Managing Stress and Personal Growth

Basically, when you're going through a very high-pressure situation,

you know, so the fund was down 30-something percent,

the press, you know, loves you on the way up and loves

you even more to write about you on the way down.

So there was a lot of very negative press.

There was some litigation in connection with that valiant investment.

And I was in the middle of a divorce.

So it was bad. About as bad as it gets.

But I didn't have a health issue.

So one, it's important to keep perspective.

But the way you manage through that kind of stressful situation,

all of us are going to have a moment like this.

Unfortunately, it's going to be, you know, a health issue.

It's going to be your fire from your job, your startup fails.

You will, you know, and it's even harder when you've fallen from a high place to a low place.

So my method was just, you know, I'm going to make a little progress every day.

Compounding is the solution to the vast majority of progress in the world.

And personal compounding is even more powerful because you make, you know, 0.1% progress every day.

It doesn't sound like a lot.

But annualized, you know, it's a huge amount.

And so what I said to myself going through this period is,

each day I'm going to make progress.

I'm not going to look back to where I was.

Because if I look there, I'm going to get discouraged.

I'm just going to focus on the next step.

And then the next step. And the next step.

And you don't notice any meaningful change for the first few weeks.

But about 90 days in, you're like, okay, I'm here.

Here's where I was. Now, I used to be up there.

But I'm just going to keep compounding.

And the curves of compounding, which I'm sure you know well,

start like this. They don't look like much.

And then they look like COVID, and they sort of eventually kind of take off.

And the other key success factor going through a challenging period of time is just to be really healthy.

So I decided a while ago to go zero sugar.

I highly recommend zero sugar. It's good for everything from mental acuity to the way you

look. Just everything about it is a positive.

You know, exercise, nutrition,

sleep, kind of the basics, and then surrounding yourself with people you love.

And I love you.

And if you do that, I think you can work yourself through almost any problem.