
“In my Opinion”
thoughts that won't blow your mind
“In my Opinion”
Playing with house money in concept and actuality has changed my life. There is more to the story…..but the term may be lost on some so I will do a quick explanation for all non-degenerates out there.
Lets say you are in Vegas and you are playing blackjack or craps…..you cash in with $200. 30 minutes later you look down and you see you have $500 in chips. What I do, and perhaps others do, is take $200 off the table and put it in your pocket and thus your now playing with house money….$300.
When I play with house money, both in Vegas and in real life, I play free. I follow the book (code for the spoken rules of the game) but I also break the book, IE don’t follow the rules. I sometimes play unconventional hands because I think the odds/payout is worth it.
Unfortunately, you and I lose site of this and start to think the $300 is ours and not the houses. We clam up and wet the bed at the thought of losing the $300…. losing perspective its house money to begin with.
Chances are, if you are reading this post you are playing with house money.
If you have food, family, faith, and some other foundational aspects you are set…the rest is house money. Your 6 figure job or aspirations is house money bro/sis! Your car payment and meals out and vacations and family portraits and Netflix and tequila and concerts and date nights and gym membership and ________ is all house money. You can survive on less, much less. We start to think these niceties are essentials and you can’t lose them. If thats the case you play in fear. You can’t enjoy shit unless you realize its house money. Take a shower and be thankful you have water running over your back. Eat black beans and rice for a week and think about what % of the world lives off that, hell throw Cholula on it and love it and question why you need steaks and lobster to begin with.
‘Scared money don’t make money’……so the rap lyric goes. I have seen this play out with so many people wanting more (better job, better $$ situation, path forward) but no appetite to risk. Risk what? It’s house money! Take it, its yours! You can’t take mine, I am playing with house money.
*There are for sure those who have not been dealt the right cards, thus they are playing from behind. To keep the analogy alive – those of us playing with house money should be conscious of how to bank roll others so they can get a seat at the table.
A mentality for the marginal…you and I both suffer from this. We stare at our phones while wisdom leaves our heads. We are officially addicted to the trivial. Our brain has fidgets that didn’t exist 3-5-10 years ago. We are consumed by unactionable information that adds little to no value outside of being more versed for pop-culture conversations. What show are you watching? Did you hear about XYZ event? Can you believe said president said _____? All marginal. All shit. #AMAS
We have ‘news’ coming at us from all angles and we welcome it…we are Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov in this instance is = Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snap, we are their dogs, their slaves, their product. As the adage go, if its free you are the product.
Thus, going to put more effort and consciousness towards using mediums for meaningful transactions.
This likely means, but still to be determined:
* More blogging using WordPress
* Using Twitter but deleting it from my phone
* Stay away from Facebook + Instagram + Snap + others in this vein…AMAS
* LinkedIN TBD….need to refine use and notifications
* Feedly for following and curating meaningful content
More to come…..
Fear is the absolute worst sensation I have known as a human. As a child, fear caused me to seek out my parents who could comfort and calm me down. As an adult the whole ‘mommy’ thing doesn’t work anymore….so then what?
The more you have, the more you can lose. I am not speaking of material things here…but family, friends, and even ‘your country’. Fear as an adult has a few affects:
The below essay (visualized) helps bring me back to what is truly important. This essay, along with other straight gold, can be found in a collection of essays called Present Concerns by CS Lewis.
One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is that you’re expected to be functionally OK in a wide range of areas — sales, marketing, services, support, operations, engineering, etc. Only, entrepreneurs are typically great at one thing and not good at the other stuff, especially if it doesn’t interest them. Now, this gets even more…
from David Cummings on Startups http://ift.tt/1P16oSw
via IFTTT
Buying a house is a big deal. Next to marriage, kids, and job it might be the next in line regarding big life events that determine the course of history for you and your family.
Buying a house exclaims many things, perhaps none more than: ‘Of all places I could live (in the US and even the world), I choose these coordinates! It is here where we will make memories, sow, reap, and dwell’. I could go on philosophically here…I won’t….rather, I want to share some practical things I am learning that can be broken down into a few categories.
My context:
Remember being lectured by your mom or dad on the theme of peer pressure? ‘If everyone jumped off a cliff would you?” It’s a rhetorical question until you become a young professional, and then for some reason it flips…you are supposed to do what everyone does and its called a ‘best practice’. While I can’t explore all these dynamics at present, I can touch on the ‘just made up’ breakdown of the types of best practices that help me determine when to shut off my ears and go back to reading blogs on my phone.
I recently broke out some of my old musings. While thumbing through these old journals and blogs, I had an extremely humbling thought – I was more intelligent back then. This is extremely discouraging. As a ‘rising professional’, I pride myself on: getting better at what I do, learning from my mistakes, gaining mastery over my domain, etc. I have always assumed this would mean that my intelligence, along with my ability to reason, would grow with my career or life advancement. However, this is very far from the truth. A case could even be made that as one narrows down on a trade/skill, they grow increasingly unaware of everything outside of that domain, thus they are “more dumb” in other areas of life.
Continue reading “Unplugging this Holiday + Stop Getting More Dumb”
When pulling into Starbucks this evening it hit me – I am a thief!
For years I have gotten to know many a barista as I have averaged about 1.65 coffee shops a day since college. With this has come ‘free coffee’. Free because thats how it was offered to me…but was it? Was it their coffee? Or…was it their shareholders coffee? Or their bosses coffee?
95% of the time it wasn’t theirs and I accepted it. I am a thief.
Continue reading “Are you a thief? I am. I stole a bunch of coffee.”
What would it be like to have coffee with Peter Thiel (the author + founder of Paypal), John Maynard Keynes, and ‘insert cliche philosopher name here’?
That’s what this book feels like, and it’s a beautiful recipe for a delightful and thought-provoking read. It deviates from your normal book on entrepreneurship (thankfully) and challenges assumptions that many (Roy) take for granted.