compassion – My Mental Model

Depression is a Bitch [Part 1]

My last entry was almost 6 months ago. There’s been no lack of thoughts or ideas. No lack of motivation to continue understanding what’s happening around me. But there was a deep sense that I wasn’t at my best self and that this was an activity which I would only do when I could put quality work forward.

Generally speaking, writing these entries is a weekend activity for me. I’ll wake up, go through my morning routine, and then sit down with my laptop and write out something that’s on my mind. It was common to start at 9 or 10 in the morning and not wrap up until the mid-afternoon. I found it really valuable in organizing and testing my ideas. I also really enjoyed the exercise of articulating my thoughts.

But… As my professional life continued to go sideways, so did the rest of my life. The more I think about it, the further back it probably goes.

Chapter 1

I was all but kicked out of my university half way through my second year. My grades were decent, but in my position as dorm president, I had a habit of standing up to university authority when they overstepped their boundaries and started negatively impacting the lives of students. Through a series of university judicial charges, bans, and fines, they made it very clear that I was unwanted at that school. So I left. But after 18 months, I took it as a personal challenge and decided to go back and take my degree through sheer academic effort. I did. I excelled and it left me optimistic for a bright future where talent, effort and focus would lead to great things. I even skipped my convocation to hit the job market ahead of everyone else. I managed to graduate into the great recession. The job market was barren. I took what I could get.. I was hired as a management trainee for enterprise rentacar doing customer service and washing cars in a suit for $13/hour. In one of the world’s most expensive cities. Not ideal, but if I could make manager, everything would get better.

Chapter 2

Enterprise Rentacar was hemorrhaging money in my area so they decided to cut costs. Within 12 months, most of the area’s top paid employees were constructively dismissed. That included my manager, also a close friend of mine.. In that transition, I was offered a job managing the second largest location in our group, a mid-sized airport branch. It required me to move about 4 hours away and I wouldn’t get my promotion until I arrived, but they insisted I would be rewarded by taking one for the team. I discussed it with my dad, and we decided it was the best career move available to me. 2 months after I moved, my dad died.

Chapter 3

Within the month following my dad, my girlfriend left me for another guy, I tore my shoulder pretty bad, and corporate management was now telling me that I would have the responsibility of a manager, but only the title, pay, and recognition of an assistant manager. They said that corporate policy prevented them from authorizing a promotion at this time. 2 months later, they moved another assistant manager to the branch who was under the impression that they would get promoted. 2 months after that, the original manager who was on an indefinite maternity leave decided to come back.

Chapter 4

Without much going right in my life, I put all my focus towards the small inheritance my dad left to his 3 kids. My dad made it my responsibility, so it became the most important thing in the world to me. As I started to look for work, the investment firm who handled my dad’s funds took an interest in me. So did a wealthy business man who was looking for a protege to mentor as he shifted into a soft retirement. The portfolio which my dad made me responsible for is probably the single biggest reason why I chose the bank.

Chapter 5

The bank (RBC) was introduced to me as the hardest thing I’ll ever do, but that if I can make it through the first 4 years, it’s worth every ounce of effort. I was warned about the high failure rate, but was also told that failure was a result of laziness, ego, and not following direction. Little did I know, the failure rate was about 95% for those who didn’t arrive with an already established book or source of clients. I also learned that following the process meant maintaining a status quo which was ineffective, severely out of date, and not in the clients’ or public’s best interest. Regardless, I worked harder than I had ever worked before. Weekends was a given.. late nights were a given.. holidays were a thing of the past.. whatever I could do to increase my chances of success. It didn’t seem to matter though. Expectations were $10M of net-new assets per year, by far the highest in the industry. In year one, I did $7M. In year 2, I was up to $16M. By year 3, management had determined that I wasn’t worth keeping. In year 4, I realized that a far better path was joining a more senior team who wasn’t subject to short-term sales targets and could actually focus on providing wealth management services to their clients.. what I understood the job to be, and what I excelled at. After a great deal of effort, I joined a top 5 team with expectations of taking over the book once the senior advisor retired in 5-10 years. It was the best possible deal someone like myself could’ve landed. 1 month after I moved and joined the new team, the senior advisor told me that management had a target on my back. A month after that, I was fired.

Chapter 6

I left the bank on a Monday and while leaving the office, my stubbornness and sense of competition took over. I refused to be beat and committed myself to having a new job by Friday. Then I went and bought an ounce of weed.. mulled it over.. and realized that was a terrible idea. For the first time in my life, I had committed everything I had to being successful at something – and it failed in spectacular fashion. All the hours I put in.. all the money I spent.. all the relationships I didn’t prioritize.. all for naught. I used to think that I was so capable, that I could be successful in any environment. This proved otherwise and it was important to understand why. Eventually, I realized that if I was going to stick to my values and be a person of integrity, there were some environments which would tolerate me and some who would celebrate me. It was now my responsibility to find the latter.

Chapter 7

I eventually found work with a small cannabis shop which had won a series of awards for being the best retailer around. With cannabis legalization on the horizon, it occurred to me that there was a significant amount of opportunity here. At first, I worked with them in building an expansion plan which would see them go from one store to a national chain. Then we needed to raise capital, so I put that together too. Eventually, I told the company I was looking to earn a leadership role within the company, preferably the CEO seat. The founders were a husband and wife team who spent most of their time minding the store or doing non-profit work, creating a great opportunity for someone to come in and mind the back-end of the business. For the first several months, everything was pretty good. The happiest I’ve been in a long time was when we had 45 days to prepare for a pitch competition. I worked 15 hours a day, 7 days a week to make sure that every aspect of the business was presentable to investors. I even stopped smoking weed because it was just getting in the way of something I loved doing.

But then legalization was delayed and regulations became uncertain. This spooked investors and a lack of investors stressed out the founders. I tried to tell them that we didn’t need the majority of funds until after legalization and that they didn’t need to stress, but it fell on deaf ears. I tried to bring a business coach in to help streamline communication and roles. They suggested that we design our roles around our personal interests, skills, and capacity. That meant giving me more of a leadership role in the company. They were reluctant and the recommendations went nowhere.

As we got closer to legalization, I lined up a friendly investment from the largest cannabis company in the world. It was all the financing the company would need to build out its next 8 stores. Around this time, the founders started to question what I did for the company or if I was even needed. I had the distinct impression that I was no longer part of the inner-circle. Maybe this had something to do with their passion for social justice and the fact that I’m a straight white male who drives an SUV and used to work at the bank. Maybe it was their suspicion for my rational approach to business when everything in their world was a matter of emotions. Maybe it was their tendency to look at the business as their property instead of looking at it as an organization of people who are working together, trying to solve a problem. Or maybe it was me declining to start our meeting with healing crystals for the second time in 2 weeks.

Whatever it was, they came to me and said that they wanted to enjoy themselves when they came to work and they were spending most of their time stressed out. They thought I was the cause. Apparently, I just wasn’t their kind of people. I listened, I apologized, and I made a real effort to try and ‘soften’ my edges. This included spending a long weekend at a ranch, doing mushrooms for the first time as an adult, talking to my ‘softer’ friends, and reading up on the issues I was facing. It wasn’t enough. Within a couple months, I was no longer employed. They even tried to remove me from the board, but had to stop when they were reminded that all the funding came through me and is only accessible while I”m part of the company.

Chapter 8

This lands us at Dec 1 of 2018. Just like when I had left RBC… personally broke.. somewhat dejected.. but with my eyes on redemption. I was a major part of building one of the best cannabis retailer in the country. On the verge of cannabis legalization, this seemed like a rather valuable skill set. Things could be worse.

Something I had finally learned is that I’m not willing to compromise my values for my career, so finding a place where there’s an alignment of values is paramount. As such, I thought I’d take some time in finding that fit this time around. Between December ’18 and April of ’19, I applied to over 200 jobs, participated in dozens of phone interviews and several in-person interviews. That was on top of all my warm-network activity. By the end of it, I had been considered for everything from Chief of Staff at a publicly traded company to a Chief Operating Officer of a small start-up.

It was quite the experience. I learned about the gig-economy and how health plans, let alone dental is getting harder and harder to come by. I learned about how recruiters are incentivized. I learned how the head of HR is there to sell strong candidates on the company in the same way that strong candidates try to sell themselves. And I definitely learned about the imbalance of power between the interests of those looking for work versus those looking to hire. I didn’t take a job until April 15th of this year. Not because I was being picky, but because it was the first job officially offered to me and I needed an income.

Chapter 9

The job that I ended up taking was with a cannabis retailer that I had been trying to stay away from. I didn’t agree with the way the CEO carried himself and was not interested in his business. However, they were the only company who made a real offer. Even if it was only a 3 month contract, the compensation was fair and it was an industry I wanted to continue in. Could be worse.

I was brought in to help with a capital raise and do some market analysis. We launched the raise a couple weeks in and I quickly found out that current shareholders, who we were going back to for more money, were not very happy with how things had gone. As it turns out, the company had raised $8M to open 15 stores by the end of 2018. Now in 2019, we had 2 stores, no money, and needed another $6M to open up another 9 locations. The capital raise fell flat on its face as almost every existing investor declined to put more money in. As a result, the CFO I was working for became increasingly agitated. Eventually, he asked me to mislead potential investors for the sake of closing more investment dollars. I told him it wasn’t a good idea and stood my ground on ethics and business practices. The following week, I was told that if I wasn’t comfortable doing these kinds of things, my contract wouldn’t be extended. I brought this to the CEO and HR who both sided with me, but ultimately said that they weren’t part of the conversation and would have to talk to the CFO as well. The CFO met with me the following week and told me that the unsuccessful capital raise has forced him to re-do the budget and they no longer have funds for my position. That was 4 days before my contract ended.

Chapter 10

For the fourth time in my young career, I had found another employer who was at odds with my values. The realization that I was consistently being forced to choose between my values or my career… was just a really dark place for me. My values are who I am. If I compromised those for someone else, in exchange for money… I just can’t. I’d rather get off the ride entirely than live my life like that.

Upon reflection, it’s like I had the potential to be a tremendous employee.. but despite my best efforts, couldn’t find the right employer. I had the potential to be a great entrepreneur but lacked the resources to do it. It was like I had all these gifts.. but no one to give them to. All this potential, but without purpose. And if I’m not useful.. if I’m not meaningful.. if I have no purpose.. why am I needed? Why should I continue to consume the world’s resources if it’s all for naught? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if I just removed myself from the equation?

I don’t think I’m the first one to have those thoughts. I suspect they’re more common today than ever before. And for those reasons, I’m grateful for the experience. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m no longer missing the forest for the trees. It’s remarkable how much you can learn in the dark places of your mind, especially once you shine some light. Even if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, the compassion I’ve learned for my fellow human being has made this entire experience worth it.

Intelligence Vs. Compassion

I’ve done a lot of thinking on these two ideas over the last year or so. The western world seems rather divided right now.. democrats vs. republicans.. liberals vs. conservatives.. blue vs. red.. left vs. right. When you consider how much these individuals agree on, the division seems rather silly. Yet it persists. I have no doubt that the existing political system and those within it perpetuate this division for their own gain, but there’s something more to it than that. They didn’t create that division, they’re just the ones exploiting it. There’s something that exists beneath that.. something biological.

I wrote an entry a while back on thought vs. emotion. Introspectively, I could tell that they were two different cognitive processes within my brain. It led me to suspect that they had different roles within the human experience. I understood that you couldn’t use emotion to do things like solve math problems or learn languages. I also understood that happiness wasn’t a logical thought. Seemed rather likely that the thoughtful part of the brain would pursue happiness while the emotional part of the brain allowed you to enjoy it.

Ironically, a few months later, a friend gave me a book for my birthday that discussed this topic. The book, A General Thoery of Love, was written by a small team of MDs and PhDs in clinical psychology. To my surprise, the authors were big fans of poetry, love, their families, and all the other soft stuff you might not associate with a scientific mind. I must say it was done quite well and taught me a great deal about how the mind works.

One of my biggest takeaways was how obvious evolution was in determining the fundamental structure of the human brain. The base of our brain is referred to as the reptilian brain and controls things like your vitals and balance. This also represents our most base instincts.. things relating to survival like the 4 Fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and… reproduction. What the reptile brain seems to lack though is any sense of compassion. I was rather surprised to find out that reptiles are known to eat their young. Apparently the part of the brain that tells us to be kind to our kin didn’t come until afterwards.

After the reptile brain came the limbic brain. It’s likely that this evolution occurred during the early evolution of mammals. The theory is that when life made the jump from laying eggs to carrying their young, the brain needed to adapt appropriately. Mammals were taking a different approach to survival, one which required them to care for their young until they were capable of fending for themselves. They needed a way to communicate. They needed to develop a language. Enter the limbic brain, the emotional center of the human brain today. The limbic brain was one of facial expressions, touch, sound, and all these other little nuances that allowed mammals to instinctively understand how one another felt. Not a language in the classic sense, but very much a language nonetheless.

The most recent evolution of the brain is the neocortex. It would be convenient to say that that the neocortex is unique to humans but it isn’t. It’s present in great apes, dolphins, elephants, and most other mammals. What seems to makes humans different is how much of brain’s mass is dedicated to the neocortex and the size of our brain relative to the size of our bodies. As one might guess, this is the part of the brain is responsible for what we typically consider to be human intelligence: logic, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness.

Effectively, through millions upon millions of years of evolution, our brain has equipped itself for survival, compassion, and intelligence. In that order. And yet the vast majority of the human brain is dedicated to its most recent addition: intelligence. That evolution has happened rather quickly considering how long it took for the other parts of the brain to develop. Nature rarely does anything by mistake.

I’m grateful for having learned all this because it’s given me a rather useful insight into the difference between thought and emotion. It’s also shown me how little the general public seems to understand or appreciate how the brain works. How often will someone talk about how they feel towards something when they’re actually thinking about it? How often will someone claim to be using their feelings to navigate something abstract? How often are we asked how we feel when we should be asked what we think? I suspect there’s something worth observing here.

As someone who prioritizes thoughtfulness, logic, and truth, I’m probably more easily frustrated by this dynamic than others. As a result, I’ve been thinking about it a fair bit and have noticed something worth sharing. Throughout the course of recorded history, I’ve noticed a shift from emotional to intelligent. I’m unsure if it’s a result of an ongoing biological evolution in the brain, or a gradual appreciation for what intelligence allows us to do. Realistically, it’s probably both. If I were to guess, natural selection favors intelligence.

Religion might be the easiest example here. Religion has existed in some shape or form for about as long as human civilization. Our brains are programmed to identify patterns, and once we do, we can’t help but use our imaginations to assign meaning to them. As soon as we were able to recognize the significance of things like the sun and stars, we couldn’t help but try to tie them into one grand narrative. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why religion is such a complex topic.. perhaps in some way, it serves as a chronology of intelligence vs. compassion.

There was a point where religion was about community and worship.. this general idea that if you were kind and compassionate to each other, your god would be kind and compassionate to you. Over time, intelligence allowed us to realize that if we were kind and compassionate to each other, that was probably all we needed. In that time, god went from an individual who was supposed to be loved or feared, to something much more abstract. Since then, religion has become less about worship and more about philosophical teachings relating to morality. Unfortunately for these religions, they often attributed their teachings to the word of god rather than what they most likely were: a reflection of how humanity understood morality at that point in history. As a result, we were put in a position where humanity’s collective understanding of morality was evolving and god’s wasn’t. How could that be. Something wasn’t right.

As the centuries went by, the intellectual crowd kept coming up with better and better reasons to stray from religion. The politics, the corruption, the lack of evidence, the logical fallacies, the tribalism… it just looked like a big pile of nope. Even the renaiisance experienced a big shift from religion to the sciences. And now, in the 21st century, religion looks to be as irrelevant as ever. The world’s brightest minds are notoriously non-religious. The vast majority of people STEM careers are non-religious. The vast majority of business and industry leaders are non-religious. The vast majority of recognized philosophers are non-religious. The only leaders that I can think of who tend to be religious are political leaders. As their actions tend to show, it’s a function of votes and job security more than loyalty to the cause.

The better we get at using the intelligent part of our brain, the better we get at discerning the difference between real and not real. As we get better at discerning between real and not real, truth and reality become increasingly important to us. As truth and reality become increasing important to us, the fictions of religion becomes much less attractive. While I think this movement away from religion is justified if not an essential part of our evolution, we should be mindful not to throw away the baby with the bath water. Religion was among the first establishments to champion the ideas of kindness, community, and morality. Those ideas are worth bringing with us to where ever we go next.

When I think about where we are now and where we go next, I can’t help but think that computers are rather central to the conversation. When I think about how computers were designed from the beginning, I can’t help but think that they were designed as an extension of our neocortex. Computers are logical by nature. If a program has a line of code which contains a logical fallacy, it creates an error. And while our computers inch towards levels of artificial intelligence that rival our own, there’s an obvious absence of emotion or survival instincts. This idea that one of humanity’s most significant creations is an extension of one of our most significant evolutionary advantages…. doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.

I’ve been thinking about writing a book for a couple year now. It’s working title is the Vulcan Republic. The idea is a mash-up between Plato’s Republic and the Vulcan philosophies from Star Trek. One takes place in the past, using logic in search of how one would create a Utopian society. The other takes place in the future where a species just like humanity embraced logic and created that utopia. Considering the path that we’ve taken over the course of our evolution, is this so unlikely? Is it so far fetched that intelligence is our guiding star?

MBTI helped me understand how strong the division is between thinkers and feelers. I know this all too well as the feelers tend to get upset with me for thinking too much and feeling too little. But then I ask them why I should feel more and think less, and they don’t have a reason. They just feel that way. As it turns out, the part of the brain that knows why things happen is the thinking part. And unfortunately for me, there are statistically more feelers than thinkers. But I suspect this is changing. I suspect that every generation, on average, has been more thoughtful than their parents’ generation. I expect that computers will help kids to learn and embrace logic faster that previous generations. I expect that the kids growing up today will respond to the highly emotional conversations around current events by learning to be more thoughtful and sensible in the way they discuss ideas with one another.

That’s a future that excites me. But it doesn’t excite everyone. The more emotional crowd aren’t always the biggest fan of computers, logic, or intelligence. I’m often faced with situations where they consider these things to be threatening. They’ll use words like empty, cold, or robotic. They seem to assume that intelligence and compassion are binary, that it’s one or the other. To that point, I think they’re wrong. I think that we could all be reminded of a simple truth: The most intelligent decision someone can make is a compassionate decision, and the most compassionate decision someone can make is an intelligent decision.

Intelligence and compassion tend to operate like a map and compass. Intelligence is a tool that helps you read the terrain and understand the most effective way to move from point A to point B. Compassion is like a compass which might not tell you much about where you are or how to get to where you want to go, but it’ll always give you a sense of direction. Too often, people will lead with unintelligent compassion, resulting in good intentions but progress in the wrong direction. Watching the social justice warriors embolden the conservative crowd reminded me of this. But at the same time, there are those who lead with intelligence and a lack of compassion which lead to productive actions which are counter-productive to humanity’s collective goals. You don’t have to look much further than Thanos or any bond villain to see how that plays out. I suspect that for real progress, we need to embrace both, and understand that when we are at our best, they are one and the same.

Nature rarely does anything by mistake… Survive. Be compassionate. Be intelligent.

Solutions that Create More Solutions

I was reading a Harvard Business Review article a while back and it was talking about the dynamic of a self-perpetuating business. An easy example is the classic ‘customer first’ strategy:

If you always put the customer first, the customer is always happy and if the customer is always happy, then they’ll keep coming back and every once in a while, they’ll come back with a friend. As more friends become shoppers, the business grows and more locations can be opened to serve more friends. As more locations are opened and the business scales, it can reinvest in itself, ultimately leading to better customer service. And the cycle continues.

Good customer service is a solution to the problem of bad customer service, but it’s also a solution that creates more solutions. There are other solutions that create more problems. Cost cutting can be an example:

Revenues are down so you look to cut costs to maintain profitability. You realize you can fire your top performing employees who are being paid the most, and replace them with new talent who will work for half as much. Next year’s forecasts are now back in line with corporate targets. Solution?

Probably not. Firing your top performing employees is a quick way to decimate your organizational culture and that leads to lower levels of acquisition, retention, and production. It was a solution in that it was able to achieve reduced costs, but it also created a problem by way of significantly reduced revenues over the long-term.

This isn’t a business concept. It’s a universal concept. It persists in the laws of physics as well as in the truths of philosophy, and it’s one which the world desperately needs to understand.

You have the compassionate crowd who actively fight racism with racism, and actively fight against free speech to protect free speech. It won’t work.

You have the intelligent crowd who spend most of their time picking apart bad solutions, and then defer to whatever benefits them personally, lacking the understanding that this is all a collective effort. That won’t work either.

I’m still trying to understand why intelligence and compassion are at odds with one another, because they also share a very significant connection:

The most intelligence decision you can make is a compassionate one, and the most compassionate decision you can make is an intelligent one.

This isn’t neutral territory between the left and the right, this is the guiding star that we should all be following. Compassion is the compass, intelligence is the map.

Me Too?

I appreciate the perspective that I have on sexual harassment, not because I understand it, but because I am making progress in understanding it.

Back when I was working at the banks, we had a training program that they would send us out to Toronto for. By the third trip, our cohort had gotten to know each other and one night we were on the hotel rooftop having drinks. A bunch of us were standing in a circle and one of the ladies decided she would show some interest. She walked over to me, started whispering things in my ear, then started rubbing my chest, then her hand went in the shirt, then down the pants.. all while I kept up a conversation with the others in that circle. I was obviously getting a lot of looks, but I kept pulling her hand out my clothes, politely told her to settle down, and laughed it off. It took about 20 minutes, but she eventually moved on and took someone else back to her room.

This was 5 years ago and I want to share what I’ve learned. It was only recently that my experience occurred to me as an example of sexual assault because it didn’t feel like it.. and I think I know why.

Part of it is that I’m quicker to compassion than I am to fear or hurt. She had a husband and kids at home, but she was on a work trip, drunk, tying to bed a guy half her age in front of a small crowd of coworkers.. I knew she was probably going through a rough patch so I tried to handle the situation with dignity. I wanted her to be better off than when we met.

I genuinely think we could all use a little more compassion in our lives, but it’s important to understand that it was easy for me to arrive at compassion because I never lost power or control of that situation. I was twice her size. Even if she were twice my size, I wouldn’t be concerned that she could force herself on me. In my mind, I was safe from what she was trying to do, and it let me act with compassion.

Most women aren’t twice the size of the men in question. All that safety that I felt likely wouldn’t exist for a woman in that same situation. For many, I’d wager that safety becomes fear. As we continue to discover/understand what gender equality really means… physical stature and the physical safety that comes with it is still a very real inequality.

That doesn’t mean that we should feel bad for being men, but it is a reminder that as men, we need to step up. If you have the power to harm, you probably also have the power to protect. Imagine if instead of hearing about a high profile sexual harassment case once a week, we heard about how the men around that person stepped up and shut it down? That’s a future I’m willing to help create.