Embracing rejection, setbacks and stoic principles

How I lost 70 hours worth of work.

September 03, 2023

Hi friends,

I have been working for over 70+ hours to put together something special for you. I usually start by writing everything down in Word on my iPad. After everything is ready, I proceed with the visuals and with making everything look good.

Yesterday I was getting to the part of making everything look good. Here I am, 7am on Saturday, getting ready to finish this. I open the word document. 

It’s empty. WTF?! Maybe I opened the wrong file. Nope, it’s the correct one.

70 hours worth of work just went out the window. I’ve tried everything. The file is as blank as my face was when I first opened it.

I really enjoy stoic principles and the dichotomy of control, but I’m only human.

🔒 The Dichotomy of Control:

One of the foundational concepts in Stoicism is the dichotomy of control. Essentially, it divides things into two categories:

  1. Things we can control: Our own beliefs, judgments, desires, aversions, and actions.

  2. Things we can't control: Everything else — including the behaviour of other people, external events, and outcomes of our actions.(i.e Word losing my work)

In my case, losing my work is understandably frustrating. While the loss of the document is outside of my control, my reaction to it and the steps I take to move forward are within my control. I got frustrated and maybe I did not react the way I should have. But we’re humans. We live, we learn.

The same can be said if you got rejected this application cycle. It’s natural to feel upset. But remember this:

When Henry Ford was working on the first mass-production car, the prototype often malfunctioned. He did not get upset at it. He immediately started tinkering it until it actually worked.

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”

Marcus Aurelius

I guess now I have to do all the work, again. With law school coming up, application deadlines & a never-ending content list that just gets bigger (luckily), I do not know when I’ll get to it (but I will).

Thank you for being part of this community. I recently hit 10k on Linkedin. It's astounding how quickly these past three months have gone by. But I am just getting started.

Every other creator I talk to has at least one person helping out. If you believe in equal opportunities and think that you can help with the mission, contact me.

Here’s something to look forward to:

👉🏻 Starting 18/09 I’ll post on Linkedin a successful application every day.

⭐️ Here’s what I found interesting this week:

Sam Altman, the guy behind OpenAI / ChatGPT has a blog. I recently stumbled upon one of his articles named “How to be Successful”.

Here’s my favourite line from it:

“I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.”

Until next Sunday,

Alin George

A warm welcome to the 311 that joined this week.

PS: Currently looking for a Word alternative; I like Notion but I need something else.(if you know one, send me a message)

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