How to Master the Invisible Hand That Shapes Our Lives

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1. Intro

Here’s a good analogy for the invisible hand of our self-improvement: we all have a tendency to be attracted to what’s easy, challenging and painful. We do this because the brain has evolved to solve problems through the use of positive feedback mechanisms such as goal setting. Once you set goals, you’re constantly achieving them and getting more in return, which fuels your drive for more.

In other words, when we look at someone who is quite successful in some field like football or accounting, it’s not that they are special; they just had an easier path to success than most of the people in those fields. They had a hard path along with all the other people who were just as good (or better) than they were.

And so we tend to try harder and be better than everyone else at something because it makes us feel powerful and good about ourselves. It makes us feel like we are doing something right or deserving. It makes us feel like we are making a difference in the world or helping people out or leading by example or being part of something bigger than ourselves.

However, if we are honest about it, there is actually very little difference between most people who are successful in any field and those who aren’t successful at all. If you look at their estimated net worth (i.e., without debt), their annual income (i.e., without any investments), their education (i.e., without any college), and their years of experience (i.e., without any formal training), there really isn’t much difference at all between them and you or me as far as what field they happen to be skilled in that day; it even varies according to how many hours they put into learning new things every day vs how many hours others do so at work (and vice versa).

So why do we care if Robert Wadlow was ‘special?’ Because he was born with a short stature and weight that weren’t typical for his race and sex — especially considering his profession — which led him to be labeled as “short” or “small” even when he was growing up with normal-sized siblings in rural Tennessee back then when everyone else there was tall enough to reach the ceiling over their heads!

2. Robert Wadlow’s Normal Weight and Height

Robert Wadlow was born in 1918, when the average American boy was about 19.4 inches (about 50 cm) tall and weighed about 12.5 lbs (6.8 kg).

Two years later, the average height of American girls had risen to 20.1 inches (about 53 cm) and the average girl weighed about 13.8 lbs (7 kg).

The most striking difference between the two groups is that girls then were a little more muscular than boys. Girls’ muscles grew faster than boys’ muscles, which led to a greater proportion of girls at a young age who were considered “healthy” and therefore physically attractive.

This phenomenon was so well-known that it became known as “Robert’s Rule of 15”. The rule says that any girl who starts out looking like an average boy by age 15 will be considered similar to him by age 16 or older, and is therefore more likely to become an adult looking like such a boy than a girl who starts out looking like an average girl but becomes less muscular as she ages. It’s also amazing how much this rule affects our perceptions of ordinary people: for example, a woman at age 45 is not likely to look like a girl at age 15 any more than she looks like one now – but she might be considered friendly and trustworthy by her teenage daughter!

That said, this rule has been shown to have its limits: it doesn’t explain why women in their late 20s are more likely to appear different from their teenage selves than men in their late 20s because they’re just starting out with menopause or other factors related to aging; nor does it explain why some women are considered attractive at very early ages because they’re genetically flat-chested even as teenagers; nor does it help explain why some women are considered attractive while they’re extremely short compared to other women of the same height; nor does it help explain why some women are generally taller than men on average; but I’ll get back to those questions shortly!

3. Robert Wadlow’s Birth Defects

Robert Wadlow is the most inspiring example of how a single gene or mutation can have tremendous impact on a person’s life. A story that is both inspiring and often terrifying:

During World War II, the Stukas, a type of German dive-bomber, came to bomb American cities. The bombs were dropped in such numbers that they were known as “Little Dinks,” because their drop could only be measured in inches. In the United States, this type of flying debris was referred to as “Little Dinks.”

Robert Wadlow, who was born with diabetes at age two and later had his legs amputated at age five after he fell from a tree, was said to have been an unusually lucky kid. His father spent two hours trying to teach him how to walk and his mother said she never knew what he did for fun; he played baseball, basketball and football all through childhood. But when Robert was 10, he was diagnosed with scarlet fever; then left home for several years while doctors tried all sorts of remedies—all with limited success. After returning home at age 15, Robert’s father enrolled him in school and taught him basic arithmetic skills that would later serve him well as an adult entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.

But not everyone has been so fortunate. Back in 1918, medical experts had no idea why Robert’s bones were so fragile—but it turned out it had everything to do with his genes. His mutant allele (which also caused other genetic abnormalities) interfered with the normal functioning of a protein called osteocalcin that normally helps maintain strong bones by protecting them from bone resorption syndrome (BRS), which causes brittle bones and eventually leads to fractures (and you may have heard about BRS if you lived through World War II).

As a result of Robert’s gene mutation, scientists discovered that his skeleton was more sensitive than those of older people—and this affected what kind of food he could eat without being harmed by it (more about this later). So little Robert ate whatever he wanted without any ill effects whatsoever until his teenage years when he developed high blood pressure from eating too many foods processed from animal sources like meat or milk (and we hope we’ve explained exactly why these are bad for us). Ever since then things went downhill; today’s little man eats refined foods whose low nutritional value makes them hard on our bodies while they’re still sitting there at the store where you bought them!

But now

4. Robert Wadlow’s Growth Patterns

The great thing about learning how to see patterns in a data set is that it forces you to take a much deeper look at your own data. When you learn to see many different kinds of patterns in your data, it allows you to tap into some new and unexpected sources of power.

The most famous example of this is the famous butterfly effect (though there are many others). A butterfly flapping its wings on a windy day in the middle of summer in one corner of the world might cause an earthquake in another corner. This has happened before. But imagine if you could observe enough butterflies and follow their flight paths to see what happens with tectonic plates over centuries or millennia.

In our lives, as we move around and interact with other people, we can observe many different kinds of patterns and patterns can emerge which we can’t quite make sense of at first — until we have enough data to start seeing them clearly.

You could say that this is one reason why there is so much political craziness: people are so frustrated by the broken system, they often start thinking outside the box. They think up solutions that don’t seem politically viable but they do work — they just haven’t been fully understood yet.

5. Robert Wadlow’s Death

Robert Wadlow was born on February 22, 1918 in New York City. The name Robert has a very long history and is derived from the German language name Rubezahl (the number seven). In English, we say “seven” instead of “six”, yet both are pronounced as “Rubezahl”.

When I was born in 1996, I was named Robert. This is a very popular name in the UK and Ireland (my father is from Northern Ireland) and if you add the accent to the traditional pronunciation of “Bob” (as in “Bobbie” or “Bobbie-dee”), you get Robert Wadlow.

Robert Wadlow lived a life that many people would consider unusual: he was short at birth but grew in stature throughout his childhood. He stood at just 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) tall at age 10 and as an adult he was 6 feet 0 inches tall or 1.65 m. By his death on January 3, 2016 at age 96, he had grown to be 6 feet 8 inches tall or 2 metres tall. We are probably all familiar with the story of the man who walks with a cane — this story goes somewhat deeper than most people know:

In 1872, Albert Wilkinson made new discoveries about mankind’s height – and found that there were some simple reasons why we have such remarkable differences based on our height:

The first discovery came to Albert Wilkinson when he observed that children did not grow as tall as their parents; they did not reach their full adult height until they reached puberty – they then went into rapid growth spurts which continued until their physical development reached its peak when they were approximately 25 years old . . . And so it was with children aged 10 to 25 who lived for ten years or so after reaching puberty before reaching adulthood… But Wilkinson did not stop there; his next discoveries were even more significant… He worked out how certain chemicals affected human height; these chemicals include iodine, guanine, guanine derivatives such as guanine methylsulfonate [which] can be extracted from various foods including grain products such as bread and cereal grains such as cornmeal… When these chemicals are present in sufficient quantity over a long period of time this leads to an increase in human height growth rates… Finally Edward Jenner discovered that smallpox immunisation produced side effects which lead some people to develop abnormally big heads

6. Conclusion

We have all lied to ourselves at one time or another. And we’ve all come to regret it. But what makes for a unique, uncomfortable experience for most of us is when we lie to ourselves about something we know perfectly well does not matter and is not true.

We are constantly telling ourselves one thing and doing something completely different. We lie to ourselves about why money is important, but we also lie to ourselves that saving money is somehow not worth it (because of what we want it for). We lie to ourselves that if our products don’t make money, they won’t be successful, but also lie about the reasons why they aren’t financially successful (and this is often the crux of their sales efforts). They may play on our self-preservation instincts or give up the ghost before we have a chance to find out exactly why they aren’t succeeding on their own terms.

What I hope this post can help you with are some ways of thinking through your own lies so you can spot them and take corrective action before they lead you down the wrong path. As a startup founder, you are going to have tons of opportunities to deal with lies in your life: You may have created a product which needs marketing, but nobody seems interested in hearing about it; or you may have an idea that everyone thinks is great but nobody has even heard of. But if you find yourself lying about things that matter (or even things which do matter), then this post will help motivate you towards self-awareness and avoid falling into these traps yourself.