Lessons From the Almanack: Happiness

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-born entrepreneur. He is also the founder and CEO of AngelList. He has invested in over 100 companies including Uber, Twitter and Yammer. He is regarded as The Angel Philosopher who lives his life guided by powerful principles and historical philosophy. In his book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, he explains what happiness is to him. And through that, it gives us many life lessons to choose a better path. First and foremost: Don’t take life too seriously, you’re just a monkey with a plan.

The Three Big Thing In Life

Wealth, health, and happiness are the most important things in life. We pursue them in this order but their importance is in reverse. We chase wealth and once we get that, we run after health and finally, we think about our happiness. Naval says that happiness is the most crucial one that should be your number one priority. He then goes on to what happiness means to him.

There’s Nothing Missing in Your Life

Naval defined happiness as the feeling of ‘nothing being missing from your life’. When you know that your life is complete. He also went on to clarify that happiness and sadness are part of life and you can never escape them and are therefore temporary feelings. He said that true happiness is actually contentment. Be content with where you are and then build on that. Happiness is a choice, be crazy positive about everything. Once you do that, the negatives will disappear and you will be content. Happiness, love and passion are choices.

The Power of Now

Be in the present moment. As we enter our adult life, we start worrying about the future too much and so we’re thinking and planning all the time. At the same time, after living for a number of years, we have considerable memories to look back to so we end up doing that too. But hardly do we sit and truly experience the present. We crave to experience the present but the craving itself takes us away from it. Cherish and experience what you have in this very moment before it becomes a memory. Sit down, close your eyes, and just listen to yourself breathe for a couple of minutes. You’ll see what I mean. Clear your ‘mental inbox’.

Inner Peace

No external events can disturb your peace. Once you start believing that, you will be unstoppable. Your inner peace is your own and it’s your mind that controls it. Nothing from the outside can hurt you and nothing from the outside can you happiness. It’s important to remember the second part as well. And you need to learn how to interact with external events. You need to master the control of your reactions. Your mind or body should be completely under your power. Cultivate indifference to things outside of your control. Life will play out in one way only, you can’t change that.

Happiness is the Absence of Desires

Desire is the contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. That is how toxic our mind is if we don’t control it. Your desires are the cause of your unhappiness, plain and simple. We can’t eliminate them but we can strive to perfect them. Strive for things that will actually bring you value and will help you become a better human being. Once we do that, we are free. The fundamental delusion is that something out there will make me happy and fulfilled whereas happiness is being satisfied with what you have. To simplify this, remember that if you’re at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you’re already winning at life.

Hedonic Adaption

According to Wikipedia, hedonic adaption is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. This can be seen in any context. When you buy a new car, after a few months, it’s just another car. Once you buy a new phone, it loses its charm after a while. Being stuck in a capitalistic world, we need to understand that materialism is the bane of this world. As explained by Chuck Palahniuk in Fight Club: Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place.

Accept Death

Confucious said that ‘you have two lives. The second one begins when you realise you only have one.’ Once we enter adulthood, we tell ourselves that we have a lot of years to live. While that is true, life can end in a flash. And death is what gives life meaning. Once we realise we won’t be getting all of this again, we understand that we must cherish some things as they are. That includes are our relationships, our experiences and most importantly, the life we want for ourselves. This life is finite and out time is limited. We must step up and get it for ourselves. We don’t wait a moment and we don’t wait for a second. We strive for what we deserve. Show impatience with action and patience with results. And remember that inspiration is perishable, act now!

Make the Hard Choices

If you make the hard choices, you’ll get an easy life but if make the easy choices, you’re get a hard life. This doesn’t mean the choice is hard or easy. We must choose the harder path early in life. We must throw ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Don’t settle for less and keep increasing the benchmark. When you’re young, you have the energy to reach your potential. You just need to have the drive. Apply for that job. Go for that degree. Move to a completely new country. Keep pushing yourself. Grind and sweat, toil and bleed, face the abyss.

Freedom is True Happiness

We need to be free. We need to be free from money, things, wants, emotions, uncontrolled thinking and anything that can take away our free will. Be the master of your own mind and your own heart. And all of this is actually impossible but we can always try to maximise this. If you’re always looking to buy the latest iPhone, you’re not free. If you’re always looking for social approval, you’re not free. If you’re always thinking about the future, you’re not free. We must eliminate all things that constrict our freedom and peace of mind. We must break the shackles and free from our mind. We must be above it.

Choose to Grow Yourself

Success will not be served to you in a plate. We must build habits and systems to reach success. And that too, will not come magically out of nowhere. It will be a slow and struggling process. Aristotle said that ‘we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit’. Therefore, we must eliminate all things that do not bring us joy or help us improve ourselves. We must condition our mind to feel like it’s having fun when we’re learning something new. We must strive to ‘have fun’ through intellectual stimulation in one form or another. We must read books instead of magazines, we must listen to podcasts instead of music, we must watch documentaries instead of movies. We must be just to ourselves and not waste our lives away like this.

‘Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.’ — Homer

We know our life is limited and we want to live it happily. We can learn an lot from the people who have achieved all they could in this world to understand that sometimes achieving everything isn’t the answer. As put magnificently by Jim Carrey, I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that its not the answer.’ I believe that life isn’t about money, things, fame or power. Life is about the intangible concepts. It’s about love, compassion, courage and empathy. It’s as human as it can be and it cannot be seen.