Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What have you learned from each of those guys? Both are very talented. [00:00:00] S1: Endless, absolutely endless. It's an amazing thing to be able to talk to people like this. And they're very different. They're both founders, they're both amazingly successful investors and have done the whole thing. They've done it numerous times. And they're very patient and generous, at least at this stage of the game. They both have a real understanding and passion for the craft and artistic nature of storytelling. Courage, complete comfort with calculated failure, as in, if you know what you're doing, you're trying something and you know it's a trial balloon, it's totally all right if it goes wrong as long as you really thought about it and there's a calculated risk as opposed to a random, let's see what sticks kind of risk. Really incredible ability to map out sort of in an imaginary way what could be. Always allowing that you're not seeing something but really mapping it out. Never sort of in a sense where it's this or that. It's always, it could be all these kinds of things and based on past experience, this has really worked. And then sort of branching off of that most. I think risk tolerance, I guess maybe it's a blessing of success that you just increasingly become tolerant, like I said, of calculated risk, which in the creative endeavor is a requirement because you're going to fail. [00:00:00] S0: Do you think we take enough risk in general as people?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Do you think we take enough risk in general as people? [00:00:00] S1: No, no. Not on the personal, emotional level. Not on a professional level. Even just being around people who have a more benevolent attitude towards failure can be extremely helpful because one's own worth is not caught up in whether something works or not. This is also a huge advantage that the Americans have over the Europeans. Failure in Europe is so shameful. And in America is more forgiving, obviously on the margins. And sometimes you think, oh, wow, this is a level of heedlessness that perhaps is a little irresponsible. But yeah, I think risk is inherent, sort of the end stage of this kind of transformation that you talk about. When you have figured out your ultimate concern, you figured out that there are going to be barriers, you can kind of name the barriers. Even you gain self-knowledge. You realize that through action there is power, even just in the action itself, even though it doesn't actually yield anything immediately. And then action begets action, which begets courage. [00:00:00] S0: I'd love to sort of redo an exercise that you've done on me before because I think it's translatable for everyone listening. You asked me some question which was something that rhymed with: what is the version of your story that is so big that it terrifies you? Can you unpack that? Very powerful question.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: I'd love to sort of redo an exercise that you've done on me before because I think it's translatable for everyone listening. You asked me some question which was something that rhymed with: what is the version of your story that is so big that it terrifies you? Can you unpack that? Very powerful question. [00:00:00] S1: The mind obviously is very good at projecting into the future and can imagine really anything. And in many ways, what is possible, even emanating from our own subconscious, is so much bigger than what the left hemisphere brain, the rational analytical brain, can handle. So I think there is a fear of the bigness of the world. That fear of the bigness of the world is also reflected in the inner world. So much of story is actually an inner transformation. When you have infinite potential in the outer world, this potential is probably also inside of you, and it's overwhelming. So fear is present, but it's a fear of potential, of all that could be. [00:00:00] S0: So you think fearing greatness is the ultimate fear?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: So you think fearing greatness is the ultimate fear? [00:00:00] S1: I think fearing greatness, as long as we define greatness as a manifold flourishing of life, so in all its forms, not just a great engineer or a great company builder—if we believe, as I do, that storytelling, especially through the course from Gilgamesh all the way to now, is thousands of years of storytelling and myth-making that we have thoroughly enjoyed—people realizing potential in the world, that there is an inner drive to reach one's potential. I do think there's probably a fear of reaching one's own potential because it might be too big. [00:00:00] S0: What about inner conflict, like a character who wants two opposing things?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What about inner conflict, like a character who wants two opposing things? [00:00:00] S1: That's the definition of story. This is a Faulkner quote, but great conflict is the heart in conflict with itself. That's a great story. So you want two conflicting things at the same time. You're very invested in your fear. You create situations in the original state where this investment in your fear pays off. And at the same time, there's a part of you, mostly subconscious but can be conscious, that has a dream of greatness. And those are absolutely in conflict because the fear wants to dominate and the greatness wants to come out and do its thing. And it's through the story itself that this gets worked out. And I always think this: when someone takes on the position of a leader and how relieved everyone else is not to have to do that, people love to just disappear and amass and be relieved of the burden of individuality. But this is possible because someone has a will to power and steps up and says, I will do it. [00:00:00] S0: Why do you think that is? Should we all be leaders in some way?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Why do you think that is? Should we all be leaders in some way? [00:00:00] S1: In some way, I think. Emphasis on "in some way." I think we have a very narrow definition of leaders: business or political leader, and that's sort of the end of it. I think actually, if you invert that and you just simply say you have a predicate understanding of yourself at that point in time based on reflection, and you act according to this predicate understanding as best as you can at that point in time, you are already a leader simply because you're guided by a philosophical worldview that feels absolutely true to you at that moment. [00:00:00] S0: Back to this exercise of a version of a story that's so big it terrifies you. It sounds like the model is: raw potential is so big, but the mind can't figure it out. And so the process is figuring out how to get something that's subconscious out, let it free. How does one do that?