Did you ever notice how many times the people who seem like they have the most to be sad about, have an unflappable sense of acceptance and kindness?  It’s almost baffling: people born with physical ailments with a most positive attitude, versus, say, little rich kids who waste away all their God and parent-given gifts.  Given that contrast, it’s easy for one to judge one person as better and one person as a lousy ingrate. 

The way I see it, we’re all born on this planet to learn a certain set of lessons, perhaps revolving around a common theme.  There are two factors which facilitate the learning of our lesson:

- Nature: our intrinsic personality, mental predisposition, physical attributes. 

-Nurture: the situation we’re born into, involving parents, geographic location, etc.

People will be given a unique combo based on whether their lesson is to, say…  Be homosexual in an intolerant environment, develop their intellectual passions despite parents who don’t see value in their pursuing higher education, etc.

Yet everyone’s challenge is in one way the same: everyone is put here to conquer it.

The child with a physical deformity – his challenge is to come out on top.  The child given health and every material benefit – his challenge is to come out on top.  At first glance it may seem like the first kid has a much tougher challenge to conquer, so why do we consistently see them doing just that?

I think it’s simply: dependence on the external world.  The first kid learns early on that what he has in the material world will not satisfy him, he has to find inner peace.  The second kid gets everything he wants, sometimes he needs to cry to get it, but either way, he is conditioned to be dependent on "things". Since this approach rarely fails him, he continues into adulthood searching for temporary external patches for happiness.  Even if one day he realizes the flaws in his approach, by the time he is an adult many of these habits will be deeply ingrained.  It takes a lot more desire to change, a lot more effort, a lot more action.

Replacing thoughts of judgment with wishes of good luck on their challenge is an effective way to deal with these seemingly easy-to-judge situations.  There are not good and bad people, there are stronger and weaker people, all taking tests of incomparable difficulty.

“Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce goods and services. What could be scarcer or more precious than love? It is rare, hard to come by and often fragile.”  A quote from Ben Stein, lawyer, writer, actor and economist in last month’s New York Times.

I was quite blown away as I read this article, as it seemed a concise description of many of my thoughts in a time characterized by learning about both Finance and Love.  As I learned the inner workings of the stock market I noticed familiar trends in how the stocks behaved.  The result, my theory of Return On Emotional Investment:

- The greater your investment in a stock, the more your earnings will fluctuate with their movements. 
- Similarly: the more you are emotionally invested in a person, the more your happiness will fluctuate with their actions. 

- It follows that pursuing a risk management technique by diversifying your portfolio would be financially sound. 
- Dissimilarly: Love (romantic love) is a monopoly.  Argue if you’d like, but here I speak to my personal preferences.

The strategy that applies to both: research.  Research historical data, generate projections and forecast trends.  Granted, this involves a research procedure more qualitative and opinion-based in nature, but with a little common sense, I would say the method could hold even more credibility than its numerical counterpart. 

I would like to finish with the poem I wrote that incited a friend of mine to send me Stein’s article in the first place.  Maybe now you’ll understand why I was stunned at the overlap.

ROEI
Up and down my money goes, this businessgirl is stressed
I'd gain so much in peace of mind, if I knew how to invest
My public image took a hit, I lost accountability
When I invested all my love-bucks in this stock of volatility

Margins won't get larger, I'm always saying I'll finally sell
Then justify not doing so with bogus forecasts on Excel
For a while I did pursue a risk management technique
'Til my diversified portfolio made me subject to critique

Down and down it plunges, this stock only disappoints
The tiny hopeful upturn, and then down two-hundred points
Historic market data, future trends, they all say "pull!"
Oh!  Though my stock is bearish, this situation sure is bull.

 

It never fails to amaze me the way our entire experience occurs in our brains.  The implications of this are that we can be taken for a ride by the crazy ways in which it works, or we can understand its functions and use the tool to our advantage.

A brief and simplified lesson in neuroscience:

Your prefrontal cortex has an executive role in the brain, monitoring functions such as planning, communication and proper social behavior.  This part of your brain involves an aspect of choice, and for this purpose I will compare it to a computer desktop.  On this desktop you can choose to recall, or click on, a specific thought or memory.

The amygdala processes memory and emotional reactions.  When something occurs in your life that produces an emotional response, be it positive or negative, the amygdala releases serotonin, which can be described as a little dose of emotional fluid.  These little serotonin doses of happy, mad, sad, scared and so on are then tacked onto their respective memory like, as neuroscientist John Medina puts it, post-it notes.

When one chooses to recall a specific memory on their prefrontal cortex desktop, the serotonin dose attached to it is released into their processing experience as well.  This explains why recalling certain happy or sad memories brings back the emotional reaction that was previously tacked to them.

So how do we get over things?  Just focus on clicking the happy icons and trying to hide the sad ones in an emotional Recycle Bin?  I’ve been thinking about this one, and I think there’s a much better solution.  It is possible to replace previously instated post it notes for updated and reviewed notes based on new information.   By going back and reprocessing memories with a more rational mind we can replace the emotional post-it note tacked to a specific experience for one that is more in line with the truth.  This is why psychologists take patients through their painful childhood memories, helping them to reprocess memories tacked with a child’s illogical emotional response and replacing them with a rational and mature adult interpretation of events.

There is no way to hide our memories on our vast prefrontal desktop, and external events can trigger the neurons that bring a certain item flying up into main screen like an annoying popup.  We can be much happier if we make sure no nasty post it notes fly into our experience, and that at worst they will read “This was hard, but I learned from it”.

"I'll start tomorrow", "just this once"...  How many times do we hear people sacrificing the present moment for an elusive "someday"?  The truth is, there is only one moment that we can control, and it's shorter than a millisecond - it's right now.

It's true that character is borne from habits are borne from actions, but there are much more interesting (and practical) implications if you look at this common phrase backwards.  Each one of your actions is reinforcing a habit - for better or for worse.

Recent studies in neuroplasticity show that, unlike what was believed for many years, the brain is not wired completely during childhood only to remain static through adulthood.  We are not "stuck" with the wiring that we had no part in creating, which introduces a lot more power and, as it goes - more responsibility.  Studies show that through adulthood the human brain has the capacity to rewire itself.  And just how does it manage this? Repetition.

Just like repeating a particular action makes it easier, mentally repeating an idea reinforces a thought pattern.  The implications of this is that changing yourself to Who You Want To Be just requires the initial resistance your brain puts up when you act against the wiring of your neural pathways.

We grow when we're outside our comfort zone.  Keep pushing new actions until they are re-wired as the default response.  No moment is merely a means to an end, each holds the infinite power of creation.

Perusing istockphoto.com is how I've spent many an idle hour recently, looking for a logo for this website.  "Your face is a logo" said some, sounding oddly insulting.  Yes, but the eventual repercussion of this would be committing the ultimate faux-pas of featuring myself on my business card.  How 'bout "no", Scott.

And then, I found it.  My stock photo soul mate.  Minimalist and colorful, simple yet bursting with detail.  And best of all - shaped like an elephant.

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant:

"The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.  A wise man explains to them:
'All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned.'"

Just like each religion is a metaphor for something so enormous and incomprehensible to the human mind.  And just like we shouldn't judge someone's view on any elephant.  If we were on their side of the room, we'd be feeling the same limb.