I spent all of my millions. This is what I learned | Hacker News Reader

I spent all of my millions. This is what I learned

hackernoon.com

46 pointsgmays11 comments

I’ve noticed when people go through very traumatic experiences (divorce, death) they sometimes experience a dramatic change in personality. It’s almost like the shock of the event kills your previous self.

This guy said he was bored of his current roles, but all said that probably wasn’t the actual issue. He was just looking for a way to cure his depression and ennui, and a change as radical as quitting his former life probably seemed appealing.

Maybe if he didn’t pick something with such a notoriously huge requirement of time he would have been better off. Like hell, even just being straight unemployed for a year and doing literally nothing might have been better. As of right now, since he’s not planning on being a practicing psychologist, it all seems like an enormous waste.

That's pretty darned normal. If it gets bad enough we call it PTSD, otherwise is a quarter or midlife crisis.

Divorce is a death, or many deaths. It requires grieving and picking up the pieces of your life and putting them together to make a new life.

It's often unwise to make such dramatic changes during this time, but people do it anyway.

> It’s almost like the shock of the event kills your previous self.

This is a very profound statement and I think I may take it a bit further in a "ship of theseus" narrative:

Perhaps we all are literally different people from year to year, month to month, week to week, and we just happen to remember our former selves enough to keep the ship intact?

What if the trauma simply shocked us into forgetting or wanting to forget our recent past selves?

" Money is flowing all around us. You make money in proportion to how much you place yourself in the flow of value transfer." - This article

It's the Great Material Continuum! Ferengi saw the universe as having "millions of worlds, all with too much of one, and not enough of the other", with the Great Continuum flowing through them all like a mighty river, from have to want and back again. As such, it was the force that bound the universe together. To get everything you desire in life, you had to have your ship navigate the Continuum with entrepreneurial skill and grace. -- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Material_Continuu...

> I lost a large chunk in the 2008 market crash

Oof.

> ..if I had kept my capital and invested it in index funds, and continued to work, I would now have so much wealth that I would never have to work again.

I really think this is just a testament that you should hire an FA if you come into money and don’t know what you’re doing.

I think that's actually what he did, from what I got in another article, and the financial advisors he hired actually did stock picking and cost him more money than they made for him.

> I suspect that part of me places formal qualifications in the way of my success.

Haha, I know the issue.

I recognize myself in a lot of these lessons. Except the losing money part, I never had much to lose.

Where the idea came that anyone needs PhD in psychology to be motivational speaker? Many if not most successful ones don't even have basic degree.

People comparing themselves to others is what causes most of their misery but maybe people need to be miserable to elevate themselves higher (which on an individual scale might sucks but i bet it benefits society).

Really enjoyed reading your reflection, well written, engaging and great message. Thanks Dr Duncan.

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