Why Physics actually teaches us A LOT about life (and no, you don’t need any skills to understand the following)
I neglected Physics as a child simply because the teacher made it the most boring thing ever. I wasn’t good at it because nothing seemed to spark my curiosity — and we were talking about electrical currents a lot (excuse my little side joke here).
The more I travelled around the sun — the “older” I got in human terms — the more I got interested in Quantum Physics trying to really understand the nature of our human existence and how we as an observer have an influence on the things we observe — Einstein’s double slit experiment. For those of you who don’t know about it search “double slit experiment” on YouTube and you’ll be amazed.
Since Henry Fords assembly line we are conditioned to believe that we have to work hard and non-stop without any breaks or rest inbetween to produce a constant outcome.
The Formula back in the days was “that the harder you work — the further you go and the richer you get.”
There have been a lot of Entrepreneers (a mix between entrepreneur x pioneer), like Tim Ferris and his infamous book “the 4 hour week”, that have shown that working harder and longer doesn’t lead to any of the above. It’s the working smarter that gets us places.
Yes, I know you wished it was over but coming back to Physics — and you’ll see why I wrote the above — since we have been conditioned to believe that we have to work harder and operate on a constant level we choose the path of least resistance in any other area of our lives and get irritated when there are challenges to overcome.
We don’t like resistance, challenges, things that are annoying like obstacles being put in our way — the invoice we hoped never came, the flight that got delayed, the moment you sit in the airplane going form San Fran to NYC and realize you booked the AirBnb for the next day and realize you’re f*cked (true story happened to me and my sister a few days before christmans in 2012).
We’ve all been in situations we never wanted to be in and wanted to avoid them at all cost and found it very difficult to see the positive side of it. We just don’t like resistance.
But here’s the deal: when we overcome challenges and at first that overcoming of a mountain is super stressful, hard, annoying — all the feels we don’t want to feel — but this is the energy we need to actually go even faster.
There was this simple physical experiment — I didn’t find it on YouTube but I’ll do my best explaining it to you. Here the question for you: which one is faster? a ball going from one level to the lower level at constant decline or the ball going over ups and downs at the same length?
Guess what: the latter — Why? We don’t need to understand or have Physic skills to understand the following: when there is friction, tension, and all these various push & pulls — if your are a Physics Major please define what forces I mean — I stopped paying attention to the details in 9th grade — just give you so much speed that you overtake the ball that is just having an “easy life” without any friction or resistance.
It’s only through the friction & the challenges we face that we create speed.
The example of the 2 balls shows us that when the ball goes over climbing, then slowing down (in human terms — resting) and then climbing, slowing down it creates a speed that the other ball which is on a constant downhill won’t be able to create and thus, “loses” the race.
It’s not only the overcoming of obstacles that is key here but also the amount of slowing down & resting can create for us. Again: we have been taught to work work work — especially me having a German background — and never take things slow. (Also something I see in the Startup-Scene now — everyone thinks its hype to sleep no more and work until the eyes get red.)
In this day and age people do marathons every day 24/7 without thinking about being like the fastest marathon runner of all time, Eliud Kipchoge. Eliud is training like all Athletes. He trains super hard and then rests heavily between this trainings.
Athletes never go fast fast fast fast, they go: fast relax fast relax.
And trust me I’ve seen Athletes on my study abroad at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado that rested A LOT like A LOT and thats why they where so good at Football, etc.
We have been so conditioned to avoid the hardest part and the relax part and to just be a constant producer of whatever that is we are producing, mentally creating that
We need to be reminded to take it slow some days and to relax — especially now that Winter is around the corner and the days are getting shorter — just letting the body & mind recover from our “marathon training”. With rest & resistance we are going so much faster into our desired destination anyways.
Isn’t it funny that Physics gets so exciting when it explains real world phenomas? — if anything, I hope this is a wink to all the teachers out there to making these topics we all hated more interesting and I know you always thought — as I did multiple times — “What the hell do I need this for?” — well life — doesn’t get more exciting.
x Berenice
