I am the only obstacle to my happiness
Part 1 of 2 – reflections and reminders from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please hit the ❤️ or leave a comment! Engagement from my readers feeds my soul and the algorithm, and who doesn’t love getting two birds with one stone? (Also birds are cool and we shouldn’t throw stones at them – just figurative!)
This is part 1 of 2 of my reflections on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. If you aren’t already subscribed, sign up now so you’ll get part 2 of 2 in your inbox!
Can you remember the first time you stopped to ask yourself if you were happy? For me, this goes back to middle school. I remember the question of happiness being intertwined with trying to understand my life purpose. Now, as I reflect on the sorts of feelings I felt and the trains of thought I explored, I see some flaws in how I was approaching the topic:
I did not yet understand that there is a huge area between happiness and sadness (or other negative emotions) that can be described as apathy or neutrality
I equated being happy with fulfilling my life purpose, when in reality this is far from accurate
I won’t get too much into life purpose in today’s newsletter, as I want to focus on happiness… But I sense that life purpose will come back as a future topic.
Before we dive in too far, I want to start with what happiness means to me (at least as of today).
Happiness is a feeling of absolute fullness and contentedness. It’s when I look around and I simply know that there’s no place I’d rather be in that moment.
I recently started to read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and immediately knew I wanted to share some of his advice on my newsletter. Here are some excerpts from a few different sections of the almanack on how he defines happiness:
Peace
When you remove the sense of something missing from your life
Not suffering, not desiring
Not thinking too much about the future or the past
Embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is
Naval talks about happiness as something that can be practiced, which resonated deeply. For me, happiness comes more easily with gratitude. I’ve made a conscientious effort to practice gratitude in my daily life with increasing frequency over the years, which I believe has made me happier.
Naval further contextualizes happiness by juxtaposing it with unhappiness:
“Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”
As I turned this sentence over and over, I asked myself, what is it that I want right now that I do not have? I knew my answers to this question right away, and immediately followed up by asking, “Am I doing all that’s within my power to work towards what I want?” I believe that if the answer is yes, then this unhappiness contract should be voided – I have no reason to be unhappy because I am working towards what I want.
As Naval gets more tactical with his wisdom, he introduces a critical concept:
When you’re young, you have time. You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health.
So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once.
This is a concept that I’ve known about for a while – for anyone who lives their life by the principles of opportunity cost or time value of money, this should be pretty intuitive. It was a big part of why I chose to take an adult gap year. I recognized that since I had enough money saved to finance the time off, the time off now would be infinitely more valuable than any time I’d get later in life. I’m including this here to serve as a gentle reminder that you never get time back – the potential to make money in the future is always there, while the potential to get time or health back tends to be pretty much nonexistent.
Given that time is one of our most precious resources, Naval then posits:
I don’t think life is that hard. I think we make it hard. One of the things I’m trying to get rid of is the word “should.” Whenever the word “should” creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. Doing something because you “should” basically means you don’t actually want to do it. It’s just making you miserable, so I’m trying to eliminate as many “shoulds” from my life as possible.
I’m very tempted to print this out and put it on my wall as a constant reminder to myself. I often fall victim to the mentality of “doing the things I should.” I believe it actively detracts from my happiness. After reading this, I made a list of “shoulds” to remove from my own life. The only rule I’ve set for myself is that I cannot ignore any “shoulds” that positively impact my physical wellbeing and health, such as exercising or eating well.
Tl;dr
This is part 1 of 2 of my reflections on The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. On defining happiness, here are the tidbits that resonated the most with me:
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
Love the observations in this!