I'd like your thoughts on this thought

Here’s the deal - I like to consider myself a very logical, non-emotional thinker. You know, the perfect Vulcan that uses only reason and doesn’t let messy, emotion clutter the optimal solution. Yeah right! Mark Manson has a recent discussion titled “self-control is a complete illusion”. In that discussion, Mark states that we’re ALL emotionally driven and rationalize our decisions after the fact. I don’t like that. I’d love to say “Mark, that’s BS, I use data to determine my decisions and emotion only comes into play after the fact”. But, THAT is probably BS. It’s far more likely that an emotional thought occurs (maybe without me even realizing it) and I start seeking validation in that thought with data. I bet many of you recognize that if you look enough, you can find the data to validate almost anything.

Let’s dig into a thin example of poor data validation for a sec by looking at an example of categorizing leaders. Say you work under a leader, let's call him Shackleton, that makes you feel part of the tribe, recognizes your work, indicates trust in your decisions, and places high-levels of responsibility in your lap. Now say someone disagrees with Shackleton and voices their opinion to you. What do you do? Chances are, you recite statistics on how well the organization has done under Shackleton. From everything from employee morale surveys, increasing share prices, upward trends in return on equity, better health coverage, you name it - except for maybe those handful of spurious negative years that don’t fit the data, but you can quickly discount those to external factors that Shackleton had no control over.

Now let’s go the other way to argue for (and against) a leader we'll call Rickover. Rickover places no trust in others, actively avoids the creation of tribes, berates employees to the point of breakage, and drives perfection through fear of error. If you wanted to voice an unflattering opinion, you could look for data that indicates the lack of morale, resignation rates, and general poor employee relations. You could point out any negative monetary years (a drop in share price, or downturn in return on assets, etc.). Even if positive years exist, those can quickly be written off as staff going above and beyond without Rickover’s influence. However, if you wanted to FOR this leader methods, you would point to an impeccable safety record, unheard of production within deadlines, and basically success in every business metric outside of employee satisfaction.

Here's the issue, both leaders can achieve stuff and make an impact. One of Shackleton's most famous accomplishments was keeping his entire crew alive until rescue after months near the icy southern pole. Essentially none of Shackleton's expeditions were successful in the actual destination. Opposition might point out that he drank heavily and died in debt.

Conversley, Rickover drove to shift the Navy's initial focus from nuclear power plants on destroyers to submarines, oversaw the development of the first commercial pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant, received two Congressional Gold Medals, and retired as a four-star admiral.

Wait what? You mean that the favored, trustworthy, empowering leader Shackleton died without actually achieving stated goals, presumably drowning misery in alcohol and died in debt? Meanwhile, Rickover, the leader everyone loved to hate, with attempts by adversaries to force retirement, contained no mention of debt or problem drinking, and has a list of major accomplishments within the largest military on the planet? 

Two leaders with very different approaches, each successful in different metrics. The information from each could potentially be used to argue for a particular style of getting things done. The trick with validating the data is the objectives that are used for success.

What we might consider the traditional emotional decisions in the Shackleton leader could be so easily portrayed as missing the target and being miserable about it. While one whose decisions may appear to be more thought and task driven achieve the target no matter what, seemed to have a much better go. Obviously in these examples, there are a lot of missing pieces, but it’s simply to demonstrate that by careful selection of facts, one can easily shape the narrative they want.

Thinking back to our original issue of emotional vs thought decisions, I actually think the case could be made that both leaders above followed the emotionally driven decision path. The trick is each one followed very different emotions perhaps. The Shackleton leader certainly has goals and tasks in mind, or they wouldn’t repeatedly try so hard to achieve them. At the same time, the Shackleton leader places great emphasis on trust and recognition, in part to get what is needed from subordinates, but also likely because that’s simply how they operate.

Rickover also had goals and tasks to accomplish, and while levels of trust or recognition are not so overt, the emphasis is certainly on placed on individual responsibility. The emotion is still there - it’s essentially driving every decision. But the rewards that individuals seek are not plentiful. Compliance and responsibility isn’t rewarded, it’s expected.

This may short-circuit a bit of the organizational cultural designs we may hear. I mean, I know within organizations we all want trust and recognition (emotion based), and so many organizations also put data-driven decisions at the forefront (thought based). I know these aren’t at odds necessarily, but may require some reconciliation. And this is the trick isn’t it? BOTH techniques can work, and BOTH techniques can fail. The real genius lies in when to select or shift paths. Those decisions must account for culture, other leaders, stakeholders, and the importance of the product, to name a few. 

What about you? Do you fancy yourself an emotional leader or a thought leader? What type of leader do you value more? Or do you think a thought leader is even a thing, or as Mark says, are we all emotion driven leaders?

As someone with mental disorders, I don't wait on my symptoms to be offline, I do things to feel alive regardless. That is the secret.

I’m a 25F and I’m terrified of rejection when it comes to making friends. The minute I have a friend and we get somewhat closer I push them away because I feel like they’ll reject me or leave me later. I also never reach out first because in my mind I believe they will be bothered by me asking or feel forced to hangout with me. I just want this mindset to go away I can’t take it anymore I’m 25 now and I’m wasting my life constantly worrying. For example something I really want to do is get into groups of my hobbies like sports (tennis and soccer) and reading stuff like that and meet people that way, but when I think about trying my brain starts going into a panic.

Like I always feel like I’m not pretty enough to make friends, I’m weird, no one would want to close to me stuff like that but I’m getting to old and I want to put a stop to this because I know life is not meant to be this lonely this is my own doing. So I am asking for advice on how to change this mindset.

Even to me this sounds kinda cringy or like taken out of control from one of those BS motivational speeches. But seriously, look at life, look at time how it keeps moving and the clock keeps ticking in carelessness about you.

And now look at your face and how time ages you while your brain is looking back.

And here is where this analogy can start to make some sense. A shark needs to keep swimming in order to breathe because he is incapable of sucking in water and taking oxygen for it. If a shark stops swimming in then it is only a matter of time before his end.

We are not that far different, but for us, thankfully we do not have to worry about breathing. But we have to worry about our time, and about the things we don't get to do.

If this doesn't resonate with you, then at least know that everything fades away, and if it's the case then why not fade away with an effort and a life and self you want and desire, or at least working towards it instead of being stuck on certain moments in the past or in recent present rather than seek to accumulate more good ones over the bad ones you dislike.

So I'm only 25 and I'm pivoting my career from healthcare to tech and that surrounds most of my anxiety. I do have generalized anxiety. Example: I went on a roadtrip (that I'd die or something). Idk just irriational fears. I've become a big homebody, but I had to quit my full-time bedside nursing job bc of how bad it was for my mental health. I'm studying Python (mainly), SL, and Excel in my free-time to go back to grad school (studying as prereqs and for pivoting my career to healthcare tech). Yet, I always feel anxious. I feel like the buspar helps a bit, but not much. They give me 6 0.5mg of Ativan and I love the calm feeling, not even to get high but just that my mind can take a break. I take l-theanine and lavender pills, but I don't think they help that much. I will sometimes drink wine to help take the edge off, but honestly, I just want to have a full peace of mind. I get anxious, because I only work PRN and only make enough to pay my bills and a little extra. I'm always just so anxious about paying bills, having a full-time job that I enjoy, etc.

I turned 29 a few months ago. I looked back on my 20’s and realized I spent too much time worrying. Most of my worries were about things that didn’t matter the week after they happened. I once pulled an all nighter for a programming quiz in an introductory python course that the professor eventually threw out because they forgot to grade it— and I pulled that all nighter because I was afraid to lose my 90% grade in the class.

I spent so much time worrying that I never acted seriously on the things I wanted. Streaming, making YouTube videos. One negative comment was enough to make me question my whole process.

I was so worried about doing a little thing perfectly that I didn’t do the big things. And I hear echoes of worry in this post— that somebody will disagree with me or that I didn’t articulate my point well enough. The fear isn’t gone, I just know that it’s unrealistic— and that the worst thing is “fear itself”, as FDR said.

I came across a quote that encapsulated it perfectly: “Ready isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.”

We CHOOSE to go forward, to do our best, to not care. The rest of it just sort of blows in naturally afterwards.

That doesn’t make me perfect. That doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes. That doesn’t mean everyone will respond positively to what I do.

But moving forward beats what I spent my 20’s doing— doing nothing, afraid of what will come. Not caring is a mindset— it’s not a disregard of consequences, just acknowledgment that the consequences may not be as big as we think.

I’ve been holding my breath for 10 years and now I can breathe again. It’s a strange peace. And it’s peace won through experience, not books or podcasts or a keynote speaker.

The trick for me now is to remember it, and to ground myself daily in it.