Arjun Badola

Retaliation begets more retaliation

Market is at all time high and I am here sitting with more than 70% cash.

What should I do? Write to relax your mind.

I was just surfing through Twitter and came across this tweet.

Shane Parrish

The mental model: “retaliation begets more retaliation” is very helpful in your life.

World is full of dumb-lazy-Negative-sadist people (Too pessimistic?)

One has to protect their mental peace from such people out there.

Let me share a wonderful thing which I read in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari…

The author had written that one should treat their mind as a garden of flowers and if anyone tries to litter it you must stand at the gate of it to guard!

“retaliation begets more retaliation” mental model can help you do that.

I personally try to avoid a lot of arguments/discussions/talks where I know that the other person is highly biased or does not respect what others have to say.

The reason being that to convince someone about anything it requires time and energy. Plus, it can many times lead to destroying your mental peace.

You can only convince a person who is willing to get convinced.

But if you get into a conversation with a person who is very rigid to their views and ignores the counter part of it, well then walk away.

Be careful, don’t just go out there and start avoiding points from people whom you think are highly biased or whatever.

Biases can never be avoided only minimized till a certain limit. This means while making this decision of avoiding people your decision will also be biased.

So, there is a very thin line in making that call. To which you won’t find the answer in this essay. (Time will provide you the answer)

Coming back to the quote “retaliation begets more retaliation”.

One advise I would like to give is that always think before retaliating.

Here is checklist on when to retaliate:

  1. Will your counter argument help that person to Meta-Update (Update his knowledge)?
  2. Do you consider yourself knowledgeable enough in that area of field?
  3. Have you verified your information?
  4. Would your argument harm your relationship? (It is sometimes okay to say that someone looks beautiful to make them feel good.)
  5. Do you have the ability to take criticism if you are wrong after making the counter point?

If answer to the above questions is yes then I would retaliate.

Checklist on when not to retaliate:

  1. You or other party is not in a good mood
  2. Your information is going to add no value
  3. When you don’t have time
  4. Explanation requires basic understanding of other concepts
  5. Your Boss?

Inshort

Always give priority to your mental peace. Soon you would realize that pointing out someone, especially in public, won’t make you a hero. Rather, it would destroy your relation with that person and eat up your time and energy.