Hey I'm Rohan! Thanks for reading. Thursday Thoughts is a weekly newsletter where I share one thought I’ve been pondering during the week and then recommend 4 other random finds from across the internet. Not yet subscribed? Do so here.

In this week’s issue we will cover:

• Holistic Gratitude

• Imaginary Enemies by Mark Metry

• We Begin Our Lives as Growth Stocks, But End Our Lives As Value Stocks by Nick Maggiulli

• The Art of Catching Greenlights with Matthew McConaughey

• A quote from JFK

Holistic Gratitude

First of all Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating in the States!

This Thanksgiving probably looks a lot different from what we are all used to with fewer people around the table due to social distancing guidelines. The country has gone through a lot this year: a pandemic, a contested election, civil unrest, among many other events. Even with all of these events, Thanksgiving comes around the same time as a reminder that we all still have things to be thankful for.

While the word gratitude almost seems like a cliché these days with the caricature of wellness gurus and Instagram influencers pushing gratitude journals, there’s a reason people actually swear by it. Gratitude works. However, it’s not enough to be grateful when things are going good, its also important to be grateful holistically - for the good and the bad.

Speaking from a personal experience, last year I went through a lot of struggles with figuring out what I really wanted to do - a quarter life crisis if you will. I was struggling with not living up to my expectations in various fields of my life and at the time I couldn’t really see past my struggles. In the struggle I never imagined that the trials and tribulations could lead to something useful. It’s easy to not be able to find meaning or be grateful for the struggle when you’re in the struggle.

It’s easy to be thankful or grateful when things are going well. It’s much harder to do so when things are going bad. However, looking back at last year now, I know that the struggles I went through happened for a reason and taught me some valuable lessons. That’s what all of us need to keep in mind during these hard times.

This is not to say its easy though. Especially over the last few weeks my family has had to deal with the death of a lot of our elder members. There is a lot of pain this Thanksgiving and right now it can seem like there’s no sense in being grateful for anything. However, these are the times where we must really count our blessings for the things that we might take for granted right now.

This is a hard moment for us all, but it also constitutes a test. We need to “look for the good within the bad” as the Stoics would say. Will we all be able to?

Imaginary Enemies

I loved this post from Mark Metry over the last week:

In reality, nobody is actually fixated on your every move and keeping tally of what you are doing. This is a remaining byproduct from when we as humans were living in tribes and our very life depended on our social standing among our fellow members. Today however, nobody cares about what you do, so you shouldn't let that false sentiment limit you in any way.

We Begin Our Lives as Growth Stocks, But End Our Lives As Value Stocks

I came across this really interesting article by Nick Maggiulli a couple of days ago about how as people age, we start to think differently about our lives and our future prospects. While we are young, we set extremely lofty expectations that we adjust as we grow older, partially because we sometimes make mistakes in pursuit of that goal. The article starts out with Nick dissecting the reasons of his failure to accumulate his goal of $500,000 before the age of 30, but through that dissection, he imparts some timeless wisdom about growing up and life itself.

The Art of Catching Greenlights with Matthew McConaughey

I'm going to be honest, I judged Matthew McConaughey by his cover. The southern Texan drawl and his less serious roles (think Wolf of Wall Street and 2019 seminal hit The Beach Bum), led me to underestimate him to a large extent. When I saw that he released a memoir, Greenlights, I chuckled and chocked it up to a money grab by an actor who really had nothing to teach us. However, I decided to give his interview on the Tim Ferris Show a go to entertain myself for a few minutes. I expected it to be entertaining but did not in the least expect to come out thinking the world of Matthew McConaughey. But I did. McConaughey is actually surprisingly wise - a distributer of "whiskey wisdom" as Joe Rogan calls it. I actually was very surprised at the things that I learnt about him and was hanging on the every word of his stories. Would really recommend giving this a listen:

Quote of The Week

That’s all for this week. Please let me know your feedback on how to improve this newsletter. Would love to chat with you to make sure that each issue is providing you value going forward. If this is your first time reading and you liked it consider subscribing! Until next week - stay safe!