Witness
Witness is a powerful transformative element of the human condition, that calls us to live up to our potential.
Look at how you behave. How you present yourself how you conduct yourself. Your posture.
Notice that your behavior is different depending on who you're around. If you're by yourself, you might be in sweatpants and have BBQ chip crumbs all over your face. Maybe that's just specifically me but maybe you're somewhat similar. You know you would behave in a more respectable, presentable form if someone else were around to see you, witness you.
Witness is good for you, it helps keep you honest, it's easy to lie to yourself if there are no witnesses. You can just ignore the fact that you picked your nose and flicked it across the room, but if someone you respect is in the room with you, you wouldn't dare try to write that off. Immediately it becomes very apparent how disgusting and embarrassing the action is.
Imagine the college student who never calls home, their grades start to lag behind only the professor knows. Now imagine the student who calls their mom weekly, with updates on what they are studying in each class and what they earned for their most recent grades. I don't even have to ask you to contrast and compare, you know already how this turns out. You know this mom doesn't have to provide extra instruction, she doesn't have to chastise, she doesn't have to praise, the mere act of providing witness to her child pulls the student toward their potential.
Remember when you were a kid and you had a friend over and you immediately noticed all your toys that were too young for you? All of a sudden because someone else's eyes are on your room you want to put more effort into making your room look awesome get rid of those kid toys and make it awesome.
The attention of a pretty woman will do this for a young man. This is why young men get so nervous approaching or talking to women. Women have millions of years of evolution preparing them to figure out whether a potential mate is living up to their potential or not. The attention of a pretty woman a young man wants to impress is like a spotlight, focused witness. Notice the young man wants to impress her, he is being called to live up to his potential. A man's posture improves when he has witness it doesn't degrade.
You're a better person when you have witness, you should pursue witness. Try it out, as a homework assignment put yourself in a position where you have more witness than you're used to report back to me with what you noticed. Was it uncomfortable? Why? Did you notice things that could be improved, did you want to improve them?
**Witness is a powerful transformative element of the human condition, that calls us to live up to our potential.**
Again I'd like to thank Jordan Peterson and James True for influencing my thoughts on this subject. https://www.jordanbpeterson.com https://www.jtrue.com
The Bitcoin pizza purchase wasn't a tragedy
I see a common sentiment among novice bitcoiners, they lament the ancient Bitcoin pizza purchase of 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, or about $41 worth of Bitcoin at the time. At first blush a common refrain among people is to note the current price of 10,000 Bitcoin and say that Hanyecz spent gorzillians of dollars on two pizzas.
According to this line of thinking if you spend $41 worth of Bitcoin on pizza today and the price of Bitcoin doubles tomorrow you accidentally spent $82 on pizza. What is the issue with this line of thinking? Shouldn't you keep your bitcoins and just spend your U.S. dollars (which are really federal reserve notes but that's a different article)? Ah hah! There is the rub! You still have to relinquish the $41 worth of value. You can spend federal reserve notes (FRN), you can spend gold bouillon, you can spend anything, even Bitcoin Cash, but you have to relinquish the $41 worth of value in some form in order to get the pizza. It doesn't matter if you spend FRN because you still lost $41 worth of value and that $41 worth of value could have been spent on Bitcoin instead. So every purchase of every kind is an opportunity cost not just when you spend using Bitcoin. Hanyecz's pizzas were not the only $41 worth of value that didn't get stored as Bitcoin that year. The first Bitcoin transaction for real world goods is a beautiful thing, it was a proof of concept, it was a stepping stone toward a better world so **we should really stop pretending like the Bitcoin pizza purchase was a tragedy.**
I want to thank Coindesk for the historical information and @Sajibb for reminding me of this topic https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-is-bitcoin-pizza-day/ https://read.cash/@Sajibb/bitcoin-pizza-day-1a67ce5c
I can't remember who originally put this form of thinking about money in my head, I probably developed it back in 2017 sometime.
Treat Yoself
You should treat yourself with at least as much respect as you treat your guests.
You know how we clean up our homes before we have company over? Why do we do that? Just have some company over and you'll become acutely aware of all the junk lying around, how the vacuum should be run, there's clothes that should be put away, beds that should be made, and if you're being honest with yourself you should open some windows and light a pumpkin scented candle. My question is: why are we more aware of these things when company is over than when we're alone?
You might say you want your company to feel welcome, you don't want them to feel disgusted by their surroundings, maybe you even go above and beyond and you want your company to feel lit by their surroundings, dilated by decorations or feng shui. And that's fine that you want to do that for your company, honestly, I find it admirable, but that begs the question of the topic I actually want to talk about.
Isn't it funny that you do those things for your guests but not for yourself? If you have company over do you prepare special food? Arent you deserving of that specialness as well? Jordan Peterson's 2nd Rule for life is "Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping." In his book he details how people have a hard time treating themselves well. They often can't even be bothered to take their prescribed medications. They often treat their pets better, remembering their prescribed medications, researching nutritional information about their food and providing regular exercise. The question is why can't they treat themselves at least as well as their pets? There is some underlying low self-esteem at the root of this phenomenon. But I want to take it to the next step. Once you're able to treat yourself at least as well as you treat your pet, you now need to recognize that you also treat your guests better than yourself. I think you're just as deserving of a clean room, a delicious meal, and of being dilated by your surroundings as your guests, and I think its odd if you don't treat yourself with this level of respect.
Maybe you're scared of being, God forbid, "selfish". What would selfishness look like though? Selfishness would be unduly treating yourself better than you treat others. My modest proposal is only to stop disrespecting yourself by treating your guests better than yourself. Selflessness is the true vice here, being without a self isn't healthy. Imagine you have a group of four friends that come over to your home once and a while and you routinely make an effort to treat three of the guests to a good time but deny the fourth. This is what it looks like to me when a good host neglects themselves. Instead I want you to aim for self fullness. You shouldn't be empty of yourself, evacuating whenever it might benefit others, instead be present. **Treat yourself at least as well as you treat your guests.**
I want to thank both Jordan Peterson and James True for influencing my thoughts on this topic. https://www.jordanbpeterson.com https://www.jtrue.com
@BeardedCivilizer