#3 - Sleep Paralysis

You open your eyes.

It's still dark. The light hasn't started peeping through your curtains yet.

You feel another presence in the room.

Someone is standing right over you.

You try to move your fingers.

You swear you feel someone else's fingers gripping your hand.

You try to turn to see who it is... but you can't move.

At the back of your mind is this intense fear. There's a shadowy figure standing over you (who's not here to cuddle) and you can't move.

But the rational part of you suspects that it's unlikely that if there was someone in the room and they wanted to harm you, then they probably wouldn't be holding your hand.

So you close your eyes.

You wait it out.

And a few seconds later it's over.

This was my experience this morning.

It freaked me out.

I've experienced sleep paralysis before, but none that I remember as vividly as this.

UpToDate classifies sleep paralysis as:

the complete inability to move for one or two minutes when awakening or when falling asleep. Episodes of sleep paralysis can be frightening because the immobility may be accompanied by hypnopompic hallucinations or a sensation of suffocation.

The hallucinations I felt were so real and I was so terrified.

And it was only when the sun rose that I finally felt safe.

I can now empathise a lot more with people who have psychotic disorders, like schizophrenia, and become quite anxious and agitated.

Their behaviour is usually coming from a place of fear, not as a flaw of character.

Isn't the brain (and the mind) just so fascinating?

Kajanan

Resource #1 - Tweet

If you've seen some of my recent blog posts, you'll know that money is something that I've been increasingly thinking about now that I'm heading towards the end of medical school and finally going to enter the workforce and earn an income.

It's interesting that most people would never think that they could reach the "lesser rich" stage, let alone any of the stages beyond that.

It's even frowned upon by society to desire having 'large' amounts of money.

But I think that's dumb.

Money is a tool and not using best utilising the available tools to your advantage is like choosing not to use your dominant arm just because you want an extra challenge.

So I've set two goals—a floor goal (the minimum amount I'd like to achieve) and a ceiling goal (the maximum amount I think is feasible)—for myself for 10 years from now. They are:

1. Floor goal (lower limit): I would like to at least be in the "lesser rich" group.
2. Ceiling goal (upper limit): I would love to be in the "comfortably rich" group.

(Note: I've multiplied these numbers by 1.5 to approximately convert from USD to AUD).

It's a bold proposition to think that I can go from around -$50K net worth to be worth millions in a decade. We'll just have to wait and see.

Where would you like to be, financially, in 5-10 years from now?

Resource #2 - YouTube video

TL;DR: An interesting talk by Gary Vaynerchuk about which platforms have the most underpriced attention (i.e. demand > supply) and right now he believes they are:

1. Facebook Fan Pages
2. YouTube shorts

He believes that TikTok & Instagram now have immense supply (supply > demand), which makes it harder to stand out.

Gary Vee is a titan of the media industry. If you're a content creator or business owner, you should be probably be focusing on these platforms.