9.10.24 - Some notes on an abundance mindset and a redacted response to an email
2L is fun so far and I’m really just taking it easy. Deeply interacting with the content. It’s a consistent effort, but whenever I get that twinge of anxiety about workload, I remember that life is short and I’m doing this because I like it, and not from a position of need or desperation. This reminds me of something. When I was 19, my friend showed me this YouTube channel called “AlphaMaleStrategies” (look I’m 25, I’m part of the Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate YouTube compilation generation, it’s not my fault) and although I can’t say it was terribly helpful for my purposes, there is one gem of wisdom from his videos that I think about often, and that’s the idea of an “abundance mindset.”
Essentially, AlphaMaleStrategies, or “AMS,” routinely hammered the point that you shouldn’t approach women with a scarcity mindset, that something about that makes you repulsive/unattractive, and that to succeed, you had to have an “abundance mindset,” essentially giving off the vibe that you have options, interests, suitors, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4_9IcLGW8
AMS, for what it’s worth, didn’t prescribe confidence “tricks” to achieve this, it wasn’t about purely “signaling” this mindset. He emphasized being “on your purpose” to achieve this, that is, actually pursuing ambitions outside the romantic sphere on their own terms, which in turn would improve your romantic/sexual prospects. Paradoxically, if you do things just because you want women, that’s just inherently repulsive to women, but if you do things “on your purpose,” then your vibe will just become attractive and the women will come.
Now, this is a truth that well adjusted individuals wise up to anyways (hopefully?), that people who loves process and living life itself are often more successful than people who are too narrowly focused on metrics (I have to reconcile this with my general thinking that its important to focus on exams during law school, however. It can be done, imperfectly.) Regardless, this same idea has been communicated in many stories, motivational speeches, etc. Jerry Seinfeld has a speech, it may have been a graduation speech, where he says something along the lines of don’t chase money, chase your dreams, and money will follow you.
This is also a key theme in the best Bollywood film I know (really only one of a few I’ve watched), 3 Idiots, starring Amir Khan. In short, there’s a bunch of engineering students in a fictionalized version of one of India’s super competitive engineering schools, and they all burn out, get eaten up by the culture in various ways, except for the one kid who was truly in it for the love of the game, had fun throughout, and who the movie reveals becomes wildly successful at the end, beating all the miserable tryhards.
What am I on about? Well, really I think about the wise teachings of AlphaMaleStrategies, Jerry Seinfeld, and Amir Khan whenever I begin to get stressed about Law School. You have to remain on your purpose. You have to have an abundance mindset. You have to love the game. You can’t approach the work from a place of anxiety and fear. That’s a LOSING mindset (I wrote about this earlier, go to the home page and scroll down to the Winning and Losing Mindset post, because I cannot be fucking bothered to paste hyperlinks). You have to frame everything as a fun game, and do it because you LIKE it.
What does this mean in practice, for me? Well take today. I have a lot of competing priorities right now, including a research paper, a competition, three doctrinal classes, a dog, and some personal affairs. At times, t can threaten to make me feel overwhelmed, as is the often reported state of law students. That overwhelmed feeling can create a feeling of anxiety, which, depending on your temperament, will result in either an approach or avoidance strategy.
An approach anxiety will make you do your work in the immediate term, but you won’t enjoy it, you’ll be stressing do the readings, just having a bad time, associating it with negative feelings, and then you will dread doing it in the future.
Avoidance anxiety is just procrastination, which means you won’t do the work and you’ll waste your short time on this earth, fall behind, and be outcompeted by your peers.
Both are really bad. So you have to get off that anxiety ramp first. For me, when I get anxious, I read something I’m interested in, like the news, or something in politics/economics, and then I remember the kind of issues that made me interested in law, and reconnect with the bigger picture. Then I feel a soft sense of eagerness creep up to go to my desk and do the readings.
That’s exactly what I did this morning. I felt bad for a second, and was about to start scrolling twitter (avoidance anxiety), but then I realized what was happening. So I slowed down, I read a bit of a book I’ve been meaning to finish (The Ministry for the Future). Now I’m writing for this stupid blog. And now I feel eager to get to my readings.
Before even touching the work, I got myself out of the scarcity mindset and into the abundance mindset, on my purpose. As Alpha Male Strategies would have wanted.
Because like a beautiful woman, knowledge and insight is attracted to the joyous, the curious, the happy warrior. If I’m anxious when I’m reading I’ll have to chase those insights and connections, I’ll have to force awkward dialogue with it, and they will elude my grasp. Not acceptable.
I have a girlfriend now, but the times I’ve done the best with women, in clubs or whatever, is when I’ve arrived to the function happy and ready to have a good time. Girls are drawn to the guy who is just there to dance.
Learning is the same. Actually everything in the world is exactly the same (Kanye once said this on Jimmy Kimmel about making music and designing shoes). Knowledge is drawn to the guy who is just there to learn.
the second part:
I’m still figuring out the vibe of this little site, but I’ve always liked how Tyler Cowan puts email exchanges on his blog MarginalRevolution. So I’ll do that where it makes sense and I’ve written something semi-interesting/helpful. This is a response to a really nice email someone sent me on the site. I fucking hate emails in general but a nice email to my schizophrenic alternate identity is always welcome.
Another note, we should all send more non-work related direct messages on the internet. Like I’ll email authors of journal articles and stuff sometimes and it’s crazy how responsive they are. I’ve DMd some of my favorite bloggers (literal PhDs with huge followings) on Twitter and have had really interesting conversations. The internet makes all of this so possible and even as a cold email king myself I feel that we are under capacity for these kind of interactions.
——
Dear [redacted],
Thank you for sending such a kind note!
Like you, I am in love with early internet-style websites. There appears to be a community of software engineer and artist types who still make them and share them with each other, and I was partially inspired by them (here's an index of them I found: https://webring.xxiivv.com/).
Outside of old professors, it doesn't seem like people in the liberal arts really do this. So I decided to make the site as a public notebook with the hope that that culture could be revived (or built?) a bit. Your comment on the writing is too kind and I'm glad you enjoy the informal style. I obviously have to make very polished work product in "real life" [redacted] so it's a nice outlet for rougher thoughts.
[redacted] here's some thoughts I've shared with friends in the same boat:
the culture and rat race can make it easy to lose your creative, curious, and human side, so I try really hard to nurture it in stupid ways like tweeting nonsense and having the website.
law school has been really fun and does scratch a creative thinking itch; nothing since undergrad philosophy or economics classes has made my brain work as hard
contrary to what the culture on the law school reddit suggests, you CAN have a fun and good life doing it (especially if you've worked in the real world before [redacted] So don't let people's gloomy depictions scare you off if it's interesting to you!
With warmest regards,
knxnts