Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter.

The Lens of Bravery

What would I do if I had 3x the bravery that I do?

Your life is restricted by the amount of courage you are prepared to deploy at any moment. Maybe just knowing this will help you to be more brave.

Do more embarrassing things… don’t be embarrassed.

False Peaks

A false peak (or false summit) is a point on a mountain that seems to be the top but is actually not the summit. The false peak still has a great view—many will stop here and admire it, never to reach the summit. To reach the real peak, you may have to re-descend what you just climbed, in order to position yourself for the actual summit push. Often you can only identify what is the false and real summit once you have summitted one. Perspective makes them difficult to differentiate from the base.

“So what?” you ask.

How many false peaks have you (metaphorically) climbed in your life?

Graduating high school, graduating university, getting a job, getting married, having kids, making X amount of dollars, buying a house, getting that car, going on that trip… each one seems like the pinnacle of achievement before you do it. But in hindsight, many of them are insignificant.

The lesson? You can set goals, but you don’t know how much you will enjoy the outcomes of these goals until you achieve them. However, even if you don’t like the outcome, you would never have known that if you did not begin the ascent. Each action taken, each goal achieved, each refinement to your life perspective, the small things add up to the real summit. You must climb the false peak first to see where the real peak really is.

Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement

A quick framework to help you argue effectively:

Quote to go

Thanks for reading!

Lucas