] – “If you want to achieve your dreams, you have to be relentless about making them happen. It takes a lot of focus and drive to achieve one’s goals. That’s because our dreams are usually out of reach. Why else would it be a dream? It’s not easy. And there’s a high price to pay for pursuing it. That’s why only crazy, driven people go after their dreams.”
One of the key lessons from Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens is the incredible power of stories. I want to extend that idea with this next article in which the stories you tell about yourself are critically important:
The transformational power of how you talk about your life [BBC] – “People who tell more positive stories and stories with more elements of redemption (for example, that time that you lost your job, but ended up switching career paths into something you enjoy much more) tend to enjoy greater wellbeing, at least based on research with Western samples, in terms of more life satisfaction and better mental health. So do people whose stories express a greater sense of being a protagonist in the events of their life and having more meaningful communion with others. For example, the episodes they remember frequently involve loved ones and close friends, such as that hilarious hen night in Brighton, or shared hobbies, like the time they and their cousin went to cooking classes together. Engaging in more autobiographical reasoning and having greater structure to one’s life story also correlates with greater wellbeing.”
Finally, are we nearing the end of retirement as we know it?
The End of Retirement [The Walrus] – “It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it. Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macroeconomy is messing with my microeconomy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.”