A monk is meditating on a lake when a boat bumps into his…

He feels the irritation and anger building within him…

He opens his eyes to see an empty boat. His anger disappears, for you can’t be angry at an empty boat…

In life, you’re going to experience countless collisions…

The negative emotions that build are rarely from the collision itself, but from your perception of the negative intent behind it…

Your interpretation of the collision creates your own poison…

The Empty Boat Mindset is a reminder that most of the collisions in life are with an empty boat…

When you embrace it, you reassume control over your own boat…

Am I just getting angry at an empty boat?

@SahilBloom Indeed, the things we worry about that our outside our control can affect us badly or have no effect at all. And it’s all down to your own perceptions. How many times have we worried about things and more often than not, it was all for nothing. It’s ridiculous when you think

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@SahilBloom Very true. This is classic Stoic philosophy: "When you are distressed by an external things, it’s not the thing itself that troubles you, but only your judgment of it. And you can wipe this out at a moment's notice." - Marcus Aurelius

@SahilBloom In this part of the world, where I'm from. There is hardly an empty boat, someone is always behind the empty boat. Yeah, it's okay not to get angry at everything, but no boat is empty here.

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@SahilBloom Reminds me of a system design principle: graceful degradation. Instead of the whole system crashing under stress, it sheds non-essential tasks to protect the core function. Your reaction is the core function.

@SahilBloom Warning ‼️ bubble burst: I think this is true for many mundane situations but not for deliberate acts like say fractional banking (mouse click $) or central banking, heck, all banking and their enablers, our ruling class.

@SahilBloom you’re an empty boat too. thats the actual insight from that chuang tzu story.

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@SahilBloom Dumb parable. The monk should be furious at the a$$hole who didn’t tie up the boat properly. If he had, there wouldn’t have been a collision in the first place.

@SahilBloom Ifcyou take it to it's logical conclusion, you assume that everyone around you is an NPC. Life becomes a single player game.

@SahilBloom Neatly illustrated with pictures. This is very much helpful in having a calm and sound mind. Good one 👍

@SahilBloom Your thread is going viral! #TopUnroll https://threadreaderapp.com/th... 🙏🏼@PalveMantra for 🥇unroll

@SahilBloom Would be hilarious to hit someone yelling at you with 'calm down you empty boat'

@SahilBloom Long way of saying everybody is doing the best they can from their level of awareness

@SahilBloom Am i jist getting angry at an empty boat ? Absolutely not anymore👍

@SahilBloom Like Brownian motion these collisions are inevitable. Key is don’t let your mind make these ripples into tidal waves. Thanks for sharing Sahil.

@SahilBloom What if it’s waymo? /ducks

@SahilBloom In professional world, it may not work.

@SahilBloom I don’t have this opinion about Bill Gates

@SahilBloom Couldn't agree more. Mental models like this are game changers.

@SahilBloom Some people do intentionally and deliberately harm animals though, and buy and sell their corpses to put on their fridge and plate, no empty boats there, that’s intentional violence.

@SahilBloom this is the stuff that makes you Shail. more of this

@SahilBloom Nice. I am following you again. You were posting crap for a bit.

@SahilBloom I love this concept. It's originally from a chinese philosopher named Chuang Tzu I believe. But I got introduced to it for the first time from Seth Godin's "Purple Cow"!

@SahilBloom Looking forward to this. The Empty Boat Mindset is a game changer.