Let's Fight (our) Mediocrity, One Round at a Time!
All in Happiness
Hard to believe, but Life-Sparring celebrates its' first anniversary. Time to look back, analyze and look ahead to the future! Life-Sparring works! Really!
This is the third quarterly check-in on the goals from my New Year's resolution. Just as a reminder, the idea was to choose targets that fulfill the S.M.A.R.T criteria: being specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-related. By making my goals public and checking-in regularly with you out there, I hoped to keep me motivated over the year to achieve all goals for 2016. And just in case this is not enough, I added a punishment on top, promising to go to work in original Bavarian Lederhosen on the first working day in 2017 if I miss more than one of the six goals for the year. Still pretty scary!
As a kid, a long time before I learned about probability and randomness, I had my own philosophy on “luck”. I was convinced that some people would be more affected by good and bad luck, while others were simply overlooked by Fortuna.
Over the years my view on randomness and probability matured. While I learned basic probability concepts earning my master’s in economics, it was my experience playing poker between 2005 and 2012 that really sparked my interest in randomness.
This is the quarterly check-in on the goals from my New Year's resolution. Just as a reminder, the idea was to choose targets that fulfill the S.M.A.R.T criteria: being specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-related. By making my goals public and checking-in regularly with you out there, I hoped to keep me motivated over the year to achieve all goals for 2016. And just in case this is not enough, I added a punishment on top, promising to go to work in original Bavarian Lederhosen on the first working day in 2017 if I miss more than one of the six goals for the year. Still pretty scary! So let's see where I am at the half-year mark of 2016.
Some of the biggest obstacles on our path to happiness are inside of our own heads -- deep-rooted instincts that might have once served an evolutionary purpose, but that now are mainly lowering our quality of life.
One of the strongest and most destructive of these innate reflexes is FOMO. What sounds like an uptown art gallery, stands for “Fear of Missing Out” and is far less innocent than it appears.
After many years of New Year’s resolutions that lasted hardly longer than a few weeks, I wanted to do it all differently in the first full year of my Life-Sparring experience. Choosing targets that fulfill the S.M.A.R.T criteria: being specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-related to be effective; making my goals public; and checking in regularly with you out there hopefully is enough to keep me motivated all year to achieve all goals for 2016. And just in case this is not enough, I added a punishment on top, promising to go to work in original Bavarian Lederhosen on the first working day in 2017 if I miss more than one of the six goals for the year. Scary!
So let’s see how I fared during the first quarter of the year!
This is the second Life-Sparring round on the topic of fear within four months.
That I am revisiting the topic after such a short time is mainly motivated by two factors: a recent personal crisis on my side, and reading Daniele Bolelli’s excellent book Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising a Baby Girl, and Cage Fighting.
Equity markets are volatile these days. The Dow Jones in January 2016 just had the most 1% swings in a single month since 2008.
It’s debatable if we are at the doorstep of the next crisis or not. In any case, I am fairly optimistic that this time, at least I am better prepared and would not repeat the same mistakes I did in 2008.
While markets remain as volatile as ever, I at least seem to have tamed my “emotional volatility”.
