![[chris-barber.png|80]] I'm Chris, living in San Diego, from New Zealand, Australia, Stanford, and Santa Monica. Focuses: AI speculation, AI preparation, emotional regulation. > ![[matt-mochary.png|40]] "Chris is one of my favorite humans on the planet. Smart, doer and fun. But of course my view is very biased. I owe my entire coaching career to him, as he was the very first person to ask me to coach!" – Matt Mochary, coached the CEOs at Coinbase, Notion, Reddit, and managing partners at Benchmark, Sequoia > ![[griffin-choe.png|40]] "Chris and the thinkers he recommends have had an enormous positive impact on my life" – Griffin Choe, leading AI security efforts at Figma > ![[josh-singer.png|40]] "I have met none like him. I regularly think "what would Chris Barber do"" – Josh Singer, Founder of Eigen > ![[rafael-cosman.png|40]] "I've known Chris Barber for around a decade now and he is a great guy and someone that we are honored to have as an angel investor. Would definitely recommend working with him if you have the chance!" – Rafael Cosman, Founder of Protogon Research ### Emotional Regulation My younger self wanted to know how to maximize peace and happiness, I think after years of experimentation I've made a pretty good answer for this. I'm drafting a small video guide with real video examples from zoom workshops I've done. I made a tool called resonance that helps you make people feel seen and emotionally regulated. > ![[matt-mochary.png|40]] "If you want to be in the top 1% of emotional intelligence you need to master this skill" – Matt Mochary, coached the CEOs at Coinbase, Reddit, Notion, and Managing Partners at Sequoia and Benchmark > ![[griffin-choe.png|40]] "it's been helpful for feeling more peaceful about work and future trajectory, in relationship with my girlfriend, and in relationship with parents" – Griffin Choe > "I just textbook resonated and it worked so well" – my sister > ![[josh-singer.png|40]] "I find it most useful in helping people deal with their raw emotions" – Josh Singer > "helpful before heightened situations like an exam, a presentation" – Ben Pan > ![[alton-sun.png|40]] "I'm regularly complimented on it and it has embedded itself into my language" – Alton Sun > "you taught me resonance, which is honestly life changing, as I've said to you many times" – Ben Pan > ![[george-zeng.png|40]] "for me (1) it's wanting to make my partner feel emotionally validated. maybe a distant (2) helping me build trust and resonance in professional relationships" – George Zeng > "this shit works bro" – Justin Yang > ![[richard-ngo.png|40]] "This shit is magic" – Richard Ngo > ![[herrick-fang.png|40]] it's helped with "how to make myself feel better about which choices i wanna take" and "has helped me identify if i actually do/do not want to do something" – Herrick Fang > ![[josh-singer.png|40]] "I want more. I want more bi-directional rez. We'll be your guinea pigs." > "I think it would drastically change the next year of our business." > – Josh Singer > "when people around me are not doing so hot i can help them more" – Justin Yang > ![[josh-singer.png|40]] "I use it 70% with partner, cofounder 5%, team members 20%, others 5%" – Josh Singer > "for me it's about unsticking emotions for myself and my friends when I am frustrated or not sure what to do about something" > "also just getting closer to my friends by being more supportive and help them feel their way through dilemmas or frustration too" > – my brother > "if you're around the bay or SF anytime soon for resonance workshop, I'd love to be a part of that. You know, I think it's one of the most useful skills I've ever learned. And I think it'll just get better and better. I want to keep cultivating it until it becomes a superpower, and not just for my career, but also for friends and romantic relationships, friendships." – Ben Pan > ![[nina-barber.png|40]] "For a decade I was looking for the thing that would bridge that gap between self awareness and actually feeling different, and I feel like IFS (internal family systems) and other stuff fell short, I understood the triggers but they didn't go away. Whereas resonance once I was aware and had practiced a bunch was clear it could be the path to reducing a lot of triggers" > "For parenting I didn't desperately need a tool but I see now how there's a huge gap if you don't have resonance. I think about all the ways we connect with the kids because of resonance. The foundation of love and respect and connection because of resonance" > "I use resonance probably a hundred times a day a few seconds each time in micro moments with myself and you and the kids" > – my wife Nina I care about this because I think **the more people in the world that are excellent at making people feel seen and emotionally regulated, the more fun and cool the world is**. ### Decision Making My younger self wanted to know how to minimize regret and maximize success and make great decisions. I think I've made a pretty good answer for this (It's mostly a variant on "get really good at emotional regulation"). > "I think that's one of the most life changing things I've learned, how to reach peaceful preference between your subconscious and conscious mind" > "It's just been so powerful." > "I used to be someone who thinks a lot about everything. I'm very cerebral, very analytical." > "It's helped me find opportunities that other people aren't working on, that actually are very important to work on." > – Ben Pan, student at Stanford University > ![[maile-minardi.png|40]] "Peaceful Preferences are now my roadmap for all parts of my day here are a few small examples that FELT SO GOOD to choose" – Maile Minardi, Founder of Marketing Consultancy ### Parenting Before having kids I hoped to have a more enjoyable and connected and fulfilling experience of parenting than some of the other parents I see and hear talking about it. We have two kids so far; our oldest is 3.5. Our methods feel like magic. The methods are mostly "get good at helping your kids with emotional regulation". >![[nina-barber.png|40]] "I wish wish wish every parent knew this stuff" – Nina Barber, my wife and co-founder of the executive coaching marketplace I've written a few things on parenting for close friends, like 1) a table of the different decisions we made for our first kid, how we changed those for our second kid, and what we'd do for future kids and 2) a video guide demonstrating some of our parenting methods with real in situ videos. ### How To Prepare For AI You may want to understand what's coming in the next few years, what to be worried about (and not), and how to prepare/thrive. I'm working on this, here are some quotes from my friends who've seen draft versions. >![[josh-singer.png|40]] "The product-market fit for this will be very high" – Josh Singer, Founder of LLM consultancy >![[rick-barber.png|40]] "This is perfect, this is it, this is the way ... I want to read what you've got already" – Rick Barber (no relation!), CTO of AI-native marketing firm >![[griffin-choe.png|40]] "That's sick, honestly ... I immediately want to click in" – Griffin Choe, Leading AI Security Efforts at Figma Here's a draft curation of my AI roundups and preparation interviews so far: [[AI Prep Notes]] ### Peace, Success and Happiness My younger self wanted peace, success, and happiness. This is what I'd say to my younger self about those topics: > ![[chris-barber.png|40]] "You're looking for regret minimization, peace/happiness maximization, and success. You'll get that if you get really good at helping the people you care about feel seen and emotionally regulated. Including yourself. This skill will enable you to make better decisions – emotions are information. It'll take a year to get good and it'll take several years to build the 'infrastructure' of a life from these peaceful and emotionally informed choices. After a year or two, it'll clearly feel like "the answer". Financial independence is a big piece of the answer too, but that's already obvious. Emotional regulation is a skill, it's learnable and teachable, and it's the single skill that would've had the biggest positive impact to learn earlier. You can still get infinitely better at emotional regulation - there's no obvious limit and no obvious point of non-diminishing returns." – Me, what I'd say to my younger self ### About and Links I'm effectively a semi-retired entrepreneur/researcher. I also co-founded an executive coaching marketplace for startups (let me know if you're a founder of a seed-series C startup and need help finding an executive coach); founded a place for engineers to discover good startups to join (let me know if you need help deciding between startup job offers); and have previously written deep dives into GPU supply, how to get into Stanford, and other topics. Email: [email protected] On [Twitter/X](https://x.com/chrisbarber) I have recently started talking about AI speculation, AI preparation & emotional regulation.