Why You Should NEVER Feel Like A Victim (Even If You Are)
Nugget from Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant
Hello Friend!
I’m editing this letter from an asian restaurant I just discovered—besides being delicious, it is very spacious and comfortable so I thought “why not just write here”.
I have already heard Charlie and Naval many times on this issue of the Victim Mentality. And I plan to keep hearing them on this issue every now and then, because I want the best ideas to really soak into my brain, to the point of becoming a default thought and behavior.
Also, it’s so easy to give into being a victim—and we as humans default to easy paths. So it’s useful to be reminded of the detrimental implications of taking this—sometimes tempting—path.
👤 Authors
💡Nugget
The insight from Charlie Munger comes from an answer he gave to a young man from the crowd (during the 2020 Daily Journal Annual Meeting).
The young man (speaking to Charlie):
"You're a testament to the idea of… Not to be a Victim, but to be a Survivor.
And it’s an attitude that has helped me in my short life so far.
Could you perhaps expand on that idea?"✦ Charlie Munger:
Well, it’s really interesting…
Some people are victimized by other people. And if it weren't for the indignation that that causes we wouldn't have reforms that we need.
But that truth is mixed with another… → It’s very counterproductive for an individual to feel like a victim—even if he is.
Best attitude is just to be cheerful about everything and keep plugging along.
As we see, victimhood is useful at a societal level.
But at an individual level is disastrous -- it robs your agency and makes you dependent on others... Feels good in the short-term (because you put off responsibilities), but in the long-term it can only cause misery and a sense of enslavement.Therefore I don't like politicians that get ahead by trying to make everybody else feel like a victim. They make my flesh crawl. And I just don't believe in it.
Of course… Who wants to be a victim instead of a survivor? [rhetorical question]
You can recognize your position as bad and try to improve it—that's okay.
But to have a deep feeling that it’s all somebody else's fault is a very counterproductive way to think. People don’t even like being around them. It’s really stupid…
And yet our politicians build on it and try to make their careers work by doing something that's very bad for all the people they are talking to. And they think they're doing the world's work! It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.
Source: Video Clip from the 2020 Daily Journal Annual Meeting
✦ Naval Ravikant:
The Victim Mentality…
[Definition] → It's somebody else's fault, it's my skin color's fault, it's the system's fault…
[Outcome] → Those people are sinking. I feel bad for them… I want to shake them out of it and say: actually you can get out of it.
[Overcome it] → You just have to stop thinking it's everybody else’s fault.
Joe Rogan added:
"You have to alter the perspective…
But it's so difficult for people to do.
It's one of the most difficult things for people: to change the way they approach reality itself."At the end of the day, I do think life is really a single player game.
It's all going on in your head.
Whatever you think. [Whatever] you believe… will very much shape your reality—both from what risks you take and what actions you perform. But also your everyday experience of reality…
If you're walking down the street and you're judging everyone: “I don't like that person because [of] their skin color. She’s not attractive. That guy’s fat. This person’s a loser…”
The more you judge, the more you're gonna separate yourself and you'll feel good for an instant—because you'll feel good about yourself: “I'm better than that”—but then you're gonna feel lonely and then you're just gonna see negativity everywhere.
The world just reflects your own feelings back at you.
Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgments. To a tree there's no concept of right or wrong, good or bad…
You're born.
You have a whole set of sensory experiences, stimulations, lights, colors and sounds.
And then you die.
And how you choose to interpret that is up to you—you do have that choice.
Source: Video Clip from The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast #1309
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
- Viktor Frankl“It is your mind that creates the world”
- Buddha
💬 Reflections
My formula for greatness is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”
- Nietzsche
"A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others."
- Confucius
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of July 2024) contains nearly 2,000 timeless ideas (sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs — captured on books, interviews/podcasts and articles).
I call this Database the Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants it.
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”.
So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
💥 Stuff I Loved
I really enjoyed this blogpost from Paul Graham (written in 2014). It addresses the problem of forgetting ideas from books, arguing that even if you can’t recall most of the information you read in a book, it still contributes to your worldview—thus, it’s still useful.
Wishing you a lovely weekend!
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my free 80-page ebook. It’s packed with 23 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!
No way bro, I've been drafting an article on it already that even if you're a victim of heinous crime, still you shouldn't treat or look at yourself as a victim and all that which you mentioned above. Haha what a coincidence!