Aug. 10, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:04
5593 How to Get Promoted!
"I am in a management position in a retail corporation since 2021. I would never have imagined even getting this far 15 years ago. I was just beginning my journey towards sobriety. (thats also the time i discovered you on YouTube). I have hired many lemons over the last few years. I'm trying to figure out why. I remember people taking a chance when promoting me because they saw potential in me. I feel like I am bad at spotting potential. What did people see in me that I am missing when I hire?""My wife and I are having our second baby at the end of October - 4 months away. We had our first child and I was able to be there in person for her throughout the birth, but this second will present a problem in that anyone but the father is allowed on site in the maternity ward. My wife tonight told me that she is very afraid about having the birth on her own as I stay home with our first born. I wonder if I have not been recklessly un-empathetic for her.My wife has moved countries to marry me and we have both defoo'ed all of my family and friends and as a result, have no support throughout the birthing process and I am going to have to remain at home for the duration.Where I see this going as the problem - is that I don't have much - if any will to search for friends in the face of what I see out in the world. I'm now also considering that I do not pay enough attention to the people commenting in the chat for an example as possible future friends. What are your thoughts on finding new friends after having had defoo'ed a toxic family and starting from scratch?"Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Well, it is the pinch-punch first day of the month, 4th of July, 2024, and there were some questions I didn't get to yesterday in the Sunday morning 11 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time livestream because we got sucked into a black hole of intense white knight drama.
No, not drama.
Intense white knight manipulation.
Alright.
I'm in a managed position in a retail corporation ever since 2021.
I would never have imagined even getting this far 15 years ago.
I was just beginning my journey towards sobriety.
That's also the time I discovered you on YouTube.
I have hired many lemons over the last few years.
I'm trying to figure out why.
I remember people taking a chance when promoting me because they saw potential in me.
I feel like I'm bad at spotting potential.
What did people see in me that I am missing when I hire?
It's a great question.
One of the things that is real easy to do is to mistake your own energy for other's potential.
Mistake your own potential for other's potential.
So, the syllogism goes something like this.
I succeeded because people gave me a chance.
Therefore, everyone I give a chance to will succeed.
You follow?
I succeeded, or succeed, because people took a chance on me, therefore everyone who took a chance on me will succeed.
That's not true.
That's not true.
That's reversing cause and effect, right?
I mean, necessary but not sufficient, right?
Therefore, all good basketball players are tall.
Therefore, all tall people are good basketball players, right?
That's not a rational sort of syllogism, right?
So, you may have that sort of magical thinking of saying, well, I'm just like everyone else.
People took a chance on me and I should pay it forward by giving the chance to other people, taking a risk on other people.
Now, clearly, that hasn't been working out.
So, that is something important.
So what I've looked for when mentoring people is a passion for whatever is going on that predates the work itself, right?
So for instance one of the reasons that people took a chance on me and invested in me as a software entrepreneur was because I'd been writing programming code since I was 11 years old, right?
So since I was 11 years old I've been writing programming code so people knew that my passion for computers strongly predated
Me doing this coding work in my 20s.
And so when I had $1,200, which was like just a massive fortune back then, when I was 11 or 12 years old, I inherited it from my step-grandmother and I immediately applied it to buying a computer.
I didn't save it up for a car.
I didn't buy, you know, whatever nonsense you could buy back in the day, but I used it to buy a computer.
And actually, no, to be fair, to be fair, to be fair, the computer was $11 or $1200.
It was an Atari 800.
With, was it 16k?
16k!
Yeah, the 400 came with 8k and a membrane keyboard.
This one had a raised keyboard and 16k of RAM.
And I, yeah, I think I got six or seven hundred dollars.
My mom kicked in the rest, to be fair, right?
She did help me with that, which was good and nice.
So I had a passion for computers that vastly predated me getting into programming.
So if there's a passion that is larger, right?
If the job is a subset of a larger passion,
Then that's a good thing, right?
If people come up with solutions prior to you noticing or asking me to solve something.
Right, so I remember my daughter and I, I don't know, some five years ago, four years ago, I mentioned this on the show before, but it's illustrative, right?
So we went to a Tim Hortons in Canada, of course, and they were out of bagels, right?
And so I went through this whole exercise with her.
So let's say that you're working at Tim Hortons and you're out of bagels.
Well, and again, let's assume that these things are possible.
It really was a mental exercise.
There could be good reasons why you wouldn't.
And let's say you noticed that you were running out of bagels.
Well, you'd call head office.
You say, we're running out of bagels.
You got to drive some out here.
You would go to, there was a convenience store that was attached.
You go and see if they have any bagels.
They say, ah, well, they're not official Tim Hortons bagels, but whatever.
I think people would rather get bagels and you could at least tell them.
You could drive to another store.
We're good to go!
The people who said, you know, hey, I came up with the solution for X, Y, and Z, right?
So, way back in the day, I had a report production engine that required Access to be running Microsoft Access, which is a database program and a reporting system.
It required that Microsoft Access be running
on a server so that the client could request the reports, the reports would be sent back.
It turns out, sadly, that Microsoft Access could not run on the server unless somebody was logged in but the company we were working with had a security policy that people could not be logged into the server.
So that was a problem.
So a guy I worked with, I still remember his name actually, a guy I worked with came up with an idea to scan the, you could open up the reports in design mode or design view, and you could scan the reports to figure out where the controls were, like the labels and the data boxes and so on.
And he ended up writing an algorithm
to store the properties of the reports and then produce the reports in what's called RTF rich text format and it was wonderful fantastic and so he came up with that all on his own and he worked on it all weekend and so like i was thrilled and excited so people for whom the work is a subset of a larger passion people who solve problems
Either that you as a manager you didn't even know there was a problem and they solve it or that you know that there's a problem and they come to you with the problem and the solution, right?
So the people I did not invest in were people who came and said X is a problem and they just sit there like a bunch of wet-glued papier-mâché.
They just sit there and you know then it would be up to me to solve the problem and it's like okay well I'll pay you because once I figure out the solution you can implement it but what I did like
Yeah.
A database programmer, if he got interested in the front end, if he wanted to come on sales meetings, if he wanted to understand the clients and the cash flow and the share structure and the management and ownership structure, if he showed interest in the business as an organic entity outside of his particular specialty, well that was very interesting and very exciting.
Because what is the problem in business?
The problem in business is to make money.
And you should always ask yourself this, right?
Is what I'm doing making money?
There's this weird thing like, I don't know, making money is considered a bad thing or whatever.
It's like, well, it's pretty necessary.
I can't do this show if there's no resources to do the show, right?
So, when people showed an interest in the business as a whole, larger than their own particular little slice of the business, that was of course of great interest to me because it meant that they could solve problems from a business standpoint rather than just be told what to do from a specific subset of the business platform.
People who read books or take courses on their own time that have some importance relative to what they're doing as a whole.
So, if there was a programmer who was interested in learning something about business, I'd be happy to chat with him.
I'd recommend some books.
I'm not going to send him on a big training course, although I was happy to do that if that worked out, unless he showed some interest and some ability ahead of time.
People who wanted to understand how the economics of the business worked, because a lot of people are just like, well, I have my tasks, and then I get my paycheck, and I have my tasks, and I get my paycheck, and there's nothing wrong with that, right?
There's three kinds of people in business, the finders, the minders, and the grinders.
The finders find the business, the minders
I run things from a conceptual standpoint, and the grinders just do the actual day-to-day work, right?
Finders, miners, and grinders.
And so, if you're a grinder, then you're just going to be given a task, right?
And you are going to be programmed with your task, and then you program the computer to complete the task.
And then you just get your next task, and to me it's not the most exciting and conceptual way to live and to work, but there's a lot of people who are like that.
So, if somebody showed interest outside of the narrow field of specialty and was willing to learn about business and requirements and needs and wanted to meet with customers and so on, right?
Because I loved having my programmers meet customers because, like, you think I pay you?
I don't pay you.
I just hand them the money that they pay you.
Like, they pay me and then I pay you, right?
So, you're not working for me, you're working for the customers.
And, you know, people who wanted to understand, like, they enjoy talking about, I don't know, politics, economics, philosophy, science, like, something that's larger, right?
I also look for people who had interesting hobbies, right?
If somebody was just like, well, I go home and I play video games and I watch a movie and I go to bed.
I think there's nothing wrong with that.
It's fine, but that's just not the kind of intellectual curiosity and excitement that I'd want to invest much managerial time, effort and energy into.
So there's a lot more about that, but that's my very sort of general answer as a whole.
Just be someone who's interesting, who's curious, who looks at the larger picture and you'll be fine.
All right.
My wife and I are having our second baby at the end of October, four months away.
We had our first child and I was able to be there in person for her throughout the birth.
But this second will present a problem in that anyone but the father is allowed on site in the maternity ward.
My wife tonight told me that she's very afraid of having the birth of her own as I stay home with our firstborn.
I wonder if I've not been recklessly unempathetic for her.
I'm so sorry, I'm going to have trouble understanding this one.
Anyone but the father is allowed on site in the maternity ward.
Yeah, I don't think that you should not... I mean, I think you should be there for the birth of your...
Your child.
You should be there for the birth of your child.
I mean, there's got to be somebody who can watch your baby, right?
And if there's nobody who can watch your baby, then you need to start developing your social networks, right?
Friends, neighbors, family, whoever, right?
But there's got to be some
We're good to go.
Grabbed a bar of soap or something like that, the baby.
But yeah, you need people to help you raise the child.
You need people that your children are going to play with and socialize with and hang out and all of that.
So this is your wake-up call to develop
You know, some kind of social network that is going to function for you.
So yeah, she's right.
You need to be there.
And there could be decisions, right?
There could be important decisions that need to be made that you need to be there for.
So your baby will be fine.
And you want to do it now, right?
So you want to introduce someone.
And you know, even if you hire babysitters or whatever, right?
You want to introduce your baby to someone so your baby gets comfortable.
With that person, and then, I don't know how old your firstborn is, but I assume quite young, so you've got to get them used to that person and pay for it, and that way you have that person available as a resource, and then you, I don't know, depending on the age of your firstborn, you can explain things or not, or whatever, but, you know, your baby
Your firstborn will be fine for a day or two while you go and have the second baby.
I mean, this has been going on since time immemorial, and babies, especially if they have someone else in their life that they know and trust, or toddlers, they'll be absolutely fine.
I mean, big
Crying, kick up a fuss, and all of that.
I get that, but it's important for you to be there with your wife.
So yeah, get yourself some kind of community, get people who can watch your toddler, and go be with your wife.
In my humble opinion, that would be the way to go.
All right.
Alright, bleh bleh bleh.
Oh, there's more information.
My wife has moved countries to marry me with both the food of my family and friends, and as a result have no support outside the birthing process.
Okay.
So, but you have to get support.
You have to get support.
You have to find friends, family, sorry, not family, friends.
You gotta find people in the community, you gotta hire babysitters, you gotta go to a church, whatever it is you're gonna have to do to get some sort of
A community, you need that.
And you, the good news is you have several months, right?
All right.
She says, oh he says, where I see this going as the problem is that I don't have much, if any, will to search for threats in the face of what I see out in the world.
I am now also considering that I do not pay enough attention to the people commenting in the chat, for example, as possible future friends.
What are your thoughts on finding new friends after having defood a toxic family and starting from scratch?
Yeah, I mean, you really should find friends.
You should find your friends, you should find people that you can get along with, you can find.
Like, they don't have to be perfect, because Lord knows I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, your wife's not perfect, your kids are perfect, but that's a different matter.
But it's what's best for your kids.
What's best for your kids, of course, is that you have some kind of social life, right?
They can't just grow up in a cocoon of you and your wife.
And you don't talk to anyone else.
You don't have any social life with anyone else.
They don't have any friends with anyone else.
I tell you, man.
I tell you, tell you, tell you.
This is especially fundamentally and essentially crucial when your kids get older.
When your kids become teenagers,
They're going to need a friend group, they're going to need a social group, or they're going to miss an absolutely crucial window of development.
I mean, they want to start developing friends, they want to start exploring the possibility of a little bit of romance and dating in their mid-teens and so on.
So, yeah, you're going to need that, and you don't want to just try and make that out of whole cloth from nothing.
So, your kids are going to need other kids to play with, they're going to need to learn how to negotiate some kind of social environment, and they're going to need to
You know, see you socializing as well because they're going to learn how to socialize from watching you and your wife socialize.
And it's really not a good idea, in my humble opinion, it's not a good idea to raise kids who don't have social skills.
Now, of course, you can teach a lot of social skills, you and your wife, they'll develop social skills from siblings, from being siblings and so on, but it's not enough.
Your kids need to see you socialize, they need to see how you handle friendships, they need to see, you know, the pluses and minuses of friendships, and a good friend is goal in this world.
So, your kids are gonna need to.
Otherwise, your sort of fear and anxiety and negative attitude towards the world, which is why you wouldn't have friends, is gonna get into their brain, right?
And you don't want that, right?
You don't want them growing up to think that everyone's terrible and you've got to be isolated because humanity is a social contagion, plague or, you know, whatever you're gonna come up with, but you've got to find people that you like.
And there are people, I mean I tell you this right, there are people out in the world that you will like.
You know, maybe it may take a couple of runs to find them but they are out there and you can find them and you should!
For you, for your wife, for your happiness, you know, we're social animals, we're not just atomistic family interstellar space station non-groups, right?
Just the family unit
is usually not enough well and for the obvious reason of course that your kid's future lie beyond the family unit right your kid's future lie beyond the family unit because your kids obviously not going to marry and have kids within the family unit so your kids are going to need to you're aiming your kids at the outside world and they need to have exposure to the outside world the good and the bad the right and the wrong and that is important because otherwise how are they going to get out into the world
And get married and have their own friends and careers and how are they going to have kids and like all this kind of stuff, right?
So you need to develop a social life.
To me that is an essential part of parenting as a whole.
And I get, I know, I mean we can all be kind of fussy.
We've all been burned and you'll make mistakes.
Lord knows I have with friendships over the course of my life.
So, but you'll be fine.
You'll survive all of that.
And you'll get a good stable group of friends.
You know, I've had my ups and downs with friendships, but I've got a good group of friends now, and my daughter is good friends with a great group of people.
And that's just something you have to keep thrashing around until you can find and build.
And yeah, we've all been burned.
But, you know, to be fair, we've also burned others, right?
I'm sure you haven't been a perfect friend or a perfect person as a whole.
None of us have.
So, you know, with humility, recognizing that you're not perfect, I think it's important to just go out there and do some of that rough and tumble of developing.
Friendships and you know that's gonna have you confront some maybe some social anxiety or some problems with affection towards others but the you know the purpose of being burnt is to have you avoid fire not sunlight right the purpose of being burned by bad people is to have you avoid bad people
Not everyone.
That's taking it too far.
That is like saying, I got a sunburn once so I can never see the sun again.
That's letting the bad guys win.
Letting the bad guys seal you off from a social environment is not the way to deal with being hurt.
The way to deal with being hurt is to go the opposite direction into love.
and affection, not stay in the realm of avoidance.
In other words, the solution to being hurt is not isolation because that's just being hurt in a different kind of way.
The solution to being hurt
Is to connect, is to love, to have affection, to be positive.
You don't want to let people who hurt you, rob you of your capacity or willingness or desire to have a social life and social engagements, right?
That's not, that, whatever happens, that's not the right thing to do.
We're social animals and you don't let bad people take away your social life.
You don't let them say, and the bad people might even be the people in media, the people in politics, or all of the people who are saying to you, the world is ending, it's the worst thing ever, and World War 3, and all that kind of stuff.
People have had to have children throughout our evolution in situations far worse than we face.
I mean, humanity was down after the last Ice Age.
Humanity was down to 10,000 people.
One-fifth of the Galactica crew.
So, yes, you don't want to let the bad people and the scaremongers and the fearmongers rob you of a social life and rob your kids of learning how to socialize outside the family because that's what they're going to have to do.
Otherwise, it's kind of the end of your line, which makes having kids a whole lot less valuable.
All right, I think.
Let me just double check.
I think that was it.
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