Beyond happiness, look to the neutral state

Part 2 of 2 – reflections and reminders from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

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Last week, I started to share my reflections on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. As a quick recap, here are the tidbits that resonated the most with me on defining happiness:

• Happiness can be practiced

• Happiness can be defined by what it isn’t – it’s eliminating the sense of something missing from your life, removing suffering and desire, not thinking about the future or the past, and embracing the present moment and reality

• Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want

• The trifecta to pursue is health, money, and time

• Eliminate as many “shoulds” from life as possible

Photo by D Jonez on Unsplash

Without further ado, let’s jump into part 2. As Naval gets into dissecting happiness, he also touches on how important it is to surround ourselves with the right people.

There’s the “five chimps theory” where you can predict a chimp’s behavior by the five chimps it hangs out with the most. I think that applies to humans as well. Maybe it’s politically incorrect to say you should choose your friends very wisely. But you shouldn’t choose them haphazardly based on who you live next to or who you happen to work with. The people who are the most happy and optimistic choose the right five chimps.

I reflected on the people with whom I interact the most, trying to understand how they impact me. Pretty quickly, I could see a lot of overlapping attitudes and approaches, as well as highly aligned values. Within the group of my chimps, we share certain beliefs about the world around us, our responsibilities to the world at large, what we find satisfying in life, and how we ought to treat others. There is a fascinating question of whether this creates an (unhealthy) echo chamber effect, or if it’s a chicken-and-egg problem, where we actually go out of our way to create an echo chamber to make us more “happy and optimistic.”

At any rate, optimism isn’t infinite. There are always going to be times when things go poorly, or at minimum, not the way I’d like. In those moments, Naval recommends:

• Effortlessly interpreting [the outcome] in a way that doesn’t break my innate peace

• Understanding that life is just the way it is: I have no cause to be happy or unhappy

• Giving up on the idea of problems: things are only problems if we choose to see them that way

I’ve paraphrased these a bit for my own understanding, but I think broadly he is describing the concept of neutrality, on which he further expands:

The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgments. To a tree, there is no concept of right or wrong, good or bad. You’re born, you have a whole set of sensory experiences and stimulations (lights, colors, and sounds), and then you die. How you choose to interpret them is up to you—you have that choice.

Ultimately, the quote that really got me thinking was this:

“The neutral state is one of perfection.”

I have spent a lot of time pondering this statement. It made me think of something my mom told me when my grandma passed away (it was also the day after I placed first at DECA Internationals): The high moments in life only feel so great because they exist in contrast to the low moments. We need highs and lows to feel meaning.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that in addition, between the highs and lows, we need many moments of neutrality. Without the quiet, mundane moments, there’s no time or space to reset and to rebuild my energy.

Maybe the key is not to always chase happiness, but instead to focus on achieving and maintaining neutrality.

I know that I am very prone to angst in moments of neutrality. In my adult life, in particular, I’ve struggled to sit and feel content with the quiet seasons. There are many chapters where I find myself with a bit more free time and a bit more mental space outside of work, and as soon as that happens, my mind begins to wander. Soon, instead of basking in the calm and peace, I’m creating angst for myself. I’m questioning what I’m doing and often trying to provoke reactions or create ripples from the world around me.

While I’ve been able to grow a set of muscles that help me pursue happiness – oftentimes through practicing gratitude – I haven’t invested nearly the same in the tools to help me see the perfection that exists in the neutral state.

So, that’s what I’m focused on for myself next.

If you think you’ve been able to crack this, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I really, really appreciate hearing from readers when topics resonate – just hit reply on the email or leave a comment below ⬇️