Mental Health is Mental Toughness

Plus: TikTok Legislation and Akira Toriyama

Howdy,

In this edition, I write a tangent based on what a Tech CEO said this week, get political and share my thoughts on the current TikTok bill in the U.S Congress, and pay tribute to the creator of one of my favorite shows of all time.

Reading Time: 9 minutes, or half the time it takes you to find something to watch on Netflix.

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Pain and Suffering

Jensen Huang

“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering”

These words from Nvidia Founder/CEO Jensen Huang made waves across the Internet this week. Jensen has become a popular figure in tech. The guy is earnest in interviews, wears cool leather jackets, and his leadership has propelled Nvidia to “trillion dollar company” status.

So what’s the context? This quote doesn’t come from a dramatic sword fight between him and the CEO of Intel.¹ Huang was recently at a summit in Stanford University and was asked for his advice to budding entrepreneurs.

This was his answer:

“One of my great advantages is I have very low expectations, and I mean that. Most of the Stanford graduates have very high expectations…You’re surrounded by other kids that are just incredible. You should have very high, you naturally have very high expectations.

People with very high expectations have very low resilience. And, unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.

I use the word, the phrase, ‘pain and suffering’ inside our company with great glee, and I mean that…I mean that in a happy way, because you want to train, you want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness out of them. And greatness is not intelligence, greatness comes from character, and character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered…

I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.”

This seemed to resonate with many across the tech industry. Though it also led to a bunch of people misunderstanding Jensen’s words and celebrating the return of hustle culture, or saying things along the lines of “this is why today’s youth is so weak!” ²

One reaction in particular that caught my eye was this one.

The guy behind this tweet actually has a more nuanced take (once you read the comments). But, of course, his message was also misunderstood by others.

Mental health and mental toughness are not binary choices. Mental health IS mental toughness.

Good mental health is about understanding your locus of control, developing emotional resilience, and an awareness for your emotional states, traumas, and triggers.

If you are strong in the areas above, by default you are mentally tough. You will be more resilient, better able to assess situations without obsessing about other people’s opinions or catastrophizing. When the worst case scenarios do happen, you’ll be in a better position to regulate yourself back to a state where you are not suffering in rumination.

Which brings me to the other big misunderstanding that this quote has caused. Pain and suffering are useful in building resilience. Resilience is good—it gives you the stamina to do really hard things. And if you are doing hard things because it’s your purpose, then you are living a life aligned with your values (which is the ideal). However, this doesn’t give people carte blanché to be assholes and pass that off as kindness.

Just imagine these scenarios:

“Oh yea, I blocked your promotion, but that’s because I think you could really learn from the pain of disappointment. You are welcome.”

“I’m breaking up with you. I know this is painful. But this pain will be good for you. Trust me.”

“I’m sorry this concert is sold out. Enjoy the healthy, bitter taste of disappointment.”³

We should endeavor to minimize the pain and suffering we bring to ourselves and others. Treating ourselves and others with kindness and grace. Managing our expectations and our inner monologue⁴ so that we are not ruminating and suffering needlessly.

And we need to minimize pain and suffering because, guess what? Pain and suffering will always exist. If you are doing hard, worthwhile things, pain and suffering will be abundant. High risk, high reward.

In life’s marathon, you will encounter plenty of rocks in our path, each of them gleefully rubbing their tiny rocky hands in anticipation to taking out your ankles. The path will be rocky, so don’t add rocks to your shoes. Life is already hard enough as it is.

I wish you ample doses of pain and suffering, and the wisdom to know the difference between suffering from healthy pursuits versus becoming the architect of your misery.

P.S: The Buddha’s Parable of the second arrow is a perfect read for understanding the different types of suffering.

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TikTok Legislation

Image generated using Dall-E

Unless you are an ostrich, you may have heard that the United States Congress is rapidly moving towards “banning TikTok.” This bipartisan effort (who knew they could still work together), seeks to put into law the following (brought to you by ChatGPT)⁵:

The proposed bill, H.R. 7521, targets tech companies operating apps like TikTok in the U.S. that are under foreign adversary control, including nations like Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. It prohibits these companies from distributing, maintaining, or updating such applications within the U.S. without divesting from foreign control.

To continue operations, these entities must undergo a qualified divestiture, removing foreign influence as determined by the President. The bill mandates data portability for users and establishes penalties for non-compliance.

This legislation aims to safeguard national security by limiting foreign adversaries' influence on U.S. digital spaces.

I have a “spectrum of patience” for different concerns around this bill:

- I have no patience for people who refuse to accept that China is a foreign adversary (I would love to be frenemies, but it’s just not in the cards), or those who think that the Chinese Communist Party has never used TikTok to actively harm the United States government and/or citizens.

-I have a little patience for people who say “so we are banning TikTok but we can’t ban assault rifles?” Like yes, I would love that as well, but this is the same type of perfectionist politics that shames politicians for trying to get anything done. TikTok is a genuine threat. Is it the most important thing? No. We cannot let perfect be the enemy of good, particularly with a historically unproductive congress.

- I have more patience for people who worry about the impact this legislation is going to have on creators and small business owners—despite the fact that TikTok is also not very friendly to cross-platforming or promoting commerce outside of the app.

- I have a lot more patience for those who fear that the speed by which this bill is being passed has the same stinky smell of The Patriot Act⁶—or reek of executive overreach. I also think that any legislation which would have impact nearly 150 million users and has second/third order effects on personal liberties and businesses should probably be debated more robustly (even if the ability of having productive discourse on this topic is lower than the chances of me getting married this year).

So my current position is that something has to be done in regards to TikTok, but that allowing the President/Executive branch to have main say on which companies they deem to be controlled by foreign adversaries should have more checks and balances that involve other branches of government.

I’m also equally open to legislation that provides more transparency as to how the US uses data from US-based social media sites. I do not think American social networks are without fault or reproach, but I do think that TikTok and China is a more urgent threat.

So anyways, get ready to re-open your Myspace account, I guess.

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Arigato, Toriyama-sama!

Akira Toriyama (left) and illustration by comic artist Shituzi (right)

Dragon Ball founder Akira Toriyama passed away on March 8th at age 68.

Whenever someone I know dies, I feel a twinge of sadness mixed with gratitude. Death is a reminder of how finite and precious life is.

I never met Akira Toriyama, but his death hit me harder than I expected.

Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga and anime was one of my favorite shows growing up. Despite my Catholic school teacher’s warnings that the show was “satanic,” I loved getting home from school, turning on the TV and watching Goku and friends look for the dragon balls, fight (a lot), and enrapture me in heroic plot lines.

I cried when Frieza killed Krillin. I remember my awe when Goku became a Super Saiyan for the first time. I watched with the naïveté of a child as Perfect Cell seemed like the one opponent to finally beat our heroes.

My Roman Empire is Dragon Ball/anime references. There is not a week that goes by that I don’t think about Dragon Ball—even if it’s just a second. At this point, I’m in a 1,000+ week streak of Dragon Ball in my mind. It doesn’t just live on my head rent-free, it’s an esteemed guest.⁷

And I’m not alone. Dragon Ball is a huge phenomenon (especially outside of the US). I read somewhere that after Jesus, the second most identifiable character in Latin America is Goku. They are probably right. I mean, cities in Mexico were hosting episode live streams that were attended by thousands of people. Globally, the Dragon Ball franchise has brought in 23 billion in revenue since it was created in 1984. It’s sold over 260 million copies of its manga. Dragon Ball Z is still one of the most Googled, watched, and downloaded TV shows in the world despite ending over 20 years ago.

Toriyama’s impact in creating a worldwide cultural juggernaut will be felt for generations, as people like me, will teach their children to train hard, elevate their ki, and that the key for a good kamekameha is intensity and focus.

Rest in piece Toriyama-sama.

We’ll close today’s Tangent with the iconic Dragon Ball Z opening (in Spanish of course).

Until next time!

1. But I’d watch that.

2. Like this tweet, or this tweet, or this one

3. Well, fuck you too Ticketmaster.

4. Apparently like 30% to 50% of you don’t have an inner monologue, so one less thing to manage. Go you.

5. I wrote a summary and then asked ChatGPT if it was accurate and it was like “Hahaha no, you moron. Here let me help you.” So that’s why I added it.

6. The Patriot Act was passed in 45 days (Source: ACLU).

7. Probably shouldn’t bring this up in a first date.