MONTHLY MULLING💡

Inner Scorecard and Velvet Hooks

Jun 12, 2022

Hi👋 Tapan here.

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Happy Sunday y’all!

*Recently took a trip to Inverness. Here’s an epic sunset from the Highlands.*

We all know that family, friends, and health is more important than running around doing a meaningless job, hardly getting any time for yourself🤦🏽‍♂️

Yet we somehow manage to find ourselves in the exact position as we become young adults. In a rut. Unhappy. Probably, lonely.

⚠️ Yes, today’s newsletter will be a bit philosophical (and a bit long!). You will have to read all three ideas to understand what I am getting at. Bear with me.

Over the past week, I read two books that have made me (re)think about happiness.

😇 Tuesdays With Morrie: A man diagnosed with ALS talks about living while dying

🪝 We Need To Hang Out: A middle-aged man wonders how did he end up losing all his close friends and why does he struggle to make new friends

But before I share ideas from the above books, currently,

📖 What I am reading: A Little History of the World (the book should be called A Little History of Europe tbf. The writer forgot to write about the Eastern world from 200BCE until 1300AD😂)

📺 What I am watching: Essential Spirits To Build Your Home Bar (I might get into mixology again. Yayyy, alcohol! I did a brief stint back in 2017 trying to make some of my favourite cocktails. Ended up with an incredibly drunk roommate. Yayyy, Divya? If you’re looking for books to learn mixology - this or this)

Let’s start🚀

😇 Tuesdays With Morrie (Book)

Morrie Schwartz was a sociology professor who loved dancing and talking to people before he was diagnosed with ALS.

*Morrie Schwartz with Mitch Albom (author)*

The book starts with 4 important lessons.

✅ Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do

✅ Accept the past as the past, without denying it or discarding it

✅ Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others

✅ Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved

Morrie explains we live our lives somewhere in the middle

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

And this is how we find ourselves living a meaningless life.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.

This aligns with the idea of an inner scorecard which I cover below (keep reading!)🙏🏽

People are so hungry for love that they are accepting substitutes. They are embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works.
People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think of the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running. Once you start running, it’s hard to slow yourself down.

As Naval says, some people play status games.

If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

So, what’s should you do?

Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Love is the only rational act.

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🪝 Velvet Hooks (Book - We Need To Hang Out)

Billy in the book researches middle-aged friendships and why we lose our relationships as we grow old. I went down this rabbit hole because of a Reddit post.

🤔Some of you might have noted this? We get busy with our careers and family. Friends are not a priority. We want to make plans but scheduling takes initiative. And then at some point, we start thinking, where did my friends go!?

The book provides some solutions and my favourite is the idea of velvet hooks.

Friendships are like velcro - two pieces strongly attached yet easily pulled apart. The word Velcro is derived from two French words - velour (velvet) and crochet (hooks).

So what do velvet hooks mean for friendships?

Run through the list of all your close friends and think of how you’ll become friends. It would usually be because of a situation which made you meet consistently kindling friendships. You didn’t have to schedule or plan it. You just hung out.

So if you’re trying to rekindle your old friendships or form new ones, you need to have something similar. You need to have velvet hooks. A day to hang out and maybe an activity.

If you’re trying to form new friendships, join a gym or go to a bar (or anything else you enjoy doing) around the same time consistently.

If you want to reconnect with old friends, fix a day and just hang out. You don’t need to have a plan but know that one particular day will be your day with your friend.

Freud’s Theory of self-determination states,

Human beings need three things in order to be content: They need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives, and they need to feel connected to others. He considered these three pillars—autonomy, competence, and community—to be intrinsic to human happiness.

🧘🏽‍♂️Inner Scorecard (Article: 7 mins)

Let’s bring this newsletter home? And who better to do this other than Uncle Warren.

It’s well known among the investing community that Warren Buffett lives his life by the concept of an inner scorecard ⭐

Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?

Morrie talks about this in the book too

But the big things—how we think, what we value—those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone—or any society—determine those for you.

It’s important to live your life with an inner scorecard. Live your life through your own standards and beliefs. If you have to compromise on your inner scorecard, DGAF! Say no.

Here’s a nice way to think about inner scorecards.

The little mental trick is to remember that success, money, fame, and beauty, all the things we pursue, are merely the numerator! If the denominator — shame, regret, unhappiness, loneliness — is too large, our “Life Satisfaction Score” ends up being tiny, worthless. Even if we have all that good stuff!

😀 Hopefully, the above three articles made you rethink happiness.

🎙COLD BREW MONEY

💰 Mohnish Pabrai’s Dhandho Framework: Mohnish Pabrai is one of our favourite investors and the Dhandho Investor is one of our favourite books. Here’s a summary.

📉 Stock Market Crash - What Are We Doing?: The markets have been trending downwards this year. Here’s a list of 5 things that we are doing.

Can I ask you to share the podcast with one friend/family this weekend?

Cold Brew Money - YouTube!

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