3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, My LA and Toronto live shows sold out in hours. Absolutely wild. Limited tickets remain for all other US & Canada dates - get yours here. I’ve been thinking about impediments to happiness. And I can see two obvious roadblocks. First is wanting things to be different. “Happiness is the state when nothing is missing.
When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something.” — Naval Ravikant
If you want the world to be different, your happiness is held hostage until that change occurs. Sometimes this is an actual change you need to make. To leave an unhappy friendship, change from an unfulfilling career, complete a difficult conversation. And we often will remain in years of misery to avoid a few minutes of pain. The second roadblock is uncertainty. “Humans never genuinely pursue happiness; they only pursue relief from uncertainty.
Happiness emerges momentarily as a byproduct whenever uncertainty briefly disappears.”
If you feel like you can’t predict the future, you will default to fear, worry and rumination. Your mindscape will eclipse reality’s landscape. Worrying about the thing you can’t predict usually involves a nightmare fantasy which is way worse than what could happen in reality. However, this imagined nightmare briefly collapses the chaos of the world into certainty. This is how much humans abhor not knowing how the future will unfold; we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable. Sometimes these situations overlap. A family member gets an uncertain medical diagnosis and we can’t be with them, we argue with our partner while we’re apart and don’t know how they’re feeling overnight, we try to mend a broken friendship with a letter and haven’t yet got a reply. So, if you’re feeling unhappy, look to where you’re uncertain, and where you want things to be different first. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. A recent study examined the effect of education on dating success on Tinder. They analysed data on 3,600 evaluations of 24 fictitious profiles. They find that the effect differs sharply between men and women. Women strongly preferred highly educated men, however men exhibited no such preference. They also found no evidence that men have a preference against highly educated women. “In contrast with recent influential studies from the field of economics, we do not find any evidence that men would have an aversion to a highly educated potential partner. Additionally, in contrast with most previous research – again from multiple fields – we do not find any evidence for preferences for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level.” 2. "Men destroy each other during war, and themselves during peacetime." — Nassim Taleb 3. “Man is fond of counting his troubles but not his joys.” — Dostoyevsky LIFE HACKWhoop’s new 5.0. My favourite fitness tracker just released their newest version. Even smaller but now with a 14 day battery life. Heart Screener for on-demand ECG readings. Healthspan to track how your habits affect your pace of aging. And for the ladies, it now has Hormonal Insights for personalised cycle and pregnancy guidance. Join for free, pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap and get your first month for free, plus there’s a 30 day money-back-guarantee. Try the new Whoop risk-free. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
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3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, Come see me live in NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City & Chicago. I see a problem with taking advice from super successful people. There’s a trend of people who’ve “made it” explaining what their routine looks like now, when they’re asked how they became successful. They’ll talk about work-life balance, the importance of leverage, walking lots, early bedtimes, playing with ease and grace, not obsessing, transcending their resentment and overcoming a sense...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, Come see me live in NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City & Chicago. I’ve been thinking about presence this week. Blaise Pascal explains the problem… “We never keep to the present. We anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, My US & Canada live tour is getting close to selling out - LA, Vancouver, Toronto and Nashville are all gone. New York City, Austin, Boston, Denver, Salt Lake City & Chicago - limited tickets left. Come and see me live. “The worst thing that’s ever happened to you is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.” — Joe Rogan The saddest you’ve ever been is the saddest you’ve ever been. The hardest you’ve ever worked is the hardest you’ve ever worked. Tough times...