How to shape your reality 🚀
And why thinking objectively is limiting
As someone who likes analysing the nature of reality, I have always stressed myself on ‘Think objectively, dont sway your head in one direction, etc etc’. Of course, that’s helpful, you shouldn’t overindex on just one part of the situation and decide based on that.
But.
There are some nuances. There are two important truths to internalize here:
Reality is neutral. Things are by itself not good or bad, we just project these feelings and meanings onto them.
Reality is not static. Reality changes every moment and the actions that we do also influence it.
\(Reality(t+1) ≠ Reality(t)\)
What these simplify to is:
How we look at a situation matters
What we do in a situation matters
These sound obvious but it is uncanny how frequently we don’t internalize these things.
Frame: How we look at a situation matters
<Insert self-help gyaan about thinking positively>
But it’s true, a lot of self-help advice on these things, while bogus, get one thing right —> your frame defines your reality.
This is also why a pro-con list doesn’t work in decision making. You will be able to find pros and cons in any situation. So what? It’s ultimately about what you want to focus on.
Growth mindset also eludes to the same thing. The genesis of growth mindset is also looking at obstacles as opportunities to learn something —> framing a situation positively. Then you act accordingly and discover another positive thing and that perpetuates your frame.
Similarly, negative frames lead to actions that perpetuate the negative frame.
So someone who only focuses on the positive of a situation is often termed as delusional, but that frame might actually be useful in shaping the reality. Hence, Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field was so crucial in creating Apple.
This doesn’t obviate the need for thinking objectively —> you should still analyse the situations from all the angles. But the action that you take after that will still be based on a frame.
Btw, that frame doesn’t always need to be positive. If you have a positive frame about things that are actually bad for you or don’t fulfill your needs, it’s going to be a disaster. The frame has to be based on what you want overall.
Agency: What we do in a situation matters
A lot of people who assume situations are fixed, are inherently saying that they don’t matter in a situation. That is not true.
If that were true, you would never be able to solve problems in your life.
If that were true, the only way to win in poker would be to get perfect hands every time.
And that is why agency matters.
Every small action that you do has a butterfly effect on your reality. And the compounding effect of such actions is very high.
You smile at a person on the street, they smile back, you feel good about it and nail your next meeting.
Of course, the outcome is out of your control, but if you’re not passive, you’re at least shaping the outcome to some degree.
The biggest lesson that entrepreneurship teaches is actually this - that your frame and agency changes your reality.
A startup is at 0 when it starts. And it stays 0, until an iterative combination of frame and agency, with some luck, takes it to 1. Every founder knows this, hence they never assume that the reality is fixed.
As a Gullyboy dialog goes - “I will change my reality to match my dreams.”